LIZ PEEK: A blue wave? The liberal media wants one, but voters might disagree
Four weeks from today, Americans will go to the polls and set the country’s course for the next two years. Heads up to Republicans: things are shifting.
The liberal media is positively giddy over polls showing Republicans lagging in key Senate races, and others showing the GOP likely to lose the House. But are their happy forecasts of a blue wave likely to prove right?
Maybe, but there are signs that voters are beginning to look at Democrat candidates more closely, and they don’t like what they see. When long-time Democrat Debra Messing endorses Republican Bruce Blakeman for governor in New York State over incumbent Kathy Hochul, something is afoot. Incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins, considered vulnerable by Democrats, now leads her opponent and Michigan Democrat candidate Abdul El-Sayed just lost the endorsement of an important union. Meanwhile, in Minnesota, which went for Kamala Harris in 2024, candidate Michele Tafoya could become the first Republican senator from the state since 2009.
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Democrats are not popular. For all they celebrate Donald Trump’s low approval ratings, the reality is that the Real Clear Polling averages put Democrats’ favorability at 39%, exactly tied with the president.
The media are also playing up worst-case scenarios in a determined effort to drive down Republican turnout and campaign funds. It’s a clever strategy. If voters think their cause is lost, they may well stay home and decline to back local candidates.
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Note to voters: it’s far too early to reach that conclusion. Much can change between now and November. The polls are seemingly becoming less reliable with every election cycle and can also be easily manipulated. In a recent New York Times/Portland Press Herald/Siena survey of Maine that shows Collins in the lead, for instance, the surprised author writes it has "a sample that looks reasonably favorable to Democrats." Even the Washington Post admits in a recent piece, "There are reasons to suspect polls could be overestimating Democrats’ strength."
Meanwhile, there are signs that increased scrutiny may not bode well for the radical leftists running for senate seats in Michigan, in Maine, or elsewhere.
In Michigan, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed recently lost the endorsement of the state’s firefighters union. The head of that labor group claims it had always meant to remain neutral in the race, which also features Republican Mike Rogers, and that El-Sayed’s name on a list of endorsements was a clerical mistake.
That account is disputed by at least one union official who says it was El-Sayed’s negative views of law enforcement that soured his organization. He told a local news outfit, "Abdul El-Sayed has …held positions within organizations that support defunding the police and abolishing a considerable portion of our prison system."
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CNN Politics confirmed that El-Sayed explicitly endorsed the anti-cop movement, stating in a 2020 interview, "We do need to defund the police."
Republicans, digging into El-Sayed’s past, are highlighting a tweet from the candidate saying, "The fact that cops kill Black folks so regularly tells us who society considers part of the ’public’ & from whom they are to be kept safe. Its not just a few bad cops — it’s an entire SYSTEM of white supremacy."
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El-Sayed likely hoped to keep those offensive past remarks hidden, but the days of erasing history are long gone. El-Sayed is also tagged with campaigning with Hasan Piker, the infamous anti-Israel influencer who claimed America "deserved 9/11." That cannot sit well with most voters.
The Michigan race is a toss-up; Real Clear Polling shows recent surveys have El-Sayed one or two points ahead of Rogers, within the margin of error.
In Maine, which went for Kamala Harris by 7 points in 2024, Democratic former state Senator Troy Jackson is struggling in his bid to unseat long-serving Republican Collins. Democrats considered this race a prime pick-up opportunity — the only state won by Harris that had a GOP senator running for reelection. But, they initially chose unknown populist Graham Platner to be their candidate, despite revelations that he sported a Nazi tattoo, had voiced racist opinions online, was not actually a working-class oysterman but rather had received significant financial support from his well-off father, and was accused of infidelity. It took credible charges of sexual assault to boot Platner from the race, leaving fill-in Jackson to carry on the campaign.
Voters are not ecstatic about Jackson, who lacks Platner’s charisma, and who is running an uninspired campaign. A recent New York Times poll showed Collins ahead by three points; the author of the survey, whose recent red state polls were more promising for Democrats, found it "hard to imagine how Democrats could seriously be competitive in Kansas if they can’t even win Maine."
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Hilariously, the Times writer concludes: "Ms. Collins may be leading for a simple reason: People like her better and think she would be a better senator."
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Democrats are banking on voters’ dislike for President Trump carrying their party to victory in November. To quote the Times, still puzzling over Collin’s favorability, "It also just seems inconsistent with Mr. Trump’s extraordinary unpopularity." But, despite the president’s exhortations to his base to pretend he’s on the ballot…he is not. His poor polling may not matter to voters worried about Democrats’ antisemitism or the likelihood that a Democrat-run Congress would rush to reopen the border, block investigations into welfare fraud, reverse cuts to spending that have driven the federal workforce to the lowest level in 60 years, raise taxes, reinstitute the green energy anti-oil diktats of the Biden era, and undo the business-friendly policies that have boosted economic growth to rates not seen in decades (other than post-Covid.)
The GOP has considerable money to spend getting that message out in the next four weeks. Let us hope for the good of the country they do just that.