What you do through Nov. 8 will decide
Half of registered voters are dissatisfied with Democrats, polls say. Meaning half (more than half, actually) are dissatisfied with Republicans, and hold “no enthusiasm for returning to the programs, priorities, and daily chaos of Donald Trump’s presidency,” writes Ron Brownstein in The Atlantic:
If Republicans make only modest gains this fall, it will be a clear warning that the party, as currently defined by Trump’s imprint, faces a hard ceiling on its potential support. But even a small Republican gain would send Democrats an equal warning that concerns about the GOP’s values and commitment to democracy may not be sufficient to deny them the White House in 2024. “If I was advising the Biden administration, I would say this is the No. 1 priority: Fix the fundamentals,” John Sides, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University and a co-author of a new book on the 2020 presidential election, The Bitter End, told me. “The biggest priority is inflation, and everything else is secondary.”
But until Nov. 8, it’s turnout, Democrats. Brownstein adds, “[F]or all the doubts Americans are expressing about their performance, there is no evidence of rising confidence in Republicans.”
Despite the challenges, Democrats remain competitive in places tradition says they shouldn’t. The key factor is this:
You can’t win if you don’t show up to play.