WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden and the new Democratic Congress have just been sworn in, but the clock has already started during the midterm elections in 2022, when voters will decide whether the president will have more than two years to advance his agenda with a friendly Congress.
Democrats must defend a narrow majority of 221-211 in the House (218 seats are needed for control) and the 50-50 Senate, where the loss of even a single seat will cost the party the chamber.
History is not on their side. Americans usually have control over power, and the president’s party has lost its seats in almost every middle term since the 1930s. They usually suffer huge losses in their first mid-term.
“In 2020, House Republics won 28 of the 29 most competitive districts by emphasizing the exact policy of assassination issued by Joe Biden during his first term,” said Michael McAdams, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP campaign . “If House Democrats thought 2020 was bad, they were not the least bit prepared for what the 2022 cycle ahead.”
The most recent exception to the historical trend was in 2002, when the country, in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, rallied around President George W. Bush and picked up its IDP seats.
Democrats now hope that if Biden can succeed in fighting another crisis – the Covid-19 pandemic – and the Democrats will knock on the door again after stopping for the pandemic, voters will reward them.
“Organize, organize, organize. This is how we have hurt history and won two by-elections in Georgia,” the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Jaime Harrison, told MSNBC on Friday.
It’s still early days, and there are more questions than answers over the next two years of American politics. Here are the top five:
1. What is Trump doing?
Donald Trump said in his final public remarks as president that he “will be back in some form.” Even after being arrested twice and banned from Twitter, Trump remains overwhelmingly popular among Republican voters, with only 5 percent saying they regret voting for him after the deadly uprising at the Capitol this month.
Democrats have done best if they can run against Trump without him being on the ballot, as in the 2018 midterm and Georgia Senate runoff, saying Republicans will find it difficult to wash Trump’s hands after the attack on democracy.
“It makes it impossible for them to turn around and recruit the classic Republican banker in the foreign objects to run for Congress,” said Tyler Law, a Democratic worker working on House Races. “A lot of people will forget his crude comments in a few years. Americans will not forget the time our Capitol was raided by domestic terrorists dressed in Trump gear.”
2. What happens to the IDP?
Even if Trump decides to spend it on the golf course, the Republican Party he left behind faces an internal reckoning over his influence and their future.
Trump has helped push the rise of juice from the party’s shrinking base – they have won the presidential vote only once in 32 years – but with him gone, some want to double Trumpism while others want to move on.
“There are going to be pretty competitive, if not brutal, primary elections for the Senate nominations in places like Georgia, Arizona and others,” said Matt Gorman, a Republican strategist who worked on House Races.
Yet Republicans found themselves in a similar position after Barack Obama’s election in 2008 and moved them back to victory in the midterm, and Democrats did the same after Trump’s victory in 2016.
3. Everything about the base?
In the past, it has been difficult for Democrats to get their base to run in non-presidential elections, and after four years of almost constant protests and donations and concerns, the party’s voters may be eager for a break from politics. .
Republicans, however, face their own challenge in eliminating their base without Trump, and it could be harder when he evokes sentiment that Republicans are betraying him.
They also encountered some financial winds after large corporations said they would stop donations due to the riots in Capitol, at least for a while, and with the sidelines or death of some of their biggest funders, such as the National Rifle Association.
“Democrats obviously grew their online donor base much better than Republicans, but a lot of it was the kind of anger donations against Trump,” said Jessica Taylor, an analyst at the Cook Political Report, who follows the Senate race. “I’m not sure you would donate Republicans in the same way, because Biden is not divisive in the same way.”
4. What about Biden?
Both of Biden’s predecessors entered the White House with full control of Washington and faced almost immediate grassroots uprising that culminated in a ‘shell’ in the middle, as Obama put it memorably.
Trump’s inauguration is overshadowed by the Women’s March just a day later. And despite embarking on astronomical approval ratings, he saw the first excitement of conservative setbacks at the Tea Party rallies organized in February 2009, just over a month after taking office.
Biden, the strategists in both parties agree, are less divided than Obama or Trump. Conservatives have had a hard time turning the president into a boogeyman who animates their base, such as Hillary Clinton.
Restrictions on Covid-19 could complicate the build-up of popular protest actions, but the setback of the ongoing social-restraint restrictions could also spark why a new movement is on fire.
Can Biden stop the pandemic and build up the economy better, as he promised? Will his government face scandals? Most do.
5. What does the card look like?
States are still drawing their maps after the once-a-decade census, so we still do not know what congressional districts will look like in 2022. Some states with shrinking populations like New York are expected to lose seats in Congress, while others, like a thriving Texas, are expected to earn some.
“I think the Republicans are well positioned to take over the House again, but the $ 64,000 question is, ‘What does redistribution look like? Asked Gorman, the Republican strategist.
Republicans have the upper hand in the states after 2020 was a disappointing year for Democrats, but it is not as skewed as before, after 2010.
Meanwhile, the card has been introduced in the Senate. Democrats need to make sense. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., And Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., Who have just won special elections, are defending but have to run again to seek a full six-year term. They also have senators who can be re-elected in New Hampshire and Nevada, who have only narrowly led Biden.
On the Republican side, Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey retires, leaving an open seat in a state that Biden carried. Ron Johnson, a staunch Conservative, in Wisconsin, could be re-elected in another Biden state. And the GOP will also have to defend seats in the battlefield in North Carolina and Florida.