While 2022 is likely to be tough for Dems, I think there's one area of upside that's being underrated -- this year, Dems are winning the national popular vote by a slim margin and thus barely winning the House. People talk like Dems have maxed out their vote share.
What Dems need to do in 2022 is what they did in 2018: Win the House NPV decisively. Obviously that's hard in a midterm year where you have the WH, but probably easier when you're not running on a big unpopular entitlement change, as ruling parties did in '94/'06/'10/'18.
The last first-term midterm where a president sought re-election while presiding over a divided congress was 2002, and that president's party gained seats. Obviously special circumstances, but the circumstances in 2022 may be pretty special too, with COVID waning & fast growth.
The divided congress under Bush was more productive than you might have expected, and yet one of the winning GOP messages in 2002 was that Democrats were being obstructionist -- blocking the creation of DHS over civil service terms.
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