When the third-ranking Republican in the House goes on Sunday television and calls $4 gasoline and $6 diesel "unacceptable," a viewer could be forgiven for forgetting who runs Washington. Republicans hold the White House, the House and the Senate. Tom Emmer is not an opposition leader describing someone else's failure. He is part of the governing majority, complaining about prices on his own party's watch.
It isn't the first time Republicans have discovered that presidents don't control the pump. For four years they treated every gas-price uptick as a personal act of Joe Biden. Donald Trump promised to cut prices on day one and to "drill, baby, drill" the country into abundance. Now the price on the sign is the price on the sign, and the whip's answer is that it's unacceptable. Unacceptable to whom? He has the votes, the gavel and a president of his own party. If he has a plan, Jon Karl should have heard it. What Karl heard was a turnout strategy.
That's the tell. Emmer's argument is that Republicans keep their majorities if their voters show up. That is a candid admission that the message is not about persuading anyone. It is about frightening the base, and the fright of choice is the word "communist."
Karl did what a decent interviewer should. He noted that most Democrats don't call themselves that, and that the ones who use a label say democratic socialist. Emmer waved the distinction away. That refusal is the whole strategy. If a Democrat who wants Medicare to cover everyone is a Marxist, then so is a Democrat who wants to cap insulin, and so is every Scandinavian prime minister. A word that covers everyone describes no one. It exists to end the conversation before anyone asks what is actually being proposed.
Let's be fair about the other side. The Democratic Socialists of America is a real organization with real positions, some of which, on policing and foreign policy especially, are far from where most voters live. Democrats who pretend it has no internal Marxist current are making their own evasion, and the party's candidates ought to be able to say plainly which DSA planks they own and which they don't. Voters can handle that. They can't handle being told that a nurse running on hospital affordability is Lenin.
Here is what Emmer would rather not litigate. Health care premiums are rising. Groceries cost far more than they did five years ago, and diesel at $6 moves every box of food across the country. Those are the kitchen-table facts, and the Republican answer to them is a vocabulary lesson. Most Americans in polls favor letting Medicare negotiate drug prices, a policy Republicans fought. A party that wants to talk about who is radical should explain why it opposes things that majorities support.
Democrats should take the opening, and take it without flinching. Don't spend the fall defending a label or fleeing one. Ask Republicans what they will do about a $6 gallon of diesel, since they are in charge. Ask what they will do about premiums. And when someone responds with the word "Marxist," treat it as what it is: the sound of a majority with no answer, asking its voters to show up anyway.
How it may affect me
Diesel prices flow into grocery bills because nearly all food is trucked, so high fuel costs show up in your supermarket total as well as at the pump. Both parties will be campaigning on those prices before the midterms.
