Media touts Biden-fueled Dem comeback; long-serving congressional Dem isn't buying it.
The mainstream media is peddling the idea that Joe Biden is on a “hot streak” that has “buoyed Democrats ahead of the midterms.” That’s the media’s persistent message.
But Rep. Marcy Kaptur didn’t get the memo. Or else she doesn’t believe it.
Kaptur is a Democrat. She has represented a northern Ohio district since 1983.
Just a few weeks ago, Kaptur greeted Biden at a Cleveland airport. A photograph appeared to show the president kissing Kaptur’s hand (at least it wasn’t the 76-year-old’s hair).
But now, Biden’s “hot streak” notwithstanding, Kaptur is running an ad that criticizes her party’s leader in no uncertain terms. Her new ad states:
Joe Biden is letting Ohio solar manufacturers be undercut by China. But Marcy Kaptur is fighting back, working with Republican Rob Portman protecting our jobs. . . .
Marcy Kaptur, she doesn’t work for Joe Biden. She works for you.
The mainstream media has plenty of incentive to portray Joe Biden as the comeback grandpa. It wants to create a self-serving, self-fulfilling narrative.
But Marcy Kaptur has no incentive to buy the narrative and plenty of reason to reject it. Her political future is stake, and she’s been around long enough to know what’s required to preserve it. What’s required in her district is to break with Joe Biden, or at least pretend to.
I should add, however, that Kaptur’s reelection prospects have been dimmed by redistricting. The old boundaries of her district encompassed an area that Joe Biden carried easily in 2020. Were she still running in her old district, it’s unlikely that Kaptur would have criticized Biden.
But her new boundaries exclude half of her old district’s voters and include significantly more rural territory. Thus configured, Donald Trump would have carried the district by 3 points in 2020..
Even so, the Cook Political Report rates Kaptur’s race a toss-up. (Her Republican opponent, who won the GOP primary with 36 percent of the vote, was in D.C. for the January 6 protest, but did not engage in unlawful conduct.) So it’s not like redistricting has placed Kaptur behind the eight-ball.
If a Democrat in a toss-up race feels compelled to criticize Biden — in this instance for helping China — it’s difficult to take seriously claims that a Biden-fueled comeback is providing congressional Democrats meaningful momentum for the midterms.
Speaking of the Cook Political Report, its current breakdown (as of August 10) rates 214 seats as either solid, likely, or leaning Republican (Larry Sabato’s latest ratings, also from August 10, put 217 seats in one of these categories). For the Democrats only 187 seats fit one of these descriptions, according to Cook’s report.
Cook rates 34 races as toss-ups. If the GOP wins half of them, Republicans will hold 231 seats in the next Congress. And the party needs to win only a few of the toss-ups to claim control.
The Cook and Sabato ratings came out after passage of the Democrats’ half a trillion dollar spending package. They also post-date most of the over-the-top articles touting a Biden-Democratic comeback that I collected here.
Maybe new, post-boondoggle polling will cause Cook and Sabato to adjust their ratings. But for now, it looks like Cook and Sabato, like Rep. Kaptur, didn’t get the mainstream media’s party-line memo.