By Jack Phillips
A longtime Democrat strategist warned members of his own party that they could face a blowout loss during the 2020 midterms.
“The marked decline in support for President [Joe] Biden and his administration nationally and in key swing states indicates that the Democratic Party could endure a blowout defeat in the 2022 midterm elections,” Douglas Schoen, who had worked for former President Bill Clinton and was an adviser to Michael Bloomberg’s short-lived presidential campaign wrote in an opinion piece in The Hill this week.
The Biden administration in recent days has received significant bipartisan pushback for how the U.S. military withdrawal was handled, while Biden’s announcement last week for new COVID-19 mandates for private employers could face stiff opposition from Republican governors and other entities. Rising inflation, gas prices, and grocery prices could also trigger backlash at the polls.
“Biden is in a significantly weaker position now than both of his most recent Democratic predecessors—Bill Clinton and Barack Obama—at this point in their presidencies, which suggests that Democrats could suffer even more substantial losses in 2022 than the party did in 1994 and 2010,” he continued.
In Congress, Democrats don’t fare much better, Schoen warned. Of issue is a budget resolution worth $3.5 trillion, which could bring significant increases in taxes while raising the debt, deficit, and inflation, he said.
“The electoral backlash against Democrats could be even more substantial than in both 1994 and 2010,” he said, referring to previous Republican wins in Congress. Historically, the president’s party loses seats during the subsequent midterm election.
Democrats currently hold a 50-50 majority in the Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as a tie-breaker. They also hold a slim majority in the House, although Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has previously expressed confidence that her party would retake the lower chamber in 2022.
“Republicans need to pick up just five House seats, and redistricting alone could cost Democrats close to or even more than that number,” Schoen wrote. “Further, since World War II, only twice has the president’s party gained seats in the midterm elections—in 1998 and 2002, when both presidents had approval ratings over 60 percent and, even so, saw only meager House seat gains.”
Schoen concluded by suggesting the White House and Democrats need to reverse course in order to prevent significant losses in Congress.
“If the Biden administration continues to push unnecessarily big government spending initiatives and tax increases, along with weak immigration policies and an incoherent foreign policy strategy, Democrats could suffer the most substantial midterm loss of any party in recent history,” he said.
Last month, before the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Pelosi told reporters that she doesn’t believe poll numbers suggesting the GOP would take the House in 2022.
“I’m very confident that we will win the House,” Pelosi said on Aug. 6, shrugging off a previous warning that was issued by Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, to incumbent Democrat representatives in August.
The Epoch Times has contacted the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for comment.
