In the final stretch before the midterm elections, President Donald Trump has asked Republicans to vote as though he’s on the ballot. But weirdly enough, neither he nor the rest of the GOP has made much of a case for his record at all.

And in a third consecutive election where voters insist that their No. 1 concern is the cost of living, the absence of an affirmative defense of Trump’s economic performance is a conspicuous omission. Fairweather Trump frenemies will point to the Iran war’s impact on gas prices (but never the tariffs preventing an absolute decrease in goods prices last year, per the estimation of the New York Fed) to claim that the economy couldn’t be worse.