Midterms: Will a summer of campaigning save Republicans?

Members of Congress are leaving Washington for their summer recess, said Calen Razor in Politico, but the break will be anything but relaxing for GOP lawmakers. With less than 100 days left before the midterm elections, and with Democratic candidates up by an average of 6.1 percentage points in the generic ballot, Republicans must now spend five anxious and “potentially grueling” weeks at home in their districts. They’ll try to somehow persuade voters not to punish them in November for the high cost of living, an unpopular war in Iran, and the failures and excesses of President Trump—whose approval rating has flatlined below 40%, and who is loudly and regularly attacking Senate Republicans for failing to pass his “SAVE America Act” package of voting restrictions. Parties in power usually lose seats in the midterms, said Liz Goodwin and Ben Binday in The Washington Post, and November was going to be “tough no matter what” for Republicans, given Trump’s sagging poll numbers. But with the Iran war heating up again, pushing gas prices back above $4, some GOP pollsters are “raising the alarm” about the widening enthusiasm gap between the two parties’ voters. While Democrats are champing at the bit, Republicans are “listless and demotivated,” with about 1 in 5 “reliable Republican base voters” saying they may stay home on Election Day, or even vote Democrat.

Republicans should be doomed, said Chris Stein in The Guardian, but Democrats have their “own woes.” For starters, the party is broke. While the Republican National Committee has nearly $130 million in cash, most of it from wealthy donors, the Democratic National Committee is $2 million in debt. If the midterms were held today, Democrats would be favored to at least win back the House, said Julia Mueller in The Hill. The latest forecast from Decision Desk HQ suggests they’ll win a 15-seat advantage in the chamber and send House Speaker Mike Johnson’s caucus back into the minority. But that’s down 10 seats from early July, and it doesn’t help that Democrats are now attacking one another in a “bitter” public argument over the party’s future.

That debate has been a “gift” to Republicans, said Mona Charen in The Bulwark. Earlier this year, the GOP had “nothing to run on” and seemed headed for a deserved drubbing in November. But candidates aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America then scored a succession of Democratic primary wins, in New York and Colorado. The DSA’s platform calls for abolishing prisons, borders, and the presidency, while pushing sky-high taxes to fund a worker’s paradise of “free everything”—a set of policies seemingly designed to repel swing voters. The DSA’s rise has given the GOP its “midterm message,” said Ed Kilgore in New York. Republicans can and will now frame the midterms as a “vast ideological struggle” against Radical Socialism, with Trump and the GOP, for all their flaws, as the “safer bet.”

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Much may hinge on the “final wild card” of the season, said Hans Nichols in Axios: Michigan’s Aug. 4 Senate Democratic primary between centrist Rep. Haley Stevens and “progressive insurgent” Abdul El-Sayed. A leftist Muslim with a habit of “equivocating about terrorism” may not be able to win in a Midwest swing state, said Nick Catoggio in The Dispatch. But will this “new red scare” really make the electorate as a whole forget 21 months of rising prices, ICE killings, weaponized government, and “lascivious corruption”? Socialism may be an “albatross” around Democrats’ necks, but “it’s likely less of one than Trump is for Republicans.”