Nate Cohn

By that measure, people's wages have been keeping up with the growing costs of goods.

So that's where you get the argument that maybe things aren't actually that bad.

Maybe we're actually better off than ever before, even if it doesn't feel like it.

I think the catch, though, is that that story doesn't necessarily hold up for the goods that we've been talking about.

The price of housing, health care, education, those middle-class necessities, the prices of those goods has increased more than wages in recent decades.

So if you're the kind of person who is trying to buy those goods today,

you really are finding it harder to buy those things than you would have 40 or 50 years ago.

For the people that we're talking about

who are trying to get that middle class life, who haven't bought it yet, people in their late 20s, 30s, who are now staring at having to buy those things, they are going to try and tackle those big and growing costs head on.

And for that person, I think that there's a really good argument that their incomes haven't necessarily kept up with the ability to buy into this middle class life.

Yeah, there are a lot of different layers here because these things are so expensive and because they are so essential, they are very difficult to compromise on.

And so families are often being put in a position where if things get harder, they may just simply not be able to do it.

You simply may not be able to have a home.

You may not be able to send your kid to college or that's how it feels.

It means that even though incomes have kept up with inflation, it's probably the case that more people have had to compromise on their life goals or stare down the possibility of compromising on their life goals.

Well, it's definitely a bright spot for Democrats.

It creates an opening for them.

They're going to do well in all likelihood in the midterm elections, which historically are basically just an up or down referendum on the party in power.

So people are upset at Trump.

The Democrats are going to do well this November.