Jeffrey Blehar writes for National Review Online about bad electoral news for Republicans.
And here we are, days away from October in a midterm year. This is beginning to feel a bit like a nightmare as well, a familiar one where all the inexorable beats are hit and we all go plummeting downwards — to wake up on the other end, not dead but brutally scarred. My historically minded colleague Dan McLaughlin once observed that parties facing electoral doom in a November election rarely turn their fortunes around after September — but the bottom sure can fall out from underneath them after that, as time takes its toll and opinions get baked in. So here we go.
With the Wall Street Journal’s newest opinion poll, putting the president at a miserable 37 percent approval rating, I think it’s fair to say that the cake is baked, like it or not. This is the impression of the Republican Party that most (not all) voters will take into the booth with them: the impression of Trump and his unanswerable minions pretending to party it up at state dinners with our (actual, not merely ideological) sworn geographic enemies in China to celebrate their rank privilege.
I have held out my hopes for the GOP’s prospects in November: Partisan gerrymandering (like it or not) has decreased the elasticity of House districts, so that the Republican wipeout in the lower chamber will be mediated by hard geographic (and demographic) realities. In the upper chamber? Abdul El-Sayed is a grotesque parody of woke antisemitism. Troy Jackson has literally spawned two children with his second cousin. But statewide overall, in Senate and governor’s races? We’re getting to Katy-bar-the-door levels here as the winds pick up (ideally not high enough to lead to a flattening in Kansas). And if you wonder why the GOP is facing brutal headwinds in Iowa’s governor’s race (CLICK) or why Trump is fighting off his own once-hardcore representatives in Florida Latino districts (CLACK) then get ready for the RUUUUMBLE as we tumble down and around to our destination.
The post Sensing the bottom dropping out appeared first on John Locke Foundation.
