After SOTU, Pence Makes Bold Predictions About Upcoming Midterms
A day after President Donald Trump rocked the house (and country, actually) at the annual State of the Union address this Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence predicted that Republicans will “make history again” during the 2018 midterm elections by defying the odds against them.
“Conventional wisdom holds that the upcoming midterms are going to be a challenge, right?” he noted while speaking Wednesday at a GOP congressional retreat in West Virginia, as reported by Politico.
“Well, I think you all know what President Trump thinks about conventional wisdom,” he continued. “The conventional wisdom said in 2016 that Hillary Clinton was going to be elected President of the United States of America.”
Leftists commentators and experts likewise now confidently assert that “Democrats are in the catbird’s seat in the 2018 midterms,” as CNN put it.
According to The Washington Post, this optimism is rooted in “(t)he Democrats’ success in many recent state and local elections,” as well as Trump’s “distinctively unpopular” favorability ratings among voters.
Fair enough, except that not only did Trump’s SOTU address receive high approval marks across the board, but his favorability ratings have been climbing, as can be observed in the following chart from RealClearPolitics:
“The truth of the matter is we made history in 2016, and we’re going to make history again in 2018, when we reelect Republican majorities in the House and in the Senate,” Pence added.
He could be right. A new Monmouth poll published this week found that 47 percent of voters are leaning toward voting for Democrat candidates, while 45 are leaning toward Republicans.
While this might sound depressing at first glance, keep in mind that this “is an astonishing drop from last month, when a Monmouth poll found the Democrats with an enormous 15-point lead, 51% to 36%,” as noted by The Daily Wire.
Also consider that this poll was reportedly conducted before Trump’s SOTU this week. Given the president’s impressive performance, the lead could conceivably shorten further or even disappear altogether.
Here’s the kicker: Leading the efforts to reelect Republicans to the House and Senate is Pence himself.
Politico reported that he intends to “hopscotch the country over the next three months, making nearly three dozen stops that could raise tens of millions of dollars for House and Senate Republicans, all while promoting the party’s legislative accomplishments”
With Pence leading the charge and Trump’s legislative accomplishments — including the historic tax reform bill he signed in late 2017 — paving the way forward, the chances of success look sweeter than ever right now.
Of course, “right now” is not November, so let’s just hope nothing happens between now and then to ruin these immensely positive vibes.
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