For years, one of the bedrock adages of electoral politics was “it’s the economy, stupid.” The quip, coined by former Bill Clinton strategist James Carville, warned party leaders that economic concerns will always outrank other issues in the mind of voters
But recently, Carville’s iconic advice feels like it’s been forgotten.
In President Joe Biden’s administration, social and cultural concerns rose on the Democrats’ priority list. Policies like a $15 minimum wage and addressing price gouging in grocery stores were not front and center to Vice President Kamala Harris’s short presidential campaign (or at least, not as front and center as other issues).
Under President Donald Trump, who won partly on a promise to lower prices for consumer goods, prices have nonetheless gone the opposite direction, driven by his punitive tariff strategy and a war with Iran that has disrupted the energy market.
Because of this, concerns about the economy — and specifically the cost of living — have never been more important to voters. That reality has led both parties’ candidates in the 2026 midterms (as well as prospective candidates in the 2028 presidential election) to adopt a new focus on “affordability.”
The A-word just might be the buzziest thing in politics right now. It’s in policy papers and television ads, and on the campaign trail after it was popularized by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whose successful 2025 campaign was laser-focused on the issue. At its heart, the idea is not that different from Carville’s: A candidate must show credibility on “kitchen table” issues before anything else, especially at this moment.
That being said, affordability means so many things to so many people (including to Trump, who has called it a “hoax”). I wanted to spend this week on America, Actually breaking down the buzzword and getting a sense of the policy positions that inform this new focus.
So I talked to Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX), who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, about the group’s recently released “New Affordability Agenda.” It’s a 10-point policy proposal outlining in more concrete terms what progressive Democrats mean when they say affordability.
I think the timing of the proposal is particularly interesting, with Democrats out of power in both chambers of Congress and Trump still in the White House. Why are progressives releasing this now? And how many of these proposals do they believe can garner bipartisan support?
Read on for an excerpt of our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full show, so listen to America, Actually wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on Vox’s YouTube channel.
Why release this agenda now? Democrats are obviously not in the congressional majority. Why at this moment?
The new affordability agenda is the Progressive Caucus’s 10-point plan to bring down costs for everyday people, especially by taking on the big corporations and the ultra-rich that are screwing you over and making their money jacking up your prices. And the reason that we put this agenda out now is because we want candidates campaigning on this agenda in their primaries.
We want people to win their elections by going and connecting with their voters about driving down costs. Here’s the radical part: If we take the majority, I want us to pass these kinds of policies to bring down your utility bill by $500 next year, to cap your childcare cost or reduce that prescription drugs cost, and then dare Donald Trump to try to block it.
If they pass it, great. If they block it, then voters will know who to blame. But right now, the idea I hear from a lot of voters is, okay, they know who Trump is. They might be really pissed off at his lies and how he is, but they want to know what Democrats stand for, especially when it comes to these day-to-day economic issues.
Congress hasn’t necessarily gotten itself a reputation for passing big bills over the last couple years. How achievable is this stuff?
Voters are so upset and rightfully pissed off right now at the way their costs keep going up and up and up. And so I hear from elected officials all over, but especially my Democratic colleagues, that we’ve got to do something about this. And so I think this is a key opportunity to finally beat Big Pharma and start producing tons of our own generic drugs as a country and collapse the prices of so many of the drugs people rely on for their healthcare.
Right now is a moment to finally take on these super PACs that are trying to buy politicians and elections and policies. And so I smell blood in the water in this moment, while voters are upset, to forge a new consensus in the Democratic Party.
It sounds like you’re saying some of this agenda should be seen as a signal to fellow Democrats in 2026 and 2028, saying, “This is what affordability means to us.”
As a progressive in a progressive district, I could put forward an economic agenda that polls really well in Austin, Texas, but maybe has more trouble, say, in some rural parts of the country. We chose strategically not to do that and instead put out an agenda that polls very well with two out of three Trump voters, seven out of 10 independents.
We did that because we want to get this agenda passed. This is a no-excuses agenda. It plays well in every district and helps voters with the thing we hear every day, which is how damn expensive life is getting in this country.
To that point, is that the reason that I don’t see things like climate change or even Medicare for All listed among these planks?
As a progressive caucus, we have things called our flagship agenda. That includes Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. We keep on fighting for those flagship bills and to bring more parts of the party together around those ideas.
But these are not our flagships. This new slate are our battleships in addition to our flagships. These are the kinds of issues where we’ve got, in some cases, 80 percent support of voters, not just right now, but consistently. And so let’s move that stuff, since we can have consensus on it while still pushing for the big ideas.
It does feel a little bit, though, that Democrats are talking about climate less. Is that true?
What we need to make sure we do in the climate movement is connect it to everyday people’s lives. The moment that Republicans tried to make it seem that tackling the climate crisis was about buying more expensive products or was kind of an elite luxury, we took a big hit.
And so I think that it’s very important, if we care about having a livable climate agenda, that we need to talk about how electrification is gonna make things cheaper.
Let’s get this restarted by taking on the insane price of your electric bill, earn people’s trust, and then show folks how an agenda on climate can actually make your life more affordable instead of more expensive.
I wanted to also ask about the ban on surveillance pricing. I know you introduced a bill on that policy, and your bill would prohibit the use of surveillance-based pricing and wage setting. It would also prevent the use of AI to set wages.
This all makes sense to me, but it feels downstream from a bigger question of tech and AI regulation that we’ve heard from members of the House who have called for a moratorium on data centers overall.
Why isn’t something like that on this list, and it’s instead a focus on surveillance pricing?
We need AI regulations big time. But let’s get started with, in my view, taking on the AI lobby on something that makes sense to basically everybody.
Let’s just talk about surveillance pricing for a second because it rightly pisses people off. We had the other day somebody on Twitter tweet at JetBlue, “I’m trying to get to a funeral. Somebody just died, and in the last day, the price on this flight has gone up like $250.” And the customer service rep responded from JetBlue saying, “Clear your cache. Clear your cookies.”
And this is the thing that people know is going on. You’re getting your private data scooped up, they run it through AI, and they figure out how to set a price for you. That is the kind of thing that should unite Democrats, but also tons of independent and Republican voters to say, “Yeah, these folks are using AI to screw us.”
Part of the premise of this episode is we want to break down buzzwords like affordability and even progressive. We talked about the former, but I think the latter matters as well as it’s one that can be misdefined.
What does being a progressive mean to you in 2026, and how would you distinguish it from just being a Democrat?
For me, being a progressive means at least two things. One, being willing to unite lots and lots of people, all of the folks that are getting screwed over against the powers that be that are making your life worse, whether that is oppressing you on a civil rights issue or jacking up your costs like we just talked about. It’s about bringing the everyday person, who may not have [financial] power but should have political power, together to take them on.
Second, I think being progressive is an essentially hopeful enterprise. I think that the world can be much better, that we don’t have to settle for crumbs or settle for the status quo.
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