At the present moment the Republican Party appears likely to have majorities in both houses of Congress in 2023. In a column in the Washington Post Matt Bai tells Democrats, smile! The news isn’t all bad:
No one at the White House will say this out loud, certainly, but the fact is that losing control of the House (and possibly the Senate) in November would instantly make the presidency a more manageable job. It would curb the power of the Sanders-Warren wing, freeing Biden to pursue the kind of mainstream liberal agenda — his landmark infrastructure law being a good example — that the voters thought they were getting in the first place.
Meanwhile, a newly emboldened Republican majority — like space junk orbiting its Trumpian star — will gravitate even more strongly toward antidemocratic themes of election fraud and intolerance. Like Clinton and Obama before him, Biden will have the chance to rebrand himself as the grown-up standing firm against bullies and extremists.
I’m not as sure as Mr. Bai is that the parallels between Bill Clinton in 1994 and Barack Obama in 2010 and Joe Biden in 2022 are that strong. For one thing both President Clinton’s and President Obama’s presidential approval ratings were higher going into the midterms than Joe Biden’s. Clinton’s approval rating was over 50% and Obama’s was around 45%. Joe Biden will be very lucky if his approval rating cracks 40% on Election Day 2022.
For another thing, the U. S. domestic and the world situations were a lot rosier going into the midterms in 1994 and 2010 than they are now.
For yet another Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were a lot younger then than Joe Biden is now—just about 30 years younger in both cases. That makes a difference in how much energy they could bring to the party.
My only advice is do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
“It would curb the power of the Sanders-Warren wing, freeing Biden to pursue the kind of mainstream liberal agenda…”
Sanders-Warren are going to stand down? Biden is really a fossil fuels advocate, but for the progressives?
“…his landmark infrastructure law being a good example..”
The one with 10-15% actual infrastructure spending?
“…a newly emboldened Republican majority — like space junk orbiting its Trumpian star — will gravitate even more strongly toward antidemocratic themes…”
You mean like Truth Ministries, raiding the homes of or shackling political opponents, or vaccine mandates?
The general population is far more savvy than Bai. At these times one hopes that the Democrat operatives who run campaigns listen to tripe like Bais spews and act accordingly. Victory will be glorious.
I think that Democrats should be less concerned about Biden’s being re-elected and more concerned about his living through the next two years. I think it’s going to be very stressful.
Furthermore, IMO they face a very peculiar problem. I don’t see that any candidate who can win in the general election can win in the primaries. Just to cite one example, the Democratic governor with the highest approval rating is the governor of Kentucky. Is there any way he could win the presidential nod in the primaries? I don’t see it.
I can’t think of one policy, one action, that arose from the Biden Administration, which actually helped the working or middle class members of society. While people did favor upgrading our infrastructure (something Trump supported), the final product was a lip service sham,
like Drew said having only a small percentage actually being allocated to infrastructure projects. People are simply fed up with Biden’s insincere presidency. Even some of my life-long democrat friends are sounding like republicans in their Biden criticism.
As for the 2022 midterm possibility of republicans taking both the House and Senate, my hope is they would spend their time rectifying Biden’s mistakes and holding him at bay from making more, rather than going after divisive impeachment procedures.