A media that is obsessed with horse race politics is trying desperately to come up with ways to predict what’s going to happen in the 2022 midterm elections. Since polling is still pretty unreliable when it comes to individual races, they have to look for something else. Typically that means taking into account the fact that, historically, the party that controls the White House does poorly in midterm elections. That, combined with Biden’s approval numbers, is part of the package that is predicting doom and gloom for Democrats.
But as we see with NBC’s First Read, there’s another poll number pundits are using to predict a “shellacking” for Democrats: the extent to which voters think the country is on the “wrong track.” According to most polls, 70-75% think we’re heading in the wrong direction. With numbers that high, the feeling is obviously bipartisan.
It is understandable why Republicans think the country is on the wrong track. Right wing media is constantly feeding them apocalyptic messages about things like stolen elections, hordes of immigrants invading our country, crime levels on the rise, public schools that teach propaganda to their children, and Democrats implementing a socialist agenda. And that doesn’t even take into account the radical conspiracy theories about how a cabal of pedophiles is in control of the world.
So what explains the fact that so many Democrats also think the country is headed in the wrong direction – especially when their party controls the White House and has (albeit small) majorities in both houses of congress?
A seemingly intractable pandemic is certainly a major contributor. But given four years of a Trump presidency, followed by a multitude of Republican attacks on our democracy, it is understandable that even those on the left are feeling pessimistic about the direction we’re heading. All of that is combined with the fact that mainstream media seems focused on highlighting the challenges we face as “Biden failures.”
It is obvious that Republicans and right wing media are depending on hyping their apocalyptic messages to get their voters to the polls in November. They’re doing everything they can to inflame the chaos, while avoiding any talk about their actual agenda.
The question is: how will this pessimism affect Democrats? To the extent that the “wrong track” analysis stems from the way Republicans are attacking our democracy, it is possible that more people will turn out to vote in the midterms. There’s just too much at stake. But if that feeling is a reaction to the media’s obsession with Biden failures, it could depress turnout.
In the end, Hayes Brown nailed it when talking about this particular data point.
I understand the theoretical utility of trying to take the country’s temperature. But declaring that “America is on the wrong track” based on such polling is absurd. As it stands, analysts and pundits are pretending that they’re using objective data to explain the political fortunes of our elected leaders and the policies they’re advocating. But nothing substantive is being measured — it’s all just vibes.
Nancy, I’m sympathetic to this take. But let’s step back for just a moment and consider the fact that a significant minority of voters, and virtually all low information voters, will actually vote based on those “vibes”. And it is beyond dispute that when it comes to the “Biden failures” the mainstream media are pumping the bellows as fucking fast as they can trying to turn that ember into an inferno in the minds of the general public. And I have to say, they are doing a damn fine job, and are giving a huge lift to the efforts of the GOP to destroy any possibility of a continuance of democracy in this country.
When the argument is predicated on the fact that “nothing substantive is being measured”, that really gives me no comfort at all for the prospects in November. Facts and policy arguments really don’t win elections in 2022. Those “vibes” do. It shouldn’t be that way in a healthy democracy, but it is. Republicans have learned very well how to use vibes, while Democrats are still trying to figure out how to craft an argument to persuade all those people who continue to puzzle them by voting, time and again, against their own self interests, by electing Republicans who don’t give two fucks about them. In the meantime, those vibes keep wreaking havoc on the public perceptions of Democrats and the Biden administration.
It could well be that Democrats think we’ll be on the wrong track until Trumpism is thoroughly tamped down which would lead to greater voting by democrats.