200 Days Until Election Day and Gibbs Has Control of The Newsletter!
Hello Hackaroos!
Gibbs, here, with Murphy out of pocket for the day, he’s given me permission to be in the driver’s seat solo (!!), but if you have any negative comments, please still direct them toward him! With exactly 200 days* until election day, I give my take on what’s going to be determinant (or not) of the results and then look ahead to the big presidential runoff in France this weekend.
*No, we didn’t mark our calendars to do a 200 days outlook at Election 2022. It was part of what I was thinking about and it very randomly just happened to be a nice round (and coincidental) number.
With that preamble, let’s begin!
Two Big Midterm Factors To Watch With 200 Days To Go
As we sit here 200 days before election day, where do most of these House and Senate races sit and what should we expect going forward with the overall political environment? The two biggest factors in the control of the House were always going to be how redistricting impacted the electoral map for both parties, but, most importantly, how the President's approval rating shaped the overall political environment. And while it’s definitely not news to say that Republicans have a distinct advantage in the House, it's helpful to look a little bit closer at why. Redistricting, at this point, looks like it’s largely going to end up as a wash for both parties. At one point, the conventional wisdom was that Republicans might pick up enough seats to control Congress just on redistricting alone. But then, even recently, Democrats created some advantageous maps in very blue states, looking like those might have actually given the Democrats the advantage and netted up to a half dozen seats as a result of redistricting. Now, however, it looks like the courts have largely evened this out by forcing some maps to be redrawn. It’s doesn’t mean that some seats for each party aren't harder to defend as a result of new Congressional boundaries, but redistricting alone isn't likely enough to significantly impact the overall results.
Source: FiveThirtyEight
And, that brings us to the biggest determinant in the political environment, aka the President's job approval rating. There are a lot of rating services out there for political junkies and all of them in the last week have made changes indicating tougher sledding for Democrats as the environment continues to deteriorate.
Again, it's not news that Republicans are likely to control the House. The biggest challenge now for Democrats is more and more seats, even seats that Biden won somewhat comfortably in 2020, are increasingly finding themselves in perilous toss up territory. If a Democrat won by even high single digits in 2020, I would put them on the endangered list for 2022. It's a sense of just how bad the political environment continues to be for Democrats. Remember, on Election Night 2021, Virginia (Biden +10 in 2022) flipped to a Republican Governor and New Jersey (Biden +16) was a nail biter until the day after the election, so this slide isn’t new.
As for the Senate, as we talked about on the podcast this week, we’re in a wait and see mode around who the GOP nominates in some of its more important races. But, there’s also concern in these statewide contests.
Today, the President's approval rating nationally seems mired at around 42%. There doesn’t look like a concerted plan to change that and some amount of that is a combination of political forces we tend to see with the party in power in an off-year election and issues, like inflation, that aren’t easily solved. Does it mean it won't get a little bit better for Democrats? No. Does it also mean it might not continue to get worse? We're at a point where there's some real things that have to happen to make the political environment better such that it becomes a lot better for Democrats. Again, maybe not rocket science, but the mood among Democrats has gotten worse even in a week that looks somewhat benign in terms of events.
The Debate Over Title 42
The next Democratic flashpoint is around the rescinding of the CDC’s designation of Title 42 in late May and the expected increase in attempted border crossings that are sure to follow. Increasingly, Democrats (see above), worried about the deteriorating political environment, are calling on the administration not to rescind the lifting of the Title 42 declaration. For context, just last month saw the largest number trying to cross the border since 2000.
The politics around Title 42 have already held up additional COVID money a few weeks ago in Congress. But it's also going to get messier on the Democratic side as some will argue for lifting this as humane and other Democrats plead for the administration to do more to prevent another political issue to navigate. You've even seen a number of Democrats make statements hitting the Administration on this, many from border states like Arizona. But, it’s been more than that. A number of Senate challengers have spoken out against the Administration’s plan, the head of the Democrat’s Senate campaign committee has raised concerns as have incumbents like Raphael Warnock (on the ballot in November) and Montana Sen. Jon Tester (up for re-election in 2024). New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan, who’s state borders a small part of Canada, even traveled to the border with Mexico to deliver her point and film a statement challenging the White House. Now, that’s not something you don’t see every day. My prediction: the White House will find a way to delay lifting the ban as Democrats have enough political pitfalls to fret about right now.
A Focus on France
The biggest political story over the next few days is not going to take place in the US, but in France, as Sunday is the national election there, pitting French President Emmanuel Macron against challenger Marine Le Pen. Macron won by a nearly five-point lead in the first round of the Presidential election nearly two weeks ago. The two had their final debate earlier this week and coming out of that combative evening Macron heads into the campaign’s final days with an advantage. But, this won’t be like 2017 where Macron swept to victory 66% to Le Pen’s 34% (we told you the political environment was tough!). Needless to say, the outcome could be monumental for how the coalition continues to exist (or not) to push Putin back from Eastern Europe.
Russian President Vladimir Putin with Marine Le Pen at the Kremlin in Moscow in 2017. (Credit: MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV / Stringer / Getty Images)
Coming Attractions:
Lastly, though I was tempted to cover this today, I don't want to have too much fun while Murphy is out. But next week we're going to discuss the news from several days ago that the Democratic Party is accepting applications from state Democratic Parties to decide the ordering for the nominating contests in 2024. I don't likely have to remind Democrats of the utter fiasco of Iowa Caucus night 2020. Despite that, Iowa has enjoyed a fairly revered history here, though both that place on the calendar, as well as the future existence of caucuses, seem likely not to survive this process. Murphy’s Presidential experience is called for here (when he’s gone I can admit he does have some good insights) and I’ve agreed to loan him a t-shirt from a Democratic campaign to wear for our discussion! We’ll ponder the question of exactly where Democrats should hold their first contests to determine their Presidential nominees going forward? We want you to be involved too, so get your maps and your arguments ready for why you think a certain state should be first or even in the top four.
My Iowa post script is last week we told you about the struggles that former Cong. Abby Finkenauer was having gathering enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. In fact, at one point a judge ruled her ineligible to run. Fast forward, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled in her favor and reinstated her candidacy. However, not being able to collect 100 written signatures from a county probably doesn't bode well for winning a statewide race against somebody who's represented Iowa in the Senate as long as Chuck Grassley. Her bumpy campaign also got outraised in the first quarter, fundraising reports showed. Tough times.
We’ll see you next week!
A Lonely Gibbs