Dem
54
GOP
46
Republicans are expecting and bracing for a shellacking tomorrow evening. Quite a few House members in deep-red districts—even recently re-gerrymandered districts—are probably going to lose. A year ago, every Republican in an R+8 district probably wasn't even planning to campaign. Now many of them are in the fight of their lives and some will lose. In private, House Republicans are not wondering if they can keep the House. They are wondering how bad the slaughter will be and how big the Democrats' margin will be. They are also aware that being an incumbent is always better than being a challenger and all the Democrats who get swept in by a wave election in 2026 will be incumbents in 2028 and will be better known and harder to dislodge then.
Many Republicans in once-safe districts are begging the party leaders for money to stem the bleeding, but that money is already allocated to Senate races in red states. The leadership knows the House is gone but the Senate is still in play. One senior Republican said to Politico off the record: "It could be quite a brutal evening. Once the dominoes start falling it becomes hard to stop them." In other words, if Troy Jackson wins easily in Maine and Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and Roy Cooper win in Georgia and North Carolina, respectively, by double digits. then it's Katie bar the door when the Midwest results start coming in.
Some Republican incumbents are so hard-pressed for cash that they have stopped polling, to save money for ads. So they don't even know what is about to hit them. One Republican strategist responded to a Politico reporter's question about the state of the race with a video of a dumpster on fire being swept away by flood waters, sort of like this.
Republican strategists' fear is not that young Latino men and white working-class men of all ages will vote Democratic, but that they will stay home and not vote at all. And in a year when Democrats are super energized, that's a problem.
In Ohio, the Senate race is close, although Sherrod Brown has had a small but consistent lead since July. But internal polling shows that Vivek Ramaswamy's numbers are collapsing and his despicable ad is probably going to go down in history as the 60 seconds that turned a winnable race into a landslide defeat due to a deeply flawed candidate's terrible decision, despite being warned. And the one-two combination of Brown and Amy Acton may provide sufficient coattails to flip some close House races in the state.
The NRCC has commissioned polling in over 100 House districts, an unprecedented number, to see how deep into red territory the flood may reach. The NRCC and RNC are now coordinating ads to save Reps. Bill Huizenga (R-MI, R+3), Rob Wittman (R-VA, R+3), Mike Turner (R-OH, R+4), Jeff Hurd (R-CO, R+5), and Monica De La Cruz (R-TX, R+7). All of them are in danger for the first time. Rep. Andy Barr will probably be elected governor of Kentucky but his KY-06 House seat is in danger of flipping even though it is R+7. Rep. Brad Finstad (R-MN) won by 18 points last time but is barely running even now.
One senior Democratic operative said: "I would rather be us than them. But if anyone tells you they know what's going to happen, they're full of sh**. Everything is close."
The election is the easy part. Then what? Donald Trump will be president until Jan. 20, 2029, unless he dies or is forcibly removed, but he will be probably be the lamest of ducks starting January, especially if Democrats claim both chambers of Congress and every House and Senate committee starts investigating people in his administration for malfeasance in office, corruption or both. He will be full of rage, and who knows where that will lead. His influence will be at the lowest point ever. Even lower than on January 7, 2021, since there is no possibility of him running for president again. Many Republicans believe that the era of Trump's bleats on his full-of-gas social media site dictating how Republicans should vote is over forever. If Republicans he endorsed take real drubbings, Republicans will see that he has no magic power to protect them and act accordingly. Every man and woman will be on their own next year and it will be a very rough ride for Trump. (V)