Years from now, after the post-shellacking dust has settled, after the Democrats have had their fill of backbiting and finger-pointing, astute political scientists will note the 2022 midterms as the election in which Democrats became the equivalent of flat-earthers.

How so? By trying to deny the inescapable truth of James Carville’s most trenchant political observation: It’s the economy, stupid.

When it comes to elections, it is the economy, and no amount of denial or misdirection or smokescreenery will make it otherwise. Try as they might, the Democrats won’t be able to convince enough voters that abortion outweighs the economic pain they’re feeling.

The Democrats’ political wounds, though, are entirely self-inflicted. Joe Biden threw caution to the wind early last year when he ignored the inflationary warnings of former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers (and congressional Republicans) and signed into law the now-ironically named $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. Here’s part of what Summers said in a prescient Washington Post op-ed way back on February 4, 2021, just shortly after Joe Biden took office:

First, while there are enormous uncertainties, there is a chance that [this bill] will set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation, with consequences for the value of the dollar and financial stability. … Given the commitments the Fed has made, administration officials’ dismissal of even the possibility of inflation, and the difficulties in mobilizing congressional support for tax increases or spending cuts, there is the risk of inflation expectations rising sharply.

So there’s your smoking gun. Summers saw the Democrats warming up the printing presses, and he tried to warn them. But to no avail.

A month later, our Nate Jackson pointed out the idiocy of forcing through $1.9 trillion in spending that was largely unrelated to the COVID relief that the bill had been sold to us as. A year later, this past February, with the economy fully consumed by the very generational inflation Summers had warned of, Jackson dubbed it “A Biden-caused disaster.”

Making matters far worse, and ensuring that inflation would be Issue Number One in the minds of voters, Biden signed on August 16 yet another awful piece of legislation — the ridiculously named Inflation Reduction Act. Adding insult to self-inflicted injury, he did so during a bizarre party on the White House lawn with old James Taylor singing a song about suicide while the Dow dropped a stunning 1,300 points.

And now, given both the benefit of hindsight and the seeming inevitability of a red wave midterm election, the Democrats are thrashing around for scapegoats.

First, there was Joe Biden himself at a community college in Irvine, California, laughably warning the American people, “If Republicans take control, the prices are going to go up.”

If that remark puts you at a loss for words, you’re not alone. Calling such a pathetic falsehood “The BIG Lie” would be an insult to BIG Lies everywhere.

Then there’s soon-to-be-former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who tried to downplay the inflationary fears of the electorate: “When you bring down unemployment,” she sputtered, “inflation goes up. … So in any case, [President Biden] brought unemployment [down], cut it in half. Inflation is there but it’s global and not as bad as it is in some countries.”

Got that? Shut up, she explained. And count your blessings that this Bidenflation, this worst-in-40-years disaster, isn’t even worse than it is.

As for Republicans, she said, “What’s their plan? They ain’t got nothing.” And of her own party and its increasingly dim prospects, she said, “We’ll have to message it better in the next three weeks ahead.”

Then she said this: “I think we’re in great shape. Other people don’t want to believe that.”

Mmmkay.

Finally, there’s South Carolina Democrat and soon-to-be-former House Majority Whip James Clyburn, the man most responsible for propping up Joe Biden and breathing life into his corpse-like candidacy in early 2020. Yesterday on friendly MSNBC, Clyburn said this:

Well, let me make it very clear. All of us are concerned about these rising costs, and all of us knew this would be the case when we put in place this recovery program. Any time you put more money into the economy, prices tend to rise.

In politics, this is what’s known as a gaffe — an accidental telling of an inconvenient truth. And, boy, is this a biggie. What Clyburn is saying is that the Democrats knew what they were doing was going to cause inflation, but they stuck it to us anyway.

Let that sink in between now and Election Day.