So, Larry Sabato's first update of his
Crystal Ball in around three and a half weeks, and things haven't changed much.
The Senate is still at zero Republican leaning seats, four Democratic leaning seats, and six toss-ups, meaning the Democrats need to hold on to every one of their leaning seats and pick up every single one of the toss-ups to win the Senate. Not likely, so even if the Democrats win the House they won't be able to be much more than a speed bump for judicial appointments -- but the likely one and possibly two Supreme Court appointments turn into a to-the-knife fight like we haven't seen in a generation, because thanks to the Left's dependence on judges to advance and protect their agenda they'll see that as a fight for
all the marbles. Of course, if Justice Kennedy chooses to retire at the end of June that bloodbath happens during the summer and fall before November's general election -- right in the middle of the election season.
SenateRepublican Safe, Likely, and not up for a vote: 49
Republican Toss-Ups: 2
Democrat Safe, Likely, and not up for a vote: 41
Democrat Leans: 4
Democrat Toss-Ups: 4
Things are still looking better in the House, but also still not much. In the past almost-month
one Republican seat has shifted into the Toss-Up category, bringing the total up to twenty-six. So Sabato currently has:
Republican Safe and Likely: 189
Republican Lean: 21
Republican Toss-Up: 24
Democrat Lean (Republican): 4
Democrat Likely (Republican): 1
Democrat Safe (Republican): 1
Democrat Safe and Likely: 189
Democrat Lean: 3
Democrat Toss-Up: 2
Republican Safe (Democrat): 1
So Republicans are likely to pick up two Democrat seats, meaning they can afford to lose twenty-four seats and still keep control of the House. Split the Toss-Ups and they are likely to lose eighteen, leaving them with 224 seats -- much more narrow than their current 240 seats, but still six seats more than than they need to retain control.
For Governors there are still seven Toss-Ups:
Republican Safe, Likely, and not up for election: 21
Republican Lean: 6
Republican Toss-Up: 3
Democrat Lean (Republican): 3
Democrat Safe, Likely, and not up for election: 15
Democrat Lean: 1
Democrat Toss-Up: 3
Independent Toss-Up: 1
So right now for the Democrats to win the House they need at least a small Wave Election, and it's possible that our Daily Prophets' drive to destroy the Trump administration may well be getting in the Democrats' way:
The Media Is Killing the Democratic PartyEver since April 30, when the New York Times published a list of topics that special counsel Robert Mueller would like to ask President Trump about, cable news and the political press have focused exclusively on the two major legal matters in which the president is entangled.
First, of course, is Mueller’s open-ended probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Second is the Southern District of New York’s investigation into Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s business dealings, including with Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels. The coverage has been typically sensationalist and hyperbolic. Each new revelation, personnel change, tweet, and television interview is greeted as a prelude to Trump’s defenestration and exile. Putin, Mueller, Comey, Stormy, Rudy, and the two Michaels, Cohen and Avenatti—these are the only names that seem to matter in American political discourse.
What the Democratic Party has not recognized is that Trump’s legal dramas, though good for ratings, have done little to benefit the political opposition. On the contrary: President Trump’s approval rating has been on the upswing. He stands at 44 percent approval in the Real Clear Politics average, his highest rating in a year. That number might well be slightly higher, given the existence of “Shy Trump Voters” who are afraid of the stigma attached to approving of the president.
Meanwhile, since December, the Democratic advantage on the congressional generic ballot has been cut in half, from plus 13 points to plus 6.5 points. In a new survey, pollsters for Democracy Corps and Women’s Voices Women’s Vote Action Fund, while optimistic about Democratic chances in the fall, nonetheless concede that the party’s “momentum has stalled in the last few months.”
His victory depended on a coalition between his devoted fans and more traditional Republican voters who, despite misgivings, supported him because they concluded that the alternative was worse personally and politically.
Why? Well, the most obvious answer is the economy, with its strong job market and positive wage growth. One could also say that voters like peacemakers, and so have embraced President Trump’s desire to meet with Kim Jong-un of North Korea. Both explanations sound reasonable to me.
But I would also suggest another one: The American electorate has not changed fundamentally in the decades since the Clinton presidency, when in the words of the late Jeffrey Bell it held a “bifurcated view” that separated the man from his policies. And as long as the policies seemed to be working, the man’s opponents found themselves wrapped around the axle of personal disgust, waiting in frustration for voters to recognize and repudiate defects of character that were all too plain to see.
Trump became president despite majority personal disapproval. His victory depended on a coalition between his devoted fans and more traditional Republican voters who, despite misgivings, supported him because they concluded that the alternative was worse personally and politically. Evaluations of his character are now “priced in” to the electoral market. That is why NBC News/Survey Monkey found this week that Republicans who say Trump is dishonest support him anyway. And it is why Trump’s overall approval in this poll is 45 percent, “tied with the highest rate of approval recorded by the NBC News/ Survey Monkey poll since he began his presidency.”
The incessant spotlight on the lawyers, on their clients and subjects and targets, not only occupies the attention of Democrats and the anti-Trump Resistance to the exclusion of other topics. It also relieves them of any responsibility to come up with a substantive message. The voters, by contrast, read the headlines with a cursory or prurient interest as they go about their lives in the real world of work, family, community, and faith. One voter told me the other day that legal terminology makes her eyes glaze over; she’d much rather browse Instagram. But such terminology is all anyone speaks in Washington nowadays—even if most pundits are not lawyers, probably couldn’t get into law school, and make up for their lack of expertise and inside knowledge with hyperbole and speculation.
“In the past few months,” write the authors of the Democracy Corps poll, “Democrats have appeared less focused on the economic and health-care battles that most engage anti-Trump voters; at the same time, Republican base voters, especially white working-class men, could finally point to a signature conservative policy achievement in the new tax cut law, where before they were grasping for news to justify their vote.”
Is it any wonder that Democrats appear less focused on the issues that engage voters, when the most prominent spokesmen for the party are Adam Schiff and his mannequins on the House Intelligence Committee, and Richard Blumenthal and Ron Wyden on the Senate side? When Michael Avenatti is on television to such an extent that by the end of this process he won’t just have his own show, but probably his own network?
Comments
I take exception with Democracy Corps’ analysis on one point. The tax bill passed in December, yet Trump’s approval began its most recent rise in March. That is exactly when he announced, against the wishes of his some of his own advisers and the Republican Congress, his first round of steel and aluminium tariffs. It is Trump’s desire to combat offshoring and deindustrialization, more than the tax bill, which is galvanizing his base and strengthening his economic message. More even than immigration, trade and manufacturing were the issues that distinguished Trump from elites in both parties and won him a mass majority of white voters without college degrees.
College-educated voters and suburban women disgusted with Trump may be enough to win the Democrats a slim House majority. But Democrats won’t find themselves in a truly commanding position until they make inroads among the Rust Belt voters who abandoned Hillary Clinton for the president. The more the party focuses on Robert Mueller and Stormy Daniels, the less likely it is to recognize the appeal of Trump’s economic message and to adjust accordingly. The more the party falls for the self-flattery, empty rhetoric, question begging, and maze-like complexity of media narratives—not to mention the more it succumbs to the fever-dream of impeachment—the less likely it is to recoup the power it once enjoyed.
Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.
—Edmund Burke