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Tags: democrats | congress | 2024 elections | joe biden
OPINION

Dismal Presidential Odds Mean Dems Riveted on Salvaging House Seats

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Larry Bell By Friday, 19 July 2024 12:07 PM EDT Current | Bio | Archive

Referring to dimming hopes of retaining the White House following President Biden’s calamitous debate performance, the ultra-liberal Los Angeles Times lamented that if frightful visions of a Trump victory weren’t enough to keep them up at night, looming even worse are real prospects of a Republican trifecta that adds losses of both houses of Congress as well.

The likelihood of that dreaded Democrat nightmare has since increased exponentially in the aftermath of the failed assassination attempt on opposition presidential candidate Donald Trump which have galvanized party loyalty.

Meanwhile, what Politico previously described in May as a full-blown Democrat “freakout” over Biden’s sinking reelection prospects is amplified by growing Trump popularity in response to transparently political lawfare assaults against him.

Following his New York so-called “hush money” conviction, the former president’s primary digital fundraising committee, Trump National Committee, raised $139 million over three months, including $69 million from donors giving less than $200, while another, Trump Save America, raised $28 million, including $11.7 million from small donors.

Trump campaign likely-voter enthusiasm had begun to transform many formerly “safe” blue congressional districts demanding defensive resources prior to his inspirationally defiant response to the assassination attempt that missed killing him by less than an inch.

Included are toss-up contests in Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, New Mexico and Virginia which may determine control of Congress’ lower chamber.

Regarding Senate seats, the 2016 race was the first time the outcome went in the same direction as the presidential contest; a pattern that was repeated in 2020 with only one exception — Maine.

This suggests that the current Trump lead in all swing states and rare ticket-splitting gives Democrats and their down-ballot contestants strong causes for hypertension.

In order to keep Senate control, Democrats must defend twice as many seats as Republicans — 23 to 11 — in order to retain a current thin 51-49 advantage, counting three independents who caucus with them.

Several of those must-win states are those that went strongly for Trump in 2020. Among these, Republican are virtually certain to take the Democrat Senate seat held by West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, a state that Trump carried by nearly 40 percentage points

That Republican vote alone would split the Senate 50-50 with the vice president serving as tiebreaker, also requiring that two of the Democrats’ most endangered incumbents, Jon Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio manage to prevail in states Trump decisively won in 2020.

As for optimistic Democrat hopes of flipping Senate seats in Republican-leaning Florida and Texas to offset possible losses elsewhere, this will require overcoming Joe Biden’s increasing drag on those rapidly dwindling potentials.

Jessica Taylor, who analyzes Senate races for the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, posits that while a Democratic candidate may be able to outrun the incumbent president by 5, 6, 7 points, that gravitational pull will be enormously challenging to overcome.

The fight for the House appears to be closer where Democrats need a gain of just four seats to win control.

The Cook Report ranks 44 seats as competitively in play — 24 of them held by Democrats and 20 by Republicans, whereas Inside Elections sees a more expansive field, with 71 seats in play — 39 Democratic and 32 Republican.

Consequently, more than a dozen lawmakers from the president’s own party have publicly called for him to step aside in favor of another candidate as key elected Democrat leaders and strategists have grown increasingly alarmed that his presence on the ticket could transform some blue states into contested battlegrounds.

A major problem here is the lack of any currently identified alternate candidate that polls any better, with most all of them worse.

An even larger Democrat dilemma is a conspicuous absence of any popular Biden administration policies or successful achievements to run on.

Joe Biden had pledged in his Nov. 7, 2020, victory speech to be “a president who seeks not to divide but to unify,” vows which have since been betrayed by divisive portrayals of Trump as an existential threat to democracy while hypocritically practicing banana republic lawfare against him.

Biden administration strategies have sought to replace unifying equality of merit-based opportunity guaranteed by our Constitution with polarizing equity of outcomes based upon Marxist divide-and conquer politics of victimization entitlement that fracture the country along racial, ideological and cultural lines.

Democrat Congressional down-ballot hopefuls will also face steep uphill struggles distancing themselves from numerous other policy outcomes that most voters haven’t welcomed.

Included are: growing threats of world wars on two continents; complete surrender of American border sovereignty; war on fossil-fueled energy independence; runaway inflation, food, housing and fuel costs; surging crime, expansive deadly addiction, and homeless populations; permissive antisemitic attacks on college campuses; mandates requiring COVID shots and lockdowns, electric vehicles and requiring public schools to let biological boys use girls’ restrooms; partisan weaponization of the FBI and DOJ against a leading opposition presidential candidate; and most recently, gross failures to adequately protect said candidate in a very near-miss assassination attempt.

As the old saying goes, with or without Joe Biden, incumbent congressional Democrats can run away from him, but not hide from enabling his disasters.

Larry Bell is an endowed professor of spac architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.

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LarryBell
As the old saying goes, with or without Joe Biden, incumbent congressional Democrats can run away from him, but not hide from enabling his disasters.
democrats, congress, 2024 elections, joe biden
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2024-07-19
Friday, 19 July 2024 12:07 PM
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