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Grocery shelves that should be full of infant formula are bare, especially in rural areas across Pennsylvania.
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Salena Zito: Rhet­o­ric ver­sus re­al­ism at the pump, and in the for­mula aisle

Shannon M. Venditti photos

Salena Zito: Rhet­o­ric ver­sus re­al­ism at the pump, and in the for­mula aisle

MURRYSVILLE, Pa. — Linda Sutton is filling her car with gas at the Sheetz on U.S. Route 22 in this Westmoreland County suburb. Like everyone else, she has been dealing with rising gas prices for over a year now — but today the cost jumped overnight to $4.69 a gallon, the highest number Ms. Sutton has seen in her lifetime.

“I am a retired teacher and a widow, so I live on a pretty strict budget; no one is giving me a raise to help make up for these costs, so you have to cut back on other things,” she said. “You get to the point where you have to start cutting into your essentials.”

One month ago — according to AAA motor club — the cost for a gallon of regular gas here in Pennsylvania was $4.16; a year ago, it was $3.15. Ms. Sutton says those costs influence how frequently she drives to visit with her son and his family elsewhere in the region.

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“My son has a landscaping business in the South Hills, and honestly I don’t know how he is going to continue to handle these costs, because you need gasoline for the truck, for the equipment, to drive from place to place; these costs cut into everything for people who have small businesses,” Ms. Sutton said.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, left, greets crew members of a C-17 that delivered a plane load of baby formula at the Indianapolis International Airport in Indianapolis on Sunday, May 22, 2022.
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78,000 pounds of infant formula imported to U.S.

A registered Democrat who voted in the primaries on Tuesday, Ms. Sutton said if things don’t start to improve, she won’t have any problem looking outside the Democratic Party to cast her vote.

“My vote isn’t about a party affiliation, it is about my pocketbook, my family’s pocketbook, my community and what is best for all of them,” she said.

On the other side of the bay, a young man was filling up his truck. When the total went over $100, he groaned: “Don’t ask me what I think,” he said: “I don’t think it’s fit for print.”

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For the first time ever the average price of gas in all 50 states is now over $4, with prices in Pennsylvania going up three consecutive days in a row, clocking in a record high of $4.74.

Experts expect it will hit $5 this week, driving up inflation and driving down the Democratic Party’s chances of having even a mediocre night in November. In the latest CNN and SSRS poll, a significant majority of adults say President Joe Biden’s policies have hurt the economy, while 8 in 10 say the government isn’t doing enough to combat inflation.

And the economy isn’t the only thing hurting Mr. Biden and the Democrats — the latest crisis to hit parents across the country is empty grocery store shelves where baby formula should be stacked.

In a drive last week across Blair, Cambria, Westmoreland and Indiana counties, where dozens of miles often separate the consumer from the closest grocery store, shelves were empty at every single stop.

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Imagine being a parent on a budget, down to your last container of formula: You drive to four different grocery stores, two Wal-Marts, a Target and a Rite-Aid, racking up more than 60 miles in pursuit of nourishment for your child. You not only have zero luck finding anything to feed your baby; you have also used up a lot of gas.

Along that drive you likely also saw significant evidence of a drug problem — either in the gaunt, vacant faces on people walking along Main Street or the batch of new treatment centers that have popped up where they’d never been before — and you might begin to wonder: ‘When was the last time anyone in power has seen what’s going on in our communities?’

Meanwhile, it was recently reported the Biden White House spent six months coming up with the nickname “Ultra MAGA” to go after Republican candidates.

The people who run strategy for the White House seem to have forgotten how to place themselves in voters’ shoes and experience everyday problems that impact families and communities. For them it is nothing but political calculation: They went to strategy school, not governing school.

Youngstown State University professor Paul Sracic says Biden has become a sort of anti-Harry Truman: “Where Truman insisted ‘The buck stops here,’ Biden is constantly trying to shift blame onto others; from Putin to ‘ultra-MAGA’ Republicans, Biden is hoping that Americans don’t hold him and his party responsible for things like inflation, the baby milk shortage, or the border crisis.”

Mr. Biden’s calculation, Mr. Sracic says, will not work.

Truman’s phrase was not an offer to take responsibility, but an acknowledgement of reality: When things go well in America, the president gets credit, and when they go wrong, he also gets credit.

“With parents scrambling to track down formula following the collision of supply chain issues and a massive recall, they want answers on how this could happen with such a life-critical product,” said Mr. Sracic.

If you are not convinced this is a very real thing, go spend ten minutes in the baby aisle in any store across the country that has empty shelves; see the crestfallen faces of many working-class and minority parents — who don’t have the wherewithal to purchase cases online from Europe — and it’s hard not to imagine the hopelessness and instability they feel in that moment.

Calling voters names like “ultra MAGA” has rarely worked in American politics; Barack Obama’s crack about “clinging to guns and religion” didn’t cost him Pennsylvania in the 2008 general election, but it did cost him the primary that year. It also eventually eroded his approval ratings in the 2010 midterms, as well as his margin of victory in 2012.

Ask Hillary Clinton how “basket full of deplorables” worked for her in 2016.

Eventually those being denigrated use the name as a badge of honor, explained Mr. Sracic.

What Mr. Biden also doesn’t realize is that the president is always something of a teacher: He needs to explain clearly to the American people what he intends to do to combat the problems that are right in front of them.

“Slogans are not enough, and realism means accepting that the world exists not as we might like it to be,” said Mr. Sracic.

It also means admitting that tough choices have to be made.

But the Biden administration seems paralyzed by the fear of offending any of the core Democratic constituencies, said Mr. Sracic: “The result is a feeling of rudderlessness, that things are spinning out of control. This is not what people voted for in 2020.”

North Side native Salena Zito is a national political reporter for The Washington Examiner, a New York Post columnist and co-author of “The Great Revolt”: zito.salena@gmail.com.

First Published: May 22, 2022, 4:00 a.m.

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Grocery shelves that should be full of infant formula are bare, especially in rural areas across Pennsylvania.  (Shannon M. Venditti photos)
Gas prices have soaredto record highs across the country, making consumers stress and rethinking their next vote.  (Shannon M. Venditti)
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