And just like with health insurance, Americans probably tend to get mad at the consumer-facing company who actually charges them money, rather than at the shadowy suppliers who are billing the consumer-facing company — or at external forces like supply shocks. Indeed, grocery stores have become less popular as prices have gone up, even though the stores aren’t profiting much:

As Ezra Klein and the Abundance folks like to point out, at some point you actually have to make stuff work in order to make the voters like you. Getting Americans mad at an undeserving target like grocery stores might win you a couple of elections in the short term, but in the long term, you have to actually address reality; if you fail to bring down food prices, people are going to feel betrayed and get mad at you for failing to keep your promises.

Donald Trump is finding that out now. He campaigned on the idea that kicking out immigrants would bring down prices. Now ICE is rampaging through American communities and rounding people up for “Alligator Alcatraz”, but prices aren’t going down, or even slowing. As a result, inflation has gone from one of Trump’s strongest issues to one of his weakest: