Members-Only Article
This morning I dipped into the Times comments about the piece I wrote on abortion politics. They made me even more pessimistic about the Democrats’ electoral fate in November. Obviously comments at some level aren’t a good barometer of a larger population. But the level of self-defeating ignorance on display almost defied comprehension. I closed them up and decided to go about my day. The one critique that stood out to me was the argument that none of the abortion stuff matters because this midterm is really about the economy and especially inflation. So Democrats need to focus their message on that. And if possible, resolve those issues by election time.
It goes without saying that 1) inflation approaching 10% is not popular, 2) it is exceedingly unlikely that Joe Biden can materially reduce inflation in the next five months (in fact you probably need big shifts three months out from the election) and 3) taking stock of #1 and #2 if Democrats allow the midterms to be a referendum on inflation they will get soundly defeated since inflation is not popular.