By RICK MILLER
Olean Star
President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from his re-election bid and his endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris have brought presidential politics back to square one, U.S. Rep. Nick Langworthy, R-23, said Wednesday.
In an interview with the Olean Star, Langworthy, the freshman Republican from Niagara County, said there is a sense of euphoria among Democrats after the president took himself out of the race following a brutal debate against former President Donald Trump in July.
Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will get to make their case at the Democratic National Convention and to the American people next week.
Meanwhile, Langworthy and other supporters of the former president are scrambling to paint a less flattering picture of the vice president.
“Ultimately, this is going to be down to issues once we get to Labor Day,” Langworthy said. This is going to be an economic election. This reminds me a lot of you know, Ronald Reagan asking the American people in 1980 ‘Are you better off than you were four years ago?’”
While the rate of inflation has slowed recently, you don’t notice it at the grocery store, Langworthy said. Wages aren’t keeping up with the increases, he added.
Langworthy called the likelihood of an interest rate cut in September by the Federal Reserve convenient. “It’s almost like it was planned that way.”
The Republican congressman said, “People are struggling.”
Trump’s campaign to tie Biden to inflation will now focus on Harris. “His (Biden’s) terrible record is now her terrible record,” Langworthy said.
Is Harris enjoying a honeymoon? “Undoubtedly,” Langworthy replied. That will fade as she begins to face scrutiny. “It’s a dead heat,” he said of the Trump-JD Vance ticket compared to the Harris-Walz campaign going into their convention. “It will be about the issues.”
Earlier this week, the Cook Report changed their outlook in three battleground states from leans Republican to toss-up after Harris polled four points ahead of Trump in each of the three states.
Langworthy countered by declaring that Harris “was the most radical nominee” and her opinions “are far outside the mainstream.”
He said Vance, the freshman senator from Ohio, is “razor-sharp,” and who has already questioned Walz’ resignation from the National Guard after 24 years as it was about to head to Iraq. Walz said he retired as he was about to run for Congress, where he spent 12 years before being elected Minnesota governor.
Langworthy also questioned Walz’ common sense when tampons were made available in schoolboy’s rooms.
With just over 80 days before the presidential election, Langworthy said, “This is going to be the shortest sprint in history.”
The Southern Tier congressman said he expects after the vice president formally accepts the nomination for president next week that Republicans will tie her to both the economy and border security.
“People are deeply struggling, ”Langworthy said. “They understand what the Biden economy has done. And I have yet to encounter someone in this district that’s told me, you know, I’m really better off since Biden and Harris were in the White House.”
On the Southern border, Langworthy said Haris was not much of a border czar as illegal immigration peaked. The president assigned Harris to work with Central American countries to help stem the flow of migrants seeking asylum in the U.S.
The vice president said recently she would have signed the bipartisan immigration bill worked out by several senators, which Trump urged them to scrap. There weren’t even enough votes in the Senate to pass the bill, Langworthy said.
Langworthy said that Harris ran her presidential primary campaign four years ago in favor of Medicare for All and would have eliminated private health insurance. Now she’s running away from that.”
He also tied her to raising bail for Black Lives Matter defendants “that burned down police headquarters” in cities after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020.
