EDITORIAL: Democrats getting nervous about next year’s midterms

Despite winning the White House and gaining a Senate split last November, many Democrats expressed frustration that they had underperformed, losing more than a dozen seats in the House and missing an opportunity to seize the outright majority in the upper chamber. Some moderates pointed squarely at the party’s vocal progressive wing for championing blather such as “defund the police” and embracing the “S” word.

Ten months later, the rift continues, and Democrats have begun fretting over the midterm elections next year.

Politico reported this week that a July poll commissioned by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee concluded the party is sinking in several battleground districts and would probably lose the House if the 2022 elections were conducted today. The survey “showed a Democratic candidate falling behind a GOP candidate by 6 points in a generic poll in swing districts,” Politico noted. One anonymous House member told the website that “the polling looked pretty dismal to me.”

Party leaders insist that they need only to shore up their messaging to reach swing voters — that all the “free stuff” coming out of a Democratic Congress under the guise of pandemic relief will eventually move the needle in their favor. Perhaps. Although persistent inflation may undermine that strategy, and it’s difficult to believe that a majority of independent voters favors the type of rampant fiscal irresponsibility that passes for achievement in Washington these days.

Left unsaid is the possibility that many moderate voters have indeed digested the party’s message all too well and don’t like what they’re hearing. Progressives have yanked President Joe Biden far to the portside, and the party has increasingly dabbled in woke, radical nonsense on policing and other issues as violent crime spikes in big cities across the country. According to a new Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll, 75 percent of respondents favored putting more police on the streets rather than taking money away from law enforcement. Who knew?

“Crime is becoming the next crisis in America,” Mark Penn, co-director of the survey, told The Hill, “with overwhelming numbers seeing an increase in crime, and Americans want stricter not looser enforcement of laws.”

Fifteen months is an eternity in politics, of course, and Republicans have their own problems, particularly here in Nevada. But as long as Democrats continue their mad rush to the hard left, and progressives insist on shouting into the megaphone, the GOP will have ample opportunity next year to capitalize on the fact that the president’s party typically falters during midterm balloting.