HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania — Mediocre candidates, lackluster fundraising, self-inflicted wounds. Squint hard enough and you might catch remnants of the three political hurdles, or some combination thereof, that once conspired to derail Republican efforts to win control of the Senate and help Democrats avoid the midterm elections curse.

Now with Election Day around the corner, polls are suggesting a return to convention. Voters are poised to punish the party in power in the White House amid intense dissatisfaction with President Joe Biden and rising anxiety over the economy and public safety. That is putting Republicans on the precipice of winning a majority in the Senate after a late summer and early fall of doubt, doubt, doubt. And with the House already long since leaning toward a GOP takeover, Democrats on Capitol Hill are staring down the barrel of a complete and total sweep.

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Leading the Republican Senate surge, at just the right time, is Dr. Mehmet Oz, renowned heart surgeon and famous television personality and the GOP nominee here in Pennsylvania.

Oz was on the cusp of overtaking Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) as the calendar turned from October to November after trailing in 21 of 22 public opinion polls since early June, which would keep this pivotal open seat, in a critical swing state, in GOP hands. That was how the Pennsylvania Senate race looked before Oz met Fetterman on national television for their one and only debate. The lieutenant governor’s cognitively diminished performance only raised more doubts about his fitness for the Senate amid lingering health effects from a stroke he suffered in mid-May, giving a critical boost to Oz.

The Senate, divided 50-50, belongs to the Democrats strictly on the basis of the tiebreaking vote wielded by Vice President Kamala Harris. Pennsylvania is the only real opportunity Democrats have left on the 2022 map to capture a seat held by the Republicans, and without a Fetterman victory, their prospects for holding the Senate and escaping the fate that typically befalls the president’s party are slim to none.

“As I go across the country, I’m campaigning for a lot of House members and senators, and everybody across the country asks me about Pennsylvania,” said Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and ex-U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who was in Harrisburg, the state capital, campaigning for Oz just days before the Nov. 8 vote. “All eyes are on Pennsylvania because this is the seat to the majority in the Senate.”

Democrats know it, too.

“If you send me to D.C., I promise to be that 51st vote,” Fetterman told supporters during a campaign rally in Pittsburgh.

If there’s one caveat to keep an eye on, it’s that Democrats are more energized than they have a right to be with a midterm election disaster looming.

Maybe it’s because the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating federal protections for abortion rights with its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling. Maybe it’s because former President Donald Trump is once again (still?) ever present in our politics, which for many Democrats is directly related to their concerns about the state of democracy in the aftermath of Jan. 6, 2021. Maybe it’s because Biden signed major legislation into law late in the summer. Whatever the reason, Democratic interest in voting is higher than normal.

That could make the fall less of a disaster for them, though they still trail Republicans on the enthusiasm meter.

“It’s not the Democrats, and it’s not the Republicans. It’s the Union against the Confederates,” said Bernard Lawson, 50, a black liberal activist and Fetterman supporter in Harrisburg. “The Republicans have become Confederates now because they want to break into the Capitol.”

In wave after wave of midterm elections this century, some shellacking Democrats, others thumping Republicans, a recognizable pattern has emerged.

At the outset of each election cycle, speculation that ignores American history is initially rampant among objective handicappers and hopeful partisans alike. Historically, the president’s party loses an average of 25 House seats and four Senate seats in midterm elections. No matter. Early on, the political chitchat is all about how, this time, maybe the party in power in the White House is in a position to gain seats midterm — or at the very least not shed enough to alter the balance of power in Congress.

That speculation quickly gives way to reality — maybe because of the outcome of off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia, maybe because the economy tanks or the president blunders his way into trouble with the voters, maybe because the polling simply makes abundantly clear that that’s where the midterm elections are headed. That accepted reality usually begets momentum of its own, fueling predictions that not just an electoral wave but one of historic proportions could be on tap.

Then comes the “hold up” portion of our program. As in: Maybe the president’s party won’t lose as many seats in the House and Senate as previously predicted. Oh sure, it’ll suffer a few here and there — history says so, after all. But maybe it’ll manage to dodge anything resembling a wipeout, leaving the power dynamic in Washington largely unchanged. In fact (and this is what comes next): Maybe this White House will buck history altogether. Maybe this president will actually lead his party to a net gain of seats in both chambers of Congress.

It happens occasionally — most recently under President Bill Clinton in 1998 and President George W. Bush in 2002. Then, finally, here’s what comes next …

WIPEOUT.

Especially judging by where Democrats and Republicans have been spending their money down the stretch, that might be where we are right now.

“The roller coaster ride of a 2022 midterm is about to round its last turn. And, while there’s still a lot of fluidity as to the final results, the momentum and the issue environment favor the GOP,” Amy Walter, the clear-eyed political analyst and publisher and editor-in-chief of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, concluded in an Oct. 26 column. “The fundamentals — an unpopular president, deep frustration with the status quo, and stubborn inflation — are ultimately going to define this midterm.”

How green are the pastures for the Republican Party at this late date?

It is now pouring tens of millions of dollars into House districts that Biden won by double digits — districts that were drawn by the political cartographers to withstand electoral waves driven by visceral forces: the skyrocketing cost of household goods, sticker-shock at the gas pump, and fear of bodily harm, or worse, because of rising crime that has not caused this much voter anxiety since perhaps the 1980s.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP campaign arm, is spending money in 18 districts Biden won by double digits — places like Connecticut’s 5th Congressional District, Oregon’s 6th Congressional District, and Rhode Island’s 2nd Congressional District.

Had those seats existed in their current form in 2020, Biden would have defeated Trump in each of them, respectively, by 10.7, 13.1, and 13.7 percentage points. The Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), likely the next speaker, was spending nine out of every 10 of its advertising dollars in seats carried by the president just two years ago.

Even Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY), chairman of the NRCC counterpart Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and running for reelection in New York’s 17th Congressional District, a Biden +10.1 points seat, is fighting for political survival.

Democrats insist to anyone who will listen the House is not lost, that defending their threadbare majority of just a handful of seats was an attainable goal. And there were some isolated bright spots for team blue as early voting got underway in earnest, not least of which is the gobs of money it is raising. Rep. Mary Peltola, the first Democrat to hold Alaska’s at-large House seat in nearly 50 years, was positioned to compete for reelection. Rep. Sharice Davids (D-KS), who won the suburban Kansas City 3rd Congressional District in the Democratic wave of 2018, also appeared in place to hang on.

But now it’s the Democrats who have to squint — to see any kind of light at the end of what looks, more and more, like a long, dark tunnel.

“This election has all of the makings of a wave election,” said Rob Simms, a Republican strategist in Washington who has lived through the highs and lows of GOP and Democratic tsunamis that have leveled both political parties in midterm elections, one after the other, since 2006. As Election Day closes in, Simms sees parallels with another, recent Republican wave: 2010, the first midterm election under President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) first stint with the gavel.

That year, the GOP picked up 63 House seats, plus seven Senate seats, including one in deep-blue Massachusetts in a special election, although it fell short of the majority.

“Much like ‘10 — there was a Democrat president along with the speaker and Senate leader who assumed their victories two years prior were a mandate for sweeping progressive policies,” Simms said, referring to the debate over Obamacare that dominated that campaign. “And just like then, the voters are about to reject them in sweeping, large numbers in states and districts all over the country.”

Of course, if for no other reason than the thin nature of their majority, the Democrats’ House obituary was written long ago. The battle for the evenly divided Senate was exceedingly less predictable. That is, until now.

Start with the fact that Republicans are holding serve on their own turf in the contested battleground states.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) is rolling to reelection over his Democratic challenger, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is rolling to reelection over his Democratic challenger, Rep. Val Demings (D-FL). To boot, those races have never really been in doubt, not really. In Ohio, where Sen. Rob Portman (R) is retiring, GOP nominee J.D. Vance is favored to defeat Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH). In North Carolina, where Sen. Richard Burr (R) is retiring, Rep. Ted Budd (R) has the edge over Cheri Beasley, former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. (Pennsylvania, where Sen. Pat Toomey (R) is retiring and the aforementioned Oz is gaining on Fetterman, we’ve already discussed.)

That brings us to the embattled Democratic incumbents. Don’t like “embattled?” Try “under fire” or, if you prefer, treading water surrounded by sharks with a cruise ship’s anchor chained to one leg.

True, Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) may yet stay afloat, the beneficiary of Republican challenger Don Bolduc’s not-quite-right-for-New Hampshire conservative populism. But Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) is in trouble against Republican challenger Adam Laxalt, the former state attorney general and grandson of Paul Laxalt, the beloved former governor and ex-senator. Republican insiders have for several months viewed Nevada as the party’s most likely path to 51 seats and the Senate majority, and that has not changed.

Nevada might be the Republican Party’s Senate majority-maker. Long-shot challenges against Democratic incumbents in the deep-blue states of Colorado, Connecticut, and Washington state might send thrills up their legs. But it’s Arizona and Georgia that present the GOP with its best chance of ousting Democratic incumbents and pushing any majority they win beyond a simple 51. It’s proving tough and provides the Democrats another glimmer of hope in an otherwise darkening sky.

In Georgia, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) is proving stubbornly resilient versus an aggressive challenge from Republican Herschel Walker. The Trump-endorsed former professional football player, a folk hero in the state for winning a national championship as a running back at the University of Georgia in the early 1980s, has weathered scandals galore. Lately, Walker has faced multiple allegations of pressuring former girlfriends to have abortions despite running as a devoutly anti-abortion candidate. Yet Warnock is on his heels, and the race is still a pure toss-up.

In Arizona, former venture capitalist Blake Masters, a Republican, also endorsed by Trump and an acolyte of megadonor Peter Thiel, is making a game of it after being left buried in a ditch by many in his own party. (The candidate’s rocky campaign no doubt deserves some of the blame for the rise of these nattering nabobs of Arizona negativism.) Yet with little more than one week to go in the race, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) was clinging to a lead of fewer than 2 points while running toward a finish line buffeted by massive headwinds.

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There are several factors driving the potential for big Republican gains. But for my money, the most interesting piece of this is the party’s improvement with Hispanic voters.

In my travels this fall, I came across Republican National Committee “community centers,” i.e. voter turnout field offices, on the south side of Milwaukee and the east side of Las Vegas. These outposts, and those in other Hispanic neighborhoods in other Senate battlegrounds, symbolize the money and manpower the GOP is devoting to winning over Hispanic voters and cutting into a key Democratic advantage, in the process, possibly, foreclosing any hope the Democrats have of holding on to the Senate in 2022.

Jose Guzman, a private school principal and conservative Hispanic voter in Milwaukee, said his community’s growing support for Republicans is a matter of being “more informed” than in past elections, a direct result of the party’s effort to court this key voting bloc. “By nature, Latinos tend to be more conservative,” added Guzman, a native of Puerto Rico. “They have the benefit of coming from other parts of the world that they have seen what happens with socialism.”

David M. Drucker is the senior political correspondent for the Washington Examiner.

Original Location: Republicans on a roll

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