Opinion | Why Affordability Still Hurts Democrats

I think a big weakness that Democrats have is they can say affordability is our new buzzword —— “Focused on affordability ——” “Affordability ——” “Affordability.” But I think the question is: Well, what are you going to do about it? And if the answer is we’re going to subsidize X, Y and Z more, that’s our policy plan. Well, to what extent is that different from the spending that we saw during the Biden presidency that kind of fueled some of this inflation? And so I do think that Republicans benefit from the fact that they are running against a Democratic Party who know the words to mouth but haven’t yet said: Here’s what our agenda is. That would actually bring your prices down. They know it’s the issue to talk about, but they’re not quite sure exactly what it is that they would do about it, or how to communicate that to voters, where Republicans can say: We’re cutting your taxes in one big, beautiful bill. And if people get their tax returns back in April and that’s true, they’ll be able to point to that. They used to be able to say: We’re bringing your gas prices down. Gasoline is going to be — I think “Gasoline is going to be below $2 at some point in the pretty near future. It’s very low, much lower than it was under Sleepy Joe.” But of course, we know that they’ve now lost that talking point, at least in the short term. But that’s where I think Democrats have a weakness, is they can say, they can pantomime that they care about affordability, but what’s their plan to actually make things cheaper besides saying “I’m not Donald Trump”? I think that’s still a vulnerability they have.