Twenty-nine Democrats are retiring and will not seek re-election in 2022. Some of them are in solid, safe blue districts where as Nancy Pelosi says a “glass of water would win with a ‘D’ next to its name.” But some of them are in purple districts or in blue districts where support for Democrats is wavering in the face of Biden’s first catastrophic year in office. The Senate currently has 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats with Harris casting the tie breaking vote. It would only take the flip of one of those seats from blue to red and no tie breaker would ever be possible. In the House, with twenty-nine retirees and everyone else up for reelection, we only have to flip four seats to have the majority but history tends to show the party out of power gaining far more than that. So, can we hope for a Red Tsunami in 2022? I don’t know. `But right about now things are not looking good for the Democrats.
The Republican State Leadership Committee commissioned a poll from an organization called Cygnal a week ago and the results which were reported in a column by Spencer Brown, were devastating for Democrats. As poll after poll done by various pollsters have shown, Biden’s favorability is sinking, Americans are extremely unhappy with the empty car lots, the empty store shelves, and the rising cost of everything. This is beginning to look like the “Winter of Our Discontent” to quote Shakespeare’s Richard III. Biden’s favorability is actually better in this poll which only contacted likely voters in battleground states, but the overall picture remains bleak. Especially when you remember that Democrat voters tend to live in large cities while Republicans tend to live in more rural areas and pollsters tend to call people in the cities because it is easier. Also, Republicans are less inclined for some reason to answer polls, so these two factors means that virtually all polls are heavily represented by Democrats. So, here is what these Americans said:
62% think America is on the wrong track. Only 34% believe it is on the right track.
Biden had a 54% unfavorable overall view compared to only a 44% favorable view. (USA Today quotes a Quinnipiac poll on Jan. 12, 2022 giving Biden only a 33% favorability rating. The Quinnipiac poll was NOT restricted to only battleground states and probably gives a more accurate overall view of American feeling.)
Democrats at federal level had a 51% unfavorable view and a 42% favorable.
At the state level they did a bit better at only 49% unfavorable and 44% favorable.
On the other hand, in a generic ballot, that is, if you had to choose a Republican or a Democrat without considering who the individual is, Republicans have a 6 point advantage over Democrats among all voters and, more problematic for Democrats, a 15 point advantage among independent likely voters. The independent votes are generally what swing an election, a secure election. (Joseph Kennedy famously “bought” enough votes to put JFK in the White House and Lyndon Johnson was snidely called “Landslide Lyndon” because in a local election that put him first into Congress, votes miraculously appeared bearing his name. This is a tried and true election strategy of Democrats. In Illinois, a long-time Democrat stronghold, the saying is “vote early and vote often” and a local man has had a sign in his yard reading, “When I die, please don’t make me vote Democrat!”)
95% of those polled think the economy is the most important issue for this country right now and when asked who they most trust to fix the economy, Republicans lead Democrats 51% to 38%.
95% also consider inflation an important issue. Again, they trust Republicans to deal with it over Democrats 49% to 39%.
94% felt crime was an important issue. Again, state Republicans have the edge over Democrats 50% to 38%. All of that clamoring about defunding the police and supporting the “mostly peaceful” rioters didn’t go over well with the actual people!
91% of those surveyed said education is an important issue to them and here there is an important and noteworthy change. Democrats are usually considered the party of education because they are heavily supported by both the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers ( the teachers’ unions). Millions of dollars flow from teachers’ dues through the organizations and into Democrat candidate coffers every election. But this year there has been a change. The unions kept schools closed when science said children were less likely to get COVID and without comorbidities, would have mild cases. The unions pushed for mask mandates of students and teachers, and in Illinois, after several school districts headed by the Paris districts had gotten the State School Board to agree that individual districts could make the mask decision themselves, the Governor (no doubt with plenty of union coin in his coffers) reversed their decision and ordered all school children, teachers, cooks, custodians, and bus drivers to be masked. In addition, many unions are pushing the Marxist Critical Race Theory in various forms in their schools, causing fights between parents and school boards, and was no doubt the deciding factor in the recent Virginia election in which the governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general positions were all won by Republicans.
Now, 44% of Americans prefer Republicans in charge of education and only 43% think Democrats do a better job. Give it a few more months and I think that slim 1-point advantage will increase. Democrats just can’t seem to help themselves.
Newly elected Governor Youngkin of Virginia immediately upon being sworn in issued a number of executive orders giving parents control over their own children in the school, from mask wearing to what their children are being taught. One order forbids school districts from mandating masking but several districts are defying him and filing suit. Now there are three things to understand here:
First, the order does not prevent any teacher or student from voluntarily wearing a mask to school.
Second, studies all over the world and especially in the United States have shown that masks have absolutely no effect on stopping the spread of COVID. The CDC has admitted that cloth masks are worthless and that surgical masks are only somewhat helpful in stopping the spread. The FDA however, warns hospital workers that surgical masks DO NOT PREVENT THE TRANSMISSION OF VIRUSES, only blood splatter and spit, because viral particles are so tiny they pass right through the masks. If you can breathe through your mask, you can breathe in virus particles. That is science. Only N95 masks give protection, but even that is not 100%.
Third, children are the least likely of all to get the virus and the least likely to be very sick with it. To them (as to most people with Omicron) it is like having a cold or the flu.
But, to Fairfax County, Virginia, it is a major deal. An unmasked child is a death threat to the entire school. So, when a mother called the school and told them she was bringing her children to school unmasked the next day according to the Governor’s Executive Order, and then did just that, accompanied by a fellow parent who was a journalist and a handful of others with signs, her children were denied entrance by a security guard who was also accompanied by a journalist. But that wasn’t all. The school immediately called the police and three, three, police cars showed up to prevent this woman’s children from entering the school! I sense a lawsuit coming here, as well it should!
When a second question about education asked about which political party Americans believed would protect parental control of their children’s education, the numbers were Republicans 47%, Democrats 37%.
Bingo.
Interestingly, the poll was conducted from January 19 – 20, 2022 in the battleground states of Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. Virginia, where the nationally viewed fights over CRT in the classroom and the mask mandate ban happened, was not even included in the poll. I wonder what difference that would have made to the percentages on education!
There are 33.7 million families in the United States with children under the age of 18 and many more with 18-year-old high school seniors. And because most grandparents today are younger and vital, that adds up to 4 more concerned voters for each of those 33.7 million families. Even being conservative and accounting for one parent families, that could well be over 100 million votes that the Democrats could be gambling with! Isn’t that rather stupid? Every policy that the Democrats have advanced in this ruinous year of Biden’s administration has driven Americans, including moderate Democrats, deeper into the eager arms of the Republican Party. But above all things, even Democrats should know that you lose even the soccer moms when you start messing with their kids!