President Joe Biden is likely to have a reckoning after the November 8 midterm elections, the Democrats seem likely to lose control of one or both houses of Congress. If that happens, Democrats will want to know why it happened? Whose fault was it? And how to make sure it doesn't happen again?

If there's one reason Biden's approval rating of 43% bodes ill for failure, it's inflation. Especially the cost of gasoline at the gas station, writes Yahoo Finance.

Biden's net approval rating changed sharply from positive to negative last summer as inflation surpassed 5% on its way to a peak of 9% earlier this year. There were other factors - especially the ugly withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan last year - but Biden's approval rating fell almost simultaneously with rising prices.

The most obvious form of inflation is rising gasoline and energy prices, if only because gasoline prices are presented as an indicator of the health of the entire economy. Biden is particularly vulnerable to high energy prices because of his open hostility to oil and gas. This makes his ranting about the fossil fuel industry the most damaging element of his time in office.

It hasn't always been this way. When Biden ran for president in 2020, energy prices were at a decade low due to the collapse in demand during the Covid pandemic. The average price of oil in 2020 was $39 a barrel. The average price of gasoline was $2.26 a gallon, 24% lower than the previous decade's average. Energy was cheap, but it was also subsidized by overproduction and hundreds of billions of dollars in losses in an oil and gas industry that was unsustainable.

No one in 2020 foresaw an energy crisis in just two years. So Biden probably thought he was safe when he said things like “I guarantee you, we’re going to end fossil fuels” at campaign events. Defeating the fossil fuel industry won the confidence of environmentalists and green energy activists, whom Biden thought were a natural part of his electorate. and in fact, Biden's political views were less draconian.

Aides explained that Biden favored getting rid of federal fossil fuel subsidies, not fossil fuel itself. Biden pointed out that yes, he wanted to do away with oil and gas, but he also knew it would take decades. Biden also insisted that he did not support the Green New Deal, a liberal plan to overhaul the energy and transportation industries.

But there's not much room for subtlety in politics, and Biden has created many occasions for Republicans to use against him when energy prices have skyrocketed.

Biden went even further in his first days in office. He canceled a federal permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have carried Canadian oil to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries. The president also suspended new oil and gas leases on public lands. Again, with gasoline prices at $2.50 a gallon when Biden took office, there was no reason to think he would have to explain anything 18 months later when prices had doubled.

Biden, however, set a trap for himself by launching a rhetorical war against fossil fuels just as they were becoming scarce - and politically valuable.

The main factors pushing up oil and gas prices over the past 18 months have to do with the economics of the energy industry, not any government policy. Profits from oil and gas were negligible in the decade leading up to the Covid pandemic, largely due to overproduction. Then demand collapsed in 2020, leading to unprecedented losses. Energy companies cut capacity and began to prioritize profitability over growth. This is still going on, and many firms now prefer to send generous profits back to shareholders instead of using them to invest in new projects.