OPINION:
President Joe Biden’s speech last Thursday, in which he declared war on those who voted against him in 2020, gave us a peek into the actual status of the 2022 election cycle. By trying to make the election about the actions of the former president – rather than about Mr. Biden’s own record or any of his legislative “achievements” — he made it clear that the Democrats know they are in trouble unless something happens to shake up the race.
If Team Biden thought otherwise or believed the public polling, they would have not felt the need to drag President Donald J. Trump into the campaign.
They have good reason to be concerned. When limited to likely voters (rather than the more expansive and less reliable metric of registered voters), the generic ballot test for House races indicates that the Republicans are headed towards a modest majority consisting of about 230 Members in the House next January.
On the Senate side, Democratic candidates have, to date, overperformed in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania, but that has largely been an artifact of their advantage in spending. The political action committees associated with Republicans will eventually rebalance those spending scales. If Mr. Trump decides to spend some of the $200 million he has stashed away, that would improve the situation for the Republicans even more.
In Pennsylvania, where the Democratic nominee, Lt. Governor Jon Fetterman has been on the offensive for months, his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, seems to have finally found his footing, driving home questions about Mr. Fetterman’s truthfulness about his health, his recent stroke, and the fact that his parents paid his bills until he was 50 years old. It also turns out he is from a privileged background, rather than the blue-collar upbringing he has tried to sell.
Mr. Fetterman is opposed to fracking — which now underpins much of Pennsylvania’s economy – and in favor of criminals (he has said that Pennsylvania could reduce its prison population by one-third).
As a result of all of this, Mr. Fetterman is now on the defensive, third-party (PAC) money is about to surge into the Commonwealth, and Mr. Trump is about to jump into the race. That is all bad news for Mr. Fetterman.
In Georgia, despite the obvious challenges associated with being a novice to electoral politics, Herschel Walker is running no worse than even with the incumbent Sen. Ralph Warnock. In the last 15 surveys, Mr. Warnock has only topped 50% three times. That’s not a promising sign for an incumbent. It is remarkable that Reverend Warnock has been unable to put away Herschel Walker, and, at this point, absent a pretty impressive October surprise, you have to think that Mr. Walker, partially riding the coattails of Gov. Brian Kemp (who will probably win by 5-8 points) will win.
In Ohio and Arizona, both J.D. Vance and Blake Masters are solid candidates, and there will eventually be enough money for them to win their races. Their backers (who include Peter Thiel) are not likely to allow them to lose for lack of resources.
In Nevada, the absence of the impressive machine formerly run by Sen. Harry Reid and the presence of an almost as impressive Republican Party effort to reach out to Hispanics means that Adam Laxalt has a good chance to defeat incumbent Catherine Cortez-Masto. When you look at the surveys of likely voters, Mr. Laxalt already has a slim lead.
Team Biden knows all this. That’s why the histrionics and the blood red stage and all that jazz the other night in Philadelphia. They desperately need to gin up turnout among those who do not like Mr. Trump. Otherwise, they will be faced with the irrelevancy of a lame duck president whose party controls neither the House nor the Senate.
• Michael McKenna, a columnist for The Washington Times, co-hosts “The Unregulated” podcast. He was most recently a deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs at the White House.
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