"Affordability has been, understandably, the watchword for Democratic candidates over the last year. After downplaying inflation under Joe Biden, the party learned a brutal lesson when Donald Trump rode the cost-of-living crisis back to the White House in 2024. In 2025, Zohran Mamdani put affordability at the center of his own campaign and surged from the back of the pack to City Hall."
"The midterms will be about affordability - that much is clear with most Americans pessimistic about Donald Trump's economy. Democrats have learned to stick to bread-and-butter issues at the expense of the culture-war battles that tripped them up in the early part of the decade. But if the war in Iran drags on, costing more American lives and sowing greater chaos in the Middle East, it will - or at least it should - become a core issue for the midterms and 2028."
"It's been a long time since foreign policy was at the center of a midterm or even a presidential race. The 2024 contest was defined by immigration and inflation. Though Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, that midterm chiefly revolved around abortion since Roe v. Wade had fallen just a few months prior."
Democrats have made affordability their primary campaign focus following their 2024 defeat, recognizing that cost-of-living concerns drove voters to Trump. The party has shifted away from culture-war issues toward bread-and-butter economic problems like housing, groceries, and healthcare. However, if military conflict in Iran escalates, foreign policy could become a defining midterm issue. Democrats have an opportunity to reclaim their antiwar positioning, a role largely absent from recent elections. Foreign policy has been peripheral in recent campaigns, with 2024 dominated by immigration and inflation, 2022 by abortion, and 2020 by the pandemic. The last significant foreign policy focus in primaries occurred in 2016, when Trump distinguished himself as the antiwar candidate.
Read at Intelligencer
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