There’s a reason why it’s very hard at the moment to find any honest person predicting that the midterm election will be anything but bad (to very bad) for Republicans.
In fact, there are at least five reasons:
Midterm elections historically favor the party out of the White House. (The president’s party has lost House seats in 20 of the last 22 midterm elections.)
That’s especially true when the president is unpopular — as Donald Trump very much is.
Voters are deeply pessimistic about both the current state of the economy — gas prices, grocery prices etc. —
andabout the future of the economy.That pessimism leads voters — in large majorities — to believe the country is off on the wrong track rather than heading in the right direction.
And
thatpessimism tends to manifest itself in a desire to punish the party in power — which is Republicans across the board in Washington.
In short: All of the indicators we have — the sort of political weathervanes — are pointing in the exact same direction.
Which gets to what keeps me up at night as a political analyst/prognosticator: The last time I remember all the signs pointing uniformly in the same direction was the 2016 presidential election.
By EVERY metric, Hillary Clinton should have won that election. She had more money tham Donald Trump. A better organization in every swing state. A more consistent message. A deeper resume. A polling lead — nationally and in swing states.
And then, well, Trump won.
He won against ALL available indicators. Because by traditional measures, Clinton doesn’t just win. She wins easily.
And, by those same indicators, Donald Trump never comes anywhere close to winning the Republican nomination again in 2024 — much less getting elected to the White House.
Those facts haunt me. Because they raise this possibility: Trump’s 2016 election either a) broke all the old rules of politics or b) the rules were already broken but Trump exposed the brokenness.
Is there an option “c” where the rules of political prognostication don’t apply to Trump but DO apply to every other politician?
Yes.
And, if so, that means that all the indicators pointing to a good-to-great Democratic year are correct. And all of the analysts citing those indicators as proof of the good year for Democrats to come will be able to pat themselves on the back November 4.
But, I do think you HAVE to consider the fact that the old rules/old indicators may be just that: Old. Outdated. No longer useful predictors in a polarized world ruled by Trump.
I talked about ALL of that — and much more — with my friend on his .
▶You can watch it all here. It was a really good conversation.
