GOP predicts midterm wins; Biden warns of democracy threats

MIAMI (AP):

Republicans are eyeing major gains in Tuesday’s elections and appealing to supporters over the final weekend of the 2022 campaign to punish Democrats for high inflation and crime rates that have risen in parts of the country. Top Democrats, including President Joe Biden and his party’s two most recent White House predecessors, said the prospect of GOP victories could undermine the very future of American democracy.

More than 39 million people have already voted in an election that will decide control of Congress and key governorships. Biden was campaigning in suburban New York on Sunday evening, a day after former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton made closing cases to voters.

Sean Patrick Maloney, head of the Democrats’ House campaign arm, is in a tough contest for his seat north of New York City. But he insisted Sunday that Democrats are “going to do better than people think on Tuesday”, adding that his party is “not perfect” but “we are responsible adults who believe in this democracy”.

“I think this race is razor-close, and I think everybody who cares about the extremism in this ‘MAGA’ movement – the racism, the antisemitism, the violence – needs to get out and vote, and that’s not just Democrats, it’s independents and fair-minded Republicans,” Maloney told NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’, referring to former President Donald Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ slogan.

Florida Senator Rick Scott, who heads the Republicans’ Senate campaign arm, countered: “We have great candidates. People are showing up to vote.”

“There’s no energy on the Democrat side,” he said on NBC. “This election is about the Biden agenda.”

Trump was rallying in Miami and hopes a strong GOP showing on election day will generate momentum for the 2024 run that he is expected to launch in the days or weeks after polls close.

Not invited to that rally is Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who is running for re-election against Democrat Charlie Crist and is widely considered Trump’s most formidable challenger if he also were to get into the White House race.

In Pennsylvania on Saturday night, Trump said he hoped the GOP would have “an historic victory” in the midterms.

But DeSantis also was on his mind – he referred to the governor as “Ron DeSanctimonious”. It’s a rivalry that has been simmering for more than a year as DeSantis has taken increasingly bold steps to boost his national profile and build a deep fundraising network.

DeSantis, who became a popular national figure among conservatives during the pandemic as he pushed back on COVID-19 restrictions, shares Trump’s pugilistic instincts. By most measures, Trump remains easily the most popular figure in the Republican Party. But many Trump supporters are eager for the prospect that DeSantis might run, seeing him as a natural successor to Trump, without Trump’s considerable political negatives.

Trump has privately groused about DeSantis for failing to say definitively that he will sit out the race.