Beyond Affordability

Voters Deserve a Debate About Integrity, Competence, and the Abuse of Power

3/19/25

I cringe (often) when I hear politicians – Republicans and Democrats alike -- talking about how affordability is the key to success at the ballot box. I think not. While it’s true that this issue may be top of mind, there’s little in the political realm that can bring prices down. Of course, Trump promised to do just that, and he’s spectacularly failed. Still, I feel safe in saying that the promise was hollow from the get-go; and anyone with reasonable intelligence and experience should have known that. It’s one thing to take actions to moderate inflation; it’s something else altogether to reverse price increases. In any case, when Democrats criticize Trump for not delivering on the promise, the charge seems to me to be a cheap shot, as it’s not likely that they could have any greater success.

That said, Trump can be faulted for actively pushing prices higher, despite his promises to do the opposite. He did this directly and almost immediately in his second term with the capricious imposition of import taxes, which unambiguously make things more expensive for U.S. households and businesses, all the while destabilizing relations with our most critical trading partners and allies. And now with the war with Iran, we’re seeing a renewed spike that will likely be feeding through the world economy for some time. While I can’t really fault Trump for not bringing prices down – he never had the capacity to do that – I can fault him for pursuing harmful, discretionary policies that pushed prices higher. While we might not have particularly good or reliable policies to lower prices, we can certainly identify policies that do the opposite; and those are the policies that happen to be hallmarks of Trump’s administration.

Health care costs are a bit of a special case. These costs have been rising more rapidly than general inflation, contributing to the crisis of affordability. And while insurance doesn’t lower health costs, per se, it redistributes who bears these costs. Moving toward a universal health insurance model would distribute these costs more widely, effectively making health care more affordable for a broader population of health care consumers. By failing to extend the heath care subsidies, Trump actively pursued a policy that exacerbated the affordability issue with scores of thousands of families no longer able to afford their health insurance premiums and therefore forced to do without.

To my mind, Democrats shouldn’t be running on affordability, as so many political coaches are urging. They’ll likely have as little success as Trump has had to lower prices. They can run on the fact that you’ll be able to count on Democrats not to make things worse, unlike what we’ve come to expect from Trump his enablers, whose only response seems to be, “Yes, dear leader.”

Democrats should forget about bloviating about affordability. Instead, they head into the mid-term election season running on the promise of returning competence and integrity to our government. They have a huge menu to choose from to cite examples of policies that Republicans have either accommodated or full-throatily endorsed, including the way Trump has degraded our relationships with our allies, how he’s imposed destructive and costly tariffs, how he’s destroyed the independence of the justice department and used that department to punish his political opponents, how he’s permitted if not directed ICE and Border Patrol to terrorize our immigrant communities, detaining and deporting people without the semblance of due process, how he’d misused our military for extrajudicial killings in the high seas off the borders of our southern neighbors, and how he’s managed a war effort in the Middle East with poor planning and inadequate coordination with our allies, just to name the highlights. With all that history, I can’t wait to see just what he has in store for Cuba! (“I think I can do anything I want with it.”) The common denominator to all these examples is they arise from Trump’s autocratic and unchecked leadership style. Democrats need to run against that!

The examples above point to Trump’s incompetence, but there’s more. We can’t ignore his corruption. In any other world, the examples of Trump using his office to extort treasure from those seeking favor would be sufficient to get this grifter booted from office. Trump and his family have accepted billions of dollars from foreign sources. How is that legal, and how can that be ignored? Somehow, the Republicans in Congress are able to look away. They’re as culpable as he is.

Democrats need to make the case that we need a thorough house cleaning, and that the rot starts at the top. Their priority should be to replace incompetence and corruption with competence and integrity, and they should invite their Republican brethren to join them with that objective. Impeachment should be the primary intention expressed by every Democrat running for office.

While the notion of “high crimes and misdemeanors” may be subject to interpretation, the case against Trump is rich with examples of abuse of power and self-dealing, irrespective of any finding of criminality. That case needs to be brought before the American public. The issues of competence and integrity are those that a Democrat-controlled Congress can do something about. Affordability. . . not so much.

Have feedback? Add a comment or send me an email at igkawaller@gmail.com. And if you like the ideas expressed, please hit the “like” button; and share this link with anyone who you think might be interested.