I've been fairly bullish on the Democrat's midterm prospects, primarily because it was too early to start wailing, gnashing my teeth and rending my sackcloth. However, I'm starting to despair a bit. The best hope for Democrats is that the rightward lurch of the GOP into full QAnon will cost them winnable seats. I'm certainly hopeful that the relative merits of the candidates in Pennsylvania is a good sign.
I also felt that the primary issue for voters was going to be Covid and Covid would be "over" by the fall. I do think that remains true, absent some horror show of a variant coming along.
The problem has become inflation, and this is an especially tricky problem because a lot of Americans have no real memory of inflation from the late 1970s. The other reason is that there are myriad reasons for inflation and few of them have policy solutions. Yes, Biden should reduce tariff barriers immediately to reduce costs. But gas prices and the post Covid surge in demand are beyond any policy problem.
Yglesias has gone full inflation hawk, but the reality is that countries that didn't do the same level of stimulative spending are still seeing 8-9% inflation. It wasn't so much that Democrats overstimulated the economy as that the economy was going to be overstimulated anyway coming out of a pandemic and supply chain issues have a long knock-on effect. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has sent oil and gas prices skyrocketing and that has been a major factor in inflationary spirals.
Voters are, sorry, dumb creatures. I will die on the hill that elections are decided by dumb things like inchoate feelings about "stuff." The right track/wrong track question pollsters rely on are basically trying to measure this. Maybe, the "wrong track" numbers are bloated by Democratic leaning voter who are appalled by the authoritarian tilt of the modern GOP and will turnout to vote Blue anyway.
I just worry that American democracy is about to get body-slammed by voters unhappy over things that are beyond policy solutions.
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