With the GOP on track to claim the House, how will Democrats respond?
"I would submit that almost all the elected republiklan nazi's are totally aware of what they themselves are doing and how illegal it is, but they don't care."
Agree, they all must know they are acting illegally. In the least unethically where they are not breaking laws, yet. Have read of GOP plans. They started on Obama's first inauguration day. Now they have a stacked SCOTUS.
Analysis by Dan Balz Chief correspondent | November 5, 2022 at 2:16 p.m. EDT
Campaign signs frame the banner outside the early voting location at the Sandy Spring Volunteer Fire Station on Oct. 27 in Sandy Spring, Md. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Elections .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/?itid=lk_inline_manual_4 .. are about fundamentals, and the fundamentals this year — inflation and the economy, fear of crime and disorder, and President Biden’s weak approval ratings — have thrown up obstacles that the Democrats have struggled to overcome. After a midsummer shift toward the Democrats due to the Supreme Court’s abortion decision, the election has swung back to bread-and-butter issues. Republicans are feeling bullish.
This is a time of great unrest in the country, felt by people in both parties, regardless of ideology. Travel across the country this fall has revealed how many Americans — no matter how deeply partisan at the polls — long for a return to some sense of civility, to a quieter time, to more effective governance and less attention to the shouters. My colleagues Marc Fisher and Meagan Flynn captured this sentiment in a story this week .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/31/early-voters-lament-high-prices-disunity-yet-vote-opposite-sides/?itid=lk_inline_manual_5 .. from Virginia, but it is widespread.
The midterm climate, however, has made those hopes seem distant.
This is the first election since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The pandemic disrupted lives, and even though the number of coronavirus cases has declined, the return to normalcy has been elusive. People prefer order to disorder, and right now much seems disorderly. Republicans have seized on this to drive their election message that Democrats should be removed from power in Congress. Democrats, starting with the president, have not been able to counter this or effectively change the subject.
This has been an unusual year, with some unexpected twists and turns. Early voting is setting records for midterm elections in some states, and perhaps Democrats will spring some surprises in the end. But the party, understandably, is braced for trouble. The midterm elections of 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2018 saw one or both houses of Congress change hands. Why should 2022 be any different?
Could Democrats have done more to deal with the issues that are most important to voters? And how prepared are they to address questions about the shape of their own party if Republicans have a good night on Tuesday?
If Republican gains are minimal, say a dozen seats in the House, Democrats will feel they did pretty well. Stocktaking will be more difficult. Even if losses are in the range of the historical average for midterms — about two dozen seats — Democrats might sidestep an internal debate, choosing instead simply to bash the GOP — under the dominance of former president Donald Trump — as being radical and extreme while vowing to resist.
VIDEO - How The Post is tracking election deniers ahead of midterms 1:24 National reporter Amy Gardner explains how The Post is tracking election deniers in key primary races across the U.S. (Casey Silvestri/The Washington Post)
There are good reasons to question the state of the Republican Party and its readiness to govern seriously. Trump’s influence has brought forward a group of politicians who, if elected, will roil the GOP and the country.Election deniers are running races as Republicans all over the country; if voted in, they could threaten future elections.
[Yeah, tough legal bars to such charges - On the evidence Trump's attempt was organized on many levels. See: [...] "Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun [[...]P - For more than a year now, with tacit and explicit support from their party’s national leaders, state Republican operatives have been building an apparatus of election theft. Elected officials in Arizona, Texas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and other states have studied Donald Trump’s crusade to overturn the 2020 election. They have noted the points of failure and have taken concrete steps to avoid failure next time. Some of them have rewritten statutes to seize partisan control of decisions about which ballots to count and which to discard, which results to certify and which to reject. They are driving out or stripping power from election officials who refused to go along with the plot last November, aiming to replace them with exponents of the Big Lie. They are fine-tuning a legal argument that purports to allow state legislators to override the choice of the voters. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=170260252]
Republicans have not put forward a true governing program. Do they really have an answer to the current high rate of inflation? Are they really prepared to scale back U.S. support for Ukraine? Or will a Republican-controlled House make its mark through investigations of Hunter Biden and with talk of impeaching Biden?
Republicans have well-known weaknesses, but the midterm campaigns have also exposed problems that Democrats will have to address no matter the election results. That debate has already started, and the volume will increase after the election. It goes to the basic questions of who the Democrats are, whom they do or should represent, and whether they are speaking effectively on the issues that matter most to voters.
[And some 70% of republicans believe election 2020 was stolen. Disinformation, misinformation and lies work. See: conix, Not one poster here, not one, has ever come close to even hinting Biden could be "'the Greatest President"." Your accusing sortagreen of that is yet another prime example of your disgusting dishonesty. [...]If voters give Republicans control of the House and the Senate it will be as a result of Republican lies and misrepresentation about Biden's policies. Lies and misinformation such as blaming all inflation on Biden. Lies, disinformation and misinformation about Biden's policies. Call it conservative exploitation of voter misunderstanding if you'd rather. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=170206616]
In New York, the issue of crime has put Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) into a tighter-than-expected race against Rep. Lee Zeldin (R). At this late stage of the campaign, she has been forced to call in Democratic reinforcements .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/03/democrats-midterm-election-fears/?itid=lk_inline_manual_26 , including Vice President Harris and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. If that’s the reality in a state as deep blue as New York, imagine the pressure on candidates in swing districts.
Democratic strategists point to the fact that embattled candidates haven’t ignored crime as an issue. They have been addressing it in their campaign ads with regularity, noting that they favor funding, not defunding, the police. Republicans have painted with a broad brush, casting Democrats as the party that favors defunding law enforcement, even if people like Biden opposed such talk from the start. Voters have often trusted Republicans more to handle the issue of crime, and that’s the case again this year.
Democratic pollster Stanley B. Greenberg, writing in the American Prospect .. https://prospect.org/politics/how-democrats-mishandled-crime/ .. a few days ago, said Republican ads focusing on crime, with Fox News amplifying that message, helped to stall the Democrats’ late summer momentum. This election, he wrote, will be remembered for, among other things, “labeling the Democrats as ‘pro-crime.’”
He went on to write: “When voters in our survey were asked what they feared the most if Democrats win full control of the government, 56 percent rushed to choose ‘crime and homelessness out of control in cities and police coming under attack,’ followed by 43 percent who chose ‘the southern border being open to immigrants.’ Those two outpointed voters’ worries about Congress banning abortion nationally and women losing ‘equal rights.’”
One other problem Democrats have faced this fall is the absence of a clear and strong national messenger. Democratic candidates have needed someone to amplify their local-market ads. Biden has not been that person. Biden’s efforts to talk up the economy have fallen flat. And he hasn’t been welcome in some of the most competitive races by struggling Democratic candidates. As Democrats absorb the lessons of this election cycle and look toward 2024 and the expected announcement by Trump that he will run for president again, this too will be part of the discussion.
Dan Balz is chief correspondent at The Washington Post. He has served as the paper’s deputy national editor, political editor, White House correspondent and Southwest correspondent. Twitter
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