Sometimes, they just come right out and say it. Here’s a Democratic operative explaining to the Washington Post that the party intends to blame the entire year-in-the-making increase in gas prices on the two-week-old situation in Ukraine:
“The good news is we now have a very specific reason for rising gas prices and a specific villain,” said Celinda Lake, who served as one of Biden’s top campaign pollsters in 2020 and currently polls for Biden-aligned groups. “Before, it was kind of ambiguous: What’s going on? Why are gas prices going up?”
The Washington Post may be content to take this rank cynicism at face value. But there’s no reason that anyone else has to.