Democrats keep doing surprisingly well in special elections. The party’s most vulnerable Senate incumbents are running ahead of their rivals in key battleground states. One of Democrats’ signature issues — reproductive rights — has repeatedly proved a winning message.
And yet Joe Biden is struggling to pull even with Donald Trump.
It’s another ominous sign for the president: Even as other Democrats are running strong, the party’s down-ballot successes aren’t translating into momentum at the top of the ticket. Biden trails Trump in many of the states he needs to win to keep the White House. His job approval is underwater. And the coalition of voters that ushered him into office four years ago is fraying.
“Democrats are enthusiastic about trying to win the Senate and trying to win the House,” said Neil Oxman, a Pennsylvania-based Democratic strategist.
And they’re “not enthusiastic about Biden’s reelection,” Oxman said. “Period.”
I have no idea about the Biden side (although people having no idea what he has to run on is more of a media thing than a what-he’s-done thing). But I’m confident saying that Trump dying before the election would be a catastrophe for the Republicans.
The GOP rank and file has figured out at this point that most people in Washington don’t represent them. It’s all just weirdos in suits who are making emotionally manipulative commercials and taking their money and health care and jobs and leaving them with nothing. I think a lot of Trump’s appeal was that, whatever his flaws, he definitely wasn’t one of those pod people, so there was quite a lot of appeal to the idea of sending him to Washington and if he wrecks the place like a deer trapped in a subway car then oh well nothing of value was lost.
I don’t think they were right about the harmlessness of Trump destroying things, but the understanding of Washington that underlay the core calculus wasn’t totally off base. DeSantis has enough authentic stupid meanness to be able to appeal to them a little bit, but he can’t hide that at his core he’s just another scumbag in a suit, and for anyone else (Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz and Matt Gaetz), I think they’re gonna say in record numbers you know what brother man I’m gonna pass.
Trump dying after he gets in office, and all the machinery of Project 2025 falling into the hands of someone who’s not the world’s most useless and failure prone individual, would on the other hand be an absolute global catastrophe.