Empty “Affordability” Promises Will Haunt Democrats in Midterms

It’s increasingly obvious that the Democrats hope to win next fall’s midterms by promising to cure the “affordability crisis.” They clearly believe their November 4 victories were the result of economic messaging rather than the partisan advantages they enjoy in New York City, New Jersey, and Virginia.

But if you listened to how the Democrats who won those elections said they would restore affordability, their promises fell into these two categories: old ideas that have consistently failed, and vague bromides that won’t help anyone.

Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral race by embracing the “promise them free stuff” strategy. He pledged to give the voters universal free childcare, fare-free buses, rent control, and city-owned grocery stores – just to start.

But as common sense dictates, there is no such thing as “free” anything. Someone has to pay for all of Mamdani’s socialist fantasies – namely, taxpayers. On child care, for instance, New York City workers and businesses will have to pay the wages of those who provide care, buy the buildings in which these individuals do their jobs, pay the utility and maintenance bills for those structures, ad infinitum.

Mamdani also promised to freeze rent increases in the city’s roughly two million “stabilized” apartments. This is one of the oldest scams in the socialist playbook—price controls for real estate. Anyone who has taken Economics 101 (and actually managed to pass the course) knows that price controls always create shortages. How does that phenomenon manifest itself in a microscopic New York City apartment? It deters landlords from investing in renovations and doing proper maintenance. Even the New York Times admits that:

“As any economist will tell you, capping prices below production costs causes shortages and rationing … Even caps that sit above current costs can deter maintenance and investment. When rent controls were lifted in Cambridge, Mass., landlords invested in renovations, raising property values across the city. When San Francisco expanded rent control in 1994, the supply of rental housing declined.”

Across the river in New Jersey, Democrat Mikie Sherrill won the gubernatorial race after promising to freeze energy rates for a year. This pledge likely got her a lot of votes, but it ignored the cause of high energy costs: supply and demand. The price of electricity in the Garden State increased by 22 percent during the year preceding the election because the current Democrat governor, Phil Murphy, presided over the closure of several power plants while the demand for energy spiked. Price controls won’t increase the supply of energy.

Moving further south to Virginia, Democrat Abigail Spanberger won the gubernatorial race based on a collection of empty bromides that her campaign called “Abigail’s Affordable Virginia Plan.” This was essentially a list of vague promises such as “making your medications & coverage more affordable,” “putting homeownership within reach for all Virginians” and “lowering your energy bills and saving you money.”

This “plan” provides precious little detail concerning how Spanberger will accomplish these miracles. But the voters bought it nonetheless – never mind the fact that the incumbent governor, Republican Glenn Youngkin, actually has a record of cutting taxes and bringing high-paying jobs to the state.

Democrats have obviously fallen for the narrative – largely cooked up by liberal pundits on corporate media networks – that off-year elections in deep blue New York City and New Jersey and light blue Virginia have demonstrated how they can escape from the political wilderness.

Indeed, they are already using “affordability” as if it’s a magic word and making patently false claims about “the Trump economy.” Former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich, for example, recently published a Substack column titled, “Trump’s Truly Sh*tty Economy.” It is a work of particularly dreadful fiction.

Reich claims that real wages have been falling since Trump returned to the White House. Nope. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), year-over-year real earnings through September increased by .08 percent. He also claims that job growth has stalled. Yet, according to the latest BLS report, the economy added 119,000 new jobs in September. As CNBC reports, that’s double what economists predicted. Reich is oddly silent on GDP, which grew by a robust 3.8 percent in the 2nd quarter and is expected to hit 4.2 percent for the 3rd quarter.

Still, even normally honest publications like the Wall Street Journal are running articles with titles like this: “The Middle Class Is Buckling Under Almost Five Years of Persistent Inflation.” This headline grossly misrepresents the actual arc of inflation during this period. In January of 2021, former President Biden inherited an inflation rate of 1.4 percent. By June of 2022, inflation had skyrocketed to 9.1 percent—a rate not seen in more than forty years. As James Piereson writes in the New Criterion, “Blame Biden for the affordability crisis.”

“There can be no doubt that rising prices, and the so-called ‘affordability crisis,’ were caused by the blockheaded and incompetent policies of the Biden administration, which included reckless spending, counterproductive green-energy policies, and an open southern border. There may, however, be a silver lining to this sorry episode: those same policies probably led to the Democrats’ losing the 2024 election.”

During Biden’s four years in office, the average price for goods and services increased dramatically. Even FactCheck.org admits, “Inflation roared back, shrinking the value of workers’ paychecks. Consumer prices rose 21.5%.” During the first year of Trump’s second term, inflation has been running at about three percent. Which begs the following question: How can the Democrats blame Trump or the Republicans for the “affordability crisis” when most of the damage was done during the mercifully short period Biden occupied the Oval Office?

They will try to convince the voters that Trump and the GOP should have already cleaned up the mess Biden and the Democrats made when they were in power. This sounds like a difficult sale to make, particularly if they offer the shopworn solutions they peddled in New York City, New Jersey, and Virginia. The corporate media will, of course, lend the Democrats a hand.

Still, is it possible that voters will forget how bad the Biden years were simply because the Democrats and the media constantly chant the magic word, “affordability”? It will be up to Republicans to ensure that alarming possibility does not become a reality. They must remind the voters which party created the crisis, clearly describe the progress that has been made toward solving it, and credibly explain what is being done to restore lasting prosperity.

David Catron is a Senior Editor at the American Spectator. His writing has also appeared in PJ Media, the American Thinker, the Providence Journal, the Catholic Exchange and a variety of other publications.