Paying the bills is harder than ever. Are voters supposed to feel joy?

PAYING THE BILLS IS HARDER THAN EVER. ARE VOTERS SUPPOSED TO FEEL JOY? On Wednesday morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release inflation figures for July. Whatever the numbers turn out to be, this will remain true: Prices are far higher than they were when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took office. 

Even as the rate of inflation has gone down from its peak in 2022, people have learned an unhappy lesson. When the rate of inflation goes down, prices still go up. They are building upon all the price increases before but at a somewhat slower rate. Yes, very few things go down, but at the same time, others keep rising at a high rate. There’s no relief.

This week, the Wall Street Journal published a striking portrait of how that affects many families. The headline was “Child Care, Rent, Insurance: Where Inflation Hits Hardest Now; Big, fixed costs that are tough to avoid are crushing household budgets.”

“Price increases for lots of items, like cable and shampoo, are indeed cooling,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “Prices for vehicles, gasoline, TVs and plane tickets have even dropped over the past year. … But prices for many of the things that are hard to do without are still posting eye-watering increases. Rent and electricity bills are up 10% or more over the past two years, and car insurance costs are up nearly 40%, according to the Labor Department’s index. Shoppers might be able to trade down from prime steak to cheaper cuts of meat at the supermarket, but they can’t really do the same thing with the water bill.”

The article told the story of one family trying to use less electricity, reduce their home insurance coverage, and cut back on the children’s sports leagues. Another family stopped eating out and deferred any hope of buying a bigger house after being slammed by soaring day care costs. 

The burden is not limited to their particular circumstances. “Households across the country are facing similar struggles,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “According to the Labor Department, essential services such as water, sewer, and trash collection have jumped nearly 11% over the past two years, and electricity has climbed 10%.”

It’s no surprise that 65% of people believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, according to the Real Clear Politics average of polls. Harris and Biden took office in a moment of relative optimism for the country, when just 49% thought the country was on the wrong track. (That’s a pretty low number for the last 20 years.) By mid-2022, with inflation raging, 74% felt the country had gone astray — higher than at any point in the Trump presidency. Now, it’s 65%.

So: When two-thirds of Americans feel the country is on the wrong track, what theme do Harris and running mate Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) adopt for their presidential campaign? Joy. The Washington Post reported that the two Democrats have “seized on a joyful message.” A New York Times analysis of their “joyful campaign” included the headline: “Harris Used to Worry About Laughing. Now Joy Is Fueling Her Campaign.” MSNBC declared that Harris and Walz “campaign with joy.”

Obviously, Harris and Walz are happy. Why shouldn’t they be? Harris quickly, almost instantly, secured the Democratic nomination after party leaders pushed the aged and infirm Biden aside. Walz has a chance for a bigger job than he ever imagined. That can make a politician joyous.

But what about everybody else? For those families making trade-offs to meet their most basic needs — can joy pay their electric bill? The water bill? The rent? Insurance on the house? Kamala Harris will spend the coming weeks trying to persuade those voters to reward her for the dismal circumstances her time in office has brought. She will have many advocates, in the Democratic Party and in the media, cheering her on. But for millions of voters, the bills are still the bills, and there’s nothing joyous about that.