Unless inflation significantly abates well before November (and there’s certainly no guarantee of that), Democrats will face midterm voters, who are already disposed to smite the party controlling the White House, in a poor position to argue they are the party that can be trusted to help middle-class families make ends meet. That doesn’t mean that if they can wrest some popular domestic proposal out of Congress such as negotiated prescription drug prices for Medicare, it won’t help; they should fight for that and do everything in their power to demonstrate Republican loyalty to Big Pharma via this issue. But it’s likely to be a small life raft against a large wave of distress about inflation, the one economic problem that afflicts nearly everyone.
Democrats thus have little choice but to shift their attention to those “divisive” cultural issues where they at least can get the attention of voters and command majority support. Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s radical Dobbs decision, that now includes abortion rights, an issue where Republicans are in a weak position. Abortion rights are also an issue that can be used to illustrate the GOP’s more general hostility to majoritarian values and more general reliance on anti-democratic institutions like the courts, the Electoral College, the filibuster-controlled U.S. Senate, and reactionary state legislatures. On this front it’s the GOP, not Joe Biden or his party, that is clearly responsible for a clear and present danger to swing-voter interests. Add in a renewed threat of a return to power by Donald Trump or some MAGA successor, and you have the ingredients for a fighting chance for Democrats.
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