Look, I don't disagree that Democrats' hopes in the 2022 midterm elections are fading. Just take a quick glance at the polling over the last few days alone, and the trend looks pretty clear. My problem with this delicious article, quoting morose Democratic sources hand-wringing about November 8, is that the notion Democrats "peaked too early" in the cycle is preposterous. Their "hopes" were always relatively illusory, in my opinion. Read a bit of the story, then I'll chime in with additional commentary below:
Ever since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, it seemed possible that Democrats could avoid a midterm disaster. But if the post-Roe summer belonged to Democrats, by mid-October, even they can see the momentum they had is fading...“I’m wishing the election were in August,” said Matt Bennett of the center-left group Third Way. “I think we peaked a little early.” For Democrats, the timing could hardly be worse. Gas prices, after falling for weeks, are climbing again. Inflation is still out of control, and the stock market, despite a rally on Monday, has been taking a beating. Meantime, Republicans have been hammering Democrats on the economy and crime in a barrage of post-Labor Day advertising. And all of that is happening with early voting already underway in key states...“Look, man, I’ve been at this for 30 years, and it is always the period in late September and early October when an election starts to tilt and move,” said Mark Longabaugh, a progressive ad maker who worked on Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign. “So, we’re at that moment, and I don’t think you can look at these numbers across the country and say anything but it looks like it’s moving in Republicans’ direction.” He said, “I think it’s clear Republicans have seized the upper hand.” It was just a few weeks ago that the landscape looked far better for Democrats.
When the Dobbs decision leaked in May (the leaker has still not been identified), I expressed skepticism that the decision would ultimately prove to be a fundamentals-altering game-changer in the fall elections. Outcomes may soon prove me wrong, but that's looking less likely by the day. The latest New York Times poll found that nearly half of Americans identify the economy or inflation as the top issue affecting their votes. Just 1-in-20 cited abortion, a substantial chunk of whom presumably fall in the pro-life camp. Abortion falling far behind other issues isn't a surprise, as was already the case weeks ago, but Democrats have further undermined the potency of that issue by being lunatic extremists on it themselves. Noah Rothman writes:
In interview after interview, Democrats in contested races are neutralizing the GOP’s disadvantages on abortion by exposing their own views on the subject...Watching Arizona gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs bob and weave her way out of a direct answer on abortion limits is simultaneously impressive and painful. Hobbs was asked no less than five times in a two-minute stretch what she thinks the legal limits on elective abortion should be, but she never gave a straight answer. When her interlocutor, CNN’s Dana Bash, simply assumed that her position was that there should be “absolutely no limits in any point of the pregnancy on abortion,” Hobbs once again let loose a blizzard of rhetoric that didn’t answer the question. So, by default, CNN has written Hobbs’s abortion policy, and it’s as or more extreme than the most doctrinaire pro-life policy. By and large, Democratic candidates have settled on a consensus view that abortion should be left to a woman and her health care provider. But this disinterest in the outcomes that this produces disappears when Democrats are made to talk about abortion at any length. In many races across the country, voters have been robbed of the chance to ratify the pre-Dobbs status quo. It turns out that neither party’s activist class was satisfied with Roe, all the Democratic Party’s rhetoric to that effect notwithstanding. Thus, the party is transforming what it wants to be a referendum on abortion into a choice between two competing radicalisms.
The real trouble for Democrats isn't that they're unable to sufficiently focus on abortion, or that their own radicalism is undercutting a potential advantage on the issue. It's that they're losing the argument on virtually all of the top-tier issues that matter most to voters this cycle. Gallup recently measured the largest-ever lead for the GOP on the top question facing voters. We also wrote about what could be described as Democrats' political equivalent of a match-up problem in sports earlier in the week. Their leader is breathtakingly out-of-touch on the economy, Americans' overwhelming concern, calling it "strong as hell." It may be true that the timing of things is not working out terribly well for the party in power, but elections aren't held in August. Voters typically tune in after Labor Day, and perceptions or decisions are often finalized in the weeks leading up to the vote. In an alternate universe, Democrats might have mitigated losses by holding the election in the middle of the summer, when their base was hyper-engaged, but most other people were not. But that's not how things work, and election "fundamentals" have that moniker for a reason. They may still pull a rabbit out of a hat, in defiance of all the major current and historical indicators. But the likelihood is that Democrats are going to get waxed, to one extent or another, next month.
One candidate who embodies some of the party's struggles is Pennsylvania's John Fetterman, a deadbeat and hypocrite who has failed upward during his work-averse "career.'" Polls indicate that he may still win a Senate seat in the blue-tinted state, but his previously-large advantage has fallen to what operatives on both sides now say is a toss-up. Fetterman is an extremist on abortion, which he's tried to feature in his campaign, embracing a grotesque and deeply unpopular stance:
“Do you support ANY restrictions on abortion?”
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 17, 2022
FETTERMAN: “I don’t."
“Even in the third trimester?”
FETTERMAN: *shakes his head* pic.twitter.com/BUGlBg9D9y
He's also an extremist on crime, one of the central issues of this campaign. His answer here is an effort to deflect from certain facts. I suspect most people are perfectly comfortable with nearly all first-degree murderers taking their last breath behind bars:
One first degree murderer Fetterman voted to release (the rest of the board voted no) savagely beat a high school student with a baseball bat, then shot him to death. The victim was a cop’s son.
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) October 18, 2022
Sounds just like Red from Shawshank! https://t.co/ToJTKuIKqD
The White House would like everyone to know that the president, who is campaigning for Fetterman this week, believes him to be "capable" and "impressive":
KJP: Joe Biden thinks John Fetterman is "an impressive individual, who is just as capable as always...of doing the job." pic.twitter.com/IDAphuxcVg
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) October 17, 2022
I'm not sure I'd use either word to describe a man who actually strikes me as fairly incapable and downright unimpressive, and "doing the job" doesn't really seem to be Fetterman's thing – but hey, if Biden says otherwise... I'll leave you with a soundbite that underscores the problem Democrats are stuck with in this election:
Reporter: “Democrats have been in control of the White House, the Congress for the past 2 years. Inflation has soared. Why should Georgia voters give you another chance?”
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 17, 2022
Raphael Warnock: *long pause* “We are still in the throes of a pandemic” pic.twitter.com/rs4JlUWwZL
Plus, here's the latest ad from Dr. Oz, which seems to push down his negatives, hit Fetterman (accurately) as an extremist, and implicitly put some daylight between himself and the GOP's gubernatorial candidate in the state:
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