As we enter the final stretch of the 2026 midterm campaign season, polls show that James Carville’s 1992 campaign synopsis — it’s the economy, stupid — applies more than ever.
More than 80 percent of registered voters, including 82 percent of Republicans and 88 percent of Democrats, said “the economy” will be their “top voting issue” on November 3, based on a recent Pew Survey.
These days, when voters say the economy, they mostly mean the rising price of essentials like housing, groceries, gasoline, healthcare, and more.
In 1992, on the other hand, when Carville was advising Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, the U.S. economy suffered primarily from macroeconomic issues like sluggish growth and lower-than-expected consumer spending, as the Federal Reserve noted at the time.
Inflation was not a top concern in 1992, and the Fed predicted it would “remain low over the next two years.”
Today, voters are far less concerned with abstract concepts like slow economic growth than they are with the very real and very scary affordability crisis.
To put the affordability crisis into perspective, consider that since 2021, cumulative inflation has increased by more than 24 percent. In other words, a dollar today only buys 80 percent of what it could in 2021.
Government spending, as everyone should know, is almost always the culprit when inflation spikes. Inflation fundamentally is too many dollars chasing too few goods and services.
Everyone should also know that the Biden administration, with a compliant Democratic-controlled Congress, borrowed and printed trillions of dollars after the pandemic, which set the inflation fire.
Unfortunately, it seems like Americans are missing the link between more government spending and inflation. Even worse, more Americans than ever are falling for the socialist “free” stuff nonsense.
This November, more than 200 socialists are running for political offices across the nation, touting the welfare state as the ultimate solution to the rising cost of living.
Nearly all the socialists running in the midterms are members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and thus support the DSA’s Workers Deserve More Program.
The Workers Deserve More Program is the entire socialist policy enchilada: free everything, nationalization of industries, soak-the-rich taxes, the Green New Deal, and much more.
For dunderheads who believe that America’s billionaires will foot the bill for the socialist state, please acquaint yourselves with basic arithmetic.
If every penny were taken from every billionaire, it would not come even close to funding the DSA’s absurd agenda. Let me make this clear: if the United States enacted the DSA’s Workers Deserve More Program, hyperinflation would ensue. So would rationing, because shortages would become commonplace.
At a micro-level, the Green New Deal would ban fossil fuels, the most affordable, reliable, and abundant energy. Energy prices would spike across the board, again, just like they did during the Biden administration.
Medicare for All would erase whatever free market forces remain in the Byzantine healthcare sector. A Universal Basic Income would incentivize people to not be productive, valuable contributors to society. “Free” public housing is not the American Dream. Declaring that higher education is heretofore “free” does not make it cost zero dollars; it means robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Americans have every reason to be frustrated with the economy and the affordability crisis. However, that frustration should be directed at the crony-capitalist grifters who have rigged the economy with their big government accomplices.
Less government regulation in housing, healthcare, education, and energy will breed innovation, ingenuity, and outside-the-box solutions. More choices, more competition, fewer mandates, and less intervention would slash prices.
The surest way to break the affordability crisis is the invisible hand of free enterprise, not “free” stuff. Society is not a zero-sum game, and socialism is best at fostering mass misery and poverty rather than optimism and widespread prosperity.
Chris Talgo (ctalgo@heartland.org) is editorial director at The Heartland Institute.
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