Is Biden's Midterm Going to be Obama 2.0?

It has been 12 years since Obama and the Democrats received a shellacking during his first midterm election. Everyone remembers what happened, the GOP picked up their largest gains in a single election since 1938 and retook the majority plus six Senate seats. Less remembered is that Democrats down-ballot lost 680 state legislative seats and realigned the countries politics.

Before 2010, several states that consistently voted Republican for President were still controlled by Democrats locally, including parts of the Midwest, Deep South, and the Prairie States. The Obama White House years forever changed that.

While experts can blame Obamacare and Democrats in Washington for shooting over the mark and pushing an overly partisan agenda, a large part of it, however, was longstanding trends that sped up with the arrival of Obama, Reid, and Pelosi to Washington. Working-class whites shifted heavily towards Republicans, and it was enough to give a serious blow to the Democrat Party and rip the gavel from Pelosi’s hands. Those voting trends are still standing, and despite it being over a decade since the 2010 midterm, Democrats have yet to recover from their losses in state legislatures.

As of February 1st, Democrats have 174 fewer State Senate seats and 582 fewer State House/Assembly seats than in 2009.