Affordability

For everything that everyone wants to say about every election, James Carville was in the end correct that it’s always the economy stupid. Neither party really understands that and both act like that’s not the core issue when they take power. They each push their own culture wars and while that matters on the margins and of course matters to activists very, very much, for the kind of swing voters that decide elections–you know, morons–it’s really almost always about the economy. There can be some exceptions to this–hard to argue that Trump’s win in 2016 was based around the economy, for example. But it is true more often than it isn’t. So it will be interesting to see what Democrats do the next time they take power. They have stumbled upon the affordability issue and it is gold for them. Will they center this if they win in 2026 and then in 2028? Or will they focus on other issues again? I suspect it will be the latter for a number of reasons that include what matters to party activists, that actually lowering prices is tremendously difficult, and of course that the Supreme Court will ensure that anything Democrats do will be declared unconstitutional.

In any case, it’s good for Democrats right now at least.

On President Trump’s first day back in office, Representative Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat from New Jersey, hit him with a new political mantra. His barrage of executive orders, she argued, had failed to make any attempt to address the “affordability crisis.”

It was an early sign of where the Democratic Party was headed. Nearly a year later, Ms. Sherrill is preparing to take office after winning her bid for governor. And “affordability” is dominating the political conversation.

The word has long been used sporadically in politics — Mr. Trump promised to “make America affordable again” during his 2024 campaign — but never with the same force and frequency as in the past few months.

Democrats used “affordability” to harness worries about the cost of living and sweep to victory in this November’s elections. And once that happened, references to “affordability” as a stand-alone term skyrocketed.

Now both parties are preparing for affordability — a useful shorthand that nods to the costs of housing, child care, groceries, health care, utilities and other essential expenses — to play a major role in the midterm elections next year. Survey after survey has shown that Americans rank economic concerns as their top issue and increasingly worry they are falling behind financially.

That has left Republicans playing catch-up. Even as Mr. Trump contends that the word is a “hoax” and a “con job,” he is traveling the country on an “affordability tour” to reassure voters. The Biden administration was “when we first began hearing the word affordability,” Mr. Trump said in his recent televised address.

So far, the efforts haven’t worked: Approval of his handling of the economy has been falling for months.

All I have to say is this–this will probably work for Democrats. Swing voters don’t care that Trump is destroying the Constitution. They don’t care about any of the things we care about. They care about their pocketbook. So go ahead and use this now, but Democrats had better have a rock solid plan to enact an affordability agenda in 2029 or the election of 2030 will be a massive wipeout by a Republican Party led by Nick Fuentes.