From Cleveland to the Outer Banks, the cost-of-living crisis that will decide the midterms, in the words of the people living it.
Every incumbent on the ballot this fall, Republican or Democrat, is running on a set of numbers. Unemployment at 4.2%. Record household income. Inflation “cooling.” The five things I learned over six months of kitchen tables explain why those numbers aren’t landing.
I spent the better part of a year trying to answer one question: Why do Americans feel this bad about an economy that, on paper, is this good? Some 74% of Americans rate the economy as poor, not far off the 84% who said the same in 2009, when the country was shedding jobs by the hundreds of thousands.
