There’s good news, and bad news, for Joe Biden these days. The bad news is that he remains historically unpopular. The good news is that his approval has actually ticked up recently: The gold standard RealClearPolitics average has him at 40.9% approval across all recent polls. The even better news, though, is that his opponents in the Republican Party seem determined to blow the midterm elections.
Some months ago, it seemed all but certain that Biden’s Democrats would lose both chambers of Congress this November. Republicans need only a tiny swing to take back the House of Representatives, and a net gain of only one seat to take the US Senate. Right now, though, while they remain favoured in the US House, they are actually favoured to lose ground to Biden in the Senate.
Because of the quirks of the US System, where only one third of the Senate is up for grabs every two years, Biden has gotten lucky: Almost all of the competitive seats up for grabs this year are already held by Republicans. Democrats are playing on defence in Arizona, and Georgia, and Colorado, and New Hampshire, and Nevada. Those are the five seats they risk losing. Republicans, meanwhile, are defending Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Florida, Ohio, and Missouri, all seats which are potentially at risk to one degree or another.
And, Republicans being Republicans, they’ve nominated bad candidates: In Georgia, their Trump-endorsed nominee, Herschell Walker, has stumbled and fumbled his way across the state, fending off charges of spousal abuse. In Arizona, the Trump-backed candidate is on record as wanting to privatise pensions, in a state to where many Americans flock in retirement for the good weather. In Wisconsin, the sitting Republican Senator, Ron Johnson, has spent the last year talking about Covid Vaccines and their alleged dangers, in a state where 70% of voters are vaccinated. In Pennsylvania, the Trump-endorsed nominee is a former TV doctor who doesn’t seem to have the love of Republicans, and is trailing his Democrat opponent by 10 points. So desperate are Republicans to make up for these errors that they are pushing hard in places like Washington State, which would be a tough task for a Republican under any circumstances.
It is the same story in Governor elections: In primary after primary, Republican voters have selected Trumpy candidates who appear well outside the mainstream of their own states. Democrats are currently favoured to pick up Governorships in places like Arizona that they had been universally predicted to lose just a few months ago.
And money is a problem, too: Republican candidates don’t seem to have it. Small donors are increasingly sending their money directly to Trump ahead of a presumed Presidential campaign in 2024, and Trump is not spending any of that money backing his fellow Republicans.
Add to all of this that Gas prices are falling for the first time in Months, and that Republicans have spent much of August talking about the raid on Mar a Lago more than they have about inflation or the economy, and it’s been a good month for Grandpa Joe. He’s benefitting, too, from the Roe versus Wade decision: A lot of angry Democrats are considering voting, now, who may have sat at home before the Supreme Court made its decision. That’s a problem any conservative would be happy to have, of course, but in raw political terms, the Supreme Court did as much for Biden’s political life as it did for the unborn.
All of this may yet change. Traditionally, Americans don’t fully tune into their permanent election campaigns until after Labor Day, the first Monday in September. It may well be that if Republicans can refocus over the last two months and make the elections entirely about the economy and inflation and the Biden record, they will yet triumph handsomely. But as of today, Biden has reasons to feel optimistic, for the first time all year.