Over the weekend, Democrats celebrated their biennial tradition of hand-wringing and panic about the election a year hence. Every cycle about this time, polls showing that their voters are unhappy with their candidates and wish they had someone better are floated by all the major polling outfits and everyone starts hyperventilating. It seems like only yesterday that the polling showed Democrats being swept away by a "red tsunami" in the midterms and it was inevitable that they would lose both chambers of Congress for the foreseeable future. Oops!
One of the more extreme examples of this came back in 2011 when President Barack Obama was running for re-election. With a 61% disapproval rating on the economy and 73% saying the country was heading in the wrong direction in some polls, there was growing talk of running a primary opponent or replacing Joe Biden as vice president on the ticket. Data maven Nate Silver wrote an epic analysis for the New York Times on November 3, 2011, almost exactly 12 years ago, that was headlined, "Is Obama Toast? Handicapping the 2012 Election." His conclusion? Probably. At best, Silver concluded, Obama only had a 50-50 chance of winning.
