Politicos and pundits all know that the last 60 days following Labor Day is the rubber-to-the-road moment where both political parties must gun their engines to the checkered flag. It would be an ideal time, they say, for President Donald Trump and Republicans to discover the gas pedal is on right.
But that’s just not happening — primarily because American voters are discovering what it costs to gun their own engines on Labor Day weekend.
“Motorists across the U.S. have been warned that this will be the ‘most expensive Labor Day weekend on record’ due to ‘geopolitical tensions’ and ‘disruptions’ to global oil supplies,” reports the Mirror.
Thanks to disrupted traffic in the Strait of Hormuz and Trump’s unilateral attack on Iran, gas prices are forecasted to be on average $4.03 per gallon over the weekend. This is 87 cents higher than 2025, and it surpasses the previous 2012 record high of $3.83 per gallon.
And the timing could not be more godawful for the party and president in charge, especially with Labor Day being the so-called springboard into either triumph or tragedy for Republicans.
“It’s been a challenging year for motorists, with constant ups and downs at the pump that stayed elevated into this final summer holiday, though relief may lie ahead if tensions ease,” Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, said in a statement.
At this point Trump knows what he’s in for, and he likely knows he’s the cause of it. The Mirror reports Trump was feverishly twisting the arms of his oil industry buddies, hoping U.S. refiners and fuel distributors could expand domestic refining capacity and raise energy production to lower gas prices in the final days leading into the midterms.
“I’m just grateful I’m not on the ballot,” former speaker pro-tempore Patrick McHenry told a Saturday morning panel on MS NOW’s “The Arena with Kasie Hunt.” “… The American people are focused on how they’re living, how’s their life and how do they feel about it. And they don’t feel great, and the headwinds are real. There’s a macro concern about AI, … but it’s really about the rising cost of energy.”
Americans are also increasingly pessimistic about the overall economy, according to the Mirror, as the consumer sentiment index, an indicator of how confident Americans are about their own personal finances and the overall U.S. economy, fell 7.6 percent in August.
“Political analysts have warned that voter backlash to Trump’s handling of the unpopular war and subsequent rising gas, fuel and food prices, as well as inflation, poses a major threat to the Republican Party ahead of the high-stakes November midterm elections,” the Mirror reports.