THE RED WAVE HAS A BLUE UNDERTOW

I used to not only disagree on everything with Bill Kristol, but thought of him as a wannabe war criminal. It’s amazing how Events Change Minds and he and I now find ourselves in complete agreement about the need to save the Republic, and he has the moral courage to say that can only be done by destroying the modern Republican Party by voting for Democrats. And I liked his little quip he came up with Tuesday nights when he looked at Pat Ryan’s victory in NY-19.

“The Red Wave has a Blue Undertow.”

Way back six months ago, when this year’s midterm campaign was gearing up, analysts and political operatives both Republican and Democratic had every reason to expect a strong Republican showing this November.

President Biden’s approval rating was in the low 40s, inflation was up, the war in Ukraine had gas prices nudging $6/gallon, the Democrats seemed unable to legislatively find their collective ass with both hands on a clear day, and on top of that was the Traditional Common Knowledge that the president’s party has a long history of struggling in midterm elections.

But, now, a week before Labor Day, the traditional start of U.S. political campaigns when the people who watch no news the rest of the year start Paying Attention, it’s becoming increasingly hard to find any concrete signs of Republican strength.

Tuesday’s strong Democratic showing in a special congressional election in New York’s 19th District is only the latest example. It’s not so much a bellwether as it is a Map To The Minefield when you start to examine it in detail.

On paper, NY-19 is a classic battleground district. Obama won it in 2012, Trump won it in 2016, and Biden won it in 2020. It’s in the Hudson Valley and Catskills, which is exactly where the Republicans would be expected to flip a seat in a so-called wave election.

But Democrat Pat Ryan prevailed over a strong Republican nominee, Marc Molinaro, by around two percentage points, outperforming Mr. Biden’s narrow win in the district two years ago.

Harold Meyerson outlined Ryan’s campaign over at The American Prospect:

“The upset victory of Democrat Pat Ryan to fill a vacant House seat in upstate New York provided proof positive of the pro-choice wave. Before the Court officially ruled, the polling for Republican Marc Molinaro showed him leading Ryan by a comfortable 13 percentage points. Once Samuel Alito descended from Mt. Misogyny with his Commandments (Thou Shalt Carry a Pregnancy to Term Even if Effectuated by Rape or Incest), however, Molinaro’s margin began to diminish. It diminished more as Ryan centered his campaign on preserving a woman’s right to choose. "Choice is on the ballot," his lawn signs read. A decorated combat veteran, Ryan ran ads asserting that he’d fought to preserve freedom, and that included the freedom to choose. He also ran a populist-progressive ad attacking a local power company he’d fought as Ulster County executive, singling it out as representative of the abuses of corporate monopolies.”

While Molinaro campaigned on all the things Republicans thought six months ago were going to return them to office with 260 seats in the House and Biden impeached by March 1, 2023, Ryan campaigned on the public revulsion to Mitch McConnell’s Kollection of Kooky Klucks in the Unsupreme Court and their Dobbs decision, and Clarence Thomas’ “victory lap” of declaring it was time to “revisit” the right of privacy as it applied to access to contraceptives, same-sex marriage, and everything else good and decent the Supreme Court did since 1937.

The result in NY-19 adds to a growing pile of evidence suggesting that Democrats have rebounded in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision in late June to overturn Roe v. Wade.

There’s an old saying that something that happens once may be a fluke; if it happens twice, it could be coincidence; but if it happens three times, IT’S A FACT.

One special election would be easy to dismiss. But it’s not alone.

There have been five special congressional elections since the court’s Dobbs ruling overturned Roe, and Democrats have outperformed Biden’s 2020 performance in four of them. In the fifth district, - Alaska’s at-large House special - the count from the new ranked-choice voting is not complete, but it appears they are poised to outperform him there too.

On average, Republicans carried the four completed districts by 3.7 percentage points, compared with Donald Trump’s 7.7-point edge in the same districts two years ago.

The results aren’t merely worse than expected for Republicans; they’re straightforwardly poor.

Republicans need to fare better than Trump, who lost the national vote by 4.5 points in 2020, to retake the House. They are falling short. Not once, not twice, not three times. ALL FIVE TIMES not counting Alaska when you count in their complete defeat in NY-19.

These special congressional elections had a relatively higher share of white voters in mostly rural districts that were not representative of the country.

Voters who turn out in primary or special elections aren’t representative, either, with highly educated and well-informed voters usually making up an outsize share of the vote.

Those two factors probably gave advantage to Democrats in all four completed districts. The results showed a superior turnout in highly educated liberal enclaves or college towns, like Ithaca in New York’s 23rd District, while (Republican) turnout elsewhere in the districts lagged behind.

Strength among high-turnout white voters can get a party pretty far in low-turnout midterm elections, which tend to have a relatively whiter electorate. Thus, there is a decent historical relationship between special election results and midterm outcomes.

Before Dobbs, Republicans were outrunning Trump in special congressional elections. Since then, the pattern has reversed.

While there’s plenty of room for debate about exactly what the special election results mean for November, there’s no dispute that the results are plainly positive for Democrats.

In addition to the above, there is the additional fact observers are pointing out now, that being that women are out-performing men in registering to vote, and then voting.

Democrats have made steady gains since Dobbs on the generic congressional ballot, a poll question asking voters whether they prefer Democrats or Republicans for Congress.

Overall, Democrats now have a slight advantage on this measure, according to FiveThirtyEight’s tracker, which shows about a three-point swing toward the Democrats since mid-June, when Republicans led before the Dobbs ruling.

A tight generic ballot represents a real improvement for Democrats.

If the polls are right, it suggests a fairly competitive district-by-district battle for control of the House, rather than the expected Republican rout.

Or, as Bill Kristol put it, “the red wave has a blue undertow.”

Realistically, Republicans remain clearly favored because of Gerrymandering since 2020 in Republican-controlled states, which still tilts the House map in their favor. This means Democrats would have to win an outsize share of the competitive races to hold the chamber.

But the notion Democrats can even dream about House control is a remarkable turn from earlier in the cycle, when the House was all but penciled into the Republican column.

But the current state and district polls do look relatively promising for Democrats. The House polls are consistent with the generic ballot results.

That would be consistent with a close national vote. But here again, the long-awaited “red wave” is nowhere to be found.

Of all the indicators, primary elections are probably the single messiest measure of the national political environment. From state to state and cycle to cycle, voters usually either have a very compelling reason to show up or no reason to vote whatsoever.

But if all the states are added together, the vagaries of individual state primary elections more or less cancel out. Over the last few decades, partisan primary turnout does correlate relatively well with the results of midterm elections.

In 15 primaries since the court’s ruling, 52.5 percent of primary voters have cast Republican primary ballots compared with 48 percent in the same states in 2018 2018 was a good year for Democrats. In the end, they won 54 percent of the major party vote and carried the House easily. So they have room to fare quite a bit worse than they did in 2018 and still put up a respectable showing. Indeed, a 4.5-point shift from 2018 would yield a pretty close House national vote, with maybe a slight Republican edge depending on how one looks at uncontested races.

But that 4.5-point Republican overperformance is worse for Republicans than earlier in the year. Before Roe, Republicans were running 6.7 points better than in the 2018 primaries in the same states. The shift, however unreliable, is nonetheless consistent with the broader national story.

There’s still one measure that’s positive for Republicans: President Biden’s approval rating. His approval is in the low 40s, but it has risen along with Democratic fortunes over the last few months.

(The above information and analysis comes from FiveThirtyEight.com, so you know it’s solid.)

But in the next two months, events like the next round of hearings of the House Select Committee on January 6 are going to present lots more information to voters about Republican collusion with Trump’s conspiracy to overthrow the government. And this comes at a time when voters traditionally pay attention. And it also comes at a time when voters say by a five point margin over the next issue that Threats To Democracy is the most important issue facing the country in this mid-term election.

That’s on top of near-daily exposes of more information about Trump’s malfeasance in office with his theft of classified documents. And more information to come from the Georgia Grand Jury investigation into his attempt to subvert the election in Georgia. And there is the Washington D.C. Grand Jury investigation into his botched coup attempt, which sees all the “adults” of TrumpWorld hurrying to testify before it to clear themselves.

And today I saw one station over on Winnetka Avenue here in the western San Fernando Valley advertising Regular Gas for $4.99/gallon.

And yesterday I paid three dollars less for the same stuff I bought at Trader Joe’s ten days ago.

Not a lot, but noticeable. And it all adds up.

It’s going to be fun watching the Ferals who thought they were going to be the apex predators in the House hunt down Kevin McCarthy on November 9 and carve him up without even cooking the carcass.

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