It's a damned if they do, damned if they don't scenario. But I'd argue the less-bad option for the party holding the presidency is to stand by their president during midterms.
If they try to run away from the de facto face of their party, voters will by and large still associate the president with the party. In exchange, by running away t…
It's a damned if they do, damned if they don't scenario. But I'd argue the less-bad option for the party holding the presidency is to stand by their president during midterms.
If they try to run away from the de facto face of their party, voters will by and large still associate the president with the party. In exchange, by running away they will depress the base a bit and signal to the country that there is something sufficiently bad about the president to warrant running away from them in the first place.
Running away is a good choice for candidates in seats that would be competitive even outside of a midterm. Easy example: someone like Collins needs to have distance between her and Trump to have a chance. Unfortunately for us she has a lot of ingrained distance built up over her career.
Dems probably would have done better in 2010 if our candidates didn't create a stampede to create distance between themselves and Obama. Still would have gotten crushed overall, but slightly less crushed.
It's a damned if they do, damned if they don't scenario. But I'd argue the less-bad option for the party holding the presidency is to stand by their president during midterms.
If they try to run away from the de facto face of their party, voters will by and large still associate the president with the party. In exchange, by running away they will depress the base a bit and signal to the country that there is something sufficiently bad about the president to warrant running away from them in the first place.
Running away is a good choice for candidates in seats that would be competitive even outside of a midterm. Easy example: someone like Collins needs to have distance between her and Trump to have a chance. Unfortunately for us she has a lot of ingrained distance built up over her career.
Dems probably would have done better in 2010 if our candidates didn't create a stampede to create distance between themselves and Obama. Still would have gotten crushed overall, but slightly less crushed.
I think Dems would have probably held the Illinois senate seat in 2010 had they stood by Obama.