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I've said this before, but this rhymes very closely with Democrats' Biden era refrain "inflation is fake, and even if it's real the goddamn voters should shut up and recognize it's for a good cause."
I feel like gas is a bit different from inflation in the general understanding. Gas prices are a thing that fluctuates. It gets higher in the summer, or for geopolitics bullshit, but it can also come back down. Gas prices are a thing that is capable of getting better. OTOH, everyone understands that "inflation" means "everything is now more expensive forever".
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An understandable argument but inflation levels are far below (like half) the Biden era peak. It's true inflation is elevated in 2026 compared to 2025 but by a small amount.
By vibes this seems about correct, as I have not personally seen consumer prices rise significantly besides the consistently high beef prices.
The problem is that in the average joe's mind, they expect that in a good or average economy, prices would go "back down" to what they've anchored as "normal prices", not that they will "only slightly rise" from what they consider an already abnormally elevated price. I think MadMonzer's evaluation is right, the sticker shock of seeing the elevated prices after COVID is what broke people's perspective of what a normal economy looks like. During COVID people expected economic disruption, so they gave higher prices a pass, but they didn't expect those prices to stick and then when you pile on the loss of productivity and increased government spending...
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The vibe now is that Trump does not give a **** about the cost of living, because he is doing highly visible things that both economically literate Republicans and MSM business/finance/economics talking heads expect to raise consumer prices. (Tariffs, Iran, above a certain IQ level the attacks on the Fed and the calls for tax cuts and spending increases). The lesson of 2024 is that that hurts more at the ballot box than the difference between 2% and 4% CPI inflation. Biden's problem in 2024 was that - whatever was driving voter concern about the cost of living, probably the sticker shock as people started doing things again at post-pandemic inflated prices - his response was to signal that he didn't give a **** by telling voters that the official numbers were benign and they should stop worrying.
Cost of living is much better now than it was under Biden. Inflation is down, GDP is up, wages are up.
I remember after the election much gloating that egg prices would never come down and that "Cost of Living" was a dogwhistle to fool swing voters that would be exposed as Trump would fail to do anything about it. Eggs are $1-$2 a dozen now at my Chinese grocery store, $5-$6 a dozen for the fancy pasture-raised ones. I never saw anyone admit they were wrong, eggs just quietly stopped being a measure of "Cost of Living" and the rhetorical goalposts shifted.
The background to the point I am making is that all the standard objective indicators of economic welfare for ordinary Americans, including CPI inflation, have been benign since about 2022, with not much to choose between the late-Biden and early-Trump economies unless you own Nvidia stock. (And far better in the US than in other 1st-world countries). But ordinary Americans weren't feeling it under Biden, and aren't feeling it now. "Hard-working middle-class Americans don't have nice things any more because the rich men north of Richmond took them away" is still an effective emotional appeal to the median voter, whether true or not.
From outside the US, where I can see the statistics but not the vibes, it looks like a temper tantrum by entitled voters. And Biden acted and Trump acts like they see it that way to, and the voters are punishing them for it.
In both 2024 and 2026, if you ask low-information swing voters what the most important election issue is they say "cost of living" or something similar, they think (correctly) that the incumbent President doesn't care, and they are planning to vote against his party.
I think it was somewhat worse in the Biden era though because there was the perception that progressives were seeing elevated prices as a way to achieve ideological goals opposed by the masses. For instances, progressives are, at least those I know, almost happy about elevated beef prices because they didn't think we should have been eating that much beef to begin with, that the low prices before were not capturing the environmental externalities of it. Same with single family home ownership. At least Trump's disregard for the economy is in service of attempting to achieve geopolitical goals, which yes, will depend on whether he achieves them, but it's not against the wishes of average americans who do not want to eat ze bugs and live in ze pod but probably do want to beat or diminish America's enemies abroad, although not necessarily at the price of increases in the cost of living.
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