Good morning! I watched the January 6th hearing yesterday, and then watched the MSNBC recap last night ... but I’m not going to write about that today.
Dem election fortunes rising?
Political prognosticating is a dangerous high-wire act. From Dewey defeats Truman, to predictions of an easy Hillary Clinton victory, trying to see into the electorate and predict an outcome is notoriously difficult.
And yet ...
There are signs that the midterms may not be the disaster for Dems that everyone expects. The combination of the January 6 hearings and the Roe decision seem to have gotten some people off the couch. The generic ballot of Dems vs Repubs has swung toward the Dems. Various special elections across the country have either been won by Dems, or the Dem has come much closer than past election numbers predicted.
Let me quote one graf from a story on Daily Kos about this:
In the local elections held in Wisconsin in April, despite a widely predicted “red wave” in a low turnout election, which traditionally favors Republicans, Democrats won 53% of the 276 contested local elections on the ballot, holding their own in the purple areas in the state. Meanwhile, Wisconsin Governor Evers is leading both Republican candidates fighting it out in the primary, one of them by four and the other by seven percentage points. Ron Johnson -- who has a trail of controversies and damaging quotes a mile-long -- trails three of the four Democrats running in the primary for the Senate seat.
If you read the story, you’ll notice it contains signs and outcomes from across the “heartland,” which has certainly trended red for a while.
And before anyone gets too excited, let’s note that these are incremental movements, for the most part. They won’t make a difference in races where the difference is 20 or 30 percentage points. But in districts where the race is already close, this Dem-focused motivation may be enough to tip the scales.
Best case on the national level? We hold the House, and actually pick up a few seats in the Senate.
On our state level? The issue here is that very few races are close enough to be affected. Most seats are either solid Dem or solid Repub. But, in those races where the voter turnout is normally low, perhaps we hold some seats we expected to lose. We might even pick up a few seats. Republicans will still have a super-majority in both chambers of the legislature, but we may be able to narrow the gap some. And frankly, considering the predictions of just a few months ago, that would be a significant comeback for KY Dems.
Miscellanea
- I’ve had one or two readers respond to my question about an event calendar by sending me lists of events from various sources. Thanks for sending those! I’m still considering it – but I suspect the better solution is for organizations to send me their events, so I don't have to go hunting for them. We shall see.
- The KY Democratic Women’s summer meeting is this weekend, and the event is sold out. I’ll be there on Saturday, covering it for the site. If you are there, be sure to some by and say Hello.
- In looking back over past Daily Takes, some of them struck me as pretty good. (If I do say so myself.) Since this is a perk for Partners, I hesitate to share them publicly. But, some of them might be good for that. Any thoughts on that?
All for today. Thanks, as always, for reading – and for supporting the work.
Bruce
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15 Jun 2022
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The Daily Take is a newsletter containing observations and thoughts of publisher Bruce Maples, and is only available to Partners of Forward Kentucky. It is available via email, and is also available on the web site to logged-in Partners. The email version is sent to Partner members who have opted-in to receiving it via the Newsletters section of their profile.
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