Wake up, Democrats — and hammer Trump on the cost of living

Watching the Sunday news shows over the weekend, you would never have known that last week’s economic data showed a substantial spike in inflation. On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” CBS’s “Face the Nation” and ABC’s “This Week,” Democrat after Democrat — including Colorado Rep. Jason Crow, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy and Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen — faulted President Donald Trump’s performance at the Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, or Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops and attempted police department takeover in Washington, D.C. 

The word inflation was barely mentioned. That was a big mistake.

Beyond the Sunday shows, Democrats need to be pounding home a singular, clear message: “Donald Trump promised to reduce the cost of living. But prices keep rising.” 

And: “Donald Trump is more interested in chasing down immigrants and hobnobbing with leaders from other countries than in making sure Americans can make ends meet.”

Points like these would be a way for Democrats to begin to build a narrative that taps into the economic anxieties of millions of ordinary people. 

We know that inflation, which spiked to 40-year highs under the Biden administration, played an outsized role in returning Trump to the Oval Office. Throughout his campaign, he targeted the high cost of living, blamed it on the Democrats and made promises to bring it down rapidly. 

At a rally on Aug. 9, 2024, in Bozeman, Mont., Trump said, “Starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again, to bring down the prices of all goods.” Five days later, he told a crowd in North Carolina, “Prices will come down. You just watch. They’ll come down and they’ll come down fast.” On Aug. 17, 2024, Trump promised Pennsylvania voters, “Starting the day I take the oath of office, I will rapidly drive down prices, and we will make America affordable again.”

As the New York Times noted two days after the election, “Voters regularly cited the economy as a top concern in polls headed into the election, and they often suggested that they thought Mr. Trump would do a better job in managing it…And exit polls suggested that voters were indeed worried about the economy as they headed out to vote.” 

Anxieties about inflation ate away at Democratic support, according to David A. Steinberg, an associate professor of international political economy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. “Simply asking people to think about inflation,” he said, “reduced approval of the Biden-Harris administration and reduced confidence in the Democratic Party leadership’s ability to manage the economy. In other words, when people thought about inflation, their support for the Democratic Party fell.” 

Despite the importance of inflation in Trump’s election win, from the day he return to office in January he has been preoccupied with other issues. Closing the border; passing a massive tax cut that disproportionately benefits the wealthy; going after diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives; sending Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to round up immigrants; deploying troops to the streets of Washington and Los Angeles — these have all been more important to Trump than making any effort to lower costs for the American people.

In fact, his infatuation with tariffs seems destined to hit citizens in the pocketbook. Economists also think Trump’s immigration and deportation policies are “helping drive up prices.” Still, the president insists that “Inflation is now down to the perfect number. We’ve ended Biden’s inflation nightmare…There’s hardly any inflation at all.”

Republican strategist Karl Rove got it right when he observed that Trump is making the same mistake Biden made. The president, Rove warned, is boasting that the “Golden Age of American prosperity has returned, and Americans are just not feeling it.”  

On Aug. 12, the administration doubled down on what Rove called their losing strategy. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, speaking in a way few Americans would understand, insisted that “inflation beat market expectations once again and remains stable, underscoring President Trump’s commitment to lower costs for American families and businesses. The Panicans continue to be proven wrong by the data…President Trump’s America First agenda is Making America Wealthy Again.”

Millions of Americans — or “Panicans,” as she called them — are not buying it. The evidence is legion.

Take the June 11 story in the New York Post that revealed steep price increases at Walmart. “[A] ‘Jurassic World’ T. Rex figure had spiked by nearly 38% to $55 on May 21 from just a month ago. A heating pad costs 25% more at $24.96 this year…A fishing reel at Walmart jumped to $83.26 from $57.37.”

The store’s employees were apparently stunned as well. They posted photos of the price hikes on social media. 

Want more sharp takes on politics? Sign up for our free newsletter, Standing Room Only, written by Amanda Marcotte, now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Last week’s economic data brought home the reality for many Americans: That what they are experiencing at stores like Walmart is not a mirage. As CNBC observed, at 0.9%, the jump in wholesale prices was “much higher than expected,” making it “the biggest monthly increase since June 2022.” When calculated on an annual basis, the increase was a whopping 3.3%, “the biggest 12-month move since February and well above the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation target.”

These discouraging numbers will make it harder for the Fed to lower interest rates, as Trump is itching for them to do — so much so that he has mused about firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Those high rates are felt when Americans go to buy houses or cars.

It all comes down to this: Donald Trump may talk about inflation being at a perfect number, but Americans are not seeing it in the grocery aisle, or at Walmart. 

What the economist Harold Shapiro wrote more than 40 years ago is as true today as it has ever been. “Inflation,” he argued, “is, at its heart, not simply an economic problem, but a political and social problem. Inflation relates more directly to our political system’s response to a changing social agenda than to any unresolved deficiency in our economic system.” 

In Trump’s case, the social agenda involves chasing immigrants out of the country, shuttering DEI offices and sending troops to D.C. Those actions are much easier for a president to order than to manage inflation and its economic consequences. But the repercussions will fall disproportionately on working people, many of whom have embraced Trump as their champion. They will suffer the most from what Forbes has called “an insidious ‘hidden tax’ [that] directly impacts the purchasing power of families in the United States.”

Paying that hidden tax is part of the reason why recent polls report that the president’s economic approval ratings are anemic, with only 35% of Americans approving of his handling of the economy and a staggering 62% disapproving. The same number — 62% — also disapproves of the way he is handling inflation.

Sooner or later, those feelings — and the economic facts of life — may catch up with the president. But that will only happen if Democrats are smart enough to make inflation and affordability the only things they talk about and broadcast on social media. 

So far, they are not doing so.

They should learn from the success of Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign in New York. He spoke plainly and often about the lives New Yorkers were living. People want politicians to acknowledge and speak about the affordability crisis, including the costs of housing and health care, that they experience on a daily basis. Mamdani has offered bold solutions and has not simply recycled the usual political talking points. And he has stayed on his economic message rather than allowing himself to be distracted by every breaking news item coming out of the White House.

Until Democrats learn those lessons, they will waste their media appearances — and leave Americans caught between a president who doesn’t do anything about inflation and Democratic leaders who don’t talk about it.