Joe Biden Will Not Be Going Down Alone
Gasoline is a special commodity, Kevin Williamson reminds readers in NRO. Because most drivers fill up once a week, they are constantly aware of changes in prices to fill a tank. Before the pandemic, reports Mr. Williamson, most drivers filled up once a week. Today, they’re holding off for about two weeks between fill-ups.
After a week, you may not remember exactly what you paid for your last tank of gas, but you will remember that it was less. It’s a maddening drip-drop of price hikes. It’s not like traveling in Europe and suddenly noticing that you are paying two or three times what you are used to paying for gasoline — it’s a repeated little slap in the face accompanied by a sinking suspicion that prices are never going back down.
Americans, accustomed to cheap gas, also are used to going where they want when they want. They hate toll roads, checkpoints, detours, traffic jams, and people who drive slowly in the fast lane, confesses Mr. Williamson.
The fact that in Anno Domini 2022 I get delayed at every single traffic light because some idiot in front of me is on his phone and doesn’t notice that the light has changed fills me with . . . a lot more rage than it should.
I used to put up with paying twice as much for rent on a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan as I now pay on the mortgage for a pretty nice house in Texas, and cheerfully endured 99 percent of what you have to put up with living in New York City, but when it became clear that the subways were never going to get back on track (so to speak), I moved.
Democrats, Joe Biden above all, are whining that it is unfair that they are probably going to get wiped out in November because of inflation. Expect that whining to get worse as Election Day approaches. No, inflation isn’t 100 percent the fault of the Biden administration and its congressional enablers, but they have made it worse — and, if they had been lucky and come into power right before an economic renaissance, they wouldn’t have worried about whether it was fair to take credit for it.
Right now, our Democratic friends are having a series of hissy fits: about abortion, about gun control, about whatever it is that they’re going to move on to tomorrow. That’s the 1.8 percent of America that consists of angry partisans on Twitter. What is the rest of the country thinking about?
For better and for worse, I think that what happens in November is going to tell us a great deal about where the people of this country really are and what they really care about. The political consultants are always going on about “kitchen table” issues, which were supposed to be Joe Biden’s forte but may now very well be his undoing.
And Biden isn’t going down alone.
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