I'm pleased that Virginia's voters approved a redistricting plan that should shift four House seats to the Democrats, but I hate the fact that it's come to this. In a better country, neither the GOP gerrymandering that's taken place since 2010 nor the pro-Democratic Party gerrymandering in California and Virginia would be allowed -- but, of course, our Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that federal courts can't intervene when nakedly partisan redistricting takes place, at a time when Republicans were redistricting and Democrats were sitting on their hands, so here we are.
I'm not happy about the way the Virginia story is being reported. We often complain that reporting in the mainstream political press focuses on the odds -- which party is winning, which party is losing -- but not the stakes for ordinary Americans. The Virginia fight, by its very nature, is a story about the odds. It's about Democrats gaining an advantage in the upcoming midterms, and beating the GOP in a mid-decade redistricting battle that's been going on throughout Donald Trump's second term. It's not being discussed in terms of what Democrats would do with a majority in the House.
That's bad, because average American voters are angry at the Republican president, but also exasperated by how our political system is failing them. They've had it with Trump -- his net job approval is -17.1 points according to Real Clear Polling, -18.8 according to Nate Silver, and -22 according to G. Elliott Morris -- but the Democrats' lead on the generic House ballot is much smaller than Trump's approval deficit (5 points according to Morris, 5.9 according to Real Clear).
Middle-of-the-road voters know that they're against Trump, but they're not sure what they're for. Democrats have been winning big in off-cycle elections, but the midterms will be higher-profile, and I wonder whether Democrats will be as dominant. Do Democrats have a positive agenda? Are they even talking specifically about a negative agenda -- that is, specific ways they can keep Trump in check, or even reverse his worst policies?
At Paul Krugman's Substack, today's post concerns the abysmal consumer sentiment numbers of the second Trump era. Krugman accepts G. Ellott Morris's belief that cumulative price increases since the end of COVID are responsible for Americans' dissatisfaction with the economy. (I still believe, as I've said before, that many Americans are carrying balances on their credit cards and are exasperated by high credit card interest rates, which prevent them from paying down what they owe, but Krugman doesn't talk about that.)
Krugman notes that consumer sentiment is worse now than it was in the Biden years, even though inflation was higher under Biden. Krugman thinks Americans are more dissatisfied now because many of them really believed Trump could wave a wand and make all the post-2019 inflation go away.
I think Krugman may be right about that -- but I also wonder if many Americans just think they've tried both parties recently and both have failed them. Trump didn't just run as an opponent of Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris -- he ran as their antithesis. Biden was sleepy, Trump was vigorous. Biden and Harris were stupid and weak and naive and ineffectual, while Trump would get stuff done. Biden and Harris hated America, Trump loved it. Biden and Harris were terrible stewards of the economy, while Trump was the world's greatest businessman and dealmaker.
All that was bullshit, but I think millions of Americans believed it -- and now some of them probably think we've tried everything and nothing works.
Will those voters show up at the polls at all? I think quite a few of them won't. I think those are the ones who despise Trump but aren't on board with Democrats. I hope Democrats can give them real reasons to vote Democratic in November.
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