It’s not just that the country has problems; it has bad problems that arose on Biden’s watch, and they’ve stayed bad.
If we see a bunch of Democratic incumbents getting kicked to the curb in New York and the New England states, don’t underestimate the late factor of skyrocketing home-energy prices as winter sets in. This portrait of the region from Bloomberg is about as dire as it gets:
Heating oil delivered to New York is the priciest ever. Retailers in Connecticut are rationing it to prevent panic buying. New England’s stockpiles of diesel and heating oil — the same product, taxed differently — are a third of normal levels. Natural gas inventories are also below average. A Massachusetts-based utility is imploring President Joe Biden to prepare emergency measures to prevent a gas shortage.
Add some cold to the mix, and in the best-case scenario, Northeast consumers will shoulder the highest energy bills in decades this winter. The Biden administration, under pressure to tame prices ahead of the midterm elections, is considering ways to stash more diesel and gasoline in New England. In the worst-case scenario, a cluster of states with a combined economy bigger than Japan’s will run out of fuel to keep the lights on and heat homes and businesses.
“It’s going to be pretty bad,” said Marcus McGregor, head of commodities research at Conning Inc. “Diesel, heating oil and natural gas prices are through the roof. When you’re on a fixed salary, how does it impact your overall budget? It has to be bad.”
Tonight I’ll be on Megyn Kelly’s program, and they asked me for some quick thoughts leading into tonight. My current sense is that sometimes in years like this one, an election outcome is overdetermined. It’s not just that inflation is high; it’s been high for well more than a year, going back to spring 2021. It’s not just that gas prices are high; they’ve been high for the entire year, and it is a similar story with grocery prices. It’s not just that crime is high, it’s been rising for at least two years now. It’s not just that illegal immigration is high, it’s that the waves of migrants at the southern border jumped a few months after Biden took office and stayed high.
Any one of these problems would be a major headache for the president’s party in a midterm year. It’s not just that the country has problems; it has bad problems that arose on Biden’s watch, and they’ve stayed bad. Yes, we are no longer bedeviled by Covid-19, but we’re bedeviled by other inescapable problems.
We saw during the Obama years that even a charismatic and eloquent president can’t save members of his party when the electorate is in a bad mood. And Biden is much worse, reflexively insisting he’s doing great, the country’s doing great — “the economy is strong as hell,” “we’ve literally cut the debt in half,” etc. Biden consistently implies the country is a bunch of ingrates who don’t appreciate what a great job he’s doing, or ignoramuses who can’t realize how good they have it.
As 2022 progressed, the Democrats responded to the sense of doom by trying to stir up excitement among their base — the green spending in the Inflation Reduction Act, the student-loan bailout, etc. — but those kinds of moves just alienate, irritate, and anger the independents more.
Nobody gives a hoot about a tax break for solar panels when butter is $4.70 per pound, supplies of diesel fuel are at record lows, the costs of buying and owning a car are at record highs, Thanksgiving turkeys are 70 percent more expensive than last year, it’s the worst time to buy a house in some people’s lifetimes, electricity rates are getting hiked 10 to 18 percent in some localities, and President Biden’s advice is to buy generic raisin bran.
Democrats really thought running on abortion was going to cancel out all of that?