The Conversations The Media is Having With Democrats

If you follow along with the conversations happening right now in the media, group therapy is happening.

“Republicans are just a normal polling error away from a landslide - or wiping out,” read the FiveThirtyEight headline. The site has moved from the Democrats might keep the House to the Republicans are the odds on favorite of taking the Senate.

The press, everywhere, is starting to drop hints to Democrats that this thing has gone south on them. You’ve got Axios suggesting things may not really be that bad with the very next article noting “the tide is turning for Republicans.”

It is very true as some hacks have suggested that the polling is now biased against the Democrats by overcorrecting to the GOP. The problem is that the partisan split still weighs the Democrats more heavily. So they have to be really screwing up the polling, given that.

But also, there is the dog that did not bark. Democrats claim the shift right is because the GOP has put out a bunch of bad polls designed to shift the generic ballot. But the Democrats could do that too, and that they are not is very telling. The two big pollsters on the left, Democracy Corps and Data for Progress, both have the GOP doing well.

There’s a case to make that Dr. Oz is going to lose Pennsylvania based on the latest analysis of early voting. While the early vote in Pennsylvania has lagged, the debate did hurt Fetterman and a lot more votes are coming in now. But they still do lean Democrat and Oz will need a huge turnout on Election Day.

In Nevada, Democrats appear to be toast. They have not built up a sufficient enough firewall to stop the GOP.

In Georgia, I have been in the minority that Walker could escape a runoff. Now that view is shifting to the majority.

Masters still is behind in Arizona but has momentum. And Bolduc in New Hampshire could be a surprise upset.

The GOP will take the House. They’ll pick up gubernatorial races in Oregon and Nevada.

Look, there is a real bottom line here for where we are most likely headed.

The party that controls the White House tends to have bad midterms. In midterms following a loss of the Governor’s race in Virginia and their House of Delegates, the White House party tends to do really bad in midterms. That happened.

You head into 2022 and Democrats have gravitated to “what about that Kansas race” and “what about Washington State’s races?” But the underlying fundamentals are still there historically. Biden is unpopular. His party controls everything. They lost Virginia. Voters care about the issues Democrats are not talking about. We are many months removed from the Dobbs case and few have been affected by it, while everyone has been affected by the economy.

Every sign is there.

What I notice about all this are a few things.

First, when the wave is against the GOP, the media dogmatically insists the GOP is toast and ignores all the evidence, including, in 2020, the evidence in the last three weeks that a GOP counterwave was growing.

Second, when the wave is against the Democrats, the media slow-walks the conclusion and then doesn’t push back on Democrats who scream that it must be voter suppression that caused it.

Third, Democrats and much of the press are hoping against hope that abortion moves things in the Democrat direction and are reading every possible sign in the election as proof this is happening. But the data shows it is not. The WSJ polling shows undecided suburban women are breaking to the GOP.

Fourth, Beto O’Rourke and Stacey Abrams are toast.

Lastly, this is beyond caution for the press. This is a hope against hope that what is coming is not coming.