DON’T GET COCKY: You’d Rather Be the GOP.

There will be a lobbying effort among progressives to extend those expanded benefits beyond their September sunset date, and that effort could be as successful as their demand that Joe Biden violate the Constitution to extend a national moratorium on evictions. If so, the nation’s employment vacancy glut will continue. It will be hard for Democrats to argue that they’re creating new jobs even as they’re doing all they can to exacerbate shortages in the labor market.

By contrast, Republicans are preparing a salient midterm messaging strategy that has to have Democrats worried. They’re planning to run against Democrats on rising rates of inflation—a condition the GOP-aligned American Action Network’s polling suggests resonates with 86 percent of the voters surveyed in 51 key battleground districts. Beyond that, the GOP intends to leverage the organic outpouring of contempt for including precepts related to “critical race theory” in American K-12 curricula. Democrats have managed no compelling counterargument against either of these two conditions save to say that the former is cyclical and sure to pass before the midterms while the latter isn’t happening at all.

It’s the Democrats’ Catch-2022: