Donald Trump is out front in saying despite his barnstorming around the country ranting about illegal immigration and Republicans mostly standing behind him even when he has trouble with reality and the truth?
He can twist todays voting result as a win….Ah, No matter what?
It will NOT be any kind of win….
We don’t know what’s going to happen in the election, but we’ve got a pretty good idea how it’s likely to be spun. With Republicans probably losing the House, they (and President Trump, in particular) have focused on the Senate. And if they hold it or even gain some seats, you can guarantee they’ll cite it as a win, and possibly even a split decision overall.
This will be false.
That pre-spinning has begun, with Kellyanne Conway noting last week that it’s rare for the president’s party to gain Senate seats in a midterm election. “Think about that. That’s historic,” she told Fox News.
Trump campaign adviser Barry Bennett said of possible GOP gains in the Senate, “That’s all they’ll talk about.”
Trump has acknowledged difficulty in the House but said, “I think we’re doing really extraordinarily well in the Senate.”
The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, ran a story suggesting that GOP gains in the Senate would constitute a “mixed verdict.”
The story is nuanced and well worth a read, but we’d do well to be careful about regarding such a result as anything amounting to a split decision or mixed result. Yes, Republicans would technically be improving their lot in the Senate, while Democrats would be surging in the House. And Conway is right that it’s rare for a president’s party to gain Senate seats; it’s happened only three times since World War II.
But it would also owe almost completely to some highly unusual circumstances — for which there is very little historical precedent — and it wouldn’t exactly indicate an evenly split electorate.
The idea that Democrats even have a shot at winning the Senate is not something we were able to say for a good portion of the 2018 election cycle….