The Big Midterm Surprise

Making Meaning of the Midterms

While ballot-counting continues in key races, the midterm results so far have bucked the pre-election punditry in notable ways.

“Just to set the table here, there are some real surprises with respect to policy,” Roosevelt President and CEO Felicia Wong says on a special post-election episode of How to Save a Country. 

One big surprise: how economics played out this election cycle.

“[T]here was maybe this hint, in some of the way candidates talked about the economy, that you can actually run and build real momentum on an economic agenda,” Wong says. “Build it, we can thrive, we can have public investment in new economic sectors.”

Wong and The New Republic’s Michael Tomasky explore how progressive messages about industrial policy and job creation fared in frontline campaigns; what the media narratives got wrong; and what political ads can tell us about economic policy. 

Listen now, and follow for new podcast episodes every Thursday.

An Inflation Slowdown

Today’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) data brings some promising news: Inflation slowed more than expected in October. 

“It’s just one month, and we’ve seen months like this before, but this is exactly what we want to be seeing,” Roosevelt’s Mike Konczal tweeted.

“Core inflation [is] right at the CPI target, driven by both deflation in goods and services declining. This is what a soft landing would look like.”

Read more of Konczal’s inflation analysis.

What We’re Reading

The Midterms Showed American Democracy Won’t Go Down without a Fight – Vox

The Oldest US Congress in History Just Got a Little Younger with Its First Gen Z Member – Quartz

How the IRA Could Shape the Renewable Energy Workforce [feat. Roosevelt’s Alí Bustamante] – Emerging Tech Brew