No matter how the legacy media tries to paint the upcoming midterm elections, it just isn’t a pretty picture for the Democratic Party.
The latest evidence of that is a recent poll result from Trafalgar Group showing that even a 30-year incumbent in a state as blue as Washington — which went for former Vice President Joe Biden by nearly 20 points over former President Donald Trump less than two years ago — isn’t safe this year.
The poll, conducted Wednesday through Saturday among 1,091 likely general election voters, showed five-term Democratic Sen. Patty Murray with 48.7 percent of the vote and relatively unknown first-time Republican candidate Tiffany Smiley with 46.5 percent.
With a margin of error of 2.9 percent, that puts the two candidates about even.
As conservative Seattle talk radio host Jason Rantz put it, “Smiley underperformed in the primary because of Democrat anger after overturning Roe v. Wade, leaving abortion access to the states. Murray, up against a first-time candidate, should be leading by much more.”
Rantz argued that recent negative ads hitting Smiley indicate just how nervous the Democrats are at the prospect of losing this seat.
“[I]f the knives are out this early, Smiley is doing something right. And this race is winnable [for Republicans],” he said.
The poll also asked respondents their party affiliation — 44.2 percent said Democrat, 33.4 percent said Republican and 22.4 percent said another party or none at all.
Assuming all those Democrats said they’d vote for Murray and all the Republicans said they’d vote for Smiley — which is probably close, at least within a point or two — that would mean only one out of five of those other party or independent voters is going Democratic.
The Democrats have been working hard to make abortion the central issue of 2022, but it’s not working, and for obvious reasons. In recent years in the U.S., about three women out of 200 have gotten an abortion. However, also in the U.S., about 200 women out of 200 feel the effects of runaway inflation. So do roughly 200 men out of 200.
Voters tend the blame the party running things for whatever’s going on in the country, rightly or wrongly — rightly, in this case. Some women certainly feel very strongly about the “right” to murder their unborn babies — but not enough of them to make up for the financial concerns that just about every soccer mom is feeling right now, no matter what party she’s registered with.
If President Joe Biden were on the ballot in November, chances are pretty good the American people would boot him out of the White House over the financial ruin his policies have wrought upon their country.
He’s not, so they’ll be looking to give someone else the boot. Murray looks like a fair substitute for voters upset about inflation — and there are plenty of those.
In fact, political consultant and pundit Dick Morris found inflation to be far and away the single most important issue to Republican and independent voters in a recent poll.
Currently, Democrats hold control over the Senate by the thinnest of margins — in a 50-50 Senate, Vice President Kamala Harris casts the deciding 101st vote in case of ties. Margins don’t get any thinner than that.
That means that with only one seat changing hands in this election, Republicans could take the Senate. Most likely, if that happens at all, it will take place in either Nevada or Georgia, according to FiveThirtyEight. Arizona represents the next best chance, followed closely by New Hampshire and Colorado.
And then there’s Washington. I doubt very much that anyone in the Democratic Party predicted that they’d have to spend money this year on attack ads in Washington state just to try to hold on to the Senate.
But this isn’t 2020; it’s 2022. The pandemic is over, but its aftermath is still very much with us. The border would have to be tightened up considerably to be considered a sieve. And while the Supreme Court may have put abortion back in the control of the states, inflation is out of control everywhere.
It just isn’t a pretty picture for the Democratic Party this year.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.