The electoral damage was done, so CNN commentator Van Jones had no issues going on live TV to cheekily boast how Democrats were able to dupe voters into buying their trumped up messaging on “affordability.”
Jones joined the November 5 edition of CNN’s Election Week in America two days after the GOP got shellacked in the midterms to peacock strut. “The Republicans never figured out what we were doing,” Jones snorted to perpetually smug host Kaitlan Collins. “Now it can be told,” Jones proclaimed triumphantly. “There's something called the American Accountability Network: tens of thousands of online humans, not bots, coordinated to make the affordability message a winning message online.”
The AAN, is an explicitly left-wing outfit that’s worked with a number of George Soros-backed groups (ex. Center for American Progress, Human Rights Campaign, Mi Familia Vota) in addition Democratic figures like President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton. Others within the AAN network included fringe organizations like the radical Randi Weingarten-led American Federation of Teachers and Tom Steyer’s NextGen America. The mission, per AAN, was simply to spawn “an ecosystem that has the ability to shape political narratives, reach the public at scale, and mobilize people to take action.” Alexa, define astroturf.
To that effect, Jones plugged in the stats to flaunt the political wreckage AAN left in its wake while its operations “flew under the radar”:
32.5 million people hit on Instagram every day. 88.8 88.8 million hit on Twitter/X every single day and 185 million Facebook hits every single day. And they never figured it out.
Collins appeared nervous that Jones was getting a bit too cocky about spilling the beans, “That’s fascinating Van Jones. Well, I hope you don't get in trouble, but thank you.” Jones chuckled in response, “No, I got permission tonight. Now it can be told. Now it can be told.”
Rub it in you arrogant dweeb @VanJones68 https://t.co/77aKzSZeUH
— Joe Vazquez (@JV3MRC) November 10, 2026
Sure, “now it can be told” because voters already got played. The left-wing messaging on affordability was always a crock. Gas prices, which ironically became a talking point for a left-wing bloc that wants to regulate fossil fuels into oblivion, dropped below $4 just after the elections and U.S. oil prices fell beneath $85 a barrel as of November 10, for all the media fussbudgeting about the nonexistent $200 oil earlier in the year.
Even more telling was that prediction markets put the odds of the much-talked about Trump "recession" at nearly zero percent after the elections, which Kalshi admitted November 8 was a "record low."
BREAKING: Odds of a recession this year plummet to nearly 0% — a record low https://t.co/63hNi3L5Uk
— Kalshi (@Kalshi) November 8, 2026
In fact a major MRC Business analysis released October 14 revealed that the average all-items inflation rate during the seven months of the Iran War under President Trump’s second year was 3.6 percent, while core inflation without volatile food and energy prices averaged just 2.6 percent during the same period. During the same time period under Biden’s second year and when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, average all-items inflation was 8.5 percent while core inflation sat at a ridiculous 6.2 percent.
“Affordability?” Don’t make us laugh. But the ploy worked anyway, as Jones crowed. “Driving the kitchen table affordability message and tying that to Democrats on a positive and Republicans on a negative. The Republicans never figured out what we were doing.” He continued: “And what that meant was, everywhere you go, people were talking about affordability and they were talking about kitchen-table issues.”
Media lefties and their friends in politics love “affordability” about as much as a vegan loves a steak dinner. The utility of the “affordability” issue was its political expediency, and nothing more.
