In defiance of the conventional wisdom and public polling, President Joe Biden predicted Democrats would keep their congressional majorities in Tuesday’s midterm elections.
Biden told reporters in California, where he had been talking about semiconductors and campaigning for Rep. Mike Levin (D-CA), that Democrats would hold the House and expand their Senate majority.
“I haven’t been in all the House races, but I think we’re going to keep the Senate and pick up a seat,” Biden told a reporter. “I think we have a chance of winning the House. I don’t think we’re not going to win.”
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Republicans only need a net gain of one Senate seat and five House seats to flip both chambers back to their control.
“We’re gonna win this time,” Biden said.
The president’s travel schedule suggests otherwise. He has been to New York, New Mexico, California, and Illinois. He will be in Maryland the night before Election Day. All are blue states.
This suggests the rumored red wave may be seeping into Democratic areas that voted heavily for Biden two years ago. It also may be an indication of Biden’s low job approval rating, which stands a tick above 42% in the RealClearPolitics polling average. That does not bode well historically for Democrats.
Democrats, including the president and Vice President Kamala Harris, have urged voters to add two or three seats to the party’s Senate majority to alter filibuster rules and codify federal abortion rights now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned. The Cook Political Report earlier on Friday forecast that keeping the Senate 50-50, with Harris breaking ties, was the Democrats’ best-case scenario.
Biden shrugged off the polling and pundit projections.
“So I’m optimistic,” he said. “I really am.”
The happy warrior nevertheless sounded displeased with the press coverage.
“I know you don’t think it, but I think we have pretty good crowds. Fairly enthusiastic,” Biden said. “You don’t write it that way, but they are.”
In the closing days of the midterm election campaign, Biden has said Republicans will crash the economy, endanger democracy, cut programs for senior citizens, worsen inflation, and repeal his efforts to lower prescription drug costs.
“I don’t know anybody who’s really opposed to us bringing down medical prices and prescription drugs and all those other things,” he said.
Biden has also made a major campaign issue out of former President Donald Trump and “MAGA Republicans,” implying Thursday night that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the likely speaker if the GOP wins back the House, was a member of that camp.
The party in power has won the midterm elections only twice since the late 1930s, once after Republicans tried to impeach President Bill Clinton and the second time after the 9/11 terrorist attacks rallied the country around President George W. Bush.
Bush at one point had approval ratings in excess of 90%, though his popularity cratered in his second term. Biden hasn’t been reliably above 50% in months.
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Biden has sought to reframe the midterm elections as a choice between Democrats and Republicans rather than a referendum on his own presidency.
“You know, they say — everybody talks about a referendum,” Biden said Thursday. “It’s not a referendum. This is a choice — a choice between two fundamentally different versions of America.”
