At its best, politics can prove quite simple. “You’ve got to make it,” John Peace told me, “personal and emotional.” Peace, the campaign trainer for Rural America Rising, added, “You don’t sell the steak, you sell the sizzle.” The sizzle is pricey. In the 2026 midterms, Americans will spend $11.6 billion on ads, door-to-door, and get-out-the-vote efforts. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has already dropped $42 million on his re-election race. The sizzle is costly but basic: a promise of a better future, premised upon nostalgia for simpler times.

Our times are inflationary. Over the past decade, prices have spiraled 3.1% per year. Since 2016, home prices have jumped 81%. When Trump was re-elected president, the average gallon of gas cost $3.13. Today, it is $4.48. In that same period, childcare costs have leapt by 10%. The pain hits college and non-college, alike. “Childcare,” Seth Trott shared “changed the entire trajectory of our professional and personal lives.” The scarcity and spiraling costs of childcare forced Trott, a lawyer and Chair of the Erie County Democratic Party, to move his family … to Pittsburgh.