Republicans' Pessimism and a President Waving Off Prices

Republicans have expressed growing pessimism about their chances in the election that will determine control of Congress, PBS NewsHour reports, while the president has repeatedly dismissed concerns about high costs and gas prices as the war in Iran — which the report describes as unpopular — drags on.

Those are two different kinds of statement: a party's forecast about a verdict it might lose, and a president's judgment about whether prices are a problem worth naming. Both can be true at once. The tension is over whether cost-of-living anger is a threat to address or a subject to wave away.