Across America, the quiet arithmetic of daily survival is growing harder for those with the least margin for error — higher borrowing costs and shrinking purchasing power are compressing the lives of lower-income households in ways that no quarterly report fully captures. Senior economist Mihir Torsekar sees in this compression something that electoral politics rarely anticipates until it is too late: the moment when personal economic pain becomes a collective political force. As midterm elections approach, affordability may emerge not as a campaign theme chosen by strategists, but as a demand