The Democratic Momentum Mirage
Despite all their balderdash and bluster, they’re headed for a midterm drubbing.
by David Catron
August 28, 2022, 11:50 PM
To gauge the trepidation with which the Democrats view the midterms, consider their reaction to last week’s special elections in New York’s 19th and 23rd congressional districts. They eked out a two-point win in the former and lost the latter. Yet, the Democrats and their friends in the Fourth Estate hailed the NY-19 victory as a portent of doom for the GOP in November. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared, “Republicans should be very, very, very scared this morning about their prospects.”
The lady doth protest too much, to quote the Swan of Avon. Pelosi knows she’s about to lose the speaker’s gavel. The weak Democratic showing in New York is typical of their record in special House elections held since 2020. They failed to flip a single GOP seat while enduring a historic defeat in Texas’s 34th District. So, is NY-19 a bellwether? Nope. We heard the same tale after a Pennsylvania Democrat won a special election in 2010. This was touted as proof that no GOP wave would materialize in that year’s midterms. Politico’s piece was especially smug:
All the evidence pointing to monster Republican House gains this fall—the Scott Brown upset win in Massachusetts, the scary polling numbers in once-safely Democratic districts, the ever-rising number of Democratic seats thought to be in jeopardy—was contradicted Tuesday … In the only House race that really mattered to both parties—the special election to replace the late Democratic Rep. John Murtha in Pennsylvania’s 12th District—Republicans failed spectacularly.
When Election Day arrived, however, the Democratic House majority was swamped by a 63-seat Republican tsunami. The GOP also picked up six seats in the Senate. This year, the Republicans don’t need a wave to win a majority in either house of Congress. All they require is a five-seat gain in the House of Representatives and a one-seat gain in the Senate. Moreover, despite countless claims to the contrary by the Democrats and corporate media, the actual impact of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling on Republican momentum has been exaggerated.
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https://spectator.org/the-democratic-momentum-mirage/
