California Community College Transfer Econ vs political econ

Transferring from a well established Los Angeles Area JC.

GPA 3.8
Straight As except two Bs in Calc 1 and 2 which is my biggest problem

Extracurricular Activities:
Student government Mathematical Sciences Division Representative
Honors transfer program
Work about 20-30 hours a week
Collegiate swim team
AGS honors society board
Bilingual Japanese/english

I met with a UC Berkeley counselor at my JC. who told me to apply political econ rather than econ (because it will disregard the two B’s from my in major GPA making it a 4.0 from a 3.5) and then apply to econ once I get in, as every transfer student is pre-econ. Is this a common strategy or something that is do-able? Is the political econ major in it itself a useful major?