For many months, as Joe Biden’s approval hit record lows, there was much talk of a red wave or even a red tsunami in the 2022 midterm elections. But after the Supreme Court reversal of Roe v. Wade and a summer spate of federal spending, Democrats believed they had delivered the goods and became hopeful. Polls showed them not losing as badly as in the months before. Biden even registered at 46% approval in more than one survey. As summer turned to fall, Democrats allowed themselves to dream of holding not only the Senate, which had always figured to be close, but also the House, long thought to be a lock for the GOP. But then came a red wave, now threatening to grow into a rising red tide.
Indeed, a funny thing happened to the party of government on the way to consolidating its grip on Congress. The issues that had become prominent in the spring and summer, before voters started really paying attention to the election campaign, suddenly started taking a back seat to traditional core concerns. And the magnitude of the resulting shift of momentum back to Republicans was brought home more starkly than ever in this 2022 campaign by the latest poll results in the New York gubernatorial race. Incumbent Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul, successor to the disgraced Andrew Cuomo, had been so far ahead of the GOP challenger, Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), that people had all but stopped paying attention to the race. But from a 24-point lead in one survey as recently as mid-August, Hochul has descended rapidly, and now actually trails by .3% according to one independent poll - days after Quinnipiac rated the race as within the margin of error.
The Red Tide and Blue State Blues
And it’s hardly happening only in the left-leaning Empire State. Plenty of additional evidence of the Democrats’ collapse abounds in the shrinking leads of the party’s Senate nominees in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Arizona - and on the other side, hardline conservatives Ron DeSantis in Florida and Greg Abbott in Texas, as well as Georgia’s Brian Kemp, all pulling into double digit leads, according to the Real Clear Politics average, in gubernatorial races once thought competitive. And after famously liberal San Francisco booted its soft-on-crime district attorney to the curb over the summer, left-wing Oregon may well elect a Republican governor for the first time in 35 years - GOP nominee Christine Drazan has led narrowly in every poll - in the wake of Portland’s infamous summer of love.
Kathy Hochul (Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images for Concordia Summit)
As ominous as those poll numbers appear, It actually gets even worse for Democrats when digging into the cross-tabs - breaking down the composite vote into its component parts - of the poll showing Zeldin overtaking Hochul in New York. The Republican holds a shocking lead of 18 points (54%-36%) among one of the Democrats’ most important constituencies, Hispanics. And he enjoys a whopping 31-point advantage (59%-28%) among independent voters. With a full 40% of voters self-identifying as independents these days, that deficit is potentially cataclysmic for the future of progressivism. In New York City, which is roughly 90% Democratic, Hochul is registering at a mere 54%. Will New York be the canary in the coal mine, signaling a dam about to burst for the progressive movement?
Gas prices, up almost 60% since Donald Trump left office and rising afresh after a summer lull, may well prove to be the final nail in the Democrats’ 2022 coffin. And it’s only made worse with the embarrassing specter of the leader of the free world begging a Saudi prince to bail him out of a political crisis - after he had slandered the guy before the entire world. And then, we hear of Biden’s plans to go hat in hand to a despicable dictator in Venezuela. All of this after we had achieved energy independence by the time Joe Biden took office.
Progressive attempts to focus the campaign on abortion, climate change, “threats to democracy,” and voting rights - a faux issue now unmasked with record voter turnout in Georgia - have given way to the most damaging problem of all for any governing party: the economy, always top of mind among voters, no matter its condition. Only this year, the emergence of an issue which had hardly reared its head for the last 40 years has significantly compounded the problem. Inflation, a non-issue for anyone under about 50 years old, is now far higher than about half the country’s population has ever witnessed and is proving to be a shock to the system even more damaging than the perception of an economy headed for, if not already in, a recession.
Except in times of war, voters have never accepted excuses from the governing party for a spiraling cost of living. They have always blamed the people in charge for economic insecurity. And this year, all signs point to the citizenry further punishing Democrats for disturbing levels of crime, and for forfeiting control of the nation’s borders. The message from voters as this party in the grip of progressives prepares to take a beating is as strikingly simple and ultimately unsurprising as it has always been. They want the politicians they deem responsible for the fallen state of their nation removed from office.
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