“Decades of experience have taught that the sitting president’s party loses ground in midterm elections. Only twice in the past century – 1926 and 2002 – has the rule failed to hold. Democrats will enter the midterms with only a minuscule edge in the House, so even a small loss of seats would give Republicans control. The question is whether Trump will help, hinder, or possibly even prevent that from happening. The extent of the losses by members of the president’s party in midterm elections tends to track his approval rating as well as the state of the economy. Right now, both indicators are tentatively positive for President Joe Biden. He’s more popular now than Trump ever was. The economy is struggling, but it’s expected to rebound as the pandemic retreats, and the massive stimulus package currently under consideration in Congress should help too.”

“At CPAC, The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel reported, ‘Displays of anti-Biden sentiment were fairly rare, as the new president had not attained the boogeyman status of former president Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, who galvanized the right.’ A vendor hawking shirts that featured a Hitler-mustached image of the new president lamented, ‘I can’t give the Biden stuff away.’ Trump himself unloaded on Biden, as Trump’s aides had hoped he would, but the nature of his attacks only underlined the difficulties Republicans have faced in building opposition to the current president. Trump spent conspicuously little time complaining about the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill – a proposal Republicans have struggled to effectively oppose, and one that remains very popular with voters. Instead, Trump repeated (over aides’ advice) his false claims that the presidential election was stolen from him, claims previously aired as part of a long-running and failed effort to overturn the results. In Trump’s alternative reality, he is still the rightful chief executive. But if the midterms are always a referendum on the president, and Trump insists that’s still him, then which party will face a midterm backlash in 2022?” – The Atlantic.