GOP Success Depends On Acknowledging Americans' Economic Pain
Precarity is an omnipresent force lurking just under the surface of daily life for the average American family. Fear of an adverse expense spells the difference between scraping by and falling behind. An insurance premium for a shattered arm, new tires on the car to pass inspection, a broken hot water heater – such mundane yet unpredictable expenses can seriously disrupt a family’s finances and impose painful yet necessary choices like skipping Thanksgiving dinner to pay the bills on time.
I know what precarity feels like. I was raised by my mom after my father was killed in a car accident. I watched her work two jobs to provide a good life for our little family. I knew the stress she was constantly under – and still feels. She will be 60 in December. She’s not sure what her retirement plans are, only that she can’t retire any time soon.
President Trump’s victory last November reflected the economic precarity that Americans were feeling at fever pitch. Four years of generationally historic inflation in the things that matter most had taken out what little financial slack families had left.
Republicans took a drubbing in the off-year elections earlier this month for a simple reason: a lack of focus on the residual precarity families are still facing. At the end of 2024, 73% of adults said they were doing only “okay” financially or worse. Unfortunately, many Americans are reporting a move in the wrong direction – or at the very least treading water. Roughly 67% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, up 4 points from 2024. Nearly 70% of households are still classified as financially unhealthy according to key indicators like the inability to pay bills or the lack of a savings cushion. Ominously, nearly 28% of adults expect their family’s financial situation will worsen over the next year, up from about 16% a year ago.
More important than the recent data, however, are the secular economic trends all of us have lived through that seem to have reached their apotheoses in the last few years – all without the feeling that we as citizens had a political ability to arrest them.
When I was born in 1989, the prospect of home ownership looked quite different to a working professional my age than it does today. Back then, the typical American home cost roughly four times the median household income. Now it clocks in at roughly six times that amount. On the healthcare front, insurance premiums have risen dramatically. From 2005 to 2022 the premium index rose nearly 78%, outpacing inflation over that same period by nearly 28%. Insurers are now sending notices of 2026 premium hikes in double digits.
These structural shifts have reshaped daily life, yet the problems they have created rarely drive the national conversation. What does? The hundreds of billions of dollars, time, and talent being poured into the glitz of the prosperity of the future – AI, data centers, and the upstream and downstream tech-adjacent trappings of an economy in which the average worker feels increasingly alienated and obsolete.
Meeting people where they are remains the most important tenet of leadership no one has heard of. Considering decades-long economic anxiety and the results of the recent election, its relevance is manifest.
The Trump administration is touting its tangible and significant immigration and foreign policy wins. But the issues people care about most – the goods they can’t afford, the knife’s edge upon which their economic situations currently rest – are getting short rhetorical shrift from Washington.
When it comes to policy, what is said is oftentimes more obvious to people than what is done. More important, the lag between policy implementation and policy effect is significant.
Onshoring critical manufacturing, re-skilling the labor force, prioritizing American workers, and rebalancing trade policy in our favor are all worthy long-term goals. But political decisions are not made over the long run; they are made in two-year election cycle windows. In those windows, perception determines reality. For Americans to give the Trump administration the runway it requires to fully implement its policy agenda, they must believe they are seen and counted. They must hear the following:
We understand why you are feeling the way you are feeling. Healthcare premiums are up well above the rate of inflation. Housing prices in many of the places you most want to live are unaffordable for the average family. Our economy has grown, but too few of you have shared in its creation. Our stock market is fluctuating near historic highs, but many of you don’t have the ability to meaningfully invest and build the wealth that generations before you had the opportunity to. You are right to feel like it is Washington’s turn to adjust to an economy that has not been working – not yours.
Contrary to popular belief, Americans have patience. They will grant second chances. What they won’t brook is deception. Life is hard for most people right now. All the fancy words written by the best consultants and speechwriters won’t change that.
Signal must precede policy. People need to feel heard before they’ll believe they’re being helped. The Republican signal on the economy is bad. There is no way to say otherwise. Fix the signal, enable the policy.
Mark Twain was the publisher of Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs. He implored President Grant to put his struggles with alcohol in his memoirs, exhorting him to “trust the people.” The American people prefer honesty, foibles and all.
My advice to President Trump, Speaker Johnson, Leader Thune, and other elected Republicans is the same. Be forthright. Embrace the average American family’s reality. Trust the people. Durable political success depends upon it.
