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Joe Biden walked into the State Dining Room at the White House like a man crashing his own funeral, and not for the first time. By now, the president must enjoy the routine.
Less than 24 hours earlier, pollsters, pundits, and even politicians from within his own party had openly warned that voters would soon punish the White House for a jittery economy and historic inflation, effectively crippling the president. But the crushing rebuke never came, or at least not to the degree Democrats feared and Republicans had hoped for in the 2022 midterm elections.
Biden made the most of the moment.
The red wave? “It didn’t happen.”
The “incessant optimism” of his that some found out of touch or even grating? It was warranted: “I felt good during the whole process.”
The fear that Democrats were going to suffer a generation of defeat? “I thought we were going to do fine.”
The president may have overstated his case. Control of Congress was still too close to call Wednesday evening, and just days earlier he was preparing Democratic donors for “a horrible two years” where all he’d have to stave off Republican majorities was “a veto pen.”
But Biden brushed past those previously expressed concerns. He had just outperformed former President Barack Obama’s midterm record, watched his party significantly limit their losses, and defy nearly a century’s worth of history. Ever since Franklin Roosevelt, the party that occupies the Oval Office has averaged losses of 28 House seats and four Senate seats. Republicans may still win both chambers of Congress, but their worst-case scenario in the Senate is a razon-thin margin – and in the House, they may be in single digits.
Biden was eager to run through the score in light of that historic context.
“While any seat lost is painful [and] some good Democrats didn’t win there last night, Democrats had a strong night,” he said. “We lost fewer seats in the House of Representatives than in any Democratic president’s first midterm election in the last 40 years, and we had the best midterm for governors since 1986.
