The word of the year might be “affordability.” How the two political parties address that issue will, in large measure, determine who wins the 2026 midterm elections.

President Donald Trump says, “I don’t want to hear about the affordability,” dismissing it as a “dead” issue, which doesn’t seem like a good start. Still, as usual, Trump’s brash New Yorker style can mask the fact that he makes some good points:

“It was a con job, affordability,” he argued recently regarding Democrat wins in the off-year elections. “It was a con job by the Democrats. The Democrats are good at a few things — cheating on elections and conning people with facts that aren’t true. We are much better than [former President Joe] Biden and all of them now, just so you understand. Do you remember that the Biden administration had the highest inflation in 48 years? The reason I don’t want to talk about affordability is because everybody knows that it’s far less expensive under Trump than it was under sleepy Joe Biden.”

First, he’s absolutely correct that inflation is at a far better annual rate now than it was under Biden and the Democrats, whose American Rescue Plan plunged the nation into a battle with inflation that hit generational highs and persists nearly five years later. Trump won in 2024 because voters were fed up with Bidenomics.

Second, he’s wrong to dismiss affordability. Prices are cumulatively almost 25% higher now than when Trump left office in 2021.

I don’t know about you, but every time I buy something, I have at least a momentary flare of aggravation that stuff is so darn expensive now. Just for starters, that fast-food meal you could get for $7 in 2020 is now almost twice that much. That ain’t “3% inflation.” Gas prices may be back down, and a Thanksgiving meal might cost a little less than last year, but the latter is only because beef (up 15% since last year) isn’t usually on the menu.

Want to buy a house? Prices are up 56% since 2020. Over the same stretch, thanks to rising interest rates and other factors like insurance and property taxes, monthly payments are up 80%. The median age of the first-time homebuyer has reached an all-time high of 40 — up from 33 in 2021. Young people no longer feel like owning a home is even remotely within reach.

The bottom line is that Americans simply feel poorer, and telling them they shouldn’t feel that way — as Democrats and the Leftmedia tried in 2024 — is not a recipe for winning.

Trump’s larger point might be that it’s frustrating that this issue hasn’t sunk the Democrat Party. Democrats — with zero Republican votes — "rescued" America by causing rampant inflation. Their Inflation Reduction Act a year later was a scam to pass as much of the Green New Deal as possible. Even Joe Biden later admitted it had nothing to do with reducing inflation. The Schumer Shutdown charade over ObamaCare is another unaffordability crisis entirely of Democrats’ making.

Why is anyone even talking about affordability? Because Democrats make stuff unaffordable!

Unfortunately, Democrats have the Leftmedia at their disposal, so millions of Americans will hear the message that Democrats care more about affordability than Republicans do. Democrats want to “lower the cost” of your health insurance. Democrats want to raise the minimum wage, feed the hungry, pay for child care, and give away tax dollars on any number of other income redistribution schemes aimed at pulling heartstrings and winning votes with “free” stuff.

As for the GOP, National Review’s Mark Antonio Wright issues a warning: “The issue of affordability — high prices, high interest rates, inflation, sluggish wage growth — will be everything next year. If Republicans don’t figure out a way to address that priority, no amount of complaining about Zohran Mamdani and the rise of socialism is going to save them.”

At some level, President Trump understands that his party has to address affordability. The bad news is that he’s doing it by behaving like a Democrat.

Whether he uses the word affordability or not, his two big proposals in recent days are aimed directly at people feeling the pinch of rising expenses. In a tacit admission that tariffs are a tax on American consumers, Trump has been pushing $2,000 rebate checks for every American (“not including high income people!”). He boasts that the U.S. is bringing in so much revenue from tariffs that the American people should reap the benefits. In reality, such rebate checks could end up being inflationary, just like the direct transfer payments made under both his and Biden’s administrations during COVID. It also won’t help pay down the national debt, which he promised to do with that revenue.

The other proposal is a 50-year mortgage option. This idea may be worth its own analysis, but suffice it to say that stretching a mortgage out that long might save a few bucks in monthly payments, but it will rob homeowners of equity and cost them a pretty penny in higher interest rates. You’d be better off renting than “owning” a house by making payments that last a lifetime. It will also cause prices to rise even further.

On a related note, Trump has been pushing for lower interest rates for months. While all of us would love for mortgage rates to drop, reducing rates too soon is not helping tamp down persistent inflation.

The good news is that many of Trump’s other policies are exactly what the economy needs. His focus on energy development, domestic manufacturing, foreign investment, and rare earths will all boost the American economy. Making his 2017 tax cuts permanent has helped Americans at almost every economic level. Those are the things he and every Republican should tout, all while reminding voters just how expensive “free” stuff ends up being.

Follow Nate Jackson on X.