The Outsider Perspective Issue 301 | The Beltway Outsiders

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Good Friday Morning! Except for the official Women’s March Twitter account, which told everyone, “Abortion is safer than giving birth. Just saying.” We’re not that far removed from “safe, legal, and rare” being the primary description for Democrats on abortion. Now, abortion is preferable to giving birth – you know, that act humanity uses to reproduce- crucial to all living organisms.

As I was writing this edition, an alleged assassination attempt happened in New York against Jewish Congressman Lee Zeldin, who is also the Republican running for Governor in New York. He is safe and fine, as are others at the scene. But he describes someone trying to stab him on the stage. My CI column, linked below, covers thoughts on that and the alarming number of these stories lately: Kavanaugh, Zeldin, and the unfortunate successful assassination in Japan. It’s not good when these kinds of events start popping up, and we need to deal with them.

This week, I’m diving back into the election numbers because things are getting worse for Joe Biden and Democrats. The House passed a flurry of legislation, and more events could be on the horizon. I’ll get into that below; links to follow.

Where you can find me this week

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[7/18/2022] The vanity of Joe Biden dooms his presidency – Conservative Institute

[7/22/2022] Assassination attempts are a red flag – Conservative Institute

Desperation sets in, and Democrats throw everything at saving their majority.

The top question I’ve gotten repeatedly over the last few weeks is: “Why is the House passing all this legislation?” Some example headlines:

The House passes legislation to “protect contraception.”
House passes legislation to “protect same-sex marriages.”
House passes legislation “to guarantee right to travel” for abortion.
House passes legislation to protect interracial marriage.

Why? The answer to that is the same as why the Democratic-led House switched tracks and decided Thursday was not the end of the January 6 hearings. No, dear reader, those hearings will kick back up in September. We’re getting a barrage of legislation, most of it nothing more than show votes, because the midterms or closing in fast.

Democrats have nothing of value to show voters as we head into the midterms. They’re desperate to change the subject to anything other than inflation or Joe Biden’s record in November. Two weeks ago, I wrote the electoral landscape for Democrats and Republicans and how it was toxic for Democrats. For CI, I analyzed Fox News and New York Times polls, both top-grade, which spell out disaster for Democrats.

Democratic leadership isn’t stupid, and they’re seeing the exact public figures that I do. They’re likely running internal polls for specific races for the House and Senate – which is why they’re deploying resources to Washington and Colorado.

What may be hard to imagine is that in the two weeks since I wrote about the election, things have gotten worse for Democrats. Joe Biden’s approval ratings sunk to 36.8% in the RealClearPolitics average – which is lower than any polling average for Donald Trump.

The lowest watermark for Trump was 37% in December of 2017. He rarely shifted outside the 40-42% approval range for the remainder of his Presidency. Trump had a built-in base of support, which kept him protected with a floor of around 40%, and he could bounce back up from any negative news story.

There’s no evidence we’ve hit a natural polling bottom for Biden. Unlike Trump, we haven’t found Biden’s floor yet. I suspect he has one; it’s lower than a typical President. Trump, Obama, Clinton, and to a lesser extent, George W. Bush all had a base of support within their party. Joe Biden got elected as the consensus candidate because the far-left was fractured beyond repair, and black voters in South Carolina saved a dead and buried Biden campaign to give him the life he needed.

Joe Biden was the only sane one in the crowd. Voters held their noses and pulled the lever. There are no “Biden fans” in the Democratic Party. There’s a reason he’s run multiple times and been nothing more than an “also-run” candidate. Obama wasn’t originally going to select Biden as his VP, he wanted Hilary Clinton in the role, but she turned him down. Biden was the also-ran VP pick. Even more scandalous, Obama considered replacing Biden with Clinton before the 2012 race.

No one – and I do mean no one – believed Biden was up for the VP role, let alone the Presidential slot. In a highly crowded field, Biden emerged through consensus and fear among Democratic elites to give the nomination to Bernie Sanders. As a result, we now have one of the worst-performing Presidents in American history.

Here’s the million-dollar question: can Biden’s job approval numbers improve any before the midterms? Democrats do not seem to think so. Nancy Pelosi is unleashing everything she can from the House, which is why we’re getting more January 6 hearings, legislation aimed at Dobbs and other social issues, and more. They have to empty everything in their bag of tricks to survive what is shaping up to be a brutal beatdown come November.

Operation Save Democrats is in full effect.

The House is fully locked in, with the Senate dragging its heels. How far does this go? All eyes are on the Federal Reserve. Rumors have swirled in financial circles that the Federal Reserve will either slow, pivot, or pause rate hikes starting in September. Fed officials know that rate hikes are driving the economy into a recession. If they can delay a recession until after the midterms, it could help Democrats.

JP Morgan suggested this week that a pivot by the Federal Reserve could be in play. It’s not a new idea, earlier this spring, Bank of America and other investors priced in the Federal Reserve slowing down rate hikes in September of this year. Most of those plans got scrapped because inflation came in far hotter than anyone anticipated in their models, and the Fed had to move in the opposite direction, raising rates even faster.

But the idea of a Fed pause starting in September has never gone away because of the midterm elections. Once those are past us, the Fed can move on to the issue of bringing inflation down hard. Even those predicting a slowdown in September still think recession in 2023 is likely.

A Fed that’s independent and serious doesn’t care about elections. A Fed playing politics likely shifts policy in September and dresses it up with appropriate language. We’ll see what we get by then, but nothing is certain.

Job losses are starting to trickle into the economic data. Jobless claims have begun trending up. Most of the layoffs announced have been in tech or crypto-specific industries or those adjacent to those segments of the economy. For instance, Ford is laying off people attached to its electric car manufacturing, which is essentially tech-adjacent. But 7/11 also announced layoffs, which suggests the job market is tightening, and layoffs are moving beyond tech and crypto and into the real world (Forbes is tracking layoff announcements here).

What does that mean for Fed policy? Who knows. Everything remains up in the air. We see impacts of Fed policy, though. That’s for sure. Do they keep that up through an election? Or do they pause while votes are tallied and crank up the rate machine post-election? TBD.

In reality, the only real hope Democrats have of shifting this race is a seismic impact of an external event that moves the race in their favor. Republicans likely would have lost seats in 2002 if it hadn’t been for 9/11 reshaping the political landscape, giving George W. Bush historical popularity in the 90% range, and sweeping even more Republicans into office. Gravity reasserted itself over time, and the Democrats could ride Bush’s unpopularity in 2006-08 to massive margins.

What kind of event would do that? I’m not sure. Republicans always thought Hurricane Sandy helped Obama in 2012 because it helped make him look more Presidential at a crucial time, whereas Romney looked inept and hapless. I have my doubts there because Romney was such a poor candidate. But it’s a theory.

Without such an event, Republicans are headed for victories across the map. In the past, it took a war-like event to trigger a shift in public sentiment. That’s probably what it would take here, with a historically unpopular President at the helm and floundering at every turn.

Links of the week

Fed Officials Preparing to Lift Interest Rates by Another 0.75 Percentage Point: Policy makers are leaning against full-point increase despite June inflation surge – Nick Timiraos, WSJ

Biden’s Covid diagnosis throws wrench in White House midterm push: Fresh off a string of overseas trips, officials had been gearing up to get Biden on the road back home in the crucial months before the midterms. – NBC News

‘Battle royale’ in Department of Justice over whether to charge Trump: Watergate sleuth – Washington Examiner

Rate Hikes Alone Won’t Curb Inflation – Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg, Project Syndicate

Suddenly, two big-city Dems are upset with the fallout from Biden’s border lunacy – NY Post Editorial Board

Crime, Community, and Canvas: The art of Patrick Alexis – Glenn Loury, Substack

The Diversity Delusion Comes To Health Care – Stanley Goldfarb, Newsweek

Gender activists push to bar anthropologists from identifying human remains as ‘male’ or ‘female’ – The College Fix

UK faces a summer of discontent as historic inflation and real wage declines stoke strikes – CNBC

Why Gavin Newsom won’t stop talking about Florida – Stephen L. Miller, American Spectator

$100K got Uber research published in prestigious outlet – Felix Salmon, Axios