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“Republicans enter the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress with a narrow but distinct advantage as the economy and inflation have surged as the dominant concerns, giving the party momentum to take back power from Democrats in next month’s midterm elections, a New York Times/Siena College poll has found.” New York Times
Both sides agree that the state of the economy is likely to help Republican candidates:
“I’m not one of those political observers who believes it’s always ‘the economy, stupid’ that matters most. Indeed, you can make a very strong argument that cultural issues have mattered most in recent elections. But we are in an unusual economic juncture at present with a once-in-a-generation rate of inflation and terrible stock-market trends now compounded by recession fears. If the country isn’t yet in a ‘stagflation’ crisis, it is certainly in the shadow of one. And with early voting underway, time is running out for any sunny new trend that dispels the economic jitters…
“If a souring and even scary economy becomes more dominant in the news during the last three weeks of the campaign, Republicans are likely to get all the breaks and win some close elections. That’s not because Republican economic policies make more sense to voters than Democratic economic policies. It’s because voters tend to react when they fear they can’t make ends meet, won’t be able to borrow money to make up for lost purchasing power, and may lose their jobs. It takes a lot of luck for the party controlling the White House (not to mention Congress) to do well in any midterm. Democrats may be running out of luck on the economic front at the worst possible time.”
Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine
“This weekend President Biden went to a Baskin-Robbins in Portland, Ore., and, while eating an ice-cream cone, declared, ‘Our economy is strong as hell.’ Biden’s rosy-eyed assessment came just days after updated figures showed the inflation rate at 8.2 percent… In the YouGov/CBS News Battleground Tracker poll, very few Americans share Biden’s opinion that the U.S. economy is as ‘strong as hell.’ Just 6 percent of respondents said that ‘things in America today’ are going very well, and just 5 percent rated the economy as ‘very good.’…
“If you take your usual Green New Deal-esque wish list and rename it the ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ and pass it with great fanfare, then the electorate will expect inflation to go down. Expectations will get even higher after the president boasts that, ‘This bill cut costs for families, helped reduce inflation at the kitchen table.’ (Notice Biden’s use of the past tense there.) In mid August, Biden and the Democrats pushed almost all their chips to the middle of the table and bet that inflation wouldn’t seem quite so bad by the time voters went to the polls in November. They lost that bet.”
Jim Geraghty, National Review
Other opinions below.
“Make no mistake: Education is on the ballot in 2022, and voters are looking for someone to hold accountable… Even parents living with the chaos in reopened schools, and aware of the collapse of achievement tests over the past two years, weren’t prepared for Wednesday’s news that ACT scores for America’s high school graduates had fallen to their lowest point in three decades…
“GOP candidates at every level are also campaigning against race-conscious program admissions, as well as curriculum and indoctrination by teachers on issues related to sexuality, gender and race. Parents, not surprisingly, want their children taught reading, composition and the skills necessary to flourish in a digital world. Some basics on civics and economics are welcome, and a straightforward history of America as well. These have been the demands of parents for as long as parent-teacher meetings have existed… [A] great education reset is underway.”
Hugh Hewitt, Washington Post
“In a New York Times/Siena poll released on October 17, ‘immigration’ was the fourth leading issue (out of 20 choices) on the minds of likely voters, tied with abortion. That’s a huge jump from similar polling conducted in mid-July, when more than twice as many respondents were as concerned about abortion as cared about immigration…
“What has spurred voters’ sudden interest in immigration? Thanks to the administration’s refusal — in a break with every prior one — to deter people from entering the United States illegally, Border Patrol agents at the Southwest border set a new apprehension record in FY 2021, which they broke just 10 months into FY 2022…
“All told under Biden, more than 1.3 million migrants caught by Border Patrol at the U.S.-Mexico line have been released, not counting nearly 900,000 others who avoided apprehension in the past two fiscal years. Nearly all will be here indefinitely, if not forever. That doesn’t even include the human cost. Fox News reported in mid-September that 782 migrants had died at the Southwest border in FY 2022, more than triple the total number of border deaths in FY 2020.”
Andrew Arthur, New York Post
“Democrats have had plenty of inflation message options they could be using to put themselves into a better position heading into the last month of the campaign. They could be blaming Republicans for blocking the extension of the expanded child tax credit that had been reducing pain, suffering, and poverty among millions of working-class voters. They could simply pledge more direct economic help if they win the midterms — a popular reprise of their promise of pandemic survival checks that won them those two pivotal Georgia Senate races in 2020…
“They could resurface their now-discarded promise of a public health insurance option — or do anything other than shovel more government money at their health insurance donors that are fueling the inflation crisis. They could have forced Republicans to vote down a windfall profits tax on the fossil fuel industry, and continued to force votes on legislation to crack down on energy price gouging… More broadly, Democrats could be vilifying the entire plague of greedflation whereby corporate oligopolies are hiking prices not because their inputs are more expensive, but simply because they have the market power to fleece everyone.”
David Sirota, The Lever
“[Democratic strategist Mike Lux] suggests that candidates remind people that the Democrats are lowering drug prices and health insurance premiums, point out that Social Security recipients are going to get the biggest raise they've gotten in 40 years, inform voters that manufacturing is coming back to America (which they probably don't realize) and, finally, promise to fight for reinstating the child tax credit that has now expired. All of [that] certainly beats the stale GOP talking points about cutting taxes and ‘entitlements.’…
“[At the same time] This is an election like no other and it's got nothing to do with ‘issues’ in the normal sense… Seventeen out of 35 Republican [secretary of state] nominees have either denied the results of the 2020 election, sought to overturn them or refused to affirm the legitimacy of the outcome… I don't know whether the voters understand the true implications of this election, and I'm not sure the media does either.”
Heather Digby Parton, Salon
