Republicans on Track to Give Democrats a Beating

If Democrats take a drubbing in the off-year elections — and it seems increasingly likely, but not certain, that they will — it will be because they lost their moorings when the country seemed to go crazy, with excessive COVID closedowns and irrational obsessions about systemic racism.

Schools were closed down, despite the minuscule risk to children, and millions of modest-income folks were put out of work. People were told they were just as racist as in the days of slavery and segregation and that we must defund the police, pay reparations, and impose endless racial quotas and preferences.

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Let’s see how voters’ response is developing.

Republicans regain lead in generic vote for the House. In an era of straight-ticket voting, party support in congressional elections is a good benchmark. The Real Clear Politics average showed Republicans ahead by about 3 points from last November to June. The developments — President Joe Biden’s legislative successes, the Dobbs decision, the restoration of jobs — appeared to reduce Republicans’ lead in August and September.

Three weeks ago, Republicans seized the lead and are ahead now by slightly more than in 2014, when they won more House seats (247 of 435) than in any election since the 1920s. Polls focused on likely voters showed Republicans ahead, 48% to 45%.

Fundamentals have taken hold: out-of-control inflation, sparked by first President Donald Trump and then even more by Biden spending to compensate for COVID closedown losses; out-of-control crime, sparked by liberals’ defunding and deactivation of police forces and no-bail and quick-release of criminals. Liberal crime policies are hugely unpopular. Racial quotas and preferences in college admissions, the subject of a Supreme Court case on colleges to be argued on Oct. 31, are opposed by 74% in a Pew Research poll, and quotas have been voted down in eight of nine referenda since 1996, most recently in California in 2020.

Trump-fixation is past its sell-by date. Immigration was one issue on which the sole rationale for Democrats’ policy was Orange Man Bad. If Trump would build a wall and force asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico, Biden would let everyone in. As New York Times reporter Frank Bruni notes, focusing on Biden rather than Trump “doesn’t exactly track with media coverage of the midterms.” Voters, in contrast, except for Democratic activists who are, in my colleague David Freddoso’s words, “obsessed with Trump to the point of insanity,” are focused on the current rather than the former president.

Hispanics trending Republican. Although most news media try to suppress the story, Democrats are also suffering from out-of-control illegal immigration, highlighted by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s flying immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard. It turns out that Hispanics, especially in the Rio Grande Valley but elsewhere, identify not with the illegal immigrants but with the Border Patrol, which has been ordered to let them enter, and with blue-collar workers whose jobs they may threaten.

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