Stop dooming about November
There's still time for Democrats to right the ship before the midterm elections.
Whenever I read Democratic strategists moan about how the midterm elections are completely hopeless and they’re going to get routed, I wish I was in the same room with them so I could do this.
(In my business, I think about this scene a lot. Obviously I am sympathetic to my clients, but next time I hear someone say it’s “noooooooooooot faaaaaaaiiiiiiiiirrrrrr” that they have to pay child support, I’m going full Corleone on him and I dare the Barristers’ Society to stop me.)
Yes, Democrats are facing some Wreckhouse-level headwinds. Inflation is a killer. Biden’s relatively skilled handling of the Ukraine crisis still hasn’t erased memories of the Afghanistan withdrawal disaster. That, more than anything, is what wrecked Biden’s first term. Even I was calling for his resignation at the time, though I added that literally everyone else in the Administration and Congress should also resign and that Biden’s predecessor should be restored to office just so he could be impeached a third time.
History is not on their side, either. Barring a post-9/11 rally-round-the-flag effect, midterm elections rarely go well for the first-term President’s Party. The Democrats were famously routed in 1994 and 2010. Republicans lost control of the House in 2018. Neither chamber changed hands in 1978, 1982 or 1990, but the President’s party lost seats each time.
(Curiously, there’s a similar phenomenon here in Canada, where conservative parties win provincial elections when the Liberals are in power federally, and vice versa. The only provincial Liberal Party still controlling a legislature is in Newfoundland and Labrador. The left-wing NDP is in charge in British Columbia, and the remaining eight - including Quebec, under the right-leaning nationalist CAQ - are in conservative parties’ hands.)
So, yeah, it’s not looking good. But there is some encouraging polling data suggesting the fever might finally be breaking:
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