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(Trends Wide) — Democrats wrap up their midterm campaign on Monday facing the nightmare scenario they’ve always feared: Republicans staging a gleeful referendum on Joe Biden’s struggling presidency and a failure to control inflation.
Hopes that Democrats could use the Supreme Court’s overturning of abortion rights and a flurry of legislative victories to avoid the classic midterm defeat of a ruling party are now a memory. Biden faces a bleak political environment due to a 40-year high in the cost of living, and his hopes for a quick rebound next year are clouded by growing fears of a recession.
On the eve of the election, Democrats risk losing control of the House of Representatives and Republicans are increasingly hopeful of a Senate majority that would leave Biden under siege as he begins his re-election bid and with former President Donald Trump apparently set to announce his own campaign for a return to the White House in a matter of days.
It’s too early for autopsies. Forty million Americans have already voted. And the uncertainty entrenched in modern polling means no one can be sure a red wave is coming. Democrats could still hold on to the Senate even if the House falls.
But the way each side is speaking out on the eve of the election and the sliver of blue territory, from New York to Washington state, that Democrats are defending offer a clear picture of the Republican momentum.
A nation politically divided down the middle, united only by a sense of dissatisfaction with its record, is getting used to repeatedly using elections to punish the party with the most power.
That means Democrats are more exposed this time.
If the president’s party takes a beating, there will be plenty of Democrat indictments over Biden’s messaging strategy on inflation, a pernicious force that has pierced millions of household budgets.
As in last year’s losing gubernatorial race in Virginia, where the president won by 10 points in 2020, Democrats are closing the campaign by warning of risks to democracy and Trump’s influence, while Republicans they believe they are addressing the issue that voters are most concerned about.
“This is where the Democrats are: They deny inflation, they deny crime, they deny education,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said on Trends Wide’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
Hilary Rosen, a longtime Democratic consultant, said on the same show that her party had misjudged the mood of the electorate.
“I am a loyal Democrat, but I am not happy. I just think we’re — we’re not listening to the voters in this election. And I think we’re going to have a bad night,” Rosen told Trends Wide’s Dana Bash.
“And this conversation is not going to have much of an impact on Tuesday, but I hope it will have an impact in the future, because when voters tell you over and over again that they care first and foremost about the economy, listen to them. Stop talking about democracy being at stake.”
Rosen is not the only key figure on the left uncomfortable with the medium-term strategy. Former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, urged the White House to do more to highlight economic concerns in recent weeks, even as he acknowledged the crisis of democracy and the importance of abortion rights. In hindsight, it appears that Democrats were slow to recognize that a favorable summer spell, fueled by falling gas prices and a hot streak by the President passing legislation, would not last long enough to offset a dilapidated political environment caused for the economy.
Biden’s stern warnings about democracy
Indeed, Biden’s emphasis on the threat Trump poses to US political institutions essentially asks voters to prioritize the historical basis of the US political system over their own more immediate economic fears.
It’s a message that resonates strongly in Washington, where the scars of the US Capitol insurrection are deeply felt. And it is undeniably important because the survival of the world’s most important democracy is at stake. After all, Trump incited an insurrection that sought to thwart the continuing tradition of peaceful transfers of power between presidents.
But outside the Beltway bubble of politicians and journalists, democracy feels like a far more distant and esoteric concept than the daily struggle to feed a family and afford to commute. From Pennsylvania to Arizona, the return to normalcy after the Covid-19 nightmare that Biden promised remains elusive for many as the economic aftereffects of the once-in-a-century health emergency linger.
The impossibility of the political environment for Democrats was laid bare in a Trends Wide/SSRS poll released last week. Some 51% of likely voters said the economy was the key issue in determining their vote. Only 15% mentioned abortion, a finding that explains how the electoral battlefield has tilted toward the Republican Party. Among voters for whom the economy is their top concern, 71% plan to vote Republican in their House district. And 75% of voters think the economy is already in a recession, meaning Biden’s efforts to emphasize undeniably strong economic areas, including the shockingly low unemployment rate, are likely to fall on deaf ears.
What Biden said about the economy
It is too simplistic to say that Biden has ignored the impact of inflation, or that he does not understand the pain it is causing the country.
The premise of his presidency and his entire political career has been based on restoring balance to the economy and restoring a measure of security to working and middle class Americans. His legislative successes could lower the cost of health care for seniors and create a diversified green economy that shields Americans from future high energy prices amid global turmoil. But the benefits of such measures will take years to come. And millions of voters are suffering now and haven’t heard a workable plan from the president to quickly lower prices in the short term.
There’s also no guarantee that Republican plans to extend Trump-era tax cuts and mandate new energy drilling will have much of an impact on the inflation crisis. And a divided government would likely mean an impasse between two conflicting economic visions. But the election has become a vehicle for voters to vent their frustration, with no imminent hope that things will get better anytime soon.
Biden has resorted to highlighting the bright spots in the economy, claiming to have revived manufacturing, high job creation and a major effort to compete with China. He is now warning that Republicans would destroy Social Security and Medicare, which many Americans depend on when they retire.
And in practice, there isn’t much a president can do on his own to bring down inflation quickly. The Federal Reserve is in the lead and the central bank’s strategy of raising interest rates could trigger a recession that could further haunt a Biden presidency.
Inflation and high gas prices are also a global problem and have been exacerbated by factors beyond Biden’s control, including the war in Ukraine and supply chain issues brought on by the pandemic. At the same time, however, economists are debating the wisdom of Biden’s high-spending bills that sent billions of dollars into an overheated economy. And the White House’s repeated downplaying of the cost-of-living increase as “transitory” misjudged the situation and was another thing that hit Biden’s credibility, in addition to the trust some voters lost in him during the US withdrawal. States of Afghanistan last year.
The GOP also got exactly what it wanted, as Trump delayed his long-awaited campaign announcement until after the midterms, depriving Biden of the opportunity to shape this election as a direct clash with an insurrectionary predecessor whom he defeated in 2020 and remains widely unpopular. Such a confrontation could have allowed the president to cushion the impact of his own low approval ratings and win over voters who still despise the twice-impeached former president.
Ironically, Biden’s difficulties in framing a credible economic message could spark the very crisis of democracy he warns about.
Any incoming Republican majority would be dominated by pro-Trump radicals. Potential committee chairs have already signaled that they will do everything they can to deflect Trump’s culpability in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and go after the Justice Department as it pursues various criminal investigations into the former president’s conduct. And Tuesday’s election could usher in dozens of election deniers in state office who could end up controlling the 2024 presidential election in some key battlegrounds. Republican dominance of state legislatures could further reduce voting rights.
High inflation has also always been a toxic force fueling political extremism and tempting some voters to be drawn to demagogues and radicals whose political creed is based on stoking resentment and stigmatizing outsiders.
If the Democrats lose big on Tuesday night, Trump will be one of the winners.
