In recent years, the Democratic Party has had a simple method for dealing with the issue of skyrocketing living costs: ignore it and tell everyone that everything’s fine.

Home prices have spiked 54 percent since 2019, continuing to rise in the majority of US cities, while rents have surged 19 percent in that same period. The number of renters who are cost-burdened, putting more than 30 percent of their income toward rent and utilities, hit an all-time high of more than twenty-two million Americans, twelve million of whom spend more than half of their incomes on these two things. As a result, the number of eviction cases has soared to above pre-pandemic levels in many places, and homelessness is at a record high of more than 650,000 people.

Little of this has been reflected in top-level Democratic rhetoric, which has tended to stress themes like the survival of American democracy and the preservation of personal freedoms, while pointing to a slowing inflation rate to assure voters they need not be so unhappy about rising costs.