The Biggest Midterm Election Issue Is Chaos

If this prediction proves wrong, I’ll join the crow-eating fest the morning after. An October surprise could change everything, but how bad could any surprise get after President Biden himself already prophesied the possibility of Armageddon? No event is likely to move the needle decisively for Democratic Senate candidates in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona or Nevada.

Admittedly, the likelihood of a Republican victory is becoming conventional wisdom. A grudging

New York Times

headline noted this week, “NYT/Siena Poll Is Latest to Show Republican Gains.” At least three other recent polls concluded the election is looking good for elephants.

What, exactly, are these midterm elections about? The 500-pound bear in the room is inflation. Still, I don’t recall another recent midterm when so many discrete issues were filtering through voters’ minds. Crime, abortion, recession, energy prices, the border, schools, Ukraine and, not least,

Joe Biden.

We live in chaotic times. The RealClearPolitics polling average has the country’s right-direction number bouncing along the bottom at 26.7%.

The plausible default theory of the election is that inflation running above 8%—raising consumer prices and eroding wage gains—pushes everything else into second-tier voting concerns.

Perhaps, but midterms under a new president are inevitably a Rorschach blot on the nation’s life during his first two years. While Mr. Biden’s approval rating has ticked up in recent polls, it has been awful, falling below 40%. My view is that some portion of his bad approval is discomfort over Mr. Biden’s mental state. But people aren’t going to vote for Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance or anyone else because of Mr. Biden’s teleprompter gaffes.

I keep wondering what voters make today of the 2020 presidential election. Not the contested result. Mr. Biden won. But one reason Mr. Biden narrowly won is that he pulled over independents and disaffected Republicans by running as a moderate alternative to his party’s progressives—Bernie Sanders and

Elizabeth Warren.

Mr. Biden’s moderate, “normal” presidency didn’t last past Inauguration Day. His switcheroo to progressive standard-bearer for the Sanders-Warren-Pelosi policy goals was startling. A lot of voters who decide close elections have to be wondering about the difference between what they wanted and what they got.

Voters know they ended up with inflation not experienced in most of their adult lives. Mr. Biden not only denies that some $4 trillion in federal spending during his term has anything to do with inflation but actually argues that his legislated subsidies, transfer payments and Medicare prices negotiated for 2026 will “reduce” inflation. This is tooth-fairy economics.

The remaining bulk of the Democrats’ claimed achievements is tax credits for 2030 climate goals, though virtually no one is running on climate because it rates so low in election concerns.

What’s left? Abortion was hot after the Supreme Court’s June 24 Dobbs decision but looks to have moved off the front burner. I’m hard put to see any toss-up election being decided by playing the Trump/MAGA card, though Mr. Trump could still produce a Halloween surprise for GOP candidates.

As for Mr. Biden, by attaching his presidency so wholeheartedly to his party’s political left, he has elevated the midterm importance of issues like crime and the border.

Progressive criminal-justice theories are running side by side with a crime surge in cities and suburbs. Virtually no new-generation prosecutor has been willing to make a midcourse correction. Democrats own it.

Pennsylvania’s GOP Senate candidate,

Mehmet Oz,

is closing in on Democrat

John Fetterman

because Mr. Fetterman won’t budge on progressive justice theories that produce violent mayhem in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

The massive flow of migrants across the collapsed southern border is a long-sought goal of the Democratic left, which shows no concern for what this has done to moderate Senate Democrats such as

Mark Kelly

in Arizona or Nevada’s

Catherine Cortez Masto.

Sen.

Raphael Warnock,

Georgia’s Democratic incumbent, is a man of the left, just as gubernatorial candidate

Stacey Abrams

is a hero of the party’s left. But in his debate with GOP candidate

Herschel Walker,

Sen. Warnock was clearly struggling to square his progressive beliefs with those of Georgians who narrowly gave the 2020 election to the “moderate” Joe Biden. For months, Ms. Abrams hasn’t closed a 5-point gap with incumbent GOP Gov.

Brian Kemp.

Chaos is bad for the party in power. Inflation is a form of social chaos, as are the unchecked border and violent crime. They didn’t fall from the sky. The first two are attributable to policy decisions by Mr. Biden and the Beltway Democrats, the latter to elected Democrats across the country.

Most voters, especially the independents trending rightward, don’t like chaos. To ride it out, voters can choose between a red wave or a blue wave. The blue wave crested two years ago. It’s not going to return for Democrats in three weeks.

Write henninger@wsj.com.