Democrats go all in on affordability in bid to turn voters against Trump | Democrats
To break Donald Trump’s hold on voters, Democrats are pinning their hopes on one word above all else: affordability.
It has become a staple of press conferences, a priority for candidates and the subject of legislation ahead of the November midterm elections. When Democrats don’t like something Trump has done (a common occurrence), their counterargument is that Americans would be better off if the president focused on making life cheaper.
“Democrats in the House and Senate [are] Focus on reducing your costs, focus on affordability. “Republicans led by Donald Trump are focused on spending treasuries and, God forbid, they are living on military adventurism abroad,” Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer told reporters this week, just before the chamber advanced a resolution halting further attacks on Venezuela without congressional authorization.
It was a turning point for Democrats, who have spent much of Joe Biden’s presidency scrambling to respond to a historic wave of pandemic-related inflation that has gripped the U.S. economy and sent his presidency to a haphazard end after a single term.
Trump returned to the White House after a campaign insisting he could cut prices “on day one.” That promise was widely viewed as an economic impossibility, and now the chickens are coming home to roost for the president, with Democrats likely benefiting.
“That’s a weakness for Republicans, because Republicans said, hey, look, man, you gave us the responsibility and we’re going to make it better and prices are going to come down. And of course they didn’t,” said Marc Hetherington, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“This is his Achilles heel, and Democrats are well-served to take advantage of it.”
The latest indication of the GOP’s uneasiness came Thursday, when 17 House Republicans broke ties with party leaders and joined Democrats to approve a three-year restoration of premium tax credits for Affordable Care Act (ACA) health plans.
That’s a reversal from October, when Democrats refused to vote on funding bills unless subsidies were extended, prompting a record-long government shutdown and indicating that people buying insurance through the ACA exchanges would see significant price increases without assistance.
Resistance was eventually broken, but Republican House speaker Mike Johnson later announced that he would not allow any legislation to reinstate the credits to come to the floor for any period of time. Moderate Republicans then bypassed him to force a vote on a three-year extension, the Democrats’ preferred option.
“It left us with two options: either an expiration or a clean extension. In my view, a clean extension is a much better option, and that’s why I went down the path that I did,” Republican congressman Brian Fitzpatrick, one of the main players in the insurgency, said in an interview with NPR.
Although the bill is unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled Senate without changes, Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries praised its passage as a sign that the party’s strategy is working. “Democrats in the minority are governing as if we were in the majority because we believe we need to get things done for the American people in the midst of this affordability crisis, which is not a hoax,” he said after the vote.
That last part became a staple for Jeffries after Trump called affordability concerns a “hoax” at a rally in Pennsylvania in December.
But the data underscores why Americans are still worried about their livelihoods. While inflation today is not as high as the peak of more than 9 percent in mid-2022 during Biden’s presidency, prices continue to grow at an annual rate of 2.7 percent in November, above the target set by the inflation-fighting Federal Reserve, according to the latest consumer price index data.
An NPR/PBS News/Marist questionnaire Data released in December showed that public approval of Trump’s handling of the economy had fallen to 36%, the lowest level since the survey began asking the question.
In his last press conference, Schumer doubled down on his promise that “Democrats will make healthcare and other high costs, the high cost of living, the No. 1 issue of 2026.”
Outside groups that have already spent heavily to put the issue on voters’ radar are also scheduled to join the campaign. Leor Tal, campaign director for the nonprofit Unrig Our Economy, said the group spent $10 million last year urging voters to contact Republican lawmakers and tell them to “stop raising costs on everything from hamburgers to health care to holiday gifts.”
“One vote won’t undo everything they’ve done to make life more expensive for ordinary Americans, like the historic health care cuts they’ve already made. But it’s safe to say they’ve heard their constituents’ complaints,” he said.
Republicans, by contrast, believed their political fortunes would turn around next tax season, thanks to policies enacted as part of the Big Beautiful Bill passed last summer, which they have now renamed the “Working Families Tax Cut.”
“These supplies will find their way into Americans’ homes and wallets, and you’ll see all boats start to rise,” Johnson said this week.
“All American families will get the biggest tax refund they’ve ever had, and it’s all starting here very soon.”
Republicans are otherwise sticking to what Hetherington describes as the familiar playbook by trying to redirect voters’ attention elsewhere, such as Trump’s successful raid on Venezuela or allegations of widespread fraud in child care expenses.
Many in the party have tried to argue that the price rise, which has intensified as the economy recovers from Covid, is Biden’s fault. That strategy is unlikely to work, Hetherington said.
“Political science suggests that whoever is responsible, whether they are responsible for inflation or not, they tend to be punished for it,” he said.
“I don’t know how no one has ever coined the term affordability before, but it really seems to resonate with people. It doesn’t seem to get old.”
