Michigan Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin called out her own party on Wednesday for spending years claiming the economy wasn’t bad under the Biden administration.
Though she defended voting in favor of many of former President Joe Biden’s economic policies as a congresswoman, Slotkin told the New York Times’ “The Opinions” podcast that Democrats largely fumbled by ignoring people’s struggles.
“So we did pass a bunch of things, but we also spent a good year plus after the pandemic explaining to people that the economy was not as bad as they thought,” Slotkin said. “Saying things like: This Harvard economist says that G.D.P. is the highest, bah, bah, bah.”
She remarked, “I was going to punch someone if they quoted me one more Harvard economist when I could tell you with certainty that in my part of the world, people’s wages were not keeping pace with inflation. Period.”
Slotkin went on to say that the Democratic Party made voters feel “stupid” by ignoring their issues because the economy looked good “on a piece of paper in a spreadsheet in Boston.”
“That was annoying and was our fault,” she said.
Slotkin, who was elected to the Senate last year, rose to national prominence after giving the Democratic response to President Donald Trump’s congressional address in March. Since then, she has been equally critical of her own party for its focus on identity politics.
In April, Politico previewed a speech she gave in Lansing where she called on the Democratic Party to “f—ing retake the flag” and stop being “weak and woke.”
Though that report got attention, Slotkin clarified to the New York Times that the words “weak” and “woke” were not from her but from focus groups describing the Democratic Party.
“Just to correct the record, the ‘weak’ and ‘woke’ were the two words when there were focus groups done in Michigan in February. The two most common words to describe the Democratic Party in Michigan were ‘weak’ and ‘woke.’ So just to be accurate, that wasn’t me who said those two words. It was me repeating what the perception is of the party,” Slotkin said.
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