Inflation emerges as a 2022 campaign dividing line

Tight congressional races across the nation are quickly turning into battlegrounds over a key economic question: whether President Joe Biden’s spending agenda is the chief culprit for inflation concerns gripping the country.

Republicans are latching onto heightened anxiety tied to the nation’s sharpest inflation spike in three decades. Democrats, meanwhile, are scrambling to preempt the attacks by focusing on broader benefits of the multitrillion-dollar packages. The opposing bets on the infrastructure and social spending plans are laying the groundwork for a year of sparring tied to voters’ growing worries about...