Democrats’ gas price problem

Just how concerned should they be?

Gas prices had already been rising for the past two weeks, after 98 days of consecutive declines over the summer, to a national average of about $3.87 per gallon. And on Wednesday came the extremely unwelcome news from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its partners (including Russia) that they will trim oil production by 2 million barrels per day. The move is expected to increase prices by reducing supply.

Precisely what effect that could have at the pump over the next month, specifically, isn’t clear. The move doesn’t take effect until next month (the election is Nov. 8), and the director of the White House’s National Economic Council, Brian Deese, downplayed the impact Thursday. Deese said that, “certainly, the impact on production will be significantly lower than that headline that [OPEC Plus] announced.”

But even before then, the announcement could have an effects in other ways. And both the White House and congressional Democrats responded to the news with a torrent of denunciations and proposals that suggest they feel real urgency.

The White House had waged an extensive campaign to prevent OPEC Plus from making this move. President Biden also met with Saudi leaders this summer, despite having previously pledged to turn the country into a “pariah” for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. (Biden has claimed that trip wasn’t focused on oil — including this week, as he batted away the idea that the trip failed — but there’s little question that was a large part of it.)

When OPEC Plus announced the move, the White House quickly seemed to float the type of clash with the Saudis that Biden once promised. It suggested Congress could “reduce OPEC’s control over energy prices” — apparently a reference to repealing the organization’s antitrust protections, which probably would inflame relations with the Saudis and others.

Over the next 24 hours, other Democrats joined in.

Following a Wall Street Journal report that the United States might ease sanctions on Venezuela to allow its oil to flow to the United States and Europe, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said it had become clear that “our policy of sanctioning and isolating [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro hasn’t worked.”

(Biden on Thursday did leave open the possibility of lifting sanctions on Venezuela, but said it would have to do “a lot” in return.)

Others suggested various other legislative responses, including moving U.S. troops and missile defense systems out of Saudi Arabia and into the neighboring United Arab Emirates.

Many of the denunciations focused on the war in Ukraine — arguing OPEC Plus’s move was a boon to Russia, which could use higher gas prices to fund its war. But plenty of others pitched this more as a deliberate attack on American consumers.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) called it “a blatant attempt to increase gas prices at the pump that cannot stand.”

And Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), in perhaps the most pitched comments yet from a U.S. official, accused the Saudis of “conspiring [with] Putin to punish the U.S. [with] higher oil prices.”

Democrats haven’t explicitly tied OPEC and its allies’ move to the upcoming U.S. election, but looming in the background is the former Republican president’s significantly cozier relationship with the leaders of Russia and Saudi Arabia.

And the Biden administration has made clear the domestic impact is high on its list of immediate priorities. On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had said, “We’re not considering new releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve,” after Biden had previously tapped it. But both Wednesday and Thursday, the White House said that it was on the table.

As for how much Democrats should fear the electoral impact, it’s difficult to say with certainty.

There’s little question that higher gas prices are bad for the president and his party, even as politicians exert little influence over them. Not only is it perhaps the most readily apparent economic indicator for many American consumers and voters — a regular reminder of inflation — but it has downstream effects on the economy as well. A continued rise in gas prices would only increase the already prevalent fears of a recession.

John Sides looked at this back in 2012 — when gas prices were higher than they are today, if you adjust for inflation — and he detailed a number of scenarios based on historical data. A 70-cent increase in gas prices over three months, his model suggested, would have meant a five-point drop in Barack Obama’s approval rating and a 1.2-point decline in his vote share in that year’s reelection campaign. A more modest 40-cent increase would have cost Obama 2.8 points off his approval rating and about 0.7 points in the election.

Those sound like relatively small shifts. But consider how closely decided the battle for the House and Senate appear to be right now: Even a one-point shift could be decisive for both.

There’s also the fact that these impacts could be felt differently depending on where you live. The rise in prices in recent weeks has so far been quite region-specific — i.e. spiking in states like Arizona, Nevada, Ohio and Wisconsin but remaining relatively flat in Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. (Each of these states is home to a key Senate contest.)

Sides and others who have studied this dynamic have also emphasized that it’s difficult to completely isolate gas prices, given how interconnected they are with the rest of the economy. His model assumed everything else held constant, but that’s not how things really work.

And even if the impact of OPEC Plus’s decision isn’t that large, it comes at a time when prices had already been rising — and during a season when gas prices had been expected to rise, as The Washington Post’s Evan Halper reported as far back as July.

Democrats would rather keep the election focused on other things, but all of these proposals aside, that’s something that’s largely outside their control right now.