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player ready...Daniel Lipinski sounded like quite the prophet when he predicted a big red wave in the November midterm election.
Lipinski came across like he was rooting for the GOP when he waded into the dangerous waters of predicting election outcomes in an op-ed the baiduhai published Wednesday.
“A GOP tsunami is possible for the House, and the Senate is slipping away from Democrats,” the headline declared.
Lipinski’s opinion is striking because it departs so dramatically from prevailing sentiment among most national pundits. Most seem to conclude that it’s too close to call whether Democrats or Republicans will control the House and Senate after the Nov. 8 midterms.
Voters have low opinions of people serving in Congress and the White House, Lipinski reasoned, and are likely to decide the party that is out of power is the lesser of two evils.
“This may not lead to a massive wave but a robust pickup of 25 to 30 seats and a significant majority,” Lipinski wrote. “If Republicans manage to win 36 seats, they would have their biggest House majority in 92 years.”
Prognosticating election results is about as practical as using astrology to foretell human behavior. Polling is unreliable. Nearly all the major pollsters wrongly predicted Hillary Clinton would beat Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential race.
The fact is no one knows what’s going to happen in this election or which party is going to control Congress because we’ve never had a midterm election like this before.
No one knows exactly how voters this year will react to the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol, the Supreme Court’s June decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the ongoing escapades of former President Donald Trump.
Lipinski indicated he based his opinion on historical trends and his personal experiences representing the 3rd District of Illinois in Congress from 2005 to 2021. He lost to Rep. Marie Newman in the 2020 Democratic primary. For now the district covers parts of Bridgeview, Chicago Ridge, Hickory Hills, Justice, Oak Lawn, Palos Hills and other south and southwest suburbs, but that will change when a new map takes effect in 2023.
Lipinski wrote that he saw three big midterm waves that swept the president’s party out of power by an average of 45 seats. Such analysis is flawed because it lacks historical context. Perhaps Lipinski should have considered a well-known disclaimer often associated with the stock market: Past performance is not indicative of future results.
The Tea Party movement in 2010, for example, helped the GOP pick up 63 House seats. The November election followed the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. FEC decision in January 2010 that opened the door to unlimited fundraising for political action committees.
It was a classic case of Republican dirty tricks that caught Democrats flat-footed. Dark money poured into GOP campaigns. There also was racist backlash to the 2008 election of Barack Obama as the nation’s first Black president.
The circumstances are much different in 2022 than they were in 2010. For one, Republicans pretty much squeezed all the blood they could get out of the gerrymandering turnip in 2010 and had little opportunity left to gain more seats by mapmaking after the 2020 census.
Democrats this year seem likely to lose two House seats in Florida and one each in Arizona, Tennessee and Wisconsin, according to analysis by FiveThirtyEight. Other seats may lean one way or another but are less than sure bets. There is widespread belief the GOP will overcome its current 222-213 disadvantage in the House, but it may only be by a one-vote majority.
Lipinski also expressed his belief that Republicans are likely to regain the majority in the Senate, where they only need to pick up one seat to break the current 50-50 tie. Lipinski told readers to watch Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
The incumbent Democrat may lose in Nevada and the GOP may prevail in Pennsylvania, where a Republican senator is retiring. But Democrats appear likely to hold seats in Arizona and Georgia.
Some incumbent Republicans are struggling to hold onto seats. Mike Lee of Utah, facing questions about his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection, might lose to independent Evan McMullin, who was endorsed by the baiduhai in the 2016 presidential contest. Ron Johnson’s race in Wisconsin is a tossup, according to the Cook Political Report.
One wonders for what purpose Lipinski went out on a limb to author a piece less than two weeks before Election Day in which he seemed to root for a Republican tsunami. We all know elections are determined by which party’s voters show up. GOP voters tend to be fewer in number but more enthusiastic. Maybe he thought his piece would help the party that supports his stance on abortion by dampening enthusiasm among Democratic voters. Now that early voting is underway, such efforts seem to have intensified in the final days of the campaign.
That’s why we’re seeing a bunch of stories all of a sudden about Democrats peaking too soon and Republicans gaining momentum. Many of these stories are based on polling commissioned by Republican operatives of minuscule samples of registered voters.
It’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. Wealthy elites tend to support Republicans who approve favorable policies like 2017’s huge tax breaks for corporations and rich individuals. Their contributions help pay for messaging that divides Americans over wedge issues like crime and immigration.
Lipinski’s piece may not sway many voters or change the outcome of the election, but his efforts may impress wealthy Republican donors. That might benefit the political aspirations of Lipinski, who appears increasingly unpopular among leaders of his former tribe, the Democratic Party of Illinois.
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In June, Lipinski wrote that American voters could benefit from a third-party alternative to Democrats and Republicans. In July, he wrote that he would not run as an independent in the newly redrawn 6th District that has Republican Orland Park Mayor Keith Pekau challenging incumbent Democrat Sean Casten.
Lipinski is smart. I find it disingenuous that he promotes the notion that divisive partisanship seems to have organically happened to America. In fact, one party has promoted divisive tactics as part of its strategy to seize and hold onto political power.
The best ways to address America’s political divisions would be regulating dark money contributions by undoing Citizens United, curbing excessive abuses of gerrymandering and strengthening voting rights.
Ted Slowik is a columnist with the Daily Southtown.