The Red Wave That Wasn't

Republicans and pundits alike promised that last night would be the functional end of the Biden administration, and that overwhelming losses by Democratic incumbents in both the House and Senate would lead to a White House drowning in impeachments, investigations, and hearings.

That may still happen. But the odds of that went from certainty to question mark as Dems picked up several House seats and the Senate seat in Pennsylvania last night, and control of Congress is very much up in the air this morning.

As many in the country were going to bed last night, President Biden and his advisers – up late into the night watching the midterm returns come in — felt convinced of two things: Races across the board looked competitive, and Democrats appeared to have avoided a bloodbath that some had predicted and feared.

The White House wakes up this morning to real reasons for that optimism from the previous night to continue: The possibility of Democrats’ keeping the Senate in their hands very much remains intact, and they’ve seen Democratic governors of big swing states and key House frontliners in their party win their races.

A huge outstanding question, of course, remains the fate of the House – and just how many seats Republicans will ultimately end up picking up.

Whether Democrats can keep control of the Senate – and how the makeup of the House will ultimately shake out – will have huge implications for President Biden and his party’s ability to govern in the second half of his first term.

And as the White House is poised to highlight some of the bright spots from last night’s results, a challenge for them will be whether they can successfully make the case that some of these Democrats were able to hold their own because of the White House and President Biden – not in spite of them.

Leading up to Election Day, there was already starting to be plenty of finger-pointing at the White House. Some House Democrats, for example, told CNN that Biden and his team failed to drive hard at an economic message, at a moment when voters have made clear that it is overwhelmingly their most important issue.

One progressive House member put it bluntly to CNN: “We knew the economy would be bad… and they didn’t have an economic message at all.”

The lawmaker lamented – echoing sentiments expressed by some of their colleagues – that they also didn’t see the White House adequately take credit for Democrats’ legislative wins, including last year’s passage of a major bipartisan infrastructure bill. It was a “total failure to take a victory lap,” they said.

But if many Democrats were ready to start playing the blame game, the results so far could have bought everyone some breathing room – the White House most of all —at least for a few days.

White House officials have insisted in the final stretch of the midterms that Biden has consistently discussed the economy and made economic issues key to his political messaging.

They’ve also made clear that they believe voters are considering a range of issues as they head to ballot boxes – and not just the economy – and that it was critical for the leader of the Democratic Party to publicly discuss issues like abortion rights, gun safety and protecting democracy, which they believe have played major roles in animating the Democratic base.

We'll see if Dems can hold out.  The pickup for Team Blue with John Fetterman is huge, as Catherine Cortez Masto is in the fight of her life in Nevada still and in Georgia, Raphael Warnock is headed for a runoff. Dems will have to win one of those two in order to keep the upper chamber.

In the House, Republicans have already picked up enough House wins to put McCarthy in the Speaker's office, but Dems have picked up enough seats to keep control for now. It may be days or weeks before we know who will control Congress next year.

But I'll take that in a heartbeat over the "Red Wave" scenario, where we were supposed to know who won by midnight.