When critics of President Joe Biden's economic policies derisively dubbed them as "Bidenomics" early on in his tenure, the White House eventually attempted to appropriate the term and attach a positive connotation to it in a concerted effort to bolster Biden's standing on the issue throughout the second half of 2023.
That effort has now largely been abandoned by Biden's White House and his Democratic allies in a sort of quiet admission of defeat that the "Bidenomics" term still holds a predominately negative connotation for most Americans, according to Breitbart.
A recent analytical report revealed that after an initial surge in positive usage of the term last summer, including dozens of times by Biden himself and hundreds of times by his Democratic allies, there was a substantial dropoff in usage beginning in the fall, and now the term is rarely uttered at all -- at least not in a positive context.
Axios reported this week that President Biden used the "Bidenomics" term during an event on Tuesday for the first time since January, marking only the third time so far this year that the word has crossed his lips.
Compare that to the 100 times he employed the "Bidenomics" term throughout the second half of 2023, predominately between June and October, when the White House push to repurpose the term first coined by media and Republican critics was in full swing.
The same significant decline in usage of the term was also evident among the president's Democratic allies in Congress, who at the peak used it nearly 500 times last July but have said it only 10 times this month.
"It's a shift that amounted to an acknowledgment that the White House's messaging effort was falling flat with many voters," the outlet observed.
However, even as Biden and Democrats tried to impart positivity in the "Bidenomics" term, Republicans in Congress continued to use it mockingly, including as many as 800 to 900 times per month in August and November of last year, and they are still using it to negatively describe Biden's economic policies nearly 500 times per month now.
The fact that Team Biden's hijacking of the "Bidenomics" term last summer had failed to catch on with voters began to become evident by the fall months, according to an NBC News report in November.
The attempted rebranding of the word was described by one focus group participant as a "jumbled mess," in that nobody -- including President Biden himself -- could fully define what it actually meant and it was instead employed as a sort of catch-all term to encompass virtually anything that was even remotely connected to the economy.
Furthermore, focus groups and polling consistently showed that the "Bidenomics" term, when used positively by the president and his allies, rang hollow with Americans who are still dealing with the negative effects of high-interest rates, inflationary prices for groceries and consumer goods, and elevated costs for gasoline and other forms of energy.
"Whoever came up with the slogan Bidenomics should be fired," one anonymous Democratic strategist told NBC News at the time. "It’s probably the worst messaging you could ever imagine."
The decision to largely ditch the "Bidenomics" term -- though that process began last fall -- was likely finalized last month when multiple polls left little doubt that the rebranding effort had backfired dismally on President Biden and his Democratic allies.
Fox News reported in early February on polls that showed former President Donald Trump with a substantial lead over Biden on economics-related issues, while The Hill reported in late February on other polling which showed that, despite the constant hype from the White House, most Americans felt that they hadn't benefited at all, or were even worse off than before, thanks to Biden's economic policies.
