So many of them have spent millions and millions of dollars already on television. I think Senate Democrats have done a good job of spending these months building up their profile, and they’ve spent a whole lot of money building a positive story, a positive image for themselves. That’s what everybody’s scratching their head about. How long can the party outpace those fundamentals with a presidential rating that bad? But the question going forward is, Is it enough? Do voters need to actually believe that, because Democrats are now passing legislation called the Inflation Reduction Act, they’ve now turned the ship around? Or do they believe that Democrats are still not as good as Republicans at handling these issues?īiden’s approval rating is in the low 40s right now, which is an improvement but also around where Trump’s was at this time in 2018. One guy said, “Well, at least they don’t look like they’re sitting on their hands and saying, ‘Not our problem.’” I think that’s been very helpful to Democrats. We’ve got to be careful not to extrapolate too much, but what I thought was interesting when I listened to voters in one focus group - these are white men who either had voted for Trump in 2016 but voted Biden in 2020 or they voted for Trump but were like, Ugh, I’m not a real big fan of his - it was interesting to listen to them because it seemed as if they were agreeing that Democrats seemed to be at least doing something. It seems smart, then, that Democrats named this huge bill the Inflation Reduction Act when it actually has very little to do with inflation. We’re focused on the things that people care about.”Īt the end of 2021 and into much of 2022, if you looked at polling - Navigator polling specifically because they do this in a really smart way - people would be asked, “What do you think Congress and Democrats should be focused on?” And then “What do you think they’re focused on?” There’s been this big disconnect where voters are like, “Well, what we’d really like for them to do is deal with inflation or the economy.” And they say instead, “Well, they’re doing COVID, or they’re doing voting rights, but they’re not really focused on the stuff that matters to me.” I think it helps Democrats if there’s a sense that things are at least headed in the right direction and that they have something to sell to voters - to say, “We’re actually doing something. Are people more optimistic? What I’m really going to be watching for in these next couple of months is not whether voters think the economy has suddenly recovered or that everything’s awesome but whether Americans are more optimistic. The economy is better, but it’s still not great. The president’s not much more popular than before. You wrote that the fundamentals haven’t changed all that much. So then I get to the next piece, which is, Are Americans actually feeling better, and feeling better about the Democrats? I wrote about that, but it’s a little muddled. Instead of territory that’s very problematic for Democrats, we’re now on terrain that’s very problematic for Republicans. I think this is one big reason for the shift we’re seeing. We’ve been talking a lot about Donald Trump - and not just with the FBI Mar-a-Lago situation but the candidates he’s been endorsing and the folks running on platforms that rely heavily on election denial. We’ve been talking and hearing a lot about the overturning of Roe v. What have we talked about for most of this summer? The January 6th hearings. You had all of those things in the media Zeitgeist. We were talking about the fact that the administration was struggling to get ahold of the new Delta variant.
We were talking about the rise of inflation. A year ago, what were we talking about? We were talking about the withdrawal in Afghanistan and all the problems that ensued. The first is where the media focus has been for about the last four to six weeks, especially compared to where it was a year ago at this time. I think a lot of us who do this for a living are trying to understand what’s really behind that. There is definitely a shift both in mood and momentum. Do you agree with his assessment right now? You’ve got all these Senate polls from key states that are very encouraging for Democrats, and last week, Mitch McConnell said “ candidate quality ” may prevent Republicans from gaining the one seat they need to retake the chamber. Wade seems to be galvanizing voters in Kansas and elsewhere. Among other developments: Gas prices are plummeting inflation is coming down, albeit slowly the party finally passed very significant parts of its agenda and the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Electorally speaking, everything suddenly seems to be breaking Democrats’ way.
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