Republicans thought two months ago that they were surfing a red wave to a big win in November’s midterm elections.
President Joe Biden was floundering and historically unpopular. Consumer price inflation spiked to an ugly 9.1%, and two-thirds of voters cited inflation — or the economy, groceries, or gas prices — as their biggest concern.
Extremism seemed the preserve mostly of the Left with its tyrannical, reality-denying, and majority-defying policies on race and gender.
Former President Donald Trump’s endorsed candidates were losing as many primaries as they were winning. His power in the party looked decidedly shaky.
It may still be, but a week is a long time in politics, and it’s been many weeks since those halcyon days of GOP confidence. Democrats are putting points on the board, and Republicans are swinging and missing.
The GOP will probably retake the House, for even an average midterm result would be more than enough to sweep away Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s tiny Democratic majority. And the fundamentals suggest we shouldn’t expect just an average midterm swing. But Democrats hope they might not simply avoid losing seats in the Senate but pick one or two up and end the 50-50 tie that has largely stymied them for two years.
The GOP, spurred by Trump’s narcissistic endorsements, is picking candidates who may prove incapable of winning in the general election. Dr. Mehmet Oz (Pennsylvania), J.D. Vance (Ohio), Blake Masters (Arizona), and Herschel Walker (Georgia), are stamped with Trump’s imprimatur and are all struggling. This Trump effect is also playing out at the House and gubernatorial levels.
Democrats are spending millions of dollars to help Trump candidates. This is hypocritical for people who claim Trump and Trumpism threaten democracy, but it confers two benefits on the party of the Left. First, it helps pit weak candidates against Democrats. Second, it makes the election less a referendum on Biden, in which the president would drag his party down, and more a choice (as in 2020) between Biden and Trump, which the former has shown he can win.
Trump is helping Democrats make the coming election about himself, stumping the country with his saga of a stolen election. This perfectly fits the strategy of the Democrats’ made-for-TV hearings into the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, which rekindled memories of right-wing extremism to balance out the dangerous absurdities of the loony Left. Trump is also hurting his own party by pretending he might announce a presidential run in the run-up to the midterm elections.
And he will undoubtedly play the martyr following the questionable FBI raid on his home at Mar-a-Lago. This will put more pressure on the GOP to align itself with a former leader its current leaders wisely wish devoutly to be rid of.
But they can’t blame all their current travails on Trump. They have also been giving Democrats help and damaging their own electoral prospects. They gifted the president and his party a legislative win by voting for the $52 billion semiconductor chips bill, allowing Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to brag of their effective government. This wouldn’t have been so bad if Republicans hadn’t also allowed themselves to be blindsided by secret negotiations between Schumer and the GOP’s erstwhile friend, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV). Just hours after the chips bill passed, the Democratic principals revealed that they had a deal to pass a warmed-over version of the Build Back Better bill costing nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars ($740 billion).
By sleight of hand, they renamed this legislation the Inflation Reduction Act. Way back in the good old days of June, Democrats’ efforts to suggest massive government spending would cut inflation were laughed to scorn. But now, they’re getting away with it. GOP messaging on the matter has looked hurt and resentful but ineffective. That’s not the impression given by winners.
And the lipstick of anti-inflation nomenclature that the Democrats applied to the big-spending pig is bound to acquire credibility because of actual events in the economy. The public is lowering its expectations of inflation because imminent recession is a possibility. Gasoline prices have fallen for a month for the same reason. Ironically, recessionary concerns have tempered alarm about economic overheating.
So, it’s possible that the midterm elections will arrive at precisely the point at which inflation is visibly receding but recession has not yet sunk its teeth deeply into national prosperity. Democrats will not deserve any credit, but they are likely to claim it and might get it, too.
