Some Democrats are growing glum, but will the 2022 midterm election bring a November surprise?

Even before the results are in, there is Monday morning quarterbacking about Democrats focusing on a variety of issues, unlike the GOP s relentless emphasis on the economy and crime.

The attempt by Democrats to make [the election] about something else that s a very, very complex thing to try to pull off, said David Winston, a Republican pollster who advises House and Senate GOP leadership. He likened Democrats message to voters as, No, your No. 1 issue really isn t the No. 1 issue.

An ominous sign for Democrats, Winston said, is the stark swing away from them by independent voters. A crucial component of Biden s winning 2020 coalition, many of them now have sour views of his handling of the economy. A substantial number 40% have an unfavorable view of both parties, Winston said, and may tune out the increasingly negative messaging of the campaign.

If both sides are attacking each other and [independents] are not getting any new information, they may decide, I m just unhappy with Biden. That s the one conclusion they ve managed to get to, he said.

The limits of Democrats abortion-centric strategy have emerged in blue states, where the party has suddenly found itself on the defensive in areas that Biden handily won in 2020.

There s been a real bifurcation of the House landscape between red and purple states vs. blue states, said David Wasserman, who analyzes House races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. In blue states, where Democrats control both state and federal government, they re being blamed doubly for high crime and inflation. In purple and red states, Democrats have been more successful in making it more of a choice election since Republicans pushed for abortion bans.

The emergence of California as a weak spot for Democrats marks a stunning reversal of expectations since the beginning of this year. After the latest round of redistricting, GOP Reps. Mike Garcia of Santa Clarita, David Valadao of Hanford and Michelle Steel of Seal Beach, all of whom won narrowly in 2020, were drawn into less friendly districts. Democrats, who anticipated playing defense for scores of incumbents elsewhere, relished the opportunity to go on the offensive.

Instead, Democratic Party committees and outside groups have largely stayed off the airwaves in the pricey Los Angeles market, which covers the entirety of five competitive districts, and have opted to use those resources to shore up incumbents elsewhere.

via news.yahoo.com

I’m famous in my own mind for being anxious about the future (I can also be anxious about the past — harder to do, but I manage), so all of what follows should doubtless be rather heavily discounted. But what I most hope for in the upcoming election is an event that is fair enough that both sides will accept it, beyond the cries of foul that we have come to accept from whichever side loses. The worst thing would be a hung election, with respect to control of the Senate, for example, like the 2000 Bush v. Gore election in Florida, or one in which it is obvious that fraud played the decisive role. Those of you who are sufficiently embedded in Right Wing Nut blogosphere know whereof I speak. If you watched for example Tucker Carlson a few nights ago, you saw his response to Biden’s speech at Union Station in which he raised this doubt. What is going on here, Tucker asked; Why is the President telling us all, remember, it takes a long time to count all the ballots; it might be a few days before we know how they all came out; Mail in ballots have become a much bigger part of the process lately! I agree with Tucker, this was an odd, even somewhat ominous speech for Biden to make.

Allow me to take another step into tin foil hat territory, with all due acknowledgement of my anxious condition: The recent election in Brazil apparently won by Lulu and not by the Right’s favorite authoritarian, Jair Bolsonaro. My inner worry wart makes the connection that he recently received (I know, I know) a visit from CIA chief William Burns. Did Burns warn him that any failure to accept his highly possible upcoming defeat would be met by dire consequences? Bolsonaro was in fact apparently defeated in an election those in Brazil are not allowed to question on social media, thanks to our tech companies (which in itself seems a bit odd). He has sulkily accepted the result though technically not conceded. Lulu has a record of election fraud (no news there), though he may also have won mostly fair and square.

Of course, it could also be that all those election deniers on the Right are just setting things up so that if they do lose, they can say, See! We told you so! Those darn Dems cheated! In which case, all these anxieties are just so much battle space preparation by those darn Republicans. But this might be implausible because the GOP traditionally could not organize a one-car funeral. OTH this would not stop the Reps from engaging in some public paranoia, which Tucker (and indeed I) may be doing.

Finally, to be fair to myself, the last time I had this icky feeling was a month or two our friend Covid broke out, and I was telling anyone who would listen, which turned out to be mostly my captive audience of students, about a pesky virus that had broken out in Wuhan and which could and then would turn out to be a big problem for us. They got some good yuks out of that until they didn’t.

As is so often the case with anxiety, the payoff for being forewarned is usually (but not always) low. I suspect the most likely case, my base case, as the fintwits like to say, is that both Republicans and Dems are engaging in battlespace prep, the Dems by saying the Republicans are trying to undermine democracy itself and are election deniers, and the Republicans by saying the Dems are manipulating processes behind the scenes (with mail in voting, etc.) to cook the elections. I suspect both the Dems and the Reps are right about this. Let’s hope neither is right enough to make any difference about the final outcome of tomorrow’s ongoing experiment in democracy, the worst form of government except for all the others, which curiously leaves open the possibility, if it really is one, which I doubt, of no government at all.