Gas Prices and Iran: Voters See the Connection

Photo: The Eloquent Peasant via Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

You can tell a lot about a war by the price at the pump. For months, Americans watched gas climb past $4 a gallon while the war in Iran dragged on, and they did the math themselves. Nobody had to explain it to them. The war was pushing up the price of oil, the price of oil was pushing up the price at the pump, and the price at the pump was pushing household budgets to the breaking point.

Trump finally admitted the connection after the midterms. In an interview with Fox News, he said voters were unhappy about the spike in gas prices and that the war in Iran likely contributed to the Republican defeat. He even claimed gas had been $1.85 a gallon in Iowa before the United States moved against Iran. But the admission is the point. The president himself has now said the war and the gas prices are connected, and that voters punished him for it.

Why did voters believe the connection so quickly? Because they felt it every time they filled up. The war showed up in the price of every gallon, and then in the price of everything that has to be shipped, driven or delivered. The average price nationally hit $4.16 a gallon as voters were casting ballots, and for many families the tank was the place where the war stopped being something on television and started being something they could not afford.

Asked about the election after the results came in, voters kept coming back to the same two things: the cost of fuel and the war. They did not talk about strategy or about what the Pentagon called the mission. They talked about the number on the pump and the money coming out of their pockets. That is how elections are actually decided. Not by speeches, and not by cable news arguments, but by the daily cost of living.

It matters because gas is the rare price every voter sees every week. You cannot hide it in a report or spin it away in a press conference. It is printed in big numbers on the side of the road. When that number climbs past $4 while a president is fighting a war he said would be quick and cheap, voters put the two together without anyone having to tell them to.

So what happens next? Prices have only just started to ease, dipping below $4 a gallon in recent days for the first time since the summer. That will help, but it does not undo the months of $4 gas that helped decide an election. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has been arguing the war should end immediately, and Democrats are pushing Congress to use its power of the purse to cut off the funding that keeps it going.

Trump wants voters to forget the war cost them money, the same way he wants them to forget it cost $47.1 billion and eighteen American lives. But voters have long memories when the bill is in their own wallet. The war showed up at the pump, the pump showed up at the ballot box, and that connection is now something no one in Washington can pretend they do not see.

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