Bob Casey zeroes in on 'greedflation' message in key Pennsylvania Senate race
Democrats in battleground Pennsylvania and nationally see the 'greedflation' argument as a way to combat Republican campaign attacks over inflation.
As he seeks to address voter concerns over an issue that has weighed down members of his party across the country, Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., thinks he has found the winning formula: fighting “greedflation.”
In one of the most hotly contested and expensive Senate races of the cycle, Casey has zeroed in on this populist economic message — the idea that corporate greed is driving rising prices — as a way to push back against GOP arguments that government policies he supported have been the primary cause of soaring inflation.
Casey, who is in his third term, has run multiple ads focused on his campaign against “greedflation” in a critical battleground state and, in the process, offered a road map for Democrats nationally to talk about inflation.
“I think the average person gets it,” said Mike Mikus, a Democratic strategist in Pennsylvania. “They understand that inflation is a problem, and it’s a complex problem. But they do understand that [‘greedflation’ is] a piece of it. They feel it that these corporations, these big corporations, are willing to take advantage of a situation to increase their profits at their expense. And what this does is it shows that Sen. Casey gets it, and he’s taking on these big corporations when nobody else will.”
But Casey’s Republican opponents see the message as disingenuous. They argue that Casey, a middle-of-the-road liberal, had previously not been at the forefront of the populist economic turn in both parties. And they note that a number of economists, including liberal-leaning ones, have said the idea that corporate greed is a leading contributor to rising costs across the economy is bunk.
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