Inflation chews hole in holiday, Dem hopes
AUBURN HILLS, Mich. — Samantha Martin, a single mother shopping ahead of Thanksgiving, lamented how rising gas and grocery prices have eaten away at the raise she got this year as a manager at Mcdonald’s.
Gas “is crazy out of hand,” Martin said as she returned a shopping cart at an Aldi discount market in Auburn Hills, a Detroit suburb, to collect a 25-cent deposit.
Her most recent fill-up was $3.59 a gallon, about $1 more than the price in the spring. Her raise, to $16 an hour from $14, was “pretty good, but it’s still really hard to manage,” Martin said. “I got a raise just to have the gas go up, and that’s what my raise went to.”
Martin, 35, a political independent, doesn’t blame either party for inflation, but in a season of discontent, her disapproval fell more heavily on Democrats who run Washington. She voted for President Joe Biden but is disappointed with him and his party. “I think I would probably give somebody else a shot,” she said.
As Americans go on the road this week to travel for family gatherings, the higher costs of driving and one of the most expensive meals of the year have alarmed Democrats, who fear that inflation may upend their electoral prospects in the midterms. Republicans are increasingly confident that a rising cost of living — the ultimate kitchen-table issue — will be the most salient factor in delivering a red wave in 2022.
Democrats’ passage in quick succession of the $1 trillion infrastructure law and, in the House, of a $2.2 trillion social safety net and climate bill, promise once-in-ageneration investments that Democratic candidates plan to run on next year, with many of the policies in the bills broadly popular.
But, despite rising wages and falling unemployment, Democrats are also in danger of being swept aside in a hostile political environment shaped in large part by the highest inflation in 30 years, which has defied early predictions that it would be shortlived as the country pulled out of the pandemic.
With control of Congress and many key governor seats at stake, Republicans are pointing to public and private surveys that show inflation is linked to Americans’ falling approval of Biden. And, given the wholesale gerrymanders drawn, particularly by Republicans, in the current round of congressional redistricting, the Democrats would face a high bar in keeping their paper-thin majority in the House of Representatives, even in a favorable environment.
Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-mich., in a vulnerable House district, wrote to Biden this past week that inflation was the most pressing concern of her constituents. A former CIA analyst in Iraq, she urged the president to pressure Saudi Arabia to increase oil output.
Slotkin, who won her seat in the midterm wave of 2018, is one of two Michigan Democrats in highly competitive districts that include the Detroit suburbs. In the Donald Trump years, Democrats had mixed results in the populous region, advancing in white-collar communities but losing ground with their traditional union supporters.
In an interview, Slotkin said that during a recent visit home, she heard constantly about the high costs of gas and groceries, and experienced them herself. “I buy groceries; I drive a ton,” she said. “Thanksgiving week is going to be more expensive by a long shot than last Thanksgiving.”
She acknowledged the political peril that rising consumer prices could pose for her party if it continues next year. “Kitchen-table issues affect Michigan and the Midwest more than any other national issue going on in Washington,” she said.