Dem
47
GOP
53
March was not a great month for Americans' pocketbooks, as monthly inflation tripled, from 0.3% per month to 0.9% per month. This means the overall inflation rate jumped from 2.4% to 3.3%. This will not be good news for any politician or political party in line to be blamed for the nation's economic woes.
Is there any obvious explanation for why inflation is skyrocketing? Yeah, there just might be. Take a look at this chart of the average price for a gallon of gas, nationwide, over the last year:
The dramatic upturn in gas prices coincides, obviously, with the commencement of the war in Iran. But now the U.S. is taking steps to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, so that should fix everything, right? Right? And in case you are trying to make long-term plans, Donald Trump helpfully advised yesterday that, by November, gas prices could be lower, or possibly higher, or maybe the same. Actually, the real news there is that even Trump is acknowledging the likeliest possibility, namely that gas prices are not coming down anytime soon.
Inflation has actually been problematic for much more than a month, though, so it can't just be the Iran War that is responsible. Is there an obvious explanation for why inflation has been getting worse over the last 6 months or so? Yeah, there just might be. Take a look at this chart of pricing trends put together by the Cato Institute:
Cato is hardcore libertarian, and so they love themselves some free trade and they hate themselves some tariffs. Still, the numbers are the numbers, and tariffs are inherently inflationary. Everyone in the country knew this would happen. Well, everyone save one guy, apparently.
When it comes to the U.S. party system, the most important dynamic in the "Trump realignment," assuming there really was a Trump realignment, was the shift of white, non-college voters away from the Democrats and toward the Republicans. This, in turn, raised an important question: Did they move away from the Democrats for kitchen-table reasons, or for culture-wars reasons? If it's the former, some of those folks might be won back to the Democratic banner. If it's the latter, not so much, because adopting Trumpy takes on the culture wars would cost Democratic politicians dearly with their base.
We may be getting an answer to that very important question. Here is one last chart, this one of Trump's net approval with white, non-college voters in the past year-plus:
That is a swing of 27 points, which is pretty staggering. And this is not an outlier. He's down by more than 30 points in the CNN, CBS, Fox and NPR/PBS polls, all of which now have him underwater with non-college white voters. Trump's enthusiasm for the culture wars has not changed, but the economy sure has, and that suggests the economy is thus what is driving his approval rating down.
It is certainly possible that with some, or even many, of these voters, the Democratic Party is even worse than Iran-War-era Trump. But if their attitude is "a pox on both your houses," then many of the Trump 2024 voters will stay home for the midterms, which will certainly work to the blue team's advantage. Further, these preliminary numbers suggest that if the Democrats can come up with a compelling economic message, they might actually win back some of these voters, the ones who were the backbone of the FDR coalition. Of course, coming up with a compelling economic message is easier said than done. (Z)