On the surface, Americans may not seem to have too much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving as we stagger toward the end of President Joe Biden’s first year in office.
“This one-party rule of Washington in one year has given us not just inflation, but rising gasoline prices, a labor crisis, a supply-chain crisis, chaos, crime and worst of all: failure,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said during a recent speech on the floor.
But those same dire conditions under Biden and the Democrat-controlled House and Senate have caused Americans to quickly rethink who should be in control of the country – and that could give conservatives three things to be thankful for:
THE OFF-YEAR ELECTION:
Earlier this month, Americans had a chance to give Biden his first job performance evaluation.
He got an “F.”
“It wasn’t a little pocket one place said one thing and one said another,” McCarthy said. “It was overwhelmingly resounding, a rejection of the current policies of this majority.”
In Virginia, Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, giving the GOP its first statewide victory there in a decade.
Republicans also retook control over the state’s House of Delegates.
In New Jersey, Democrat Phil Murphy won reelection – but it was an unexpectedly tight race, with Murphy squeaking past Jack Ciattarelli by 3 points in a state Biden won last year by 16 points.
That’s 13-point swing to the right.
That has Republicans looking ahead to…
NEXT YEAR’S MIDTERMS:
Sinc 1946, the party that takes control over the White House has lost an average of 28 seats in the House of Representatives in the next midterm elections.
Since the GOP needs to flip just five seats to regain control of the House, it’s widely expected they’ll win the gavel based on that history alone.
But the early polls show the GOP could go much further.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll found 51 percent of voters said they would choose a Republican in next year’s House election, versus just 41 percent who said they would vote for a Democrat.
That’s the largest lead in the 40-year history of the poll.
And it’s not just the House that’s on the line.
“We’re going to take back the Senate, absolutely,” National Republican Senatorial Committee chair Sen. Rick Scott (Fla.) told Fox News. “We’re going to do unbelievably in 2022 because we have the right message.
The Senate is currently in a 50-50 deadlock, with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as the tiebreaker.
A gain of even one seat would given the GOP control over the chamber… and, with House gains, over Congress itself.
THE END OF THE CORONAVIRUS:
It’s much too soon to claim victory over COVID-19
But the nation is in a much better place this year than it was last, thanks in large part of President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed initiative.
That led to the development of a vaccine in record time, which in turn has not only helped keep cases in check to prevent a recurrence of last winter’s surge but has also kept Americans out of the hospital even when cases do rise.
There’s still work to be done, but at long last the end of the pandemic could be in sight.
“By Jan. 4, this pandemic may well be over, at least as it relates to the United States, after we get through this delta wave of infection,” Scott Gottlieb, who served as head of the FDA under Donald Trump, said on CNBC earlier this month. “We’ll be in a more endemic phase” after that.
That’s when the case loads will become steadier, more predictable and easier to control – much like flu season.
And that’s something every American can be thankful for.