Last month, Democrats won races for governor in Virginia and Pennsylvania and mayor in New York by stressing “affordability.”

Voters are giving President Donald Trump poor grades on inflation, and that threatens Republicans in Congress running for reelection.

The GOP may be getting a bum rap.

Affordability isn’t just inflation. Wages count, too.

Over the last year and since 2019, wages have outrun inflation and real incomes are up,  but not by a lot.

More importantly, salient items—things we must buy or hate to forgo, like electricity, coffee and hamburgers—are much pricier, and the president’s fingerprints are on those.

Holiday dinners are cheaper—turkey is less expensive, because Americans are eating fewer of the big birds the rest of year. But other meats, especially beef, are pricier.

Housing is too expensive. Mayor-elect Mamdani ran hard on promises to freeze rents on city-regulated apartments.

Nationally, home price inflation has moderated, but the ratio of the median home price to the median household income is about five. That’s 25% more than the average for the past 50 years.

The average household income is about $85,000, and that income could only afford about one-third of the homes for sale last summer.

Rents continue to rise and take about one-third of tenants’ income.

Much of this is beyond the president’s control, but many of his policies don’t help

Beef prices are hitting records because Americans continue to annually consume about 47 pounds per capita. Meanwhile, droughts have dried up grazing land and forced ranchers to cut herds to 75-year lows.

The United States exports fattier, premium cuts like steaks and short ribs and imports lean trimmings to achieve the optimal blend for our vast appetite for hamburger.

President Trump’s tariffs disrupt those logistics and can’t boost how many cattle our grasslands will support. But they help raise beef prices.

Coffee plants require warm, wet climates and rich volcanic soils in places like Brazil and Vietnam, where poor harvests are driving up Arabica prices.

The United States only has limited coffee-suitable soil, mostly in Hawaii. Trump’s tariffs can’t appreciably boost U.S production but do raise coffee roasters’ costs.

He harps about interest rates and in some measure, the Federal Reserve has complied—30-year mortgage rates have come down. That’s hardly enough, because homebuyers focus on monthly payments.

With housing in short supply—especially near big cities where the most attractive employment opportunities tend to bunch—lower interest costs motivate homebuyers to bid up prices.

Escrow items—homeowner insurance and property taxes—are up 41% since 2019.

Climate change is a factor. Higher atmospheric and ocean temperatures are raising the frequency and intensity of storms and wildfires and forcing insurers to raise rates.

States and cities limit housing supplies with tough zoning and land use regulations. But tariffs on building materials don’t help.

Immigrants account for 31% of construction workers. Deportations and new limits on legal immigration exacerbate labor shortages and limit the pace of new home building.

Trump likes to boast about low gasoline prices, but those haven’t much changed from a year ago.

New data centers to support Artificial Intelligence are driving up electric utility rates, and Trump’s opposition to wind and solar power unnecessarily limits new grid capacity.

Consumer confidence, as tracked by the Conference Board, is down dramatically since the president was reelected last November. It’s nearly as low as at the depth of the COVID-induced recession.

The margin between those surveyed who say jobs are plentiful and those who say they are scarce is similarly depressed.

Respondents to the University of Michigan Survey of Consumer Sentiment indicate economic conditions are terrible.

That’s not true, but Americans got used to living beyond their means as the economy came out of the last recession.

Americans coped with the post-COVID inflation by running down pandemic relief payments and expanded childcare tax credits that were saved during the shutdown. Many benefited from emergency-enhanced Obamacare insurance subsidies that are set to expire on December 31.

Worse for the president, most Americans feel he is giving too little priority to lowering prices and too much attention to other issues. Him claiming that a Thanksgiving dinner costs 25% less than a year ago when it isn’t true, doesn’t help.

A CBS News/YouGov poll found 60% of voters say Trump describes economic conditions as better than they really are.

Only 36% approve of his handling of the economy.

Most menacing, 65% say his policies are making grocery prices go up.

Now he’s rolling back tariffs on many food items.

In politics, as in retailing, a reputation for high prices once won is tough to shake.

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Peter Morici is an economist and emeritus business professor at the University of Maryland, and a national columnist.