Not that very long ago, Joe Biden’s job-approval rating seemed chronically and endlessly depressed; the Democratic-controlled Congress couldn’t get anything done; and all the indicators for the 2022 midterm elections looked terrible for the party, in part because its own voters were deeply disappointed with the lack of legislative productivity and a perceived absence of presidential leadership.
Now, in a series of legislative victories highlighted by the Schumer-Manchin budget-reconciliation agreement (now known as the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA), Senate Democrats are suddenly walking tall, as Punchbowl News noted:
“Senate Democrats have put together an impressive resume this summer, most especially during the last two months. The CHIPS Plus Act, PACT Act, Sweden and Finland’s accession to NATO, gun control and reconciliation were all passed in this period, a number of them with big bipartisan majorities. All in a 50-50 Senate.”
Assuming the House finishes action on the IRA later this week, it’s quite the late-innings home run, complete with a rebranded title that shows Democrats at least trying to address what has been the dominant issue of the midterms: inflation. Along with the Kansas abortion-rights referendum on August 2 that shows that Democrats may have an issue of competing significance to both swing and base voters, the landscape is most definitely getting brighter for Democrats. And though Biden and his party probably had little to do with it, they will get credit for falling gasoline prices if they continue to drop.
In an interview with Politico, Biden’s pollster John Anzalone used a gambling analogy for the turnaround. “We put our last silver dollar in our slot machine and came up big,” he said. “And they were sitting there with a stack of chips and are down to just one. The turnaround is unbelievable.”
Spin aside, things are clearly looking better for Democrats, but the question (other than uncertainty over the future direction of crucial economic indicators) is whether midterm losses are already baked into the cake. After all, with the exception of George W. Bush in the immediate wake of 9/11, every president going back to the 1930s has lost ground in his first-term midterm election. Even very small House and Senate net losses would flip control to Republicans. And while a yearlong downward drift in Biden’s job-approval rating has now been replaced with small gains, it’s still dreadful at the moment: 39.6 percent in the averages at both FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics. At this point in 2018, Donald Trump’s RCP job-approval average was 43.4 percent, and his party was on the way to losing 41 House seats. Then, too, the “direction of the country” right-track, wrong-track ratio was 41-51. Now it’s 20-73.
Sure, Democratic base voters unhappy with earlier legislative misfires may now have a sunnier outlook on the party’s congressional candidates. That, along with the growing anger at conservative Supreme Court justices and anti-abortion Republican state officials, could certainly improve Democratic turnout. But Republicans will likely retain an advantage of core swing-voter concerns that are unlikely to go away by November 8, as Senator Marco Rubio suggested in a taunting floor speech on the IRA over the weekend:
“There isn’t a single thing in this bill that helps working people lower the prices of groceries, or the price of gasoline, or the price of housing, or the price of clothing. There isn’t a single thing in this bill that’s gonna keep criminals in jail. There isn’t a single thing in this bill that’s going to secure our border. Those happen to be things that working people in this country care about.”
That too is spin, of course, but the point is that GOP talking points really don’t have to change in light of the IRA’s passage.
The best empirical news for Democrats is the trajectory of the congressional generic ballot, the midterm indicator that has had the most predictive value in the past. As recently as June 13, Republicans had a 3.5 percent advantage in the RCP averages for this measurement of congressional voting preferences, with the expectation that the margin would widen as voting grew near. Now the generic ballot is basically tied (Republicans: 44.7 percent, Democrats: 44.6 percent). Historically, the party controlling the White House loses steam late in the midterm cycle, but at the moment, Biden’s party does seem to have some momentum. And in the national contest where Democrats have most reason to be optimistic, the battle for control of the Senate, Republicans continue to suffer from candidate-quality problems that could lose them seats they probably should win in a midterm. John Fetterman keeps maintaining a solid lead over Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania; this race is for a seat currently held by the GOP. And in Georgia, Raphael Warnock continues to run comfortably ahead of Herschel Walker even before the frequently tongue-tied former football great reluctantly faces the highly eloquent incumbent Democrat in debates.
There is no way to know, much less factor in, late-breaking real-world developments that might affect the trajectory of these and other midterm contests, whether it’s unexpected economic news, a change of direction in the Russia-Ukraine war, or an official 2024 candidacy announcement by Trump that reminds Democrats that the wolf is still at the door. Typically, voting preferences form well before Election Day, and early voting will begin in September in some states. At present, FiveThirtyEight gives Republicans an 80 percent probability of controlling the House next year and Democrats a 59 percent chance of holding the Senate. These numbers are better for Democrats than those we saw in June and July, and that’s grounds for gratitude.
I’m not sure that “most people” are that extreme. For sure, those that are appear pretty scary and I don’t think any amount of persuasion is going to change them. However the people in the mountain states or the Midwest that voted Republican in the last two elections (or longer-really since 1994) are beginning to redirect their dissatisfaction with the status quo. Eight years of Bush didn’t help them much.
The question is will they be pulled further to the right by McCain/Palin or will they return to the more moderate stance they have historically had. Someone has to connect with them like the Governor of Montana did.
The problem is, don’t you think, that compared with most voters, she is not that extreme? Since her speech, Obama’s lead has been destroyed…with ONE speech! and she will give hundreds more in the next 60 days.
We need less extreme people voting, but folks, it’s time to face facts..most people like the right wing extremism of the nominees.
I agree that it needs to be driven home that Palin’s views are extreme and are particularly extreme on issues that are important to women. Here is something that could be polished up and drive the point home.
“Didn’t Sarah Palin and her family look great at the RNC, especially so as she delivered her speech on Wednesday? But she really didn’t say much about issues, in particular issues that are important to women. One has to look toward John McCain to see what his ticket really thinks about issues essential to women. When asked what he thought about pro-choice, his response was that he “favored a constitutional amendment” making abortions illegal in the United States. One has to assume that he wouldn’t have picked Sarah Palin as his running mate, if she didn’t feel the same way. Look at what John McCain has said. That’s what you can expect if McCain/Palin are elected.”
Pushing back on mockery
This mockery worked very well against Kerry-Edwards in 2004, who never used it effectively against Bush and Cheney. Reagan used it against Carter successfully too.
I think the Dems have to hit back – not necessarily Obama or his campaign, but ads need to do some of this, and surrogates too. It is hard and dicey to push back with mockery, because of McCain’s vet/POW status, and because it could be seen as sexism against Palin.
On Gov. Palin
(1) Don’t mention Palin’s name without the adjective “extremist”. She is farther right than George Bush and Dick Cheney. She’s a Dick Cheney masquerading in lipstick and heels. She may be a better shot with a gun, but her policies are more off the mark. ‘Extremist’ captures her accurately and avoids patronizing her. Look at her positions on abortion, humans having no affect on global warming, & stem-cell research.
(2) At best, Palin is the biggest flipflopper in the race. At worst she has misrepresented herself. Examples: Bridge to nowhere, Chomping at the trough of congressional pork, troopergate.
(3) Oh, and the sum total of Palin’s international experience before she applied for a passport in 2006 is she’d been to Canada. (She subsequently visited US troops in three countries, Iraq, Kuwait and Germany). That’s worse than George Bush, and look where he got us on foreign policy.
On Sen. McCain
(4) Can we mock McCain and Palin both as blind agents of big oil? They don’t need to deal with lobbyists – they are the lobbyists for big oil! The new McCain-Palin ticket is like the Exxon-Mobil merger. Americans will be paying for the hundreds of millions that will go into the pockets of oil companies and their executives – just like Cheney and Bush. Are we going to let this country, and its decisions about foreign policy, have 4 more years of being driven by the handservants of oil companies? That’s worked great for the public/
(5) ‘Country First’?!?!? What about rich people’s pockets first?! That’s what this last 8 years have brought. We have numbers on this!!! McCain and his Bush economic policies (not to mention countless homes) promise the continuation of this.
(6) How abot mocking McCain for ‘not getting’ that his economic policies are the same as Bush’s? Does he not get the very phrase he used to describe his education policy (‘civil rights issue of our time’ – Bush in 2002; ‘civil rights issue of this century’ – McCain on Sept 4) was used by GW Bush early in his presidency? Have his advisers not pointed this out?
(7) Republicans have been poor stewards of the lives of American troops. Where is the outrage over the most important cost to America of this bungled war in Iraq? It is McCain and his party who pushed it. Surely we can name three or five servicemen/women who died due to the failure to fund adequate armor for Humvees? Yes we know and remember the victims of 9/11. But Afghanistan is where we should have pressed our military power, not the distraction in Iraq.
You can’t lose what you never had, and McCain never really had complete control of the Republican Party. His recognition of this political fact is evident in his acquiescence to the Christianist veto of his preferred running mates — Ridge and Lieberman — and his acceptance of the religious right’s candidate.