Off the Editor’s Desk 5-25-2022
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Will the mid-term elections make any difference?
I asked myself that question a number of times over the past several weeks and as much I as try to remember what happened over the past many years with the mid-term election and how it has shaped the United States Congress.
How will the voters feel as they go to the polls in about 165 days for the mid-term elections? Mid-term is the two-year cycle of elections when the president is not on the ballot, but all the members of the House are up for election and one-third of the United States Senators are up.
I wonder how the electors feel about the current state of affairs that this country now faces. High gas prices, high inflation, food shortages, (especially baby formula), thousands of illegals crossing our border daily must have an effect on how we will vote this coming November.
Rachel Campos-Duffy, Fox News Commentator suggested Sunday morning, “A nation is in decline that can not feed its children.”
I am happy to see that tons of baby formula is being air lifted into our nation, but as usual, President Biden is being reactive to the problem and is not proactive. His administration seems to always be waiting to see what is going to happen and not leading the way to find a solution before the problem gets out of hand.
But, back to the election, Robert Romano, Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government, gave us a little background on the mid-term elections.
“In the mid-term elections dating back to 1906 through 2018, in 89.7 percent of cases, the White House incumbent party loses seats in the House, and in 58.6 percent of cases, it loses seats in the Senate. Overall, including every year, the party that occupies the White House usually loses on average 31 seats in the House, and about three seats in the Senate.
“For House losses, the exception to the rule were Franklin Roosevelt’s expansion of Democratic majorities during the Great Depression in 1932, Bill Clinton’s benefitting from a booming economy and public discontent over Congress’ pursuit of the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998 and George W. Bush’s surge in the polls following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and Congressional votes on the imminent Iraq War in 2002.”
Certain Senate Democratic seats are particularly vulnerable in the states of Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Colorado. However, many Republicans are opting to retire this year, Republican seats that are vulnerable are in the states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Alabama and Missouri.
Twenty Republican Senators are up for election in November including Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson while only fourteen Democratic Senators are up for election. Minnesota does not have an election for senator this November.
One final note and that is about the $40 Billion aid package to Ukraine. Congress passed the bill while President Biden was in South Korea. South Korea must not have a fax machine or have Internet. The bill had to be flown to South Korea for Biden to sign into law. Now there must be a good reason that the bill needed to be flown halfway across the world. My question is, what was the cost to burn all that fuel, add more bad stuff to the atmosphere and tell me that I should be driving an electric vehicle. Update—I just learned that the bill was hitchhiking on a commercial airliner to Korea. So, get my foot out of my mouth.
Thanks for reading! Carlton