The Midterm Fight Is Over Who Eats the Burger

Ground beef cost $6.79 a pound last month. In January 2025, when President Donald Trump returned to office, it was $5.55. That gap is now showing up in campaign ads, grill-side videos, and a strange argument about who loves meat most.

In the midterm elections, meat is on the menu. Democrats and Republicans are arguing over high prices and the Iran war. They are also having a food fight over who is the most red-blooded carnivore.

I smiled when I first read that phrase. Then I thought about the receipt.

A burger becomes a campaign prop

The latest example came from Mississippi. Democratic Senate candidate Scott Colom released a video using a clip of Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith. She said that consumers upset about high beef prices have “so many proteins to choose from.”

The video then cuts to a man grilling burgers. He says, “Pick another protein? I’d rather pick another senator instead.”

It is a clean political hit. It takes a practical problem, the price of dinner, and turns it into a question about respect. The message is simple: you should not have to trade your hamburger for a lecture.

A spokesman for Hyde-Smith’s campaign argued that Democrats deserve blame for high prices. That is the other half of the exchange. Neither side wants to talk only about cattle feed, processing, imports, or supply. Both want the voter to feel something first.

Meat as identity

In most races, Republicans are the ones using meat as a cultural test. They have branded Democrats as vegans or otherwise opposed to meat. The point is to portray them as out of step with voters, hostile to cattle country, or not manly enough.

In Texas, Republicans seized on an old interview in which Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico said his campaign for the Texas Statehouse was going vegan. In Colorado, Republicans attacked Democratic congressional candidate Manny Rutinel over his past activism against meat production and factory farming.

There is a certain comedy in it. A country with real worries about rent, insurance, gas, and groceries is being asked to sort candidates by their relationship to a steak.

But the joke only goes so far. Food is not a trivial subject. It is one of the few bills people face several times a week. When the price of ground beef rises, nobody needs a pollster to explain why it matters.

The price is the point

Democrats have also made meat a campaign issue, though usually in a different way. They are treating it as a staple that costs more under Trump and squeezes household budgets.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the average price of a pound of ground beef at $6.79 last month, up from $5.55 in January 2025. That is a 22 percent increase since Trump returned to office.

Trump has tried to bring prices down by opening U.S. markets to more beef imports, especially from Argentina. That has angered American producers, and prices have remained high anyway.

So the parties are fighting over the same cut of meat from opposite directions. Republicans ask whether a candidate shares the culture of the people who eat it. Democrats ask whether the people who eat it can still afford it.

My first reaction was that Democrats had the stronger ground here. A price is easier to check than a personality. But I would not dismiss the other message too quickly. People do not experience the economy only as numbers. They experience it as whether life still feels familiar, affordable, and within reach.

The war enters the kitchen

The Iran war has made the affordability argument sharper. Democrats and allied groups are running ads that tie Republican votes for the war to higher costs at home.

In Wisconsin, an ad criticized Representative Derrick Van Orden for voting for what it called a costly Iran war and spiking gas prices. In Nebraska, Democratic candidate Chris Backemeyer accused Representative Mike Flood of helping raise prices on groceries, gas, cars, and medicine through tariffs and war votes. In Iowa, Vote Vets Action Fund attacked Senate candidate Ashley Hinson over votes it said contributed to record gas and fertilizer prices.

The Associated Press identified 65 unique Iran-themed campaign ads. At least half of the 50 races covered featured Iran-related ads. Sixty-one of those 65 ads stressed household cost-of-living messages, including fuel and other rising prices.

That is the part that deserves attention. The war is not being discussed only as foreign policy. It is being translated into a family budget.

A Chicago Council survey found that only 2 percent of Americans named the Iran war as their most important midterm issue. Inflation and the cost of living led at 37 percent. Still, 86 percent thought the war had been bad for the cost of living, and 68 percent thought it had not been worth fighting.

That tells me voters may not lead with the war, but they connect it to the bill at the pump and the store.

What the burger cannot settle

The “red-blooded carnivore” framing is amusing, but it flattens people. A voter can care about cattle ranchers, dislike factory farming, eat less meat for health reasons, and still be furious about the price of ground beef. None of those positions makes someone less serious about feeding a family.

The real test for both parties is narrower than the ads suggest. Can they explain why prices are high? Can they offer a plan that does not simply shift the cost onto someone else? Can they talk about food without treating diet as a loyalty oath?

Campaigns use burgers because burgers are easy to picture. A grill, a family, a Saturday afternoon. It is a useful image.

But the useful question is not who would rather pick another senator than another protein. It is whether the next senator will make the protein easier to buy.

More on: Politics