Giving too much credence to media reports that the Democrats are on the verge of achieving majorities in both the House and the Senate is a mistake. Pollsters have consistently shown that they can’t estimate Trump-voter turnout. Democratic control of the Senate requires defending four of the seats the party currently holds, plus flipping four of seven Republican-held seats in solid Trump-leaning states from 2024—Maine, Kansas, Iowa and Texas.
The Democrats’ disastrous initial choice of Graham Platner as their senatorial candidate in Maine has turned that race into a tossup. Democrat Troy Jackson, a fifth-generation logger from Allagash (he replaced an oysterman) is up against Republican incumbent Susan Collins, a hardened electoral survivor who has significant crossover appeal in her state because of her skill at bringing home the bacon. Michigan's once “safe” Democrat seat—safe because that party has controlled the state's Senate seats for three decades—is now looking close. Republican candidate Mike Rogers has a solid shot at defeating Michigan's radical Democratic candidate, Abdul Al-Sayed, whose stances on Medicare for All and abolishing ICE provide ammunition for the GOP. The Senate races in Texas, Alaska, Ohio, Kansas, Maine, and Iowa also look like tossups.
The prediction market app, Kalshi, is giving the Dems a 68 percent chance of sweeping both houses—pollster “guru” Nate Silver agrees—meaning that a $100 winning bet on the GOP will yield a net profit of $212. I'll take that bet. Kalshi’s bettors (it doesn't use an internal algorithm or polling model) also give the Republicans only a seven percent chance at winning the House. I believe the Dems will take the House, but not by that margin. A $100 bet will win you $1,321 if you take the GOP.
As for taking the Senate, that's closer to 50-50. If the Democrats lose in both Maine and Michigan— a distinct possibility—they fail. Still, the GOP, which has grown accustomed to the comforts of controlling Congress, is looking a bit tremulous. The prospect of intense oversight and investigations, loss of legislative and committee control, potential impeachment, and obstruction of judicial and cabinet appointments is giving them the jitters from the top (Trump) on down.
Although there's no valid reason to take anything Trump says seriously, regardless of the topic, he's been saying some weird stuff lately, especially his homoerotic musings about the incumbent senatorial candidate from Ohio, Jon Husted, who the President said has an ass that's “a pile of muscle,” and a “very powerful ass.” Nobody can figure it out. The loose lips being an early sign of dementia can't be ruled out. Who can forget Joe Biden saying, “God save the queen, man,” after giving a June, 2023 speech in Connecticut on gun control? Maybe it's a case of pre-election nerves. The anxiety’s understandable, given that Trump's life will become much less pleasant if the GOP takes a bath on election day. Perhaps he's looking to distract from the unpopularity of his tariffs, the Iran war, and gas prices. Trump’s long been obsessed with people's looks and bodies, so maybe he’s decided that talking about his idealized male physical archetype—previously unexplored territory in the American political arena, but not the German one—is a breakthrough strategy.
Even though polls are unreliable, their pessimistic numbers, day after day, are wearing on Republican nerves, including the ones that show that Democrats are more motivated to vote in this election than are Republicans whose spirits have been dampened by an unpopular war, high gas prices, widespread economic unease and Trump's tanking approval rating. Trump's convinced he can counter this trend by working his rambling magic “weave” at his rallies, but the truth is that plenty of GOP candidates don't want these events in their state.
After grumbling about Trump in private for months, some have recently gone public with their grievances. Iowa GOP congressman Ashley Hinson released a Twitter statement calling for an end to the Iran war in order to lower gas prices. Michigan's Republican candidate for Senate, Mike Rogers, has voiced the same sentiment publicly. Even Ohio Sen. Jon Husted has called for an end to that unpopular war. A Reuters study found that two-thirds of Republican candidates in competitive House and Senate races had distanced themselves from the president in some way.
The idea of politicians distancing themselves from an unpopular president from their own party isn’t new. It happened under George W. Bush, Obama, and Biden. What makes it more significant this time around is that Trump’s had a unique grip on his party for a decade, an achievement that none of those presidents could match. He's a vindictive man who punishes those who cross him, but a case of the butterflies is causing some GOP candidates to realize that losing on Tuesday is even worse than incurring their president’s wrath.
The entire Republican party has the butterflies. While a confident political party and its president would’ve let Barack Obama's Cheesecake Factory comment slide, Republicans took the bait and embarrassed themselves over a matter nobody cares about. It was amusing watching them defend an expensive, upscale-mall restaurant that the GOP has no particular claim to when Obama's actual target was Trump's taste in interior design. And oddly enough, they let the insulting comparison to the dictator, Saddam Hussein, go. And Trump hardly looks confident in his sudden decision to endorse mail-in voting after railing for years against “fraudulent” mail-in votes. And then there's Trump's late-night, 1300-word attack on Bill Maher after the TV host cracked a few jokes about him.
If Trump and his party aren't panicking, then why has he spent time campaigning in the red states of Alabama, Oklahoma, and Nebraska which he won in 2020 by, respectively, 31, 34 and 20 points? To cross the finish line in a tight election, a political party needs the discipline to unite around a closing argument. But rampant GOP anxiety has fractured the message into a cacophony of competing priorities and defensive posturing. While the Republicans have outspent the Democrats by a significant margin, the Democrats have done a much better job of establishing a campaign narrative. Maybe this will mean that Trump loses his hold on the GOP. On Wednesday, both parties begin their campaigns for the next presidential election, so we won't have to wait too long to see how that story unfolds.