According to Gallup, 56 percent of Americans disapprove of the job President Joe
Biden is doing. About 80 percent say the country is on the wrong track.
Eighty-two percent say the state of the economy is “fair” or “poor”, and 67
percent think it is only getting worse.
اضافة اعلان
Midterm elections are typically bad for the
president’s party. But a midterm taking place alongside this kind of
disappointment in the president and his party? It should be cataclysmic.
And yet, that is not how the election looks, at least
right now. The FiveThirtyEight forecast gives Democrats a roughly 1-in-3 chance
of holding the House and a roughly 2-in-3 chance of keeping the Senate. Other
forecasts, along with betting markets, tell similar stories.
Perhaps the polls, which have tightened a bit in
recent weeks, are underestimating Republican turnout. We have seen that before
and, worryingly for Democrats, we have seen it in some of the states they most
need to win this year. But even a strong Republican performance would be a far
cry from the party-in-power wipeouts we saw in 1994, 2010 and 2018. It is worth
asking why.
Begin with the seats the parties hold now. Only
seven House Democrats won districts Donald Trump carried in 2020. Democrats are
not defending many of the crossover seats that led to huge losses in 2010 and
1994. On the flip side, the Senate map is pretty good for Democrats, with
Republicans defending more seats.
Then, of course, there is the Dobbs decision, which
led to a surge in Democratic interest and of young women registering to vote.
Every candidate and strategist and analyst I have talked to, on both sides of
the aisle, believes Dobbs reshaped this election. The question they are mulling
is whether that energy is fading as the months drag by and the election draws
close.
But there is something else distorting this race,
too: Biden’s relative absence and Trump’s unusual presence.
Trump’s relentless presence in our politics comes
from a few sources. One is, well, Trump. He never stops talking, insulting,
complaining, cajoling, provoking. He is publicly preparing for a 2024 campaign.
As I was writing this piece, I got an email from “Donald J. Trump”, headlined
“Corrupt News Network”, announcing that Trump was filing a defamation suit
against CNN. This is not a guy trying to stay out of the news.
Biden simply does not take up much room in the political discourse. He is a far less central, compelling and controversial figure than Trump or Obama or Bush were before him. He has got a surprising amount done in recent months, but then he fades back into the background.
Then there is the unusual aftermath of the Trump
presidency, which reverberates throughout our politics. The January 6
investigation is going on, and the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago to reclaim classified
documents that Trump is alleged to have taken with him inappropriately. (Trump,
for his part, recently told Sean Hannity that the president can declassify
documents “even by thinking about it”, which, sigh.)
Trump also bears responsibility for some of the
lackluster candidates causing Republicans such problems. Trump pushed J.D.
Vance in Ohio and Herschel Walker in Georgia and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania —
all of whom are underperforming in their respective matchups. In a speech to
the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, Mitch McConnell admitted that
Republicans might not flip the Senate and observed, acidly: “Candidate quality
has a lot to do with the outcome.”
Trump’s efforts to stay in the news, however, are
matched by Biden’s efforts to stay out of it. Biden gives startlingly few interviews
and news conferences. He does not go for attention-grabbing stunts or
high-engagement tweets. I am not always certain if this is strategy or
necessity: It is not obvious to me that the Biden team trusts him to turn
one-on-one conversations and news conferences to his advantage. But perhaps the
difference is academic: A good strategy is sometimes born of an unwanted
reality.
Biden simply does not take up much room in the
political discourse. He is a far less central, compelling and controversial figure
than Trump or Obama or Bush were before him. He has got a surprising amount
done in recent months, but then he fades back into the background.
Which is not to say Biden does not do anything. He
governs. Just this past week, Biden pardoned all federal convictions for simple
marijuana possession. Before that, he canceled hundreds of billions of dollars
in student debt (although legal and administrative questions continue to swirl
around that plan). He signed the Inflation Reduction Act. But then he moves on.
He is not looking to take his policy ideas and turn them into culture wars.
You do not need to love, or even really to like, Biden to support him. You need to believe in him as a vehicle for stopping something worse.
Biden did not win the Democratic nomination in 2020
because he was the most thrilling candidate or because he had legions of
die-hard supporters. The case most often made for Biden was that other people
would find him acceptable. And that proved true. Biden was able to assemble an
unusually broad coalition of people who feared Trump and considered Biden to
be, eh, fine. That strategy demanded restraint. Many politicians would have
vied with Trump to make the election about them. Biden hung back and let Trump
make the election about him.
I suspect that is part of why Biden’s approval
rating is, and has been, soft. Biden’s appeal to Democrats has been
transactional more than inspirational. You do not need to love, or even really
to like, Biden to support him. You need to believe in him as a vehicle for
stopping something worse. That is still true today.
What was never clear to me was what Biden and the
Democrats would do when Trump was not on the ballot — when Biden had to drive
Democratic enthusiasm on his own. But Biden is running a surprisingly similar
strategy in 2022 to the one he ran in 2020, with some evidence of success. He
does not try to command the country’s attention day after day. And that is left
space for Trump and the Supreme Court and a slew of sketchy Republican
candidates to make themselves the story and remind Democrats of what is at
stake in 2022.
I am too burned by recent polling misses to take a
decent Democratic year as certain. Republican victories in both the House and
the Senate would not surprise me in the least. But at this point in 2010,
Republicans were much more enthusiastic about voting than Democrats. At this
point in 2018, Democrats were more enthusiastic about voting than Republicans.
This year? It is about even, with some polls even showing a slight lead for
Democrats.
If these numbers hold up and Democrats avoid a wipeout in
November, Biden is going to owe Trump a fruit basket.
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