U.S. Presidential Politics Winter Card.

• Author: Manchin, Joe

The GOP is expected to win big in November--possibly winning forty seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and maybe also taking control of the United States Senate. The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal polling data show a collapse of support for Biden with no enthusiasm on the Democratic side for the upcoming elections and with surprising enthusiasm among independents for possibly voting this time for GOP candidates. Put another way, Biden's favorable support in the Gallup polls is 6 percentage points lower than President Obama's was in 2010 just before the Democrats lost a whopping 63 seats in the mid-term elections. And today, the public is far more pessimistic toward the future than in 2010.

The irony is that contrary to conventional wisdom, the GOP did not do as well as expected in the Congressional redistricting process. The problem for the Democrats is that the polls show that the voters simply do not like President Biden. As one political strategist put it to TIE, "The President called the rise in the price of gasoline 'the Putin gas tax', but nobody believes that explanation." All they know is that in California, for example, filling up a gas tank can run as much as $200.

By February 2023, the GOP will face its own food fight. A lot will depend on whether former President Donald Trump runs again. Former New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie has already announced an interest in running for president. In the 2016 presidential campaign, Christie saw his job as taking down the GOP front runner Marco Rubio. He was quite successful in that endeavor. In 2024, Christie sees his job as taking down Trump, assuming the former president runs.

To launch his campaign, Christie wrote a book detailing all of Trump's blunders. He recently underwent a three-week campaign tour to promote the book. The book sold only 3,000 copies. Did Christie's book campaign fail because of a lack of interest in Christie, or because of a lack of interest in...