Anyone who reads this column regularly knows that the party holding the presidency usually loses House seats. In 18 of the 20 post-World War II midterms, the average outcome has been a net loss of 26 seats. They also know that the pattern exists in the Senate but to a lesser extent: There have been losses in only 13 of those cycles, with the average outcome being a loss of 3.8 seats.
For Democrats, there is good news and bad news. The bad news is that the public doesn’t like them. The good news is the election probably won’t be about them. It should not go unnoticed that on the poll question of whether people think the country is headed in the right direction or off on the wrong track, the "right direction" numbers in the last pre-election poll compared to the first post-election poll increased by 17 points in the NBC News Poll. "Wrong track" dropped by 10 points.
Having said all that, this election is a lot more likely to be about President Trump than about his predecessor,
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