Senate Republicans are growing increasingly concerned about how the economy might affect the GOP’s chances of retaining power after the 2026 midterm elections.
Meanwhile, Democrats have been using Americans’ economic woes to make the case to the voting public and articulating far-leftist policies they claim will ease the financial burdens many are facing.
From The Hill:
Senate Republicans, unsettled by recent Democratic victories in the off-year elections, want President Trump to do more to respond to the issue of “affordability,” a buzzword Trump recently dismissed as a Democratic “con job” despite polls showing voters view higher costs as a major issue.
Republican lawmakers say they’re glad Trump traveled to Pennsylvania on Tuesday to tout his economic record, but they warn that the White House needs to do more to show voters it is working hard to ease the financial burdens felt by millions of Americans struggling to cope with rising costs.
“You can’t call it a hoax and suggest that people are going to believe it,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said of Trump’s attempts to dispute evidence that affordability has become a major concern for millions of Americans. “What you say matters.”
Trump has seemed out of touch at times with voters’ concerns over the economy, a dynamic that plagued his predecessor, former President Biden.
Trump told Politico in a recent interview that he would grade the economy as “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus.”
Speaking in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, the president argued that “prices are coming down very substantially” and blasted Democratic critics who are hitting him over affordability for pushing a “hoax.”
Murkowski suggested those around Trump may be out of touch.
“By the time somebody is at the level that they’re serving as president of the United States, it’s not like they’re going out and doing their own shopping,” she said. “Trump is not sitting down on a Thursday night and paying his own bills and seeing what’s going on with health care and how much his credit card shows for gas receipts.
“It is important that his team be really honest with him about what people are talking about around the dinner table,” she said.
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Another Republican senator told The Hill that Republicans “need to have a message about caring for people who are struggling because of the high cost of things.” He further noted that “The cost of living just makes life very difficult on people.”
While addressing a crowd in rural Pennsylvania on Wednesday, Trump claimed prices “are coming down tremendously.”
He also referred to criticisms about the economy as “a hoax” during a roundtable conversation with business leaders.
However, Democrats are using the economy as a battering ram against Trump and Republicans in Congress — despite the fact that America’s financial problems worsened over the past four years when Democrats controlled the legislature and White House.
From The New York Times:
Mr. Trump has given ammunition to his opponents in downplaying and sometimes outright denying the economic realities. Democrats are already strategizing on how to weaponize his defiant posture against Republicans heading into next year’s midterms. As Mr. Trump continues to brush off an issue that he said he would solve in his first months in office — one that is pulling down his poll numbers — Democrats believe one of his biggest strengths in his first term could become a major vulnerability in his second.
Bakari Sellers, a former South Carolina lawmaker and adviser to Democratic leaders, said that Mr. Trump is following a similar playbook Democrats used to their detriment in recent years when they tried to cite statistics to blunt worries about crime and immigration. Mr. Trump’s rejection of affordability concerns also comes as Republicans are struggling to contend with rising health care premiums set to take hold next year.
“It is a gift to Democrats, and I think this is the one time that the Democrats have been disciplined enough to home in on one message,” Mr. Sellers said. “And between this and health care, you have winning issues. And you’re seeing that throughout the country.”
The White House issued a statement repudiating the notion that Democrats are winning the messaging battle on the economy, pointing out that Democrats “spent four years creating a generational economic disaster and dismissing Americans’ concerns about inflation and affordability under Joe Biden.”
The statement further accused Democrats of “only pretending to care now — despite having no real solutions for the mess they created — to score cheap political points that no one is buying.”
A recent AP-NORC poll released on Wednesday found that only 31 percent of adults approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, a nine-point drop from March. Among Republicans, 69 percent still approve of his handling of the economy, but this also represents a nine-point drop from March.
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