The election is less than four weeks away. Now is when the politically desperate typically try to fight despondency with flights of fancy, which might explain House Speaker

Nancy Pelosi’s

optimism on

Stephen Colbert’s

“The Late Show” last week.

Mrs. Pelosi claimed that because Democrats have better organization, superior messaging and more money, “we will hold the House, by winning more seats.”

Does one of the nation’s toughest, most savvy politicos really think that? Probably not. Since modern political parties emerged between 1818 and 1824, the party in power has gained House seats only twice in a president’s first midterm.

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It happened in 1934, as President

Franklin D. Roosevelt

rallied Americans during the Great Depression, and then in 2002, when President

George W. Bush’s

approval ratings were sky-high after the 9/11 attacks.

Mrs. Pelosi isn’t her party’s only overly upbeat leader. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman

Sean Patrick Maloney

is so confident that last weekend he was fundraising with Democratic expatriates in Paris, Geneva and London. A DCCC chairman would normally make that sort of foreign fundraising trip well before the election, not a month out, especially if, like Mr. Maloney, he personally faced a strong challenger in a newly drawn district.

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Maybe Mrs. Pelosi is correct and Democrats will expand their congressional majorities. Maybe Mr. Maloney will easily win re-election as Democrats strengthen their numbers. And maybe pundits are correct when they suggest “things might be different” this midterm cycle because bad economic news and the president’s pitiful approval numbers don’t matter to voters, leaving Democrats with “a real chance” to keep “their majority intact.”

But Democrats face a simple, inconvenient fact: Nothing strategically meaningful is likely to change in their favor before Election Day.

Is inflation likely to decline dramatically this month? If it were, the Federal Reserve would be stopping its interest-rate hikes, not raising the target range for the federal-funds rate in anticipation of “ongoing increases.” The Energy Information Administration says the price of a gallon of regular gasoline has risen 26 cents nationally in the past four weeks. Because Saudi Arabia ignored U.S. pleas and teamed up with Russia to cut oil production, prices will likely go higher.

Will confidence in the economy rise dramatically before November? A Sept. 16 Gallup poll found 2% of respondents said the economy was “excellent” and 15% “good,” while 34% said it was “only fair” and 48% believed it was “poor.” Since 2022’s first quarter, the percentage saying the economy was good or better hasn’t risen over 20%.

Will voters suddenly decide they like where President Biden is steering the country? It seems improbable when the RealClearPolitics average has Mr. Biden’s approval rating at 43% and those who think America is going in the right direction at 27%.

Will our communities suddenly feel safer? The share of people who told Gallup in March—the month when the firm annually asks about this issue—that they “personally worry” about crime and violence “a great deal” was 53%, the highest since 2016.

Will the border crisis suddenly ease? It seems unlikely that Washington will do anything to stem the flow of illegal aliens, given that the border czar, Vice President

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Kamala Harris,

is still insisting that the border is “secure.”

The one development that might benefit Democrats is if

Vladimir Putin

pushes us to a Cuban Missile Crisis moment and Mr. Biden shines despite the dire circumstances. Regardless of party, let’s hope such a moment never arrives, in part because I doubt the president would do much shining.

It’s true Democrats have more cash, largely because of their more developed small-dollar money machine. But this tactical advantage isn’t enough. Every winning GOP Senate candidate in a competitive race in 2020 was outspent. The question is whether Republicans will have enough funds to reach voters, which depends on donors’ generosity in the short time left.

And while pundits are right that Republicans have nominated some knuckleheads, Democratic Senate hopefuls

John Fetterman

in Pennsylvania and

Mandela Barnes

in Wisconsin prove that even widely heralded candidates can have very problematic views and records. And debates—relatively rare this year—have provided surprises as Republicans

Blake Masters

in Arizona and J.D. Vance in Ohio more than held their own in matches this past week.

Abortion won’t save Democrats. Not when Gallup finds only 4% of Americans believe it’s the most important problem.

My guess is Mrs. Pelosi is wrong. Democrats have more cash but worse messaging. Organization helps her party, but it can’t fully offset the electorates’ deep-rooted desire for change and a congressional check on a disappointing president’s actions. Now would be the time for a Democratic Plan B, though I have no idea what it could be. I doubt Mrs. Pelosi does either.

Mr. Rove helped organize the political-action committee American Crossroads and is author of “The Triumph of William McKinley” (Simon & Schuster, 2015).

Wonder Land: With its handling of the Southern border, Team Biden demolished the Democrats’ moral high ground on immigration, creating an opening for the GOP. Images: AP/Getty Images Composite: Mark Kelly

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