I have a lot of thoughts today and I am going to write about all of them. Instead of one subject I’ll tackle several. Bear with me.
First, more news on the U.S. Senate race in North Carolina. A John Locke Foundation poll has Cheri Beasley tied with Ted Budd. That news comes on the heels of a poll last week that showed the former Chief Justice leading the Congressman. Clearly, there’s movement in this race that favors the Democrat.
It’s still early and any momentum Beasley has can certainly evaporate. It did for Kay Hagan in 2014. However, Beasley is running a better campaign than Budd. Her tour across the state is catching attention at a time when voters are beginning to tune in. Her ads exposing Budd for opposing measures to reduce insulin prices appear to have landed blows.
The poll shows the electorate shifting in Democrats’ direction as we head into the fall, though Republicans still hold leads in the generic ballots for Congress and state legislature as well as Supreme Court. The political environment has certainly improved for Democrats but there are still big warning signs. Biden’s approval rating is still abysmally low. Overwhelmintly, people believe the country is on the wrong track. The economy is improving, but inflation is still a dominant factor in people’s lives.
The GOP hopes that these traditionally predictive measures stay bad for Democrats and that the election settles down into a relatively normal pattern. Democrats hope that external factors like the January 6 Committee, the Dobbs decision, and the increasing extremism of the GOP will turn voters away from Republicans and buck the fundamentals that tend to drive midterm elections. Voters often seem a bit restless and prepared to upend political norms but then return to their traditional patterns as elections near.
Democrats’ cautious optimism may be borne out if Republicans don’t figure out how to reel-in their extremists. The right-flank has found the GOP version of Defund the Police: Kill the feds. In the wake of the Mar-a-Lago search, Trumpists have been calling for defunding the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies. A GOP candidate for Florida state house says he will introduce a bill to allow Floridians to “shoot FBI, IRS, ATF, and all other feds ON SIGHT!” One man was killed attacking an FBI office in Cincinnati and the FBI has warned that it is at increased danger due to the rhetoric.
Republicans have been slow to condemn the rhetoric and have often inflamed it. They’ve claimed that the new budget bill funds an army of IRS agents who, Republican politicians warn, are “coming for you.” GOP House Majority Whip warned of “rogue” FBI agents, despite the agency being led by a Republican and Trump appointee. The rhetoric may fire up the GOP base, but it puts law enforcement in danger and could alienate more moderate voters.
Tom Bonier, CEO of the Democratic data firm Target Smart, says that women have substantially outpaced men in registering to vote since the Dobbs decision. As he noted, they’re probably not registering to support the Supreme Court’s action. These women could give a boost to Democratic enthusiasm in an off-year election when turnout matters.
The news for Democrats is good at the time they need it. The public will begin tuning into the midterm cycle in earnest in the coming weeks and the party has some momentum. That said, we live in a time when public opinion can turn on a dime. Republicans still have the fundamentals in their favor. The president is very unpopular. Inflation is still the number one concern of most voters. And Trump’s woes tend to fire up, instead of subdue, his supporters. Still, the red wave that seemed to be forming now looks more like just a swell.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
@ Andy: Do you mean the same Ted Budd that advertises about President Biden’s spending when it is the Congress who holds the purse strings? Get the eejit a copy of the Constitution, quick! lol
The GOP ‘commitment’ to law enforcement became evident on January 6th, 2021. They believe in law enforcement only when it benefits them. When the laws being enforced are those they favor. If the law runs contrary to their objectives, then they become oppressive thugs who use heavy handed tactics against poor small business owners.
Lest we forget, the extreme left trolled those waters with their own brand of insanity with “defunding the police.” I have little doubt it was a proximal cause for the localized Republican victories down ballot across the country in 2020.
Law enforcement is society’s “or else” factor. They are who people call when they are scared, nervous, or can’t resolve conflict on their own. The general population doesn’t have a lot of interaction with the Federal levels of government. But that level of government is the one most often scrutinized. People recognize, just like they did with defunding the police, defunding the FBI or other law enforcement agencies on any level, runs counter to their own well-being. Who’s tasked with combatting terrorism? Who has stopped, interceded, or prevented another act of terrorism on US soil since 2001? Those actions matriculate down to the local level through fusion centers. Citizens, while they hear about the big story stuff, to a lesser extent know that there is more to those actions than what they are shown on TV or see via social media.
These dingbat politicians think, erroneously, that by pandering to their respective bases that this will help them through the next election cycle. Pander though they might, the political base of each respective party does not constitute the numerical clout to give victory to either.
I, for one, hope that Thomas is spot on with his analysis for the fall. It can disappear quicker than it promulgated itself, but it can be cultivated and grown across the time remaining until the mid-terms. If we remember radical and fear motivate the base; sanity and rationality motivate the middle and swing voter. That is where we will win or lose this fall.
I commented via Facebook and am not sure where the comment went. Ed Harrison.
There was actually an academic study after Hagan’s loss to Tillis, which confirmed by turnout analysis that she was winning in early voting. I believe that you may have written about it. If Dems understand the critical importance of those last 96 hours or so before polls close on Election Day, this may not be repeated. In a discussion among Durham Dems on Zoom not long ago, it was pointed out that the Rs disregarded the danger of COVID transmission in 2020 and sent huge numbers of volunteers (and probably paid folks) door to door in swing precincts. Ds did not do that.
It will be just swell when Ted Budd is elected to the US Senate and conservative jurists are seated on the state’s appellate and supreme courts. Oh, and a legislative super majority in Ralwigh, too.