Vice President JD Vance Campaigns on the Affordability Issue and Inflation in Allentown, Pennsylvania

Vice President JD Vance visited my hometown of Allentown, Pennsylvania (he actually went to a suburb of Allentown, Alburtis) to speak before a crowd of around 500 voters, including yours truly. Aspects of this event have already been reported on by some of my fellow RedStaters.

Basically, the event can be summed up by this (excellent) title of an article describing it in a Pennsylvania paper – “In Allentown, Vance says economy is improving, blames hardships on Biden.”

Vice President JD Vance painted a rosy picture of America’s economy during a visit to a suburb southwest of Allentown, pinning the high costs of drugs, groceries and housing on the previous administration. “If you look at every single affordability crisis that we talk about in the United States of America today, it’s because we inherited a nightmare of an economy from Joe Biden,” Vance said at a podium behind a banner reading “LOWER PRICES, BIGGER PAYCHECKS.”

In attendance was my (Allentown’s) GOP Congressman Ryan Mackenzie (PA-07); the U.S. Secretary of Labor, Lori Chavez-DeRemer; and Stacy Garrity, the two-term elected Pennsylvania State Treasurer, who is a likely challenger to Democrat Gov. Josh Shapiro.

All three discussed what the Trump administration, Congress, and Pennsylvania state officials are doing to deal with the affordability crisis.

Of note, I ran into Scott Presler, otherwise known as “The Persistence,” who has been registering voters for the GOP during the Trump era.

Also:

Vice President Vance’s speech may be found here.
Secretary Chavez-DeRemer’s speech may be found here.
Congressman Ryan Mackenzie's speech may be found here.
Some pictures of the event may be found here.
And a White House press release detailing the GOP record on the economy to address affordability concerns – many points of which came up in these speeches – may be found here.

“Affordability” – which encompasses the more troubling word of “inflation” – is the catchphrase on everyone’s lips these days. Many polls show the public now blames the GOP for high inflation.

In a prior column, I noted that Republican Tom Bevan, co-founder of RealClearPolitics, believes that inflation is the “whole ballgame” for 2026. This view is bipartisan. Doug Schoen, a prominent Democrat consultant – but an otherwise knowledgeable and trustworthy commentator – believes this statistic is crucial as well.

So, let’s look at the current inflation rate, how it compares to the inflation rate during prior political times, and how those prior House elections went, shall we?

At the outset, it’s important to note that “(p)olicymakers at the Fed generally believe that an inflation rate of 2 percent (or slightly below) is acceptable for a stable economy that is healthy for both consumers and businesses” although “most central banks and governments closely monitor the annual inflation rate to ensure it is at a balanced and modest level, around 2 percent to 3 percent.”

So, an inflation rate above 3 percent should be somewhat dangerous to the public, and, as a result, to politicians. Right now, the U.S. inflation rate is 3 percent.

Here is a list of the yearly inflation rates from 1929 through 2024. I am limiting my focus to the modern times of 1970 through today. The 1970s and the 1980s, in particular, were a time of high inflation. Here, thanks to Wikipedia (which can be trusted in this case), are the changes in the House over the years.

And what do we see?

Not what I expected. Inflation itself doesn’t have a consistently major effect on House elections. In 1974, the Democrats won big partly because of it, but also because of the Watergate Scandal, and the tensions regarding the just-ended war in Vietnam.

In 1982, the Democrats also won big, although their redistricting edge helped immeasurably, there were a host of other economic problems, including high unemployment, and they were coming off an awful 1980 bust cycle that allowed for a boom in 1982 as well.

But in 1978 and 2022, the Democrats only lost a small number of seats with high inflation, which may have been a result of an effective campaign run by the Democrats in those years to blunt the GOP attacks on inflation.

Also, the current inflation rate cycle is not all that bad. The year up to now is 3 percent. In 2024, the rate was 2.9 percent, and in 2023 it was 3.4 percent. Granted, 2021 and 2022 were horrible. But if 2026 continues to stay at around 3.0 percent, it would be unprecedented for the “in-party” Republicans to be punished by the electorate based on high inflation from four years ago.

Which is why it is so good that the vice president spent much of his time in Pennsylvania blaming the Biden administration for the inflation troubles. For one thing, it is true, as Biden had a willing Democrat Congress in his first two years to help him spend like a drunken sailor, which ignited the high inflation rate. Even the propaganda currently pushed by Democrats shows that Biden was at fault for this.

For another, the Trump team is doing what I believe it needs to do, to blame the Biden administration from just one year ago for the nation’s economic troubles. In 2012, Barack Obama was still blaming George W. Bush for why the U.S. economy wasn’t performing up to its potential, and that was a full four years before.

During his address to the nation Wednesday night, President Trump also talked about the economy, jobs, illegal immigration and how his administration was having to clean up the messes brought about by the Biden-Harris administration, as RedState reported.

Editor's Note: President Trump is leading America into the "Golden Age" as Democrats try desperately to stop it.

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