Counting Biden’s Performance in the House of Representatives and the Senate’s Most Probable Democrat Candidate Rankings

In American politics, the main narrative has been that President Joe Biden is on the comeback trail.

All Democratic Senate candidates are polling with small leads or very close to each other. Even if Democrats break away from the Senate, it is possible to hold onto it, even if it endangers some of the biggest new stars.

Biden has a weak position in the states that are battlegrounds for control of the Senate. Only 42% of likely voters in Nevada and Arizona approved of his performance in CNN polls last week. In Georgia and Wisconsin, his approval is at 39%, while in Pennsylvania it’s 42% and in New Hampshire it’s 45%.

Biden’s ranking historically at this time in his presidency is being questioned. When it comes to track where recent predecessors stood before the election, we can use the Gallup presidential job approval center.

The polarization of midterm elections: how the GOP and Biden are fighting each other in their respective campaigns, and the case for abortion and personal ethics

For the past 100 years, the average midterm gain in the House of Representatives for the opposition party is 29 seats. This year, Republicans needed just five seats, a goal that seemed so reachable that practically every pollster predicted the GOP would easily clear it, especially given the high inflation rate and Biden’s relatively low approval. But Republicans are struggling to clear that low bar.

This tension represents another dimension of the “double negative election,” in which most voters are expressing doubts about each party. Its impact is evident in the contrasting ad strategies of the two sides. Democrats have devoted a lot of time and money raising doubts about their Republican rivals, particularly on abortion and personal ethics, due to the fact that they have spent so much tying GOP candidates to Biden. Republicans are working to nationalize the Senate races, while Democrats are trying to localize and personalize them.

The White House is looking at an environment that doesn’t fit in with the dynamics that drove sweeping losses for the Republicans in 1994. Whether that will hold, to some degree, is tied to the very construct Biden has identified.

Way to Win is going to release a memo this week that suggests Democrats should rebut the Republican attacks on individualism by emphasizing the GOP agenda’s assault on freedom and the drive to restrict abortion. Democrats, the group writes, must “tie the salience of Roe being overturned to other issues at stake that are important to voters” and make the case that “Republicans have no plan to lower prices, but do have a plan to end Social Security and Medicare and raise taxes on millions of lower and middle-income Americans.”

There was a strong push and pull between the priorities in the debate in states like Wisconsin, North Carolina and Arizona. During last week’s televised Arizona encounter, for instance, Republican challenger Blake Masters came out of the gate very strong and kept Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly on the defensive by relentlessly linking him to Biden while the conversation initially focused on inflation and border security. As the discussion shifted toward abortion and election integrity, Kelly regained the focus as Masters could not justify his support for the near total ban on abortion and his embrace of Trump’s baseless claims of widespread fraud.

These results partly reflect the sheer intractability of our modern political divisions, which leaves fewer voters open to shifting allegiance no matter how unhappy they are with current conditions. The Senate races in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire are just a few where Republicans have been hurt by having to choose between Trump-aligned candidates that voters think are unqualified, extreme or both.

According to detailed results provided by Marist, voters who focused primarily on inflation gave Republicans about two-thirds of their votes for Congress, as did almost three-fifths of those who prioritized immigration. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to focus on preserving democracy and abortion or health care.

Given these disparities, Democrats everywhere are stressing issues relating to rights and values, particularly abortion, but also warning about the threat to democracy posed by Trump and his movement. Since June, as CNN recently reported, Democratic candidates have spent over $130 million on abortion-themed ads, vastly more than Republicans.

The 2020 Census of Economic Discontent in the United States: A Democrat Threat against Abortion, College-Free Jobs and the Transition to a Clean Energy Economy

In the long run, the most important of these may be the argument that the incentives for domestic production embedded in the trio of central Biden legislative accomplishments – the bills to rebuild infrastructure, promote semiconductor manufacturing and accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy – will produce a boom in US employment, particularly in manufacturing jobs that don’t require a college degree.

A few democrats are emphasizing those possibilities this year, but most plant openings are still in the future.

More commonly, Democrats are stressing legislation the party has passed that offers families some relief on specific costs, especially the provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act allowing Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices. Garin says that it is possible for individual candidates to overcome negative judgement of Biden’s economic management by highlighting specific initiatives. His main concern is that too many Democrats are sublimating any economic message while focusing preponderantly on abortion.

The Democrats are trying to build a seawall against the currents of economic discontent by pointing out the coming manufacturing boom and cost-saving provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act. The final weeks of the campaign will be used to measure whether that current is a violation of the party’s defenses.

Among likely Hispanic voters, a narrow 48 percent plurality disapproved of Mr. Biden even as 60 percent said they would vote for congressional Democrats this fall — one of a few groups, including younger voters, who appeared to separate their frustration with the White House from their voting plans.

College was a particularly strong dividing line. Democrats had a 13 point advantage among those with a bachelor’s degree. Among those without one, Republicans held a 15-point edge.

A significant gender gap and the winning Democratic coalition during the Trump administration relied on winning women by a wide margin.

But the poll showed that Republicans had entirely erased what had been an 11-point edge for Democrats among women last month in 2022 congressional races to a statistical tie in October.

The survey assessed Donald J. Trump on his favorability. Mr. Biden had a 58 percent disapproval rating for his job.

After defeating many younger and more interesting candidates in the 2020 Democratic primaries, Biden went on to defeat the incumbent president, Donald Trump. This was not a trivial accomplishment. Since World War II, most presidents have successfully won reelection. Despite Trump having increased his total votes and expanded his base, he was unable to stave off Biden, who campaigned on a combination of protecting American values, relying on science in the response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and promising to returning government to normalcy –issues that worked like a charm after the chaos of the Trump administration.

The mood of the nation is not good. 64 percent of likely voters see the country moving in the wrong direction, while only 24 percent see it as on the right track. The share of Democrats who thought the nation was headed in the right direction fell six points since September, and it’s above the low point of the summer.

“Everybody’s hurting right now,” said David Neiheisel, a 48-year-old insurance salesman and Republican in Indianapolis. The cost of gas, food and utilities have all gone up, and they will collapse due to inflation and interest rates.

The Times/Siena Survey of the U.S. Senate from Oct. 9 to 12, 2022: Addressing Dem Dem Demographic Error in a Democratic Electoral Campaign

The Times/Siena survey of 792 likely voters nationwide was conducted by telephone using live operators from Oct. 9 to 12, 2022. The margin of sampling error is larger than 3:1. There are methodologies and cross-tabs available here.

Biden’s sharpened message, after all, has been delivered in Washington – not standing on stage next to Democratic candidates in the midst of the most heated races across the country.

It is a window into how Biden and his aides think there is a path to break decades of electoral erosion for a first-term president’s party.

Some in Biden’s own party have begun openly questioning the party’s message – and warning that any momentum that may have existed has given way to clear signs of Republicans regaining the upper hand.

Biden said last week that it has been back and forth with them and us. In the closing days we will see one more shift back to our side.

Democrats are once again scrambling to zero in on a message to blunt GOP momentum, a reality that is compounded by differing views inside the party of where that message should actually land.

But Biden’s public comments also reflect the view, two weeks from the day votes will be counted, that has Democrats “very much still in the game,” one Democratic official said.

Whether that will hold in a home stretch in which the small universe of undecided voters historically breaks toward the party out of power is the definitive outstanding question.

“We’ve managed to suck ourselves back into our own circular firing squad,” one Democratic campaign official said. At the end of summer, people seemed to think it was better, but that’s not true. But it could be if we don’t pull it together.”

Biden or his advisers are not losing on the weight of the history because of the economic unease still ranked first among voter concerns in polls.

Advisers say that he will start to change in the days ahead, with continued insistence of hitting the road for larger campaign events after weeks of smaller official events designed to highlight legislative accomplishments.

Two Key Issues for Republicans in the Electoral Campaign: Gas Prices and Growth, the Second Quarter GDP Report, and the Recovery of the United States

They point to two factors specifically on that front: gas prices, which have been on a steady downward trajectory for the last two weeks, and the third quarter GDP report, which analysts expect to show robust growth after two quarters of contraction.

Despite legislative achievements, a fast recovery from the downturn and a cornerstone of the economy, the deficit is not going to flip over the course of 14 days.

But given the close correlation between gas prices and Democratic electoral prospects over the course of the last several months, they see an opportunity to at least make some gains – or fight to a draw – with undecided voters or those weighing whether to vote at all in the closing days.

But it’s one that officials say has been laid bare in a particularly acute manner by Republicans in recent weeks, whether on abortion, popular programs like Social Security and Medicare, or proposals to undo many of the individual provisions enacted by Biden that consistently poll in the favor of Democrats when taken in isolation.

Biden spent the last several weeks attempting to highlight individual issues officials consider key motivators of base voters, whether they’re abortion rights or his actions to cancel student loans for some borrowers.

The Democratic surge of optimism was seen by many within the West Wing as too much and that the court decision to strike down abortion was a big factor.

The structural dynamics defining House races, in part due to redistricting, have long made holding onto an already exceedingly narrow majority a tall task. Republicans have become more aggressive in their expenditures in recent days, indicating that they view an expansion of the map as well as an environment that is growing more favorable.

The President was in New York on Thursday, visiting tout the benefits of chip making. The fact that he showed up in a state he won by more than 20 points two years ago shows how his low approval ratings limit his capacity to help his party climb out of a hole.

The economy rebounded at a rate of 2.5% in the last quarter, which was good news for the President. The figures showed that the economic recovery was continuing to power forward.

The Election Environment of Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly: Implications for the American Economy, His Son, Hunter Biden, and the State of the State

The election environment facing Democrats is very testing as they are in danger of losing their controlling of the House of Representatives as their hopes of holding onto the Senate appear to be fading.

The race for Arizona’s Democratic Senator Mark Kelly appears to be narrowing, as it did in the past, where he had a clear lead. John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Senate nominee who has faced issues due to a stroke, had a shaky debate performance this week. The commonwealth represents the party’s best chance to pick up a seat and could be critical to their hopes of holding control of the 50-50 Senate, where Vice President Kamala Harris casts the tie-breaking vote. Schumer said in the conversation that he thought the Pennsylvania debate didn’t hurt them but he was concerned about the Georgia race.

The loss of either chamber could be a bad thing for the President, who is also bracing for Republican investigations of his administration, including his handling of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the business affairs of his son, Hunter Biden.

After the recent elections, there is enough doubt about the polls to make it too early to judge the race. Biden suggested that the pattern of first-term presidents getting a fall in the election may be coming back again, after his party nursed hopes of bucking the trend by voting for candidates who would overturn the Supreme Court’s gay marriage ruling.

His speech demonstrated the political impossibility of highlighting undeniably positive aspects of the economy – including hopeful GDP growth figures released Thursday and a historically low jobless rate – when inflation is raging at near 40-year highs.

Biden’s warnings of fierce political fights with Republicans over entitlements and government spending in a possible showdown over raising the debt ceiling, meanwhile, served as a preview for what may be acrimonious years to come in Washington if political control is split between the parties.

“They’re going to shut down the government, refuse to pay America’s bills for the first time in American history to put America in default… unless we yield to their demands to cut Social Security and Medicare.”

“Nothing will create more chaos or do more damage to the American economy,” the President said, admitting that Democrats always charge Social Security is at risk in elections but also arguing that proposals by Republican Sens. Rick Scott of Florida and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin this time really do threaten the retirement program.

But the issue is that all of those measures – if they succeed – will not unspool in time to be felt in this election. There’s a chance they could help Biden in 2024 if he decides to run for reelection, but for now, they are aspirational.

Some 47% of voters in Wisconsin, 46% in Michigan and 44% in Pennsylvania said that the economy and inflation was the most important issue affecting their vote. In each state, this more than doubled the number of those most exercised about the next-highest-ranking issue – abortion. Democrats had hoped that outrage over the decision of the Supreme Court would make them immune from economic liability ahead of the election.

The competitive New York gubernatorial race is because of the latter. Biden was with Hochul on Thursday in Syracuse, which is also home to a competitive House race.

What will we learn from the president’s election? The aging of the economy, the crises of war, and the crisis in the US

The president conjured a vision of an economy that Americans do not know about. The disconnect between the two realities – of an economy that is performing strongly in many areas, according to data, and the lived experience out in the country – could well doom Democrats.

The election is turning into a lesson in inflation’s negative political impact, which many adult Americans have not experienced since the 1980s.

The voters are going to look for scapegoats when their income doesn’t keep up with their costs; it is a staple of everyday life. And Biden, as the president in power, gets the blame.

Inflation and high gas prices are also a global issue and have been worsened by factors beyond Biden’s control, including the war in Ukraine and supply chain issues brought on by the pandemic. Economists are debating the wisdom of the high-spending bills that Biden brought to the table. Biden’s credibility has been hurt by the White House’s down playing of the soaring cost of living, and by the fact that voters lost confidence in him during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan last year.

In an interview with CNN on Thursday, the Treasury Secretary told Phil Mattingly to be patient, since there are many measures the administration has taken to boost the economy.

Even though inflation is lower in this country, it is still not good enough for someone at the kitchen table putting food on the table.

His comment showed that Biden understands acutely the problem that appears increasingly likely to doom Democrats this election season. But there’s nothing in the short term he can do about it.

Long-time Democratic pollster Paul Maslin says the real question is who will vote at the end. “Is it people saying, ‘I hate inflation, crime is wrecking this big city I live in,’ or people saying, ‘I’m sorry but Herschel Walker is a clown, Mehmet Oz is a clown. … Blake Masters is a joke,’ and they go back to [the Democrats]? I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.”

Biden’s approval rating has remained stagnant over the summer, meaning that Democratic hopes that it would rise through Election Day have been dashed.

The main problem for Democrats is that people still view things the same way regardless of the legislation they pass or what they do in the future. If inflation came down from where it had been, they would be in better shape. It’s not possible to convince people that things are getting better when the experience they have is not good.

“Over the past twenty or thirty years, what we’ve seen is a growing nationalization of these congressional races where there is a closer connection between opinions about national issues and national political leaders and how people vote in these House and Senate elections,” says Abramowitz. “It used to be easier for incumbents to run pretty far ahead of a president from their own party’s approval rating based on their reputation in their state or district, their constituency service, name recognition, things that you gain from being an incumbent. The value has gone down over time.

All of the Democrats had to win a state in which majority opinion was in the other party. They ran against a majority that approved of a Republican president in 2018, and now they are up against a majority disapproves of a Democratic president.

The CNN mid-October polls raised that possibility by showing Cortez Masto and Barnes still narrowly trailing even though they were attracting double-digit support among voters who disapprove of Biden. Gene Ulm, a Republican pollster, claims that the final electorate will tilt more towards Republican voters dissatisfied with Biden than they currently think. The reason, he argues, is that in the end, disenchantment with current conditions and Biden’s performance will turbocharge more turnout from Republicans, and depress turnout more from Democrats, than most models now anticipate. “The composition of the electorate … is going to crush everything,” he says flatly.

Modern US politics no longer has such exceptions. Because Biden’s standing is so weak in so many places, to hold the Senate, Democrats will almost certainly need a lot more of them.

When they are unpopular, incumbent presidents are almost always the focus of midterm elections. There is a unique twist this year, two ex-presidents who lost control of the House have turned into their party’s closing messengers.

Barack Obama and Donald Trump personify two rival visions of the meaning of America itself and are extending their bitter years-long duel as they find themselves on opposite sides of a profound confrontation over the future of US democracy.

According to officials, Biden is not upset that Obama is being more of a draw on the campaign trail than him. He has discussed some of the races with his former boss, and he believes that the message of Obama is both connecting with voters and helping his own campaign.

What Happens When Your Favorite President Got Screwed? A Comparison of the Comedy and Social Media Attacks of the 45th President

Trump has mobilized his Make America Great Again movement, which first emerged as a backlash to the first Black presidency and is built around the notion that the cultural values of a largely White, working-class nation is under siege from political correctness, undocumented migration, experts and the establishment.

Politicians, celebrities and sports stars are being reprimanded by Obama for their use of conspiracy theories and fear on social media. Arizona Republican governor candidate, Kari Lake, was one of the people who were running on the platform of the 45th president’s lies.

Why do you want someone who’s not telling the truth to vote for them? I don’t care about how nicely they say it. I don’t care how poised they are or how well-lit they are,” Obama said of the former local TV news anchor, who has emerged as a rising MAGA star, in Arizona on Wednesday.

“What happens when truth doesn’t matter anymore?” Obama said something. It is okay if you just repeat something over and over again, even though it is a lie.

As he campaigns for his endorsed candidates this fall, Trump has made little attempt to conceal his larger intentions: to buttress his own likely presidential campaign he hopes will return him to the White House.

“Your favorite president got screwed,” Trump told his crowd on a frigid night in Sioux City, in which he repeated false conspiracies that Obama spied on his campaign in 2016.

One interesting comparison of the styles of Trump and Obama on show in their rival rallies is in their use of humor. Trump has used comedy to bind his audience, a feature that isn’t often seen on TV. He often has a crowd that is enthralled by a rule-breaking bull in a china shop trashing decorum with every word and lacerating his opponents with outrageous accusations and belittling nicknames.

“He fought for this. His children bought three private planes because it was not an option to share them. You need three, now? Obama joked.

It’s easy to tell when the 44th president doesn’t have his heart in his task. He was fatigued and sleepy at the early rallies of his 2012 election race, and didn’t approach top form during his off-year election in Virginia.

Former Obama political strategist David Axelrod, who is now a CNN commentator, said that this onetime boss is being used by his party on a specific electoral mission.

Then came the 2022 midterms. Although Republicans will likely gain control of at least one chamber of Congress, if not both by narrow margins, the GOP will be frustrated. As a result of Trump endorsing a slate of candidates, the midterms were a mandate for him rather than for the sitting president. Many of his hand-selected candidates, moreover, lost, such as Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania.

Republican officials have worried all election cycle about the former president putting his own political ambitions ahead of his party. The Democrats gained control of the senate with the help of the tiebreaking vote cast by the Vice President, due to his false claims of voter fraud.

While he is heading out to the country again, Trump has not done his usual routine of multiple rallies in the most closely contested states. The GOP has succeeded in the last few weeks in returning the focus of the election to Biden, high inflation and the economic anxieties that are spooking voters.

If Republicans fare well in the mid-terms, it would be ideal for Trump to start his campaign in the third week of November.

The Challenge of Biden’s First Year in Office: A Time to Make Sense of his Time in the White House, or What Can He He Want to Do About His Country?

When he was president, Trump treated the attorneys general as his personal lawyers and accused Democrats of weaponizing the Justice Department.

Former Trump White House senior counselor Kellyanne Conway praised the former president for not taking the focus off the GOP’s midterm message, a decision that may repay him with a radical Republican House majority that he could use to weaken Biden in the run-up to the 2024 election.

“He’d like to have done it already. “You can expect him to announce the campaign soon,” she said. Some people want him to still have a surprise in November.

“Donald Trump is just getting started. I think you should keep your cellphone on,” Conway told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast on Thursday.

The stakes of a key Senate race will be underscored by the last weekend of campaigning by three sitting and two former presidents.

John Fetterman, who is running for lieutenant governor in Pennsylvania, will face a political stress test in his home state, where he has traveled 20 times since taking office.

A win by Mehmet Oz, Trump’s pick, could prove that he still is a viable candidate in a state he lost by a small margin in 2020.

The consequences go beyond next week’s election. Biden’s aides are taking steps to mount a reelection campaign as Trump prepares to announce a third presidential bid. For a several-hour stretch on Saturday afternoon, the dynamics of a potential 2020 rematch will be laid bare.

The moment marks a historic anomaly. Former presidents have typically only waded sparingly into daily politics, mostly avoiding direct criticism of the men occupying the office they once held. The last one-term president to win the White House again was Grover Cleveland in 1892.

The presidents in Pennsylvania have a constant threat of dire consequences if the opposing party succeeds, which reflects the altered behavior of Trump when he took office nearly six years ago.

Biden spent much of his first year in office trying not to say Trump’s name. He called out Trump and his associates at a rally in California this week, and also called out the governor of Florida during a charity event. Trump plays a video reel at his rallies to show his gaffe-prone successor as a gaffe prone senior citizen, but he hasn’t as frequently gone after Obama.

It is not just because someone has been on TV that it will work out. Turns out, being president or governor is about more than snappy lines and good lighting,” Obama said in Arizona last week of the Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, a former local news anchor.

They will both come out on Saturday to underscore their differing styles and political abilities, something that some Democrats like to call a comparison to Obama.

The Biden Campaign has Been a success: How President Barack Obama and his team have fought to save our country, and what he has done about it

“I know you don’t think it, but I think we have pretty good crowds. They’re fairly enthusiastic. Biden said as he left California that they are writing it in a certain way.

Compared to both Obama and Trump, Biden has held fewer campaign rallies for his party. Most of his engagements over the past month have been official events, delivered to crowds that sometimes only number a few dozen.

But he has grown frustrated at coverage suggesting he is political albatross, according to people familiar with the conversations, arguing his policies – when properly explained – are widely popular with voters.

The last days of the campaign have seen larger crowds at his rallies. Six hundred people had to be turned away from an event in Southern California on Friday, according to the White House. And Biden addressed an overflow crowd in New Mexico that couldn’t fit inside the main venue when he was holding a rally with Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

Biden, in fact, has said he chose to run for president in an effort to save US democracy. Even if his party loses control of congress, he can take comfort in the fact that progress has been made towards achieving that goal. These elections were a victory for democracy.

The official portrait of Obama was unveiled in the White House East Room inSeptember, after Obama and Biden last appeared together. The event was put off because neither the Obamas nor the Trumps were interested in showing their friendship.

The decision could take a little longer for Biden. He has pointed to family discussions around the holidays when asked about his own timeline. The members of his team assume he will run again and have begun to build a campaign infrastructure.

The Democrats Fear the Madden Scenario: The Case for a Red Wave after Biden and the Covid-19 Censorship

Democrats fear the nightmare scenario they always feared, with Republicans staging a referendum on Joe Biden’s presidency and failure to tame inflation.

Many had anticipated a red wave. Votes are still being counted in key states and districts, but even if Republicans end up with control of one or both chambers, their majority will be extremely narrow. Democrats will not face the “shellacking” that they experienced in 2010.

But the way each side is talking on election eve, and the swathe of blue territory – from New York to Washington state – that Democrats are defending offer a clear picture of GOP momentum.

A nation split down the middle politically, which is united only by a sense of dissatisfaction with its trajectory, is getting into a habit of repeatedly using elections to punish the party with the most power.

“Here’s where the Democrats are: they’re inflation deniers, they are crime deniers, they’re education deniers,” Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

“I’m a loyal Democrat, but I am not happy. I just think that we are – we did not listen to voters in this election. And I think we are going to have a poor night, that is what I think.

I hope this conversation has an effect on the future because voters tell you most of the time that they care about the economy. Stop talking about democracy being at stake.”

The scars of the US Capitol insurrection are felt strongly by those in Washington, DC. The survival of democracy is at stake, and it is important. There was a attempt to disrupt the tradition of peaceful transfers of power between presidents after Trump incited an insurrection.

But outside the Beltway bubble of politicians and journalists, democracy feels like a far more distant, esoteric concept than the daily struggle to feed a family and to be able to afford to commute to work. From Pennsylvania to Arizona, the return to normality after the Covid-19 nightmare that Biden promised remains elusive to many as the economic after effects of the once-in-a century health emergency linger.

The premise of his domestic presidency and his entire political career has been based on restoring the balance of the economy and restoring a measure of security to working and middle class Americans. His legislative successes could bring down the cost of health care for seniors and create a diversified green economy that shields Americans from future high energy prices amid global turmoil. The benefits of such measures will take a long time to arrive. And millions of voters are hurting now and haven’t heard a viable plan from the president to quickly ease prices in the short-term.

There is no guarantee that plans by Republicans to extend Trump-era tax cuts and mandate new energy drilling would have much impact on the inflation crisis either. The two economic visions of the government are likely to be stuck in a stalemate. The election has turned into a way for voters to stress out about their unhappiness, without any hope that things will get better soon.

There is not much a President can do to lower inflation in a short time. The Federal Reserve is in the lead and the central bank’s strategy of rising interest rates could trigger a recession that could further haunt Biden’s presidency.

The Republican Party also got exactly what it wanted as Trump has delayed his expected campaign announcement until after the midterms, depriving Biden of the opportunity to shape this election as a direct clash with an insurrectionist predecessor whom he beat in 2020 and who remains broadly unpopular. The president might have been able to win over voters who still dislike the former president, if he had confronted him.

Ahead of a potential sequel with Trump in 24 years, the GOP majority would be used to damage the president and cause as much confusion as possible about his intentions. Biden wanted the judiciary to be balanced out after four years of Trump nominating conservative judges.

Republicans are bullish on gaining control of congress in the upcoming elections, as they slam Democrats over crime and inflation, while President Joe Biden is warning that GOP election-deniers could destroy democracy.

Kevin McCarthy talked about his plans for power in an exclusive interview with CNN, and pledged to tackle rising crime, inflation and border security. He promised broad investigations against the Biden administration on the Afghanistan withdrawal, the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic and how the administration has dealt with parents and school board meetings. And he didn’t rule out an eventual push to impeach Biden.

Four presidents, including Biden, Trump and Clinton, all took to the campaign trail over the weekend, a sign of the critical stakes and growing angst among Democrats.

In Ohio on Monday, ex-president Trump will conclude his campaign for the White House with a rally for the Senate candidate J.D. Vance. In his speech on Sunday, Trump predicted voters wouldelect an incredible slate of true MAGA warriors to Congress.

The nation’s core values are in danger because of the Republicans who deny the truth about the US Capitol insurrection, according to Biden, who spent Saturday getting out the vote in the critical Pennsylvania Senate race with Obama.

The president will stop trying to stave off voters disapproval at the Democratic event in Maryland. His compromised standing in an election that has turned into a referendum on his tattered credibility and low approval ratings is shown by the fact that he will be in a liberal bastion on the final night.

The midterm elections: How will the rich stay rich, or how will the poor get richer? Commentary on Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel

Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel predicted on CNN’s “State of the Union” that her party would win both the House and the Senate and accused Biden of being oblivious to the economic anxiety among Americans with his repeated warnings about democracy.

In a speech on Saturday night, Obama and the president both said that the GOP would cut Social Security and Medicare if they won a majority.

They are all about the wealthy getting wealthy. The richer are staying rich. The middle class is stiffed. The poor get poorer as a result of the policy.

The midterms are the first national vote since the chaos and violence triggered by Trump’s refusal to accept the result of the last presidential election and there are already fears that some Republican candidates may follow his example and try to defy the will of voters if they don’t win. Ron Johnson, for example, has raised concerns about the integrity of the vote.

In another development on Sunday, a staffer at the headquarters of Kari Lake, the pro-Trump nominee in the Arizona gubernatorial contest, opened a letter containing suspicious white powder. Lake’s opponent, current Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, condemned the incident as “incredibly concerning.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/07/politics/election-eve-campaigning/index.html

The First Majority of the GOP Candidate Contest in Florida: Ron DeSanctimonious, Donald Biden, and the Future of the Republican Party

The first major clash of the GOP nomination contest took place in Florida, as President Trump and Florida’s governor held dueling rallies on Sunday night. The ex-president, who is expected to launch a third White House bid within days, coined a new nickname Saturday for the man who could prove to be his toughest primary opponent: “Ron DeSanctimonious.”

Florida governor, Charlie Crist, called Biden a donkey and took credit for disobeying Washington officials and experts during the Pandemic as he turned his ire on Biden.

While giving a speech at the rally, Trump teased the possibility of a presidential run, but didn’t repeat his mockery of DeSantis. Tom Cotton, who has long eyed higher office, announced that he would not be running for the Republican nomination.

Former President Bill Clinton was also called into action on Saturday, stumping for New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul in Brooklyn. The Empire state is safe for the party, but Hochul is going against a Republican congressman in a close race that shows the strength of the national environment.

“I know the average election rally is just ‘whoop dee doo do vote for me,’ but your life is on the line. Clinton told the young people in the audience that their lives were on the line.

Biden has not been effective in speaking to Americans wanting a return to normal or to getting across the pain of rising prices, both of which his White House used to argue weretransitory.

What will we learn from the outcome of the First White House Midterm Elections? Observations of the Republican Party on a Relatively Small Household

Editor’s Note: Frida Ghitis, (@fridaghitis) a former CNN producer and correspondent, is a world affairs columnist. She writes for CNN as a weekly opinion contributor, is a columnist for The Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.

The questions of who will control Congress and how the election results will affect it have not been answered. But on this day after, we can draw some initial conclusions.

First, there was no red wave, much less a red tsunami. Predictions of a huge Republican victory at the polls did not materialize. It was not a good election for the GOP. In addition, it was a disastrous day for former President Donald Trump, who had hoped a Republican landslide would place him on a glide path to the nomination to become the party’s presidential candidate in 2024.

The movement spearheaded by Trump and his opponents performed far worse than expected. Even some of the most dramatic Republican victories looked like a rebuke of Trump and his band of anti-democratic activists.

In exit polls, 28% of voters said they chose their House vote “to oppose Donald Trump.” Only 37% of people had a favorable view of the former president before the election. That should alarm the party.

If Republicans win, Trump said, he should get all the credit. If they lose, I should not be blamed at all.” But the evidence strongly suggests he deserves much of the blame.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/09/opinions/trump-biden-house-midterm-elections-2022-ghitis/index.html

What Happened to Kevin McCarthy? The End of Oz’s Effort to Stop Herschel Walker and Mark DeSantis

Maybe they will do it. Rep. Kevin McCarthy may replace Nancy Pelosi as House speaker, but even if Republicans take the House, the Democrats’ performance is little short of amazing. It was the best election performance for the party since George W. Bush in 2002.

In Pennsylvania, Attorney General Josh Shapiro trounced Doug Mastriano, who played an active role in trying to overturn the 2020 election and ran a campaign rife with antisemitic innuendo against his Jewish opponent. The far-right allies of Trump lost in many contests.

Herschel Walker could still win in December. But anyone who heard him campaign or learned about his past knows he should never have been on the ballot. fame did the trick for Trump, just as it did for him. So, he also backed TV star Mehmet Oz for the Pennsylvania seat. Oz lost to John Fetterman, who after suffering a stroke struggled to regain his verbal prowess, a key skill for a political candidate.

The biggest winner of the night was Ron DeSantis, the Florida Gov. who won by a large amount, and was greeted by his fans with chants of “Two more years!” In 2024 he will be on the White House.

Things were revealed within hours of Trump threatening to reveal things about DeSantis even though he isn’t running. The former president hinted darkly, “I know more about him than anybody, except perhaps his wife.”

To block Kemp’s reelection, Trump persuaded former Sen. David Perdue to run against him in the primary. That primary vote ended in humiliation for Perdue and for Trump.

Soon, Americans will probably have to begin enduring another season of presidential campaigning by the most disruptive candidate in living memory, a man who has shown only disdain for democracy. It is a good sign that this week the country took a step toward sanity, and that democracy did well.

Editor’s Note: Julian Zelizer, a CNN political analyst, is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author and editor of 24 books, including an assessment of the presidency of Donald J. Trump. He can be followed on social media by using the handle julianzelizer. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

Things didn’t get better for Biden when he became a president. Covid continued to wreak havoc on the country and the economy. Despite a 50-50 split in the Senate and Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema pitting themselves against the administration at various points, Biden was still able to move a formidable legislative agenda through Congress, overcoming fierce Republican opposition and even winning a few GOP votes along the way. There have only been a few legislative tracks like the American Rescue Plan since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Besides the three major pieces of legislation, Biden also appointed more federal judges by August than any president at that point in the term since John F. Kennedy, according to the Pew Research Center. Biden has also used his executive power to make progress on issues like fighting climate change, bolstering the US’ economic competitiveness, and forgiving student debt.

Biden’s “Gaffes” Will Not Distinguish Between President-Elect Donald J. Biden and the Deflection of Ron DeSantis

Nor is Trump anywhere close to done. He can be very effective when he is in the forefront of his own campaign. He still commands intense support within the party and retains a keen sense of operating in the modern media environment. In 1998, George W. Bush won his reelection bid in a landslide two years before becoming president, and this week, Ron DeSantis comes out looking a bit like him. Given his ability to appeal to the core of the Republican Party and potentially expand into new constituencies such as Latinos, he could pose a serious threat to Democrats in his ability to pull off a more polished version of Trumpism.

Republicans are making the case that Biden is not up to the task of running the country because of his verbal gaffes. That drumbeat will only grow louder if and when he decides to run for another term.

Voters are mostly concerned with Biden’s age, so “watch me” alone won’t be enough to appease them. Two-thirds of voters think Biden shouldn’t run again after watching him in office for nearly two years. There is that.

Biden will turn 80 in nine days’ time and will be 82 years old shortly after the 2024 election. At the end of his second term, he would be 86 years old. By comparison, Ronald Reagan was 77 years old when he left office in 1989.