Is “Affordability” the New “It’s the Economy, Stupid”?

Affordability has become a popular word with Democrats as they seek to slow President Donald Trump’s improvements in America. At first, Trump called it a hoax but later realized that affordability was picking up support. Now Trump and Vice President JD Vance are discussing affordability in their speeches.

The shocking thing to me – and it should not shock me or anyone – Democrats blame Trump for the bad economy when it was former President Joe Biden’s administration that destroyed the good economy from Trump’s first administration. Victor Davis Hanson explained the situation as follows. 

[Trump administration] have belatedly responded to [affordability]…. Perhaps they thought it was sort of absurd when the 21.5% aggregate inflation came under President Joe Biden. And their inflation rate that they inherited in the month of January was 3% -- it’s already gone down. It’s 3% - 2.7%. Gas is cheaper, etc.

So, I don’t think they took it seriously that anybody would believe that the people who caused the problem would blame the people who are trying to clean it up. And four years the problem, 10 months the cleanup?

And then I think they thought their foreign policy successes would mitigate any criticism. In fact, they amplified it because the Democrats said: You’re all involved with these ceasefires or Ukraine, you don’t care about us.

And so, then they had all these initiatives, which will boom, I think, the economy in 2026. But they didn’t emphasize them, exactly how increased oil and gas will help us very quickly. How all this foreign investment, how all this new deregulation, how these new tax cuts, how the new trade policies, how artificial intelligence and the jobs they will create are going to boom the economy in ’26.

Could I go back in history just a minute to offer a warning? In 1992, George Bush was up for reelection – George H. W. Bush, the elder Bush. He was riding high because the 1991 Gulf War had finished…with the survival of Saddam Hussein. But he ended that threat, expelled him from Kuwait with a four-day ground war, following a brilliant air campaign. Very few American casualties. He was at the top of his game as an international diplomat, former war veteran.

George H. W. Bush came into campaign cycle 1992 as high as 90% approval rating. There had been a recession in ’90-’91, but by ’92, when the year started, that year would show 3% inflation. That’s not too bad. It would show 3.5% gross domestic product growth. The unemployment rate had gone down. It was still over 7% too high, but it was going down. And he was at 90%.

What happened? He had a lackluster campaign….

He had a new Wall Street-type of team, and they played by the rules, and they didn’t take the Clinton-Gore campaign seriously, and they did not take the third-party candidacy of Ross Perot seriously.

Why didn’t they do it? Because – I hope this doesn’t sound eerily similar to the problem today – but they said: We had such foreign policy successes. We were polling 90%. They said: The recession is almost over. Look at all the GDP, the inflation. They’re all going in the right direction, and they’re not at recessionary levels.

Meanwhile, the Clinton-Gore-George Stephanopoulos team was saying, “It’s the economy, stupid.” And they took that meme and said: This is the worst economy since the Great Depression. We have no jobs. Inflation is affordable. And then they got an amplification from Ross Periot. He was kind of like the never Trumpers of that age, although he was an independent third party.

And the result of it? Bush’s popularity went from 90% to 40% that election year. And he would lose that election, partly because of Ross Periot, partly because of a lackluster, complacent campaign, and partly because they created this meme, “It’s the economy, stupid,” and turned a recovering economy that they had, in a sense, inherited … into the Great Depression.

I hope that doesn’t sound too familiar, but that’s exactly what is happening now. The economy is on the uptake. President Donald Turmp is overseas with a lot of successes. And the same Democrats are saying: It’s affordability, stupid. And they need to get out in front of that issue and not discount it in the way that Republicans did in 1992.

History is a great teacher. We can either learn from our mistakes, or we will repeat them. Hopefully, the Trump administration will be wiser – learn from history – than the elder Bush administration. If Democrats take over the House and/or Senate in 2026, they will win back the White House in 2028. If the Democrats win the House, Senate, or White House, the United States will start moving down the same road that the Biden administration was taking us.