Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) is in a very tight race for a House seat in New York’s 17th Congressional District with Republican Mike Lawler.

Normally you would think that a DCCC Chair would be pretty safe. But Cook Political Report just moved the race to a toss-up on October 24. RealClearPolitics also has it rated as a toss-up. That’s one more sign of how much trouble the Democrats are in, in the race for the House. Part of the problem is because of redistricting, a lot of the district is new to Maloney, so he doesn’t necessarily have any goodwill built up with those voters.

But Maloney just stepped on a rake when he was asked about how to address inflation. His response sounded a lot like “Let them eat Chef Boyardee.”

Earlier tonight I appeared on @FoxNews to discuss @spmaloney telling residents to go eat @ChefBoyardee if gas prices and groceries go up. On Tuesday voters can #FireMaloney and we can finally tackle inflation and the cost of living. pic.twitter.com/RTM3gJczcE

— Mike Lawler (@lawler4ny) November 5, 2022

“Hudson Valley residents are feeling pain at the pump and at grocery stores, what have you done, and what do you plan to do to help solve our inflation problem?,” Maloney was asked.

“Yeah, well, I grew up in a family where, you know, if the gas price went up, the food budget went down,” Rep. Maloney said. “So by this time of the week, we’d be eating Chef Boyardee if that budget wasn’t gonna change. So that’s what families have to do. Here’s what we should do,” Maloney said before discussing actions that he says would lower inflation.

Maloney’s team argues that his answer continued. But frankly, his full answer didn’t help. It showed how clueless he was. He seemed completely cool with depleting our Strategic Petroleum Reserve–as though that’s an answer to the underlying problem of the high prices of gas and not Biden’s attack on the energy industry.

“We’re capping seniors’ out-of-pocket costs in the Medicare program. That’s a big deal. So now, only two thousand dollars a year will come out-of-pocket, rain or shine,” Maloney said. “That allows seniors to budget. We’re also negotiating, finally, in the Medicare program with the big prescription drug companies to lower the cost of everybody’s prescription drugs. That’s long overdue.” […]

Maloney also said that “we’ve released 90 million barrels from the strategic petroleum reserve, that’s what’s taken about $1.30 off the price of a gallon of gas. That’s a big help.”

“We’ve got to do more to keep that price from going back up and keep it coming down. And there’s other things we can do. We can absolutely bring health insurance premiums down for those on the Affordable Care Act. We’ve done that,” he added. “We can pay for these things, by the way, with a tax on big corporations, so they will finally pay what they owe. We finally did that.”

He mentions bringing down gas prices, without noting how they’re still far more than they were when Biden came in, because of Biden.

He also blamed “Putin’s war” and “price gouging,” as opposed to the Democratic spending which sparked inflation.

“That’s part of the strategy of the Inflation Reduction Act. And all of these strategies together – together with going after price gouging,by the way, because these big oil companies are making a fortune off of Putin’s war and the rest. We’ve got to make sure people aren’t profiting off the war. All of these strategies together can help bring prices down,” Maloney said.

Biden was proposing a “windfall” tax on oil companies for making profits, to pretend that he was doing something about gas prices and the false claim of “gouging.” That would only result in driving gas prices up. That’s where we’re at with Democrats at this point: either they’re trying to make things worse or they have no idea what they’re doing — take your pick.

Maloney doesn’t help himself by saying that people should eat Chef Boyardee, then demonstrating that he doesn’t understand how the Democrats have screwed up here–and how he’s cool with things that would make the situation worse.

Democrats wonder why they are in such trouble, and may just lose this seat, as well as many others: It’s this complete cluelessness.