This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.

I'm your host, Greg Sargent.

Public polls are starting to show that Democrats are now more trusted on the economy than Republicans are,

a milestone with major implications for the elections.

Strikingly, a new memo from Republican operatives just conceded this as well,

while sounding a loud warning that the GOP is in danger of losing the Senate.

All this is also underscored by fresh economic data.

It suggests that the struggles of ordinary Americans could be getting worse. New Republic staff writer Monica Potts has been doing some really good reporting on what ordinary voters are

thinking and feeling about the economy. So we're talking to her about all this today. Monica,

nice to have you on. Thanks for having me. So let's start with the new data. GDP grew at 2% during the first quarter of this year,

which is better than last year but still came in under expectations.

And inflation just had its biggest spike in nearly three years by one metric,

driven in part by gas prices in the war. Monica, it just seems like we're economically

stuck. Is that the right way to think about it? I think so, you know, the economy was on a

path to recovery at the end of the Biden administration. I think people conveniently forget

that the post-COVID era was a really unusual time. And we hadn't seen

anything like it in our lifetimes. And a lot of the ways that people consumed changed,

they changed, their incomes changed, the way that we thought about what we needed and what we

wanted to spend our money on change throughout that period.

And of course, inflation rose really rapidly.

And so things were heading back to normal. And actually a report earlier this month from economists at the Federal Reserve found that inflation might have been back to normal had we not had the new tariffs from the Trump administration and some of the other shocks to the economy under his tenure.

Yeah, well, this economy is largely the creation of one person, Donald Trump, and I want to get into that in a bit.

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