It’s not uncommon in the history of U.S. elections for voters to contemplate changing horses in midstream at the midterms, and the economy is frequently the culprit behind the urge to “do something different.” Sadly, choosing a Democratic or Republican government to “fix” the economy is like switching between Coke and Pepsi in order to lose weight.
After a generation of deficit spending and devaluation of our fiat currency, you would think we’d have figured out by now that politics has little to do with the state of our economy. It’s a hard truth, but our problems are rooted in policies that survive elections. Virtually every president in memory who promised to spend less spent more, and virtually every Congress enabled that spending. And we are not alone. Most major powers on the planet are empires of debt.
But we do the best we can with what we have, and while empires rise and fall, the ability to prosper at the state and local level persists. After two terms under Governor Brian Kemp, Georgia maintains its AAA credit rating. Revenue growth exceeded spending, producing historic surpluses and reserve balances. Real wages grew 8.5%, according to state labor data.
However, Georgia’s economy—like the U.S. economy overall—left some people behind. Rural hospitals are struggling, and the state has among the highest percentages of people without health insurance. Economic disparity persists at the state as well as the national level.
But here’s what voters almost always forget: for the past 36 years, the share of wealth held by the top 1% has grown significantly faster than any other wealth group, and at no time during that period did the wealth of any other group grow faster than the top 1%. This happened consistently whether Democrats or Republicans controlled Congress, and whether there was a Republican or a Democrat in the White House. By 2025, the top 1% owned 31.4% of the wealth of the United States.
So voting for a Democrat or a Republican in the current election is not going to move the needle very far or very fast when it comes to how much of our paycheck is left at the end of the month. But many voters are living paycheck to paycheck, and the recent spikes in inflation have been significantly influenced by the two wars the U.S. is currently involved in: the war in Ukraine, which has stronger Democratic support, and the conflict with Iran, which has stronger Republican support. Our pain at the pump, in the grocery checkout line, and with every online purchase is directly related to the high cost of diesel and disruptions in the flow of oil related to both wars, with the larger impact coming from the ongoing conflict with Iran.
Across the 36‑year period (1989–2025), no single party configuration—whether one party in the White House and a partisan or divided Congress, or one party controlling both—consistently delivered less economic pain to consumers. The data show that consumer pain tracks global shocks, energy cycles, and long‑run structural forces far more than it tracks whether Congress or the White House is controlled by Democrats or Republicans.
This demonstrates clearly that when we vote, the majority still votes ideology, identity, or party loyalty, while the swing voter tends to vote recent economic pain. Older Democrats continue voting Democrat even when the party shifts left. Older Republicans continue voting Republican even when the party shifts populist. Many voters describe themselves as “conservative” or “liberal” even when their issue positions don’t match those labels.
And what about those of us who endeavor to think and often vote “outside the box?” Speaking for myself, for much of the time since I was first old enough to vote, I’ve been comfortable with a two‑party system that allowed me to vote for the person: which candidate had the best ideas, which candidate had demonstrated the highest integrity. Occasionally a strategic vote was called for when a party platform ran afoul of my principles or Supreme Court appointments were at stake to resist an ideological shift against those principles. Overall, it has been my observation that Republican policies have been better at raising the tide that lifts all boats, while Democratic policies have been better at sending out lifeboats when those were needed.
I once wrote a column called The Middle Path, which operated on the principle that the truth is often found midway between the extremes of opinion. But in the last twenty years the terrain has shifted. Halfway between is too far left, and the “big tent” of the Democrats shelters ideologies that are dragging the party toward policies that are not compatible with American values. It shelters actors who are actually hostile to those values. They do not wish to adapt to what generations have built. They want to remodel it. And they encourage too many who simply want to tear it down, though they have no plans for a replacement or the means to create one.
In many ways my vote this year was a vote against as much as it was a vote for. Socialism was not really the issue; that definition has shifted so much the argument is almost meaningless. Technically, the U.S. has incorporated socialist policies since FDR and the New Deal. No, what I voted against was any policy or politician who is explicitly or implicitly hostile to capitalism and/or sympathetic to communism.
It really was as simple as that. When it comes to delivering on egalitarian values—the most good for the most people—capitalism delivers. No other system of government comes close. It’s a hard truth for some, but “this time” is not different, and it cannot be different, because communism disallows the competitive spirit of humanity while embracing only the cooperative. And historically, each and every time a communist government gained control, that same competitive spirit—disguised, subsumed, rebranded—manifested nonetheless in totalitarianism.
So as the noise of politics grows louder and the promises grow bolder, it’s worth remembering that the real battle is not between red and blue, but between systems that allow human potential to flourish and systems that smother it. The last 36 years have shown that neither party can shield us from global shocks or economic cycles, but they can shape the moral and structural direction of the country. My vote was cast to keep us anchored to the only system that has ever delivered broad prosperity — and to reject the creeping ideologies that would dismantle it in the name of false equality.
