Morning Joe Diagnoses GOP House Midterm Election Prospects And It’s Not Looking Good

Morning Joe — in a fit of post-election analysis that also served well as a coping mechanism for the show’s liberal audience — wheeled out Steve Rattner to assess Republicans’ prospects in the upcoming House midterm elections.

The morning after the Ohio special election, Republican Troy Balderson leads Democrat Danny O’Connor by 0.9 percentage points, or 1,754 votes, but the race remains too close to call.

Though Balderson will likely eke out a win (he and President Donald Trump have already declared victory), Rattner declared on Morning Joe: “This was obviously not a good night last night for the Republicans.”

Rattner looked at the stats, notably a correlation between the president’s approval rating (Trump’s is low) and the number of House seats won or lost in the midterms.

“Democrats only need 23 seats to flip the House,” MSNBC’s Willie Geist pointed out.

Joe Scarborough read out the below tweet from pollster Frank Luntz, and conservative writer Noah Rothman called the Republican party “pretty deflated.”

I’m sure Republicans will celebrate tonight, but a 1-point victory in that district is nothing to commend. #OH12

The GOP have to do something really significant in September if they want to keep the House in November. https://t.co/lK93kxxE2c

— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) August 8, 2018

Rothman went on to allude to Trump’s celebratory tweet taking credit for what looks like a Republican victory in Ohio.

“Donald Trump leaning into these primary victories, saying that he is responsible for these victories is politically tone deaf,” Rothman said. “It’s silly. He’s going to have to run away from a loss in September if Republicans do suffer.”

“Running out right in front of this thing and saying ‘it’s all about me,’ and that’s going to backfire in November.”

Watch above, via MSNBC.

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