Fred Barnes is an old hand at politics. He sees a tightening midterm election.
“…Strategists treat the “generic ballot” as a magic number. It asks which party you intend to vote for. At one point, Republicans were minus-18. That’s landslide time. Now they’re minus-3 or tied with Democrats.
Republicans have underpolled on this question for decades. This leads to a twist. If they’re at minus-7 or better, they’ll probably lose fewer than 23 seats and relegate Democrats to the minority for two more years. That’s what GOP savants say, anyway.
Ah, but there’s more. Republican intensity—how hyped up they are about the election—has gotten stronger than the anger of all those agitated Democratic resisters. That’s a pretty amazing development. So is the emergence of the 89-90 percent of Republicans who say they’re fine with Trump, according to a GOP survey of likely voters.
Issues? The double whammy of a surging economy and huge tax cut are bound to boost Republicans. House minority leader Nancy Pelosi is sticking to her story that the tax bill merely sprinkled crumbs around the country, but no one else is…”