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IN THE FINAL DAYS of the 2014 midterm election cycle, Rep. Steve Israel, then the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, had a metaphor he’d often share on party caucus calls and with sleep-deprived campaign staffers. The mission at hand, he would tell them, is like landing a plane in a hurricane.
It was Israel’s way of underscoring the daunting task Democrats faced six years into Barack Obama’s administration. The president was not popular. There had been a series of controversies in the year and a half after his re-election. And the party was trying to defend its control of the Senate in a year that was structurally bad for them and limit Republican gains in the House.
But as the election drew closer, Democrats knew they were headed for a bad night. The hurricane metaphor Israel was using on his phone calls began to feel like an acknowledgement that they were going to get swept away.
Now, a dozen years later, it’s Republicans feeling those sensations of impending doom. Polls show Donald Trump’s popularity hitting historic lows. The major crisis points that have defined his second term in office are only getting worse. And the number of seats that the party is being forced to defend is only growing greater.
Democrats who lived through the 2014 wipeout tell me
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