The price of gas

I recommend reading this (gift link) bit of journalistic ethnography by Michael Sokolove, about a small town in Pennsylvania with equal numbers of Harris and Trump supporters. Very much unlike the typical we interviewed three people in a diner safari, Sokolove did one on one interviews with a good chunk of the town’s voters. Among the several dozen people he interviewed he found that exactly zero were planning to switch a 2020 Trump vote to a Harris vote or a 2020 Biden vote to a Trump vote. The portrait of the Harris voters is of people who are voting for her for the most reassuringly prosaic of reasons — because she seems like a normal Democratic politician.

The portrait of the Trump voters is . . . well you should read it yourself. They’re all normies, as opposed to Qanon or 4chan wack jobs, and the bottom line is that they think Trump is a bad guy, but gas prices were lower when he was president. (I’m simplifying, but barely).

I first talked with Mr. Libasci and his wife, Yeyi, at the post office and then again one evening over drinks at their home. They had moved to Riegelsville several years ago from upstate New York and live in the John L. Riegel House, built by a son of the town’s founder.

Mr. Libasci commutes by car to his office in Manhattan, a drive of about an hour and 15 minutes. “Gas was $2.25 a gallon when Trump left office,” he said. “I just paid $4 for mid-grade. You hear what Trump says: ‘Drill, baby, drill.’ I’m OK with that.”

Gas prices are currently lower now in real inflation-adjusted terms than they’ve been at almost any other point in the last 20 years, including for the vast majority of Trump’s first presidency. The only exception is during the last year of Trump I, when demand cratered because of a global pandemic. Interestingly, gas prices were 70% higher in real terms in the fall of 2012 than they are now (the inflation-adjusted price of gas in October of 2012 was $5.30 a gallon!) yet I don’t recall the price of gas being some sort big deal during that campaign, although I’m sure it came up.

Of course if you tell people that gas is cheaper now that’s it been at almost any other point in the last 20-plus years they won’t believe you, because a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest, especially if he watches Fox News.

Also too the whole idea that who is president has almost anything to do with the price of gas is wrong, which means that voting for somebody who is credibly threatening to end democracy in this country because gas is more expensive now (it isn’t: it’s cheaper), and because he would lower it (he wouldn’t), by drilling for more oil — the US is extracting more oil now than at any previous point in its history and in any event the current extraction rate of oil in the US has almost nothing to do with the current price of gas — is an idea that

Ok I can’t do this any more.