On the menu today: As President Joe Biden pledges that his party will eliminate the filibuster if Democrats win 52 Senate seats, there’s a whiff of Democratic panic in the air, as the midterm elections are now less than three weeks away. A new poll offers more signs of a strengthening GOP wave, and Politico moves a bunch of House races into the likely Republican pile. Meanwhile, new state polls put Mehmet Oz within two percentage points of John Fetterman in Pennsylvania and Herschel Walker in a tie with Raphael Warnock in Georgia. Finally, you can see a new narrative of excuses and scapegoats for Stacey Abrams taking shape, and Democrats are going to kick themselves over their decision to help Kari Lake in the Arizona Republican gubernatorial primary. Not quite everything is breaking Republicans’ way in the final weeks . . . but quite a lot is.
The Distinct Scent of Democratic Panic in the Air
President Biden, speaking at the Howard Theater in Washington yesterday:
In these midterm elections, it’s so critical to elect more Democratic senators to the United States Senate and more Democrats to keep control of the House of Representatives. And, folks, if we do that, here is the promise I make to you and the American people: The first bill that I will send to the Congress will be to codify Roe v. Wade. (Applause.) And when Congress passes it, I’ll sign it in January, 50 years after Roe was first decided the law of the land.
Because it is likely that every Republican senator would oppose that legislation, the only way to pass a bill codifying Roe v. Wade would be to eliminate the filibuster. Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema oppose ending the filibuster and are unlikely to change their minds anytime soon, so Democrats would need at least two more Senate candidates willing to support such a move to win in November to have a chance of fulfilling Biden’s pledge.
Biden is effectively raising the stakes in a year when his party is not expected to do well. This is not the move of a president who feels confident that his party will perform adequately in the upcoming elections.
And perhaps the White House should be panicking. This morning, Politico unveiled new national polling numbers that are just about what the Republicans wanted to see, and they largely align with the numbers in the New York Times survey that came out last weekend. The economy and inflation are, by far, the biggest issues on voters’ minds, with 80 percent saying they’ll play a major role in their vote choice. Crime was the second-most important issue on voters’ minds at 64 percent, and abortion was at 59 percent. Voters trust Republicans more on the economy, and more than 60 percent of respondents said inflation was getting worse.
In Politico’s separate Election Forecast, ten of the twelve races were updated and moved in the Republicans’ direction: “The two House districts moving into the ‘Toss Up’ category, California’s 13th District and Oregon’s 6th District, are in places Biden carried by large margins.”
The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake notes with alarm this morning that the Democratic message that Republicans represent a threat to democracy has flopped:
Independents are significantly more likely to view Democrats as a major threat than Republicans. Although more than 6 in 10 view each party as at least a minor threat, just 23 percent view the GOP as a major threat, while 31 percent say the same of Democrats. Independents are actually more likely to view voting by mail as a major threat to democracy (31 percent) than the GOP.
In late summer, Biden and the Democrats pushed all of their chips to the center of the table and bet that they could mitigate their losses in the midterms by emphasizing abortion, January 6, and the menace of Donald Trump. In normal economic and political circumstances, that might have worked. It does not work when inflation is 8.2 percent, gas prices are spiking, crime is high, the border is insecure, and large majorities of the electorate think the country is on the wrong track. Over in The Guardian, there’s a roundtable of contributors who are effectively already writing the post-mortem on the Democrats’ messaging efforts for the year.
I’m sure there’s not a lot that Liza Featherstone and I agree on, but she sure seems to nail the Democrats on not focusing on what worries the electorate as a whole:
Democratic leaders have sometimes seemed dismissive of inflation. The White House has repeatedly shrugged it off, and this summer, the Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman mocked a campaign video featuring his opponent in a grocery store discussing high food prices.
Worse, national Democratic leaders have been partying with wealthy donors, from the billionaire James Murdoch in Manhattan to real estate moguls in Los Angeles. No wonder they seem out of touch with people visiting food pantries or struggling to make rent.
If the Democrats can’t deliver a better economic message, many Americans may conclude that like the repeal of Roe v Wade, inflation is what happens when you vote.
Speaking of Pennsylvania. . . .
With Three Weeks Remaining, What Would You Rather Have, a Shrinking Lead or Momentum?
You can’t say Mehmet Oz is leading in Pennsylvania, but right now, he appears to have all the momentum:
Republican Mehmet Oz has narrowed Democrat John Fetterman’s lead in Pennsylvania’s bare-knuckle Senate election, and the two candidates are now polling inside the margin of error, according to a new survey shared exclusively with POLITICO.
Fetterman is slightly ahead with 48 percent of likely voters, while Oz has 46 percent, the poll by AARP found. That’s a shift in Oz’s direction since June, when Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor, was leading by six percentage points in the AARP survey.
No doubt this is a combination of Oz’s hard-hitting ads focusing on Fetterman’s record and stances on crime, and the fact that Fetterman can’t do the usual interviews and campaign appearances that a healthy candidate would do. Clearly, Fetterman still has a long recovery ahead of him, and the lack of specificity about his condition makes some people suspect they’re not being told the whole story. You can see the media dancing around the topic, as in Philip Elliott’s recent column in Time magazine:
No candidate likes to be poked and prodded. Even the most transparent politicians expect — often unrealistically — some level of privacy. Fetterman has insisted that the public was made aware of his stroke when it happened, so there’s no need for him to make his medical records or doctors accessible to reporters. That puts voters in a frankly unfair position. In the absence of hard facts from medical professionals, they can’t help but make their own amateur assessments based on whatever clues they can glean from his public appearances. It might not be to Fetterman’s advantage. . . .
The lack of transparency is the issue here, and it’s not entirely clear why Fetterman is thinking this is not going to be a problem. Oz released his records, after all. . . .
The Fetterman campaign’s posture just isn’t cutting it given his current situation. They seem to be asking everyone to just trust them. A lot of Democrats in Washington, and possibly more than a few voters in Pennsylvania, are responding: not so much.
By the way, the public was not made aware of Fetterman’s stroke until two days after it occurred, and wasn’t informed of his surgery until five hours before the polls closed on primary day.
And It All Might Come Down to Georgia . . . Again
Remember, if neither of Georgia’s two major-party Senate candidates reaches 50 percent, the race goes to a runoff which will be held December 6. There is a Libertarian candidate named Chase Oliver in the race, and he’s getting three to four percent in the most recent surveys.
(One more reason to be wary of that Quinnipiac poll that put Warnock at 52 percent: The survey question asked, “If the election for United States Senator were being held today, and the candidates were Raphael Warnock the Democrat and Herschel Walker the Republican, for whom would you vote?” Those voting for the Libertarian had to volunteer that option, unprompted. But that’s not what the ballot in Georgia is going to look like! If there are three candidates on the ballot, why are you only asking about two?)
Also note that under Georgia law, votes for write-in candidates only count if those candidates have “given proper notice of intent to be write-in candidates.” So a write-in vote for Donald Trump or Kirby Smart will not count toward the total of legitimately cast votes.
Right now, very few polls have either candidate at or above 50 percent, and Warnock has come in at 46 percent in the last three polls. In a strange way, all Walker really needs to do is keep Warnock below 50 percent, and then refocus for a 30-day sprint — perhaps with control of the Senate at stake and all of the remaining resources of the national parties diverted to Georgia. He’s a football player; he’s used to games going into overtime.
Perhaps most ominously for Democrats, a Landmark Communications survey, conducted entirely after Friday night’s Senate debate, shows an effective tie — Warnock at 46.1 percent and Walker at 46 percent. The accusations that Walker paid for a mistress’s abortion were not a knockout blow, and neither was the (likely) lone debate. The Hill writes that Warnock “is signaling that he’s ready to ditch his typically restrained persona in favor of more direct attacks on his Republican opponent.”
I have a hard time believing that the reason the race is tied is because Herschel Walker hasn’t been attacked enough, or because Warnock is just too nice.
Elsewhere in Georgia, notice this curious recurring theme in coverage of the governor’s race:
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, September 22: “Stacey Abrams has a surprising problem with Black voters”
The Washington Post, October 10: “Stacey Abrams faces challenges in governor’s race. Is Black voter turnout one of them?
The Hill, October 11: “Democratic group steps in to boost Abrams among Black male voters”
Bloomberg, October 11: “Stacey Abrams Struggles With Black Male Voters in Georgia While Wielding National Clout”
NewsNation, October 12: “Polls show Black men could be breaking from Abrams”
USA Today, October 15: “In the tight race for Georgia governor, Black men emerge as Stacey Abrams’ key voters”
Do you ever feel like you’re seeing a narrative built before your eyes? For the past four years, we’ve been told that Stacey Abrams is “a real superhero,” complete with a cape and a cloud of smoke. Winning the vote among African-American men by a wide margin is supposed to be easy for normal Democrats, never mind the heavily hyped ones.
Back in early September, a New York Times article about the governor’s race offered this curious, preemptive excuse: “Ms. Abrams’s allies said the comparisons between her and Mr. Warnock overlooked stark differences. Ms. Abrams is a Black woman contending with sexist stereotypes about leadership, they note.”
You can see it coming, right? If, and likely when, Brian Kemp wins reelection in the governor’s race, the excuse will be, “Too many black men were too sexist to vote for Stacey Abrams.” It couldn’t possibly be that her skills and instincts as a candidate were overhyped.
How could a candidate like the woman you see above possibly fall short, right?
ADDENDUM: Gee, if only someone had warned Democrats that meddling in Republican primaries could end up backfiring on them.