Economists are tea leaf readers. For any given economic plan you have economists giving their endorsement. “Kamala’s policies were explained and even endorsed by economists” is a non-statement and you can replace “Kamala” with any presidential candidate in the last 50 years and it will remain true. I think the President gets too much credit for both good and bad economic situations, but the fact of the matter is that the average American feels the economy is terrible after 4 years of Biden policies and that is going to look larger than promises of future policies.

On the issue of identity politics, Democrats have been all in for nearly a decade, and only in the last year or so, when it has become apparent they are out of step with the majority of Americans, have they begun to back off. It’s not unexpected for the Republicans to now be the ones bringing up identity politics given how closely the Democrats have aligned themselves to it for so long, and the current backlash towards it. The damage is done and it will take many years of priority shifting for Democrats to get over it.