Last summer, there was brief time period in which polls showed that the Democratic party might actually do well in the upcoming midterms. President Joe Biden had just signed his Deficit Reduction Act into law, and the overturning of Roe Vs Wade was sparking anger against the Republican party. But now, it seems, the pendulum has swung back in the Republicans favor, as Americans have accepted the overturning of Roe as not that a big a deal (even if a majority of them don't agree with it), and the economy has become the number one issue for voters. And by the economy, they mean inflation and high gas prices, which, unfortunately for the Democrats. has remained stubbornly high in the past few months even as the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates more than once. (Gas prices have gone down, but are still higher than they were when Biden took office). While the Republican party has claimed that they will somehow "fix" inflation, they have no real concrete plan to do so, because they don't need one. Voters tend to blame a poor economy on the party in power, even though much of the economy is beyond the control of the president and congress. (If Joe Biden had a "stop inflation" button on his desk, he would have pushed it by now). While it is possible that the Democrats will hold onto the Senate, they are likely to lose the House of Representatives, which would lead to two years of the kind of gridlock that both Obama and Trump often faced during their tenures in the White House.
None of this is unusual: the party of the President in power almost always loses seats in congress in the first midterm election, from the public turning against Bill Clinton in 1994 to the rise of the anti Barack Obama tea party movement in 2010. And, Biden can take solace in the fact a poor showing in the midterms doesn't mean that a President won't win reecletion, as we found out with both Clinton in 1996 and Obama in 2012.
But there is a bigger problem with possible upcoming Republican victories, and, once again, that problem is linked to former President Donald Trump. Trump's continued unfounded assertions that he won the 2020 election is still embraced by a majority of Republican voters. And that has lead to a stunning almost 300 different Republican candidates across the nation running for office who agree with his assertions (heck, 10 of those candidates actually attended the January 6th Rally!). These candidates winning, especially in swing states, could lead to a truly frightening possibility: Trump could steal the 2024 election. Remember that it was Republicans standing up to him (like former Pennsylvania Secretary of State Brett Raffensperger) that finally pushed Trump into leaving the White House. With Trump election loyalists ensconced in offices like Secretary of State or the Governorship, there are any number of ways that our system of voting could be corrupted in swing states with close vote counts, with certain votes being rejected and Trump being named the winner, democracy be damned.
What can Democrats (and really, anyone who cares about American democracy) do? Unfortunately, not a lot, with the Republican victory in a few days looking more and more assured. If the Republicans do win, the best thing that can happen in the country before 2024 is that Trump may not feel up to another campaign run (he will be 80 in 2024 after all) or even that one of the several investigations into his possible criminal behavior will turn up an actual conviction (although several cynics have pointed out that there's nothing in the Constitution that says that you can't run from a jail cell). But we can't bet on those things happening, and, as unbelievable as it may seem, a man who lied about losing an election and then set off a violent riot over it, could find himself back in power in 2024.
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