Veteran political reporter Carl Hulse contends, “The Midterms Feel Like 2006 All Over Again.”
The war in the Middle East is increasingly unpopular. So is the president as his numbers dip perilously — a common development in the sixth year of a presidency. Congressional Republicans are embroiled in unsavory scandals. Americans are shelling out big bucks for gas while economic anxiety runs high.
The grim backdrop for November’s midterm elections has created a steep challenge for Republicans and opportunities for Democrats that look much the same as those they encountered in 2006. Back then, congressional Republicans faced the voters at the midpoint of President George W. Bush’s second term, with the public roiled by the war in Iraq, high fuel prices and a series of ugly accusations against members of the G.O.P. majority on Capitol Hill.
“It is striking,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader and chief architect of his party’s Senate campaign strategy this year and two decades ago. “The analogy is amazing.”
[…]
“This is 2006 2.0,” said Rahm Emanuel, who in 2006 was an ambitious Democratic House member from Illinois and Mr. Schumer’s counterpart across the Capitol as the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “The similarities are eerie.”
The Iraq war was almost four years old, and we were losing dozens of service members a month, so the analogy isn’t perfect. Then again, even so, a narrow majority of Americans still approved of that war effort on Election Day, whereas the Iran war has been wildly unpopular from the start.
Mr. Emanuel and Mr. Schumer both have good reason to look back fondly on 2006, when Democrats triumphed in a blue wave.
Exceeding expectations that year, Democrats picked up six seats in the Senate, taking control of the chamber. In the House, where the Republican majority seemed to have exhausted itself after a dozen years, Democrats gained 31 seats and installed Nancy Pelosi, who is now retiring, as the first woman speaker. Mr. Bush, another victim of the six-year presidential itch, famously branded the outcome “a thumping.”
Indeed.
This year, the Senate map is stacked against Democrats — they would need to win at least four Republican-held seats to take control, all but one of them in states that Mr. Trump won in 2024. And not all of the most competitive races have gone as party leaders had hoped. But Democrats have benefited from some political twists in places where they had not anticipated being competitive, such as in Texas, where Mr. Trump’s primary endorsement of the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, over Senator John Cornyn, put that seat in play.
The nonpartisan Cook Political Report on Thursday moved its ratings of the Texas and Iowa Senate races from leaning Republican to a toss up, underscoring the expanding battleground that Democrats would need in order to replicate 2006. Democrats say that they believe they are also increasingly competitive in other states carried by Mr. Trump two years ago, including Kansas.
We’ve been fooled on Texas before (Senator Beto O’Rourke, anyone?), but there’s reason to believe it could happen. Not only did Texas Republicans oust a safe incumbent for a controversial grifter with multiple criminal indictments under his belt, but the GOP ticket is fighting for its life across the board in the Lone Star state.
Still, Hulse urges caution:
While clear similarities exist this year, significant differences are present as well — not the least of which is that Americans consume and process political content far differently than they did 20 years ago, with an emphasis on digital media rather than traditional television advertising.
Other structural changes have taken place that could influence the results. The two parties this year engaged in a redistricting war that could help stem some of the House losses Republicans might have suffered in a midterm year that traditionally runs against those in power. Polarization runs deeper, making it harder to shake voters from their party identification. Mr. Trump’s hold on his base seems stronger than Mr. Bush’s was in 2006, though it is potentially weakening amid a backlash to the war with Iran.
I would have countered that Trump is considerably less popular now than Bush was then but, looking up the numbers, it turns out not to be the case. Indeed, they’re almost identical. Gallup had Bush at 33 percent approval and 62 percent disapproval in November 2006, almost exactly where Trump now stands. (Alas, Gallup ended its presidential approval polling this past February.)
And then there’s this:
In the Senate and the House, the Democratic establishment did not get its preferred candidates through the primaries in some key races, including in Maine and Michigan. And the rise of far-left socialist candidates has Republicans seeing an opening to try to brand Democratic contenders across the country as part of a movement out of step with typical Americans.
For those reasons and more, Republicans say the comparison between the two elections comes up short.
“Democrats are running with a radically different party on a dramatically different map, and the fundamentals are stacked against them,” Mike Marinella, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a statement. “Republicans have stronger candidates, a historic fund-raising advantage and a more favorable battlefield, while Democrats are letting socialists hijack must-win races from Michigan to Colorado, Arizona, California and Maine.”
Median Voter Theory would tell us that nominating Democratic Socialists is not the way to the hearts of swing state voters. But, if the key is generating enthusiasm among the party base, it could well pan out.
And, while the map is indeed the main obstacle, there’s no world in which the “fundamentals” favor the incumbent party. While gas prices—indeed, prices overall—aren’t particularly high when adjusted for inflation, the public certainly believes otherwise.
