I don’t get why Democrats had a scintilla of hope this midterm season. Last December, it was quite clear that Joe Biden’s approval ratings were going to dip below 50 percent. It’s now in the 30s. He has multiple domestic crises to deal with, some of which he knew and did nothing about. Baby formula is one of those forewarned crises. He sat on his hands and did nothing about inflation, saying it was transitory. Gas prices are through the roof. Jobs growth is anemic. Returning to your job that you never lost due to the COVID lockdowns is not creating a new job, Democrats. We know Joe Biden is a foreign policy disaster, being wrong on every major US initiative for the past 40 years. Now, that record of failure is spilling into the domestic sphere. The man just doesn’t know how to do the job. He can’t do the job. As a result, his party, which historically was already heading for a beating, could be subjected to an even more brutal beatdown come November. The Democrats have a 50-50 Senate and a four-seat majority in the House. Florida’s new congressional map alone gives us the House.
Still, there were some redistricting maps that gave Democrats a mirage of safety heading into the midterms. Then, the inflation hit, then gas prices, and now this potential quagmire in Ukraine. And then, Joe Biden’s sinking approval numbers. The man has become the Typhoid Mary of politics for Democrats.
Every member of Joe’s party is saying ‘just stay the hell away from me this year’ right now. It also doesn’t help that legal setbacks have all but erased the Democrats’ redistricting wins. Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman said these legal defeats have been “staggering.” This has become the Democrats’ new 2022 nightmare, according to Axios:
What's happening: Courts struck down some of Dems' biggest gains, including in New York — where the GOP could win up to 11 total House seats in a red wave, according to the Cook Political Report's Dave Wasserman.
Party heavyweights — including House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and House Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) — will now be pitted against each other in contentious primaries.
Republicans are licking their chops at a Florida map that could allow them to pick up an extra four seats.
The big picture: Dems were already at a huge disadvantage for the midterms — with bare congressional majorities, dismal approval ratings for President Biden, and historical trends favoring the party out of power.
Gerrymandering opportunities in New York, Maryland and Illinois — along with favorable court actions in Alabama, Ohio and Pennsylvania — had given Democrats some cause to celebrate.
That optimism is now unraveling: “The legal setbacks and losses Democrats have suffered in the last three months have been staggering,” Wasserman says.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis decided to draw his own congressional map which he’s allowed to do. It caused Democrats in his state to go ballistic. There was an injunction on it, but the appeals court reinstated it which is just the death knell for the Democratic House majority.
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