Before the 2022 midterms, Americans were facing the worstinflation in 40 years, a collapse in real wages, the highest murder rate since the 1990s and the worst border crisis in U.S. history. Yet, despite these headwinds, Joe Biden got one of the best midterm results of any president since John F. Kennedy.
Well, today, things are better by nearly every metric. The border is secure, and the violent crime rate is falling at a historic pace. The poverty rate is at a record low. Real median household income is at the highest level since the Census Bureau began tracking it in 1967, while inflation was 3.4 percent in August — higher than most would like, but slightly below the post-1957 average. The economy is growing and has created over 1 million new private-sector jobs since President Donald Trump took office, and the unemployment rate is just 4.1 percent. Growth is being driven by the private sector, not by inflationary government handouts.
In other words, the economy is objectively in great shape. Nonetheless, polling shows that three-quarters of people rate it as poor or fair, and Republicans are bracing for a blue wave in November that could sweep them out of power on Capitol Hill.
So, what gives?
Here’s why so many are sour on the economy: Consumer prices today are 27.2 percent higher than they were in January 2021. Something that cost $100 when Biden took office now costs about $127. That is a massive increase in prices in just over five and a half years.
Biden bears the lion’s share of the blame for that cumulative increase. The consumer price index rose 21.4 percent from January 2021 to January 2025 (Biden’s term), while it has risen just 4.8 percent since Trump took office. In other words, of that $27 in rising costs, about $21 came on Biden’s watch, while about $6 was on Trump’s watch.
Put another way, about 80 percent of the higher prices Americans are paying today are due to Biden-era inflation, which is locked in. Though prices have gone up at a slower pace during Trump’s term, they have not returned to pre-Biden levels. People are angry about the cumulative effect on their wallets, and they blame the current occupant of the Oval Office.
Additionally, to tamp down inflation, the Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates, which has dramatically increased the cost of buying a home or car. In January 2021, when Biden took office, the average interest rate for a 30-year mortgage was 2.65 percent; today it is over 7 percent, pushing homeownership out of reach for many Americans.
Add to that high energy prices. The price of gasoline has averaged $3.43 a gallon during Trump’s second term — which is lower than the $3.89 average under Biden. But at this writing, gas costs $4.43 a gallon, while the cost of home heating oil is up 52 percent over last year — price increases that Americans correctly attribute to the war in Iran.
In August, Trump told voters that if you have “to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline, just remember, you’re doing it so that a very evil country cannot have … a nuclear weapon.” He’s right. And most Americans are patriots who are willing to sacrifice for our national security — so long as they understand why they are being asked to sacrifice and see a clear strategy for victory. Right now, they don’t.
Then there are Trump’s tariffs, which have added about 0.4 percentage points to core inflation as of July. That’s not a lot, but it contributes to the cumulative increases consumers are struggling with. The trade war with Canada makes things tougher for Republicans in border states such as Maine, Michigan and Alaska, which are key midterm battlegrounds, while high prices for fertilizer and diesel fuel have contributed to the GOP’s struggles in Iowa — normally a reliably red state.
Of course, it’s absurd for Democrats to campaign on “affordability” when it was their reckless spending that unleashed the soaring inflation that is responsible for the vast majority of the higher prices Americans are paying today. And they are campaigning on promises to spend even more — which would make inflation worse, not better.
As for high gas prices, the last time Democrats held the presidency, they suspended oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, blocked oil and gas drilling across more than 625 million acres of federal waters and leased fewer acres of federal land for oil and gas drilling than at any time since World War II. Today, gas prices are higher in blue states like California ($6.40 a gallon) than in red ones like Texas ($3.94 a gallon), thanks to radical climate policies that many Democrats want to force on the rest of America.
Rather than denying the lived reality of Americans struggling with high prices, President Trump needs to acknowledge the pain Americans are feeling, lay blame for those high prices where it belongs and explain why Democrats would make inflation worse. The message should be: Electing Democrats to tackle affordability is like hiring a gang of arsonists to put out the forest fire that they started.
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