‘Affordability’ could eventually bite Democrats in the bum

“Affordability” is a central theme for Democrats in this year’s midterm elections, which makes good sense.

Julie Z. Weil called it “the political word of the moment.” It addresses the ”economic anxieties, feelings of insecurity” and “bleak outlook for the future” that so many Americans feel right now.

But without an accompanying longer-term vision, owning the issue of affordability could leave Democrats exposed for 2028 and beyond.

That’s because there’s probably nothing Democrats can do that will actually make things noticeably more affordable in the near future.

John Mac Ghlionn describes Americans’ grim economic reality: 70 percent say their area is unaffordable, credit card debt is at an all-time high because “survival now runs on credit,” and AI is decimating jobs. 

“What many still describe as a temporary squeeze is better understood as a permanent recalibration,” he writes. It’s an entrenched condition, not simply the bad side of a normal economic cycle. 

A lesson Democrats learned from the Biden administration is that it takes years for economy-boosting projects — like those in the trillion-dollar Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — to filter through the economy and impact families in ways they actually feel. In the meantime, frustrated voters blame incumbents when the costs of housing, groceries, utilities and health care don’t get better.

“One thing we know for sure is voters are very anti-incumbent,” noted Harvard’s Steven Levitsky in early 2025. He observed that in the first half of the 2020s, across the world’s democracies, “Nearly 80 percent of the time incumbents are losing elections, like never before in history.” 

In fact, America’s anti-incumbency tradition of “continually throwing the bums out” has lasted for 20 years, Kevin Mahnken noted after the 2024 election. The 2025 off-year elections continued this trend. Another entrenched pattern.

This sets up a conundrum for Democrats. Run on the issue of affordability in 2026, and then … what?

To illustrate the challenge, let’s look at housing and food.

Goldman Sachs suggests “at least 3-4 million additional homes beyond normal construction need to be built to address the shortage in US housing supply and boost affordability.” FreddieMac, in 2024, put that number at 3.7 million and said, “There is no silver bullet to alleviating this ongoing shortage.”

What cocktail of solutions might Democrats propose? Suggestions from the liberal-leaning Urban Institute include things like streamlining local zoning laws, regulating the insurance industry and repealing the Faircloth Amendment (which essentially caps public housing), among other ideas.

It’s a multi-year journey from suggesting policy changes to passing them into law to seeing construction crews finish new homes. If you could wave a magic wand and conjure 4 million new homes into being overnight — which you can’t — it would still take a few years for the ripple effect to work its way through the housing market more broadly. In a non-magical best case scenario, hitting every green light along the way, people might get a break on rent by the mid-2030s.

Now let’s talk about food: “It’s quite likely prices, for the most part, will not come down at least in nominal terms,” the University of Chicago’s Jean-Pierre Dubé told Money. Wage growth outpacing inflation helps, although in a 2025 poll, 80 percent of respondents said grocery costs were “harder to afford” or “about the same” compared to the previous year — a year in which wage growth was outpacing inflation.

These stubborn realities haunt Republicans right now. On the eve of the 2024 election, Donald Trump said, “A vote for Trump means your grocery prices will be cheaper.” He’s now underwater by 41 points on the cost of living and 34 points on inflation, according to more polls.

Are Democrats making the same promise in 2026, albeit with a very different messaging style? If so, it’s almost guaranteed voters will be resentful when nothing changes.

If Democrats, or Republicans for that matter, truly want to make life more affordable for Americans, they will eventually need to pass a full slate of meaningful policies and oversee their execution on a time scale that allows them to bear fruit.

Making that happen will require buy-in from a majority of voters across multiple election cycles. That requires a galvanizing vision. What should the country look like in 50 years? What’s the moral compass that guides your decisions? Why should voters hop on your train and ride it for a generation?

I can only speak for myself and my own algorithms, but most Democratic messaging still seems Trump-centric — that Trump is making life less affordable through tariffs and war, so vote for us. That may (or may not) be the winning message for Democrats in 2026, but any victory is likely to be short lived. In 2028, presidential contenders should seize the opportunity to inspire people with sweeping solutions on a grand scale.

Chris Orchard is a Massachusetts-based writer who has spent over two decades working in nonprofit communications and local journalism. He has a master’s degree in media and communications from City St. George’s, University of London, and has written thousands of articles about local issues, politics and daily life in Greater Boston.

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