Matt Yglesias gloats.
This was a bit of a monkey’s paw campaign for those of us who two years ago said Joe Biden could have a surprisingly successful presidency by boring the country to death, lowering the temperature on the culture war, and returning focus to brass tacks economic issues. Biden was pretty successful at delivering on that agenda, except the economic basics seemed to turn against him with inflation soaring and the national mood souring. Rather than the kitchen table, Democrats’ best issue was clearly abortion when the Supreme Court hung an albatross around Republicans’ necks.
Democrats ran lots of ads about abortion. Lots and lots and lots of ads.
To the point where a lot of people on both sides thought they were really fucking up by not doing more to be visibly addressing the crime and inflation issues that voters said was more important. I always thought the abortion-centric ad strategy was the right choice among the choices available, but I still didn’t really think it would work.
Yet looking around, I think you have to conclude that it did.
Democrats did better than I thought they would. They didn’t wildly outperform the polls or anything. But they did outperform the vibes. They outperformed the history of in-party midterm performances. They outperformed skepticism that surveyors know how to reach the public. And in several states where it counted, they outperformed Joe Biden.
Jerryskids
With all the terrible things the Republicans were planning on doing, why would you ever vote Republican? I mean, all the terrible things the Republicans were planning on doing, the Democrats had already done so you knew what you were getting. If you hate America and want to see it crushed, why would you risk the GOP merely promising to do the job when the Democrats were already proven able and willing to get the job done?
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