| It's no secret that grocery shopping (to say nothing about going out to a restaurant) has become more expensive over the past few years. As Joshua Green writes, it's a political problem as much as an economic one for President Joe Biden, especially with a demographic he needs to win reelection: young people. Plus: higher pay for Walmart managers, a look at Israel's wartime economy and the race to make more weight-loss drugs. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up. While the world awaits a verdict in Donald Trump's Manhattan criminal trial, another important political development is underway at US grocery stores: Prices are up. And young people are mad about it. Unless you employ a team of private chefs to prepare your meals, you've probably noticed this already. You may be mad about it, too. For all I know, you may be Cardi B, whose viral tweet complaining about "ridiculous" grocery prices made national headlines last year and launched a million local news stories about the staggering cost of food. (Doesn't she have an army of private chefs to handle her food shopping?)  It costs more to fill that cart now. Photographer: Shelby Tauber/Bloomberg But grocery-price rage among young people is especially acute—and stands to be a critical factor in November because they're the likeliest group to sway the presidential election. That's just one data point that jumps out of a new Data for Progress study that drills down on 2024 swing voters and provides a granular examination of their biggest concerns. The bullet-point takeaways are that this year's key voters are younger and more diverse than the overall electorate. They aren't particularly partisan and describe themselves as "moderate." They're politically disengaged but lean a smidge toward Trump. They're RFK Jr. curious (46%). But what they're really focused on is the economy. And they're overwhelmingly fixated on food prices. Perhaps that shouldn't be surprising given how much they've shot up: Food costs are up more than 20% since 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. It's all but certain that the Trump verdict will dominate political news coverage for a while. But the Data for Progress study, which interviewed 4,923 likely voters, found that younger swing voters may not be paying attention to the trial. When polled, they named the "economy, jobs and inflation" as their top issues when deciding whom they'll vote for in November. It wasn't close, either. One-third (33%) chose that category as their priority, with "immigration" trailing in a distant second place (8%). Among these "economy, jobs and inflation" voters, "inflation" was far and away their top issue (55%), handily beating "economic growth" (15%) and a host of other concerns. The issue exercising the inflation crowd the most is the "cost of food and groceries" (62%), which dwarfed rent and home prices (18%) along with the cost of gas (5%). The study also found broad agreement about who should fix inflation: Joe Biden. Among swing voters, 61% said "Biden needs to take more action to solve our country's problems." This hardly comes as news to the president. Along with other Democrats, he's sought to pin responsibility for inflation on greedy corporations ("greedflation"). He recently complained on CNN that foodmakers are shrinking their products ("shrinkflation"): "Snickers bar, they did a thing," Biden said, "and it's, like, 20% less for the same price. That's corporate greed." He added, "We've got to deal with it." Last week, the Biden administration took practical steps to battle inflation by announcing it would release 1 million barrels of gasoline from the government's strategic reserve in an effort to bring down prices. No one is going to complain about lower gas prices (except Republicans), but that won't do much to bolster Biden's standing with swing voters, unless he can figure out how to bring down grocery prices, too. It's an unfortunate reality for Biden—but maybe also an opportunity?—that there's no National Snickers Reserve that a president can tap to ease the burden on hungry, strapped swing voters beset by the post-Covid-19 run-up in prices. He'll have to hope that prices come down on their own or that young people shift their focus to a problem that a president can do more to solve. That could be a tall order. Cardi B told Rolling Stone recently that she won't be voting for either major party candidate, citing, among other things, the high cost of living. | 
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