Even after a run of special election victories and encouraging polls, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has issued a pessimistic prediction for House Democrats’ chances in the midterm elections.
In comments reported by Punchbowl News, Mr Schumer told Senate colleagues at a restaurant dinner that were the midterms to be held today, there would be “a 60 per cent chance we hold the Senate, and a 40 per cent chance we hold the House”.
The outlet cited numerous restaurant patrons as its sources, reporting that they overheard Mr Schumer as he “loudly” described how Nancy Pelosi is “in trouble” in her efforts to hold on to the majority in the lower chamber.
According to the report, Mr Schumer also wrote off Democrats’ chances in the Iowa Senate campaign, warned that they could lose ground in the Arizona race should right-wing tech billionaire Peter Thiel inject more money into the GOP campaign, and said he believes Donald Trump will run again in the 2024 presidential election.
The majority leader’s prediction of losing the House puts him at odds with Ms Pelosi, who has said in the last few days not just that she thinks the Democrats can hold the chamber but that they can in fact widen their ultra-narrow majority.
That confidence appears to be based on a series of unexpectedly strong victories in special elections, not least in Alaska, where Mary Peltola won the seat vacated by deceased GOP representative Don Young. (She has now been sworn in as the first ever Native Alaskan member of Congress.)
The Democrats have also been performing relatively strongly on the generic ballot, which gauges overall support for the two parties. However, its predictive value for the outcome in November is distorted by the vagaries of redistricting and gerrymandering, thanks to which Democrats must win a disproportionately large share of the nationwide vote to capture a majority of seats.
More encouraging perhaps is the rise in Joe Biden’s approval rating, which is now being pegged at 45 per cent – a substantial improvement from his dire ratings over the summer. Mr Biden’s appearances on the campaign trail this summer have seen him trumpeting a run of legislative successes while condemning the Republican Party as in hock to the cult-like extremism of the “Maga movement”.
The GOP has been struggling to reorient its midterm campaign since the overturning of Roe v Wade, since when numerous Republican-led states have passed extreme abortion restrictions that cut directly against national public opinion.
In a piece of particularly bad timing, Senator Lindsey Graham this week introduced a bill proposing a nationwide 15-week limit on abortions, putting himself out of step with popular opinion while contradicting his own and other Republicans’ careful insistence that the issue should be decided at the state level.
