I’m just jumping into five things I mentioned on air earlier today in a final (probably not) goodbye to last Tuesday.
Don’t let Democrats spin GOP victory away. GOP performed on par.
I asked last week if we are eating a progressive narrative about the victory and victors.
GOP performed as I thought. Every poll that I examined and discussed for air did not show miraculous, huge gains for Republicans in the Senate. I said throughout the post-primary election season that I did not see the GOP taking anything beyond 51 seats in the Senate. Oz had not led Fetterman in Pennsylvania at any time with any persuasive numbers. Kelly led Masters virtually the entirety of the season in Arizona. It was always neck-and-neck in Georgia. I always felt that Nevada’s Adam Laxalt had the best chance of flipping his seat, partly due to his name recognition throughout the state as a former AG and because of his savvy campaigning. I don’t know where this fantasy of big wins in the Senate originated, because it didn’t emerge from any existing polling I saw. The pollsters were not wrong here.
The House only saw gains revised upwards as polls measuring voter sentiment began flooding the cycle — most disapproved of Biden’s handling of the economy, suburban women began leaning GOP, Hispanics were forming a new coalition as Republicans. Despite this, the credibly polling I saw did not have a massive gain. The GOP did successfully flip 15 seats (four in New York alone, no easy task) but it was not equal to 2010’s notorious shellacking. Did people think that growing disapproval to Biden’s job performance was indicative of a wave?
The bottom line: Democrats need to interpret the GOP’s results as failure so they can claim their own losses are some actual victory. The failure is building up a major wave not measured in any survey and then take an imaginary L on it.