Liam Denning, Columnist

Gasoline at $5 Hurt Democrats More Than Drivers

Rather than the absolute level of prices, the real problem is the speed at which they rose.

November 8, 2022 at 11:00 AM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

Price pressures.
Photographer: FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP

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In theory, the Democrats shouldn’t be that worried about gasoline prices today. In practice, the Democrats are terrified about gasoline prices today:

That was President Joe Biden speaking in California heading into the last weekend before Tuesday’s midterm elections. His fear of a pump-price backlash explains his zig-zagging in terms of, by turns, cajoling oil companies to produce more and then threatening them with divine retribution. This is despite average gasoline prices having fallen by almost a quarter from June’s $5 a gallon peak.