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Democrats have to defy history to hold onto the House in the 2022 midterms. As I've noted before, the president's party almost always loses House seats in the midterms. History, though, is a guide, not a fortune teller.

This week's special election in New Mexico's 1st congressional district is part of a larger trend that shows us that if President Joe Biden remains as popular as he is now, Democrats have a fighting chance to maintain House control.

Democrat Melanie Stansbury beat Republican Mark Moores by 26 points in the special election to replace Deb Haaland, who represented the district until she joined the Biden administration as interior secretary earlier this year. She did so in a district that Biden won by 23 points in 2020, Haaland took it by 16 points that same year and Hillary Clinton won by 17 points in 2016. In other words, Stansbury didn't just match but slightly exceeded the baseline Democratic performance in the district.

Of course, this was just one special election. But there have been a slew of special elections, mostly on the state legislative level since Biden became president, that seem to indicate something similar. Look at these specials using the past two presidential elections (giving more weight to 2020) as a baseline.

Democrats seem to be doing 2 points to 5 points better than you'd expect in a neutral political environment, depending on whether you look at all special elections involving at least one Democrat and Republican or those taking place with only one Democrat and one Republican.

This 2 to 5 point Democratic advantage matches pretty much what we saw in the national congressional generic ballot. It is also pretty much identical to the results we witnessed in last year's election. Biden won by 4.5 points nationally, and Democrats were victorious in the national House vote by about 3 points.

The common thread through these special elections is that Biden is popular. His approval rating has been north of 50% throughout his entire presidency. When we limit ourselves to only polling that asked voters (i.e. not all adults), Biden's approval rating is still above 50%.

Presidential approval ratings aren't all that matter during midterm elections -- but they do matter. There have been six presidents who have lost House majorities during a midterm in the polling era. All but Dwight Eisenhower (a war hero who always seemed to do worse politically than his approval rating indicated) had an approval rating below 50%.

Put another way, the presidents whose parties lost the House in midterm elections were almost all more unpopular than Biden is right now.

Now, that may not save Democrats next fall because all but the most popular presidents have lost seats in midterms, even if their party didn't lose House control. The Democrats have almost no room to spare as they won a slim majority in the 2020 elections.

The potential saving grace for Democrats is the relationship between midterm voting patterns and approval of the president has only increased over time. Since 2006, the president's party has won at least 86% of those voters who approve of the job the president is doing. They have never lost more than 90% of voters who disapprove of the president's job during the same period.

The bottom line is that if you approve of the president, you're very likely to vote for his party, and if you disapprove, you're very likely to vote for the opposition in this polarized era.

In 2018, Republican House candidates won 88% of those who approved of Donald Trump's job performance and lost 90% who disapproved. Republicans lost the House because more voters disapproved of Trump (54%) than approved (45%).

Biden, at this point, is inverse of this with an approval rating in the mid 50s and a disapproval rating in the low 40s.

Again, history suggests that Biden and particularly the Democrats' position should fade. I have pointed out that the White House party's position on the generic ballot from this point to the election should get worse. Additionally, special election results sometimes can get worse for a party the further we get from the beginning of the presidential term.

But Biden has one thing going for him that acts as a counter to the normal cycle: an approval rating that is steadiest for any president since World War II through this point in his term. He didn't experience a big honeymoon in his approval rating after his inauguration, and he hasn't seen a decline either. Biden's current approval rating looks awfully similar to the 52% who held a favorable view of him in the 2020 exit polls.

If Biden doesn't lose ground going forward, the 2022 midterms may prove to be an ahistorical event.

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Why Democrats may defy history and win the 2022 midterms - KCTV Kansas City

Have we no decency?

At long last sir, have you no decency?

These words were spoken to Sen.Joe McCarthy in 1954. He died three years later in disgrace, and his rabid movement died with him.

I can think of 15 to 25 people who should be asked this personally (actually hundreds), but tops is Yancey County's esteemed climate change denier. I wonder how the conversation went with the denier and all his Ph.Dfriends after 60 Minutes revealed that the sea ice in the Arctic has melted and the Russians are trying to confiscate the newly opened sea lanes. I know he would say if it is not Fox News, it is fake news. The aware know better! I just googled fascism, and whose name do you think popped into my head after Hitler and Mussolini, after reading the definition? You guessed right, Trump.

The informed know that Trump lost the election, lost the House, lost the Senate, was impeached twice and is the first president to have such charges brought against him. With a grand jury opened in Georgia and New York, I am hoping that justice will prevail. I have known for years that he was a delusional misfit who is inherently corrupt. He misled his followers with lies and deceit.

Now, the U.S. Senate is probably not going to form a 9/11-like commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Out of 50 Republican senators, only 15 agreed to meet with the mother of Brian Sicknick, the slain Capitol police officer. We only need 10 of these senators to vote with the Democrats; I bet it won't happen. They have something to fear! They did not fear, however, forming a commission to investigate Hillary Clinton and Benghazi.

After 33 hearings, $7.8 million and nearly four years, no evidence of wrongdoing was found. She did get beat in 2016 by a corrupt charlatan exactly the results they were seeking.

We had better straighten up. In recent news, Russia again hacked us. Putin is winning in his attempts to divide us and we are too ignorant or unaware to realize it.

Have we no decency?

Michael Perham, Clermont

I have been a resident of Leesburg and a Daily Commercial subscriber for the past several years. Each week Ive read with interest the Op-Ed section, noting that Russ Sloan was afforded a weekly byline to promote a decidedly right-wing point of view.

While perhaps expecting thoughtful, positive treatises on conservative principles and values, instead we received a weekly tirade, essentially telling us the Democratic Party was responsible for all of our problems, and the ultimate end of the republic as we know it.

It didnt seem to matter who was president, or which party had a congressional majority, Sloan told us that each and every problem in our country was the other guys fault. Over the years and through this unending weekly barrage of rhetoric, two absolutes have emerged: Sloan always told us the sky was falling and the sky never fell.

Tom Pierce, Leesburg

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Today's letters: Readers comment on former President Trump and right-wing op-eds - Daily Commercial

Tell us again how advanced Canada is

For years, we have heard that Canada has a great health care system. When Hillary Clinton was first lady, she proposed we change our health care system to be similar to Canada. Fast forward to today. Our pharmaceutical industry has created and produced millions of doses of a COVID-19 vaccine. Yet Canada is still in the testing phase, and its pharmaceutical industry is not sure it has the capacity to produce enough vaccines for their population.

According to the latest reports, Canada was to start getting its first Pfizer vaccine doses from the U.S. in early May.

Tell me again how we should change to a national health care system. I am just thankful that Hillary and the Democrats have not nationalized our system although they continue to push the idea.

Kris Riefler

Postal service woes are piling up

Last Tuesday at 7 p.m., after eating at a local restaurant, I went to drop a couple pieces of mail in the outside mailbox at the post office. The box was totally full. I tried to push the letters down, but it was stuffed. What is going on? The mail is supposed to be taken in at the end of the day. I can't believe if it was emptied at 4:30 it could be that full, especially with two other boxes sitting next to it.

No wonder we receive late notices on bills that we have paid and put in the mail. People depend on this service. Not everyone has a computer to pay bills, nor do we all want to. Some people get their medicines through the mail.

You can't depend on this critical service anymore. The election cannot be blamed now. Something needs to be done.

Karen Dale

Hixson

Old Trump tweet epitome of irony

It's a sound slap across the face when an old tweet resurfaces to haunt the writer, especially when it's one you wrote after you became president.

The message Trump published shortly after he was elected president in 2016 ratified a comment made by Vladimir Putin about Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.

It reads: "Vladimir Putin said today about Hillary and Dems: 'In my opinion, it is humiliating. One must be able to lose with dignity.' So true!"

Nationwide, Biden led Trump by 7 million votes out of a record 158 million cast.

Wielding a wrecking ball to American democracy, Trump trudged away leaving bounteous disgrace in his wake.

Rod Killian

Press needs to put numbers in context

Day after day, news reporters have been citing India's rising and "staggering" 300,000 deaths from COVID-19 as the third highest in the world. In comparison, deaths are 589,893 in the U.S. and 449,068 in Brazil. But what do these numbers mean? There's no context for them.

For context, consider per-capita death rates per 100,000 people. It's 212 in Brazil, 179 in the U.S. and only 22 in India. Thus, if the U.S. had as low a death rate as India, it would have only 77,000 COVID-19 deaths instead of 500,000. Or, if India's per-capita death were as high as that of the U.S., India would be facing a truly staggering 2,360,000 deaths, not 300,000. In light of the math, it is misleading to say that COVID-19 deaths in India are third highest in the world.

Facts have meaning only in context. Unfortunately, far too much reporting ignores context and inconvenient facts in order to create false impressions of conditions and events. If that's how freedom of the free press works, who needs it?

Bob Miller

Signal Mountain

Why would Georgians host Greene, Gaetz?

I saw that Matt Gaetz and and Marjorie Taylor Greene were in Dalton. One of these (Greene) is a person Georgia chose to represent it. So this is who Georgians are? Aren't they embarrassed and want to kick this person out of office?

I have been in the state of Georgia one time since I moved to Cleveland 15 years ago. I am not going to give that state any of my money. Why do normal Americans always have to fight against power-hungry, corrupt and mentally ill people who make laws in this country? It is very clear that both of these people have mental issues.

If Georgians are no better than [hosting] these two people, we have our own enemies in our backyards. Maybe we will have to have that second Civil War if there are people in Georgia supporting these sickos.

Penny Furman

Cleveland, Tennessee

Consistency needed on transgender issue

A much needed spotlight of rationality on the growing tragedy of the politically correct issue of child abuse as it relates to so-called transgender children: Gender dysphoria is a recognized psychological disorder and as such should be treated with psychotherapy, antidepressants and antipsychotics as are other types of mental illness. Why then are physician-ordered puberty blockers, lifelong hormonal therapy, irreversible bodily mutilation, and further, requiring society to participate in this delusional charade, the only acceptable ways of handling of this solution?

Conversely, [columnist Leonard] Pitts has, in the past, written quite eloquently concerning the harm that health care professional-provided conversation therapy does to children confused about their sexuality. A little consistency on these issues by Mr. Pitts would be appreciated.

Gene Stevens

Tunnel Hill, Georgia

Time to rethink public ed spending

Alabama's governor makes decisions about 3rd grade reading requirements. Really? Tennessee's governor signs a well-intentioned bill seeking to govern what is actually taught in public school classrooms about the history of present-day race relations in America.

Does anyone actually believe that state governments can control what happens behind closed classroom doors? Only those who have never managed a classroom of real, live human beings could believe such nonsense. All of which points to the often-obscured reality that parents are most responsible for their children's education, and should they object to mismanagement or indoctrination in the public schools, they should not be required to subject their children to an educational system which violates their values. They should be able to take to a school of their choosing those thousands of local, state and federal dollars allocated to their child's education.

How are these decisions not a matter of justice in education? And what evidence is there that current attempts to manage from state capitals and Washington, D.C., what happens in the dynamic relationship between teachers and students are actually effective?

It's long past time to re-evaluate how we spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the schooling of our children.

Gary Lindley

Lookout Mountain, Georgia

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Tell us again how advanced Canada is and more letters to the editors - Chattanooga Times Free Press

In the conservative book world, nothing is supposed to set off a gold rush like a new Democratic president. Ever since Bill Clinton inspired a wave of right-wing best sellers in the 90s, publishing houses that cater to Republican readers have learned to make the most of a new villain in the Oval Office, churning out polemics and exposs that aim to capitalize on fear of the new president.

Unless, that is, the new president is Joe Biden.

His presidency may be young, but industry insiders have told me in recent weeks that the market for anti-Biden books is ice cold. Authors have little interest in writing them, editors have little interest in publishing them, andthough the hypothesis has yet to be testedits widely assumed that readers would have little interest in buying them. In many ways, the dynamic represents a microcosm of the current political moment: Facing a new president whose relative dullness is his superpower, the American right has gone hunting for richer targets to elevate.

To some in the publishing industry, the apparent lack of appetite is bewildering. In the past, its been like taking candy from a baby to write a book about the Democratic president, one frustrated conservative editor told me, requesting anonymity to speak candidly about internal business practices. Now? Nobody is trying.

To others, though, the apathy makes sense. Eric Nelson, the executive editor at Broadside Books, the conservative imprint of HarperCollins, told me that the right-wing medias portrayal of Biden as a weak, addled old man is not conducive to book-length takedowns. Nobody who watches Fox thinks that Joe Biden is in charge of the country, Nelson said. The popular narrative on the right is that Biden is a kind of figurehead whose White House is actually being run by radical leftists behind the scenes. If somebody came to me and was like, I have a book on Bidens secret plan to destroy America, I would ask, How many times does the word nap appear in the index? Nelson said.

Ben Shapiro, the popular right-wing podcast host and author, echoed this sentiment. The president has a deeply nonthreatening persona, Shapiro told me. You kind of feel bad attacking him, honestly, because it feels like elder abuse.

Read: The resistances breakup with the media is at hand

Putting aside whether the perception of Biden as a bumbling geriatric bears any resemblance to reality, the fact that its so firmly embedded in the conservative media means that it will be difficult to dislodge. To gain literary traction on the right, a villain has to generate fear and outrage, not simply ridicule. Consider the past three decades of conservative best sellers. When Bill Clinton was on the cover, the books were laden with prurient (and in many cases dubious) details about his alleged affairs and personal corruption. When it was Barack Obama, the books portrayed himmany in barely veiled racial termsas a dangerous radical trying to transform America. And though she was never actually elected, the ominous prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency generated years worth of right-wing best sellers. (In 2006, when she was still a senator considering her first presidential bid, journalist Ben Smith wrote that Clinton had already been the subject of about 30 books, with a dozen more in the works, and compared the Hillary-book boomlet to the Da Vinci Code phenomenon.)

Jonah Goldberg, a former National Review columnist who has written several popular conservative books, told me it was never hard to make Hillary Clinton seem sinister to readers of a certain stripe. Hillary was a kind of Zelig figure of the post-60s left. Some of the associations were tenuous, but you could play the political equivalent of the Kevin Bacon game with her without needing more than one or two degrees of separation. Black Panthers! Communist law firms! Sidney Blumenthal! Saul Alinsky! Biden, an aging white guy who spent decades in the Senate, is by contrast somewhat boringly conventional.

And theres another problem, Goldberg told me: Most of the good ammo against Bidenwhich Ive deployed in the pastisnt as effective after four years of Trump. He says crazy things! He doesnt know what hes talking about! He has a ridiculous ego and lies about his brilliance and expertise! All of this is true. But all of that has been normalized by Trump. To a conservative movement that has been mainlining crazy for five years, its hard to get excited about measured criticism of Biden and his policies.

The right-wing marketplace has been radicalized, said Goldberg, who has been a vocal critic of the Trump-era GOP. Not just by QAnon-type stuff, but by years of anti-Clinton-and-Obama fare.

For now, the most successful conservative authors are training their fire on more abstract targets, such as wokeness and cancel culture. A quick review of recent best sellers suggests that ignoring Biden can work just fine. According to BookScan, which tracks most hardcover sales, Andy Ngos book on antifa, Unmasked, has sold more than 77,000 copies (an unqualified success in political nonfiction), as has Rod Drehers Live Not By Lies, which bills itself as a manual for Christian dissidents. The talk-radio host Mark Levins forthcoming American Marxismwhich will tackle, among other subjects, the widespread brainwashing of students, the anti-American purposes of Critical Race Theory and the Green New Deal, per its publisheris expected to be a massive hit when its released in July.

Shapiro attributes this trend to a broader shift that hes noticed in his audience. While conservatives may not care about Biden, he told me, they are petrified of the larger progressive forces they see at work in American politics. What people are afraid of right now are not powerful public figures. What people are afraid of are their bosses, their neighbors, that theyre going to get mobbed on Twitter and get socially ostracized. Shapiro is betting thats where the focus will stay: His own book coming out this summer will cover what he describes as the leftist takeover of every major institution.

Read: The conservatives trying to ditch fake news

Of course, conservative publishers are also grappling with an industry-wide problem: the end of the so-called Trump bump. After five years of best-seller lists being dominated by books about Donald Trumpfrom journalistic investigations to MAGA hagiographies to resistance-friendly tell-allsgeneral interest in political nonfiction could be coming back down to earth. And by deliberately positioning himself as an antidote to the drama of the Trump era, Biden may serve only to further cool the market.

Adam Bellow, an executive editor at Bombardier Books who helped popularize the anti-Clinton genre decades ago, predicted that some Biden-centric books will hit the conservative market eventually. But he told me that any attempted exposs may be hobbled by the relative lack of journalistic firepower on the right, which is heavy on pundits and light on reporters. One problem with conservative media is they dont have sources in this administration, he said. Nobody will talk to them.

Meanwhile, some in the conservative publishing world are determined to find a new bogeyman to fill the vacuum left by Biden. One possibility is Anthony Fauci, whose advocacy for COVID-19 restrictions has drawn ire from wide swaths of the right. (Faucian Bargain: The Most Powerful and Dangerous Bureaucrat in American History became a surprise hit when it was released in March, selling more than 68,000 copies.) But as the pandemic winds down in America, Faucis staying power as an antagonist is in doubt. Another option is Bidens son Hunter, whose personal life and controversial business dealings have been widely covered on Fox News. He is the subject of a forthcoming book, Laptop From Hell, slated for this September.

One conservative editor told me that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York might be the most logical choice, given the rights fear of socialism, but cited a unique challenge in making the congresswoman appear sufficiently menacing: Its hard to find a bad picture of her to put on the cover. Instead, the editor said, the smart money is on Vice President Kamala Harris, who could be reinvented in the right writerly hands as a devious puppet master pulling the strings of the affable, witless president. (Sound familiar?)

So far, though, no onein conservative publishing or the Republican Partyhas cracked the missing-villain problem. And it hasnt been for lack of trying. Last month, when the conservative author David Horowitz released his new book, The Enemy Within, the cover featured an array of would-be Democratic bad guys, including Harris, Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, and so on. It was expected to be a hit; Horowitzs last booka vigorous defense of Trumphad sold more than 168,000 copies in hardcover alone. But apparently his readers werent as taken with his new cast of characters. As of this writing, The Enemy Within has sold 12,898 copies.

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Joe Biden and the Conservative-Book Bust - The Atlantic

Hillary Clinton. Getty

Jason Sullivan, social media adviser to Roger Stone, seemd to imply Hillary Clinton should be hanged.

Sullivan made a gesture appearing to resemble a noose while talking about Clinton at a QAnon conference.

The conference, lasting three days, has attracted crowds of supporters who cheered at Sullivans gesture.

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An aide to Roger Stone, a longtime friend and former adviser to Donald Trump, appeared to indicate at a QAnon conference over the weekend that Hillary Clinton should be hanged.

Referring to Clinton as a godawful woman who shall not be named, Jason Sullivan, Stones social media adviser, made a noose gesture with his hand on a stage. His action was received with loud applause from a crowd of QAnon gatherers.

A former attorney for Sullivan did not immediately return Insiders request for comment.

Clinton was Trumps Democratic rival in the 2016 presidential election. Trump frequently berated her using sexist and misogynistic remarks, and has continued to do so years after he won the election.

Even while campaigning for the 2024 election, Trump lambasted Clinton, taking every opportunity in front of a crowd to target her.

We went through the greatest witch hunt in political history, Trump told supporters at his official campaign launch in Orlando, Florida, in June 2019. The only collusion was committed by the Democrats, the fake news media, and their operatives, and the people who funded the phony dossier: Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC.

In response to Trumps vitriolic behavior and remarks, lock her up chants often broke out among his supporters.

The QAnon conference is a three-day event that took place over the weekend in Dallas, Texas. Its main attraction was Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser under the Trump administration.

While up on stage, Flynn suggested to a crowd that there should be a coup in the United States that mirrors the one taking place in Myanmar.

Story continues

Hundreds have died since the military overthrew the democratically elected government.

Flynn in 2017 pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election. He received a pardon from Trump last year.

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An adviser to Trump ally Roger Stone appeared to gesture for Hillary Clinton to be hanged at a conference with QAnon attendees - Sports Grind...