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The great burrito debate burst onto the social media scene this week after Turning Point USA’s Andrew Kolvet posted that the Gen Z voters at his events are upset that the Mexican wraps cost $20 these days.
Reaction was swift, heated and mixed, with some commenters saying this proved prices and affordability are a major red flag for the GOP in the midterms. But others scolded the youths, claiming that “in their day,” they survived five years on nothing but ramen noodles, peanut butter and the kindness of strangers.
The fairly obvious subtext to this debate is the war in Iran, as team “cheap burritos” insists the war must end now to bring down prices and win in November, and team “suck it up, kids” argues that long-term economic success requires winning the war.
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The real question, for Republicans and the Trump administration, is just how angry are Americans over prices, and will that anger make them choose Democrats over the status quo?
To answer this question, it is important to understand that there are two kinds of political issues: gut and mental. Crime, for example, is a gut issue, because if you don’t feel safe on the street you feel it in your gut. Foreign policy, on the other hand, for most Americans, is a mental issue in that you think about it more than you feel it.
Affordability and prices can be a gut issue, and have been in several recent elections. If you are in line at the grocery store watching the tally rack up and hoping you have enough money for it, that is something you feel in the pit of your stomach.
In the fall of 2024, I was in Bedford, Pa., talking to some voters when a woman walked into the restaurant and, apropos of nothing, announced, “I cannot believe how much I just paid for groceries,” to nods and grunts of angry assent.
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This was not an uncommon occurrence two years ago. Cost of living and prices were not just the top issue for most voters I spoke with, but in many cases it all but eclipsed any others because they really were feeling it. You could see it in their eyes.
In Detroit last month, voters I spoke to were not obsessed with prices. In fact, most felt that Motown was seeing a revival, which helps to explain why, despite a very narrow statewide primary victory for Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, he lost the city badly to the more mainstream, less economically populist Rep. Haley Stevens.
This spring, there was a three-week-or-so period when gas prices really rocketed, and it became the complaint on everyone’s tongue. It was becoming a gut issue, but then the prices eased, and since have stayed in the “I don’t love it, but I can live with it” range.
As for the young adult Gen Z voters feeling an economic pinch, they have some real complaints, even if overpriced Door-Dash meals are not chief among them. The fact is that the cost of entry into adulthood is much higher than it was 30 years ago.
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When my then-girlfriend and I moved in together in 1995, we had to pay for rent, a landline (which cost almost nothing), and a couple of utility bills. There was no internet or cell phone bill, and our only subscription was to the journal Lingua Franca.
Republicans should be able to appeal to many of these frustrated young voters with targeted economic relief, something the Trump tax cuts achieved, for example, instead of the snake oil of socialism that the newfangled Democratic Party of Hasan Piker is hawking to them.
Everybody remembers the folly of President Joe Biden telling Americans that they didn’t know how good they had it while they were tightening their belts, and part of that was that Grandpa Joe was trying to talk intellectually about what had become a gut issue.
As far as Iran goes, the only theater of this particular war that the American people really care about is the gas station. If Trump can keep prices moderate, he can lob the occasional bomb at the mullahs until the cows come home.
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The 2026 election is becoming a stark choice between Republicans promising slow and steady progress and Democrats who want to blow up the system and start over, without a Senate, with a packed Supreme Court and with no private health insurance.
Unless something catastrophic happens between now and November, that is a choice that benefits the GOP, and it’s why prices will not be as decisive as so many believe they will be.
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