From the Roe v. Wade reversal and the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol to the FBI’s search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and President Joe Biden’s busy August, a long list of topics are on the minds of Americans.
The economy remains the No. 1 issue for voters as midterm elections approach, many political strategists believe.
Pundits and officials from both parties are sharing their opinions about whether the economy’s current condition will affect the November general election as Republicans strive to regain control of the House and the Senate.
While speaking to a crowd of donors in a Maryland suburb last week, Biden launched his mission to get Democratic candidates elected in November.
He touted that the economy is “heading in the right direction” and said Republicans are stripping Americans of reproductive rights and voting rights while bowing to extremists and the toxic influence of Trump.
“What we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy,” Biden said. “It’s not just Trump. It’s the entire philosophy that undermines the—I’m going to say something—it’s like semi-fascism.”
Historical trends show that the party that occupies the White House loses seats in midterm elections.
Red Wave?
Recently, Democrat Pat Ryan defeated favored Republican Marcus Molinaro in a special election to fill a vacant seat in New York’s 19th Congressional District.The upstate New York district voted for Barack Obama in 2012, Trump in 2016, and Biden in 2020, making it a bellwether district.
“Republicans can say goodbye to their ‘red wave’ because voters are clearly coming out in force to elect a pro-choice majority to Congress this November,” Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in a statement.
David Carlucci, a former New York state senator who’s a Democratic political strategist, agrees with Maloney, using Ryan’s victory as an example.
“The predicted Republican tsunami will turn out to be a ripple,” Carlucci told The Epoch Times. “Republicans have strayed so far to the right in their primaries that they now face a long journey to make it back to the center, and that is a challenge because Trump continues to be front and center in headlines for controversial reasons.”
Dave Wasserman, a reporter at Cook Political Report, had a different opinion, saying that the New York 19th Congressional District results don’t reflect November’s expected voter turnout.
More voters will head to the polls on Nov. 8 than the amount that did in New York in the special election, he pointed out, which could determine whether Ryan will remain in the seat long term, as he’s running for reelection.
The Economy Matters
Current economic numbers aren’t favorable for Democrats.The economy plunged into a recession—according to its textbook definition—after the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) declined for a second straight quarter, from April to June.
Inflation reached a 40-year high of 9.1 percent in June, before dipping to 8.5 percent in July, according to the Consumer Price Index.
A Monmouth University survey released in early July revealed that 63 percent of the respondents say inflation, gas prices, the economy, or everyday bills and groceries is their family’s biggest concern.
Abortion was the top issue for just 5 percent of those surveyed, followed by 3 percent for guns and gun ownership, health care costs, and job security and unemployment.
According to an NBC News poll conducted between Aug. 12 and Aug. 16, a majority of Americans believe that the economy is already in a recession and that Biden’s recently signed Inflation Reduction Act will do little or nothing to reduce inflation.
The NBC News poll was completed during and after the period when the FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and after the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and a Bureau of Labor Statistics report showing that 528,000 jobs were created in July.
The same survey shows that 42 percent of registered voters approve of Biden’s performance, while 55 percent don’t approve. The president had the same job approval rating in May.
A late July study from Bloomberg Economics forecasts ballot outcomes through the Misery Index, which is calculated by adding the inflation and unemployment rates, and projects it forward through Nov. 8.
Democrats can expect to lose 30 to 40 seats in the House and a few in the Senate, the study indicates.
Inside Elections stated that it’s likely that Democrats lose 12 to 30 seats in the House.
The Misery Index rose to 12.6 percent in June. Bloomberg Economics projects that the index will be 12 percent in October. That rivals the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2008–09, when unemployment climbed to 10 percent and Democrats were dealt with what then-President Obama described as a “shellacking” in the midterms.
“The economy always matters. People vote with pocketbooks,” Wes Farno, an Ohio-based Republican political strategist, told The Epoch Times. “We continue to see ramifications of Biden’s policies, including high gas prices and out-of-control inflation. It will have an impact.
“Democrats are pointing out that gas prices are down from the high, but they are nowhere near as low as they were when America was energy independent. The economy always affects the results of an election.”
Carlucci said Biden’s recent signing of the Inflation Reduction Act, his executive order to forgive student loans for many Americans, and the inflation rate decreasing from 9.1 percent in June to 8.5 percent in July are signs that the president “is on a roll at the right time.”
“Whether we oppose or support Biden’s policies, people are saying, ‘Look, the guy is doing something,’” Carlucci said. “The president is using the few tools at his disposal to fight inflation and help make sure the economy is moving in the right direction.”
Biden’s Inflation Fight
The Inflation Reduction Act is designed to address a variety of issues, including climate change, adding 87,000 IRS agents, and allowing Medicare to negotiate with drugmakers on prescription prices.Yet one problem it doesn’t solve is actually reducing inflation in the short term.
The legislation will decrease annual inflation by 0.1 percentage points over the next five years, according to the study.
That reduction starts “once major deficit-reducing provisions of the legislation are fully implemented, but the act would have no measurable impact on inflation after 2028.”“All these point estimates are not statistically different from zero, indicating a low level of confidence that the legislation would have a measurable impact on inflation,” the report reads.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) stated in August that the legislation would have a “negligible” impact on inflation in 2022 and 2023. The CBO reported that it expects the measure to help lower inflation in future years.
Many Democratic candidates are avoiding Biden during his official visits to their states. In Ohio, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) is running for retiring Republican Sen. Rob Portman’s seat against Trump-endorsed J.D. Vance.
Student Debt Relief
Biden recently announced his student loan forgiveness plan that forgives as much as $10,000 in debt for individual federal loan borrowers who earn less than $150,000 per year and up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients.A poll by the progressive think tank and polling firm Data for Progress announced that 45 percent of voters in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin would be “somewhat more likely” or “much more likely” to vote if Biden erased a minimum of $10,000 in student loans.
A throng of Democratic candidates, including Ryan, spoke out against the decision.
“As someone who’s paying off my own family’s student loans, I know the costs of higher education are too high,” he said in a statement. “And while there’s no doubt that a college education should be about opening opportunities, waiving debt for those already on a trajectory to financial security sends the wrong message to the millions of Ohioans without a degree working just as hard to make ends meet.”
Ryan encouraged an “across-the-board tax cut” for “working- and middle-class families,” medical debt cancellation, and opportunities for borrowers to refinance their student loans, among other ideas.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), who’s involved in a contentious general election against Trump-endorsed former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, said in a statement that she doesn’t approve of Biden’s executive action and that “we should be focusing on passing my legislation to expand Pell Grants for lower-income students, target loan forgiveness to those in need, and actually make college more affordable for working families.”
Christopher Briggs is a Washington-based Republican political strategist and public affairs counsel for the Independent Institute, a conservative think tank. He believes that the student loan forgiveness plan, the Inflation Reduction Act, inflation, and the skyrocketing cost of living will benefit Republicans—at least in the House.
“The economy is in a terrible freefall. I don’t think many people are fooled by Biden’s actions,” Briggs told The Epoch Times. “I think Republicans will take back the House, but the Senate is more difficult because it is a statewide election, and there is a divided electorate in each state. The Roe v. Wade reversal has energized the left, and that issue will have a larger impact in Senate races.”
An analysis published by the Penn Wharton Budget Model about the loan forgiveness plan indicates that it will cost about $300 billion for taxpayers and have the most impact on those in the top 60 percent of income distribution.
“First, I think it probably does help the president with some of his progressive base,” Mark Caleb Smith, director of the center for political studies at Cedarville University in Ohio, told a Dayton, Ohio, media outlet.
“On the other hand, I think that it probably does make it harder for Democrats to appeal to white voters. Especially those without a college degree. That’s really been the battleground group over the last couple of elections between Republicans and Democrats. I think the president’s decision probably made that a lot tougher for Democrats in the fall.”
The Commerce Department will publish its third-quarter GDP data on Oct. 27, less than two weeks before the Nov. 8 general election. Most economists define a recession as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth.
But if there were a third straight quarter of decline, it could spell doom for Democrats in the House and the Senate, National Republican Campaign Committee spokesman Mike Berg believes, noting that “you can draw a straight line from the inflation crisis caused by the Democrats’ American Rescue Plan to this recession.”
