2022 Midterms: First Look at the US House and Senate

The midterms are about 3 months away, so I’m going to indulge the political science part of me and talk about what the election results probably will be if current trends continue. Hopefully some of you will enjoy it.

First, the House. This is real simple. Democrats will lose at least 20 seats, and probably a few more. The House is more susceptible to the public mood about whether or not the country is going in the right direction in the midterms, and since something like 85% of Americans feel things are getting suckier, the party in power will get a shellacking.

The Senate is another matter. The popular wisdom is to think that Democrats, with only 50 seats right now, are bound to lose control of the Senate this fall. As is often the case with popular wisdom, it’s wrong this year.

As things look now, the Democrats have a very good chance to gain two Senate seats. It’s not because voters like them all that much. It’s because the Republicans have nominated several candidates so abysmal they make Hillary Clinton look less vomit-inducing.

Take Georgia. Here, all the Republicans had to do was nominate someone who just seemed sane while pounding Warnock over the head with Joe Biden’s broken promise about sending $2000 checks out the door as soon as Georgia delivered two Senate seats to the Democrats. Georgia delivered. Biden waited months before sending $1400 checks.

This should be a slam dunk for Republicans, but Trump endorsed Hershel Walker because he’s a famous football star and Trump laps up that kind of celebrity merde and Georgia Republicans were stupid enough to listen him. Now they’re stuck with a candidate who is obviously suffering from some kind of brain damage. Warnock has a small lead in the polls, and I think he’ll pull it out. Today, anyway.

In my home state of Ohio, Trump endorsed JD Vance, a small town Ohio hillbilly who won the right scholarship and became a head fund manager megamillionaire, because Vance wrote Hillbilly Elegy and therefore is a fellow celebrity. Vance won the nomination over a couple of state party hacks who nobody really liked, and then used his hedge fund loot to do things like take a tour of Jerusalem and say stupid shit like women should stay in abusive marriages at Pacifica University in California.

Meanwhile, absolutely positively nauseatingly corrupt Democrat Paul Ryan is saturating the airwaves with waves of ads that are hard to ignore, and I have yet to see a single Vance TV ad. Not one.

As one Ohio Republican lamented, “Somebody needs to tell JD Vance this is a Senate campaign, not a book tour.” Vance looks like he’s going down. Here’s a Democratic gain.

In Pennsylvania, the Republicans nominated Dr. Oz, a celebrity doctor from New Jersey, to run against Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman. All Fetterman has to do is to call Oz a carpetbagger, and he’s done just that. Democratic gain again.

Wisconsin and North Carolina are both anyone’s guess at the moment, but they’re both Republican seats at the moment, so they don’t matter if Ohio and Pennsylvania both flip. No other Senate race looks like it will switch parties in November.

Of course, things may change, so I’ll look for any changes in another month or so. Thanks for reading and have a good night.