With gasoline at $4.40 a gallon, inflation rising, 30-year mortgage rates above 7%, and the Federal Reserve raising interest rates for the first time in three years, November’s elections are shaping up badly for Republicans. VoteHub, with its respectable methods and data, gives Democrats an 83% likelihood of winning the House and a 52% chance of taking the Senate.
Conservatives probably conceal their views almost as much from pollsters as they do from left-liberals in general conversation, who often talk in a way that indicates they can’t believe anyone would disagree with them, and will fight them if they do. So the blue party is probably not as far ahead as it appears on the surface.
If I gambled on elections, I’d bet against VoteHub’s suggestion that Democrat Troy Jackson has a 66.6% probability of beating Sen. Susan Collins in Maine, and against its 68.6% probability that anti-American Democrat Abdul el Sayed beats former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers for the vacant seat in Michigan.
Democrats have become so radical, unpatriotic, and plain whacky that one hopes voters have sufficient judgment to break with history and retain the GOP in charge. But congressional midterm elections are, more than anything, referendums on the executive in the White House, and President Donald Trump is increasingly incoherent and unpersuasive in his defense of the economy and the Iran War, which are connected.
All year, it’s looked like Republicans would need a miracle to avoid losing the House, where their majority is as thin as a computer chip. A switch from red to blue in the lower chamber looks as probable as ever.
So Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) will get the win he needs to become speaker and avoid being ousted by his colleagues. You can tell, however, that he might find the job as difficult as Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) does now, and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) did before him.
The prospect of holding the majority is doubtless attractive, but it comes with difficulties, not the least for Jeffries being the need to stop his troops from surging immediately toward a third impeachment of Trump. Jeffries is being questioned about this as the gavel inches toward his outstretched grasping hand. His answer is, “We haven’t ruled anything out when it comes to the tools available to us to hold people accountable, and we haven’t ruled anything in.”
That translates as, “My position at the top of my party is decidedly precarious, for my fellow Democrats think I’m weak, and I’m not going to say anything that makes me look like I’m shirking a fight. But nor am I going to commit myself until I must to a course of action that stands no chance of ousting the president and which ordinary Americans detest as a marker of dysfunction in Washington.”
LIES, DAMNED LIES, AND THE AI SCARE
The coinage of impeachment has been so debauched and devalued since that of President Bill Clinton and the two of Trump that the response of voters is an eye roll and the thought, “Not again! We’ve been there and done that.”
Being the minority party is less rewarding but easier than being in charge. When you win, you have to switch from sniping to government. The fact that Jeffries is already havering is another straw in the wind that House Republicans are going to lose.