For most of the last year, Republicans have been not-so-quietly confident that the midterms will bring forth a massive red tsunami. In this thinking, the inexorable result of rising inflation, general dissatisfaction with congressional Democratic flailing, and the crushing unpopularity of Joe Biden would sweep the GOP back into power.
But what if it doesn’t?
The generic congressional ballot has now been tightening for six weeks, Republican campaigns and committees have found themselves short of cash, and the GOP is visibly struggling to regain the traction that seemed to come so naturally this spring.
As John McCormack reports in the new issue of National Review, some analysts such as Dave Wasserman with the Cook Political Report think the Democrats now have about a one-in-four chance to hold the House. Combined with a number of toss-up Senate races, the chances of another two years of unified Democratic control of the federal government are suddenly a very real possibility.
“With a House majority and 52 Senate seats,” McCormack writes, “Democrats would have the votes to gut the Senate’s legislative filibuster — the long-standing 60-vote rule for passing most legislation. They would no longer need to seek bipartisan support on any matter, and they would no longer be constrained by the moderating influence of Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.”
If you thought it was frustrating when all that stood between America and trillions of dollars of new spending was a wobbly Joe Manchin, just wait until the Democrats no longer need his vote.
From abortion, to gun control, to H.R. 1 — the Democrats’ 791-page behemoth of a bill that amounts to a federal takeover of elections — don’t expect an empowered Democratic caucus to take the moderate path.
Why not? Because today’s Democrats aren’t your father’s Democrats.
“Joe Biden leads a party that is more left-wing than either Bill Clinton’s or Barack Obama’s,” Matt Continetti writes in his essay “The Woke and the Restless.” “Take, for example, the growth of the Congressional Progressive Caucus”:
Six Democratic House members launched it in 1991. Bernie Sanders was its first chairman. Today the caucus has more than 100 members, including Senator Sanders. It is the second-largest caucus in the Congress (after the conservative Republican Study Committee) and outnumbers the pro-business New Democrat Coalition.
Dobbs changed the political environment by energizing the Democrats’ left-wing activists base. And the result, Continetti writes, “has moved inflation, border security, and CRT off the front page.”
If the Democratic coalition is energized and its Republican counterpart is subdued, a coalition of “college-educated white voters behind pro-choice candidates” could “prevent a Republican takeover of the Senate.”
You’d better buckle up, America.
Elsewhere in this issue, do read the stirring tribute to Queen Elizabeth II by John O’Sullivan, “The Queen Lays Down Her Burden.”
“Elizabeth the Second of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has been the sovereign for the entire life of anyone under the age of 70,” John writes. “It’s said that the number of British subjects she met in her reign amounted to about a third of the U.K. population. It sounds unlikely but not impossible. For I met her twice — once when she visited the offices of the Daily Telegraph in the year of her Silver Jubilee, another time when I received a decoration from her after serving in government.”
We didn’t know it when we made plans to send Maddy Kearns across the pond to report on Liz Truss rising to be the new Conservative prime minister, but Maddy would be in London when the Queen died.
“The change in Britain’s new political era came at dizzying speed,” Maddy writes in “Change and Decay.” “On Tuesday, Boris Johnson and his successor, Liz Truss, had been summoned to Balmoral Castle in Scotland by Queen Elizabeth II, a constitutional necessity for the transition of the office of prime minister. Few had any idea it was to be her final act of service.”
The next few years will be difficult and challenging, and Truss must make the hard choices and change course from the Boris years because, as Maddy writes, “under recent leadership, the Tory Party has not been reliably conservative.”
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