The enduring daffy charm of this show lies in its authenticity.

Granted, there’s a genuine celebrity on the panel in the person of Whoopi Goldberg plus several figures whom we might call “celebrity-adjacent.” But once you get past that, you realize the reason “The View” continues to resonate despite having been on the air for a thousand years is because the hosts are just like us at heart.

Most of us have no idea what we’re talking about. Annnnnnnd these idiots clearly have no idea either.

Most of us drench our perceptions of political reality in wishcasting, letting our opinions of what the outcome should be shape our expectations of what the outcome will be. Whoopi and the gang do that too.

Although I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a case as egregious as this one.

Alyssa Farah Griffin was the one political pro on the panel today and political pros tend to be better at separating what they want to happen from what’s likely to happen. There’s an asteroid headed our way, she warned the panel, and every Democratic dinosaur in Washington risks being wiped out by it. Which is objectively true, as we point out each and every day on this site. If anything, the asteroid is bigger than we thought — and still getting bigger:

I also can’t stress enough that the idea the current generic ballot is “just ok” for Rs is flat out wrong. Don’t believe me, ask Enten. And bear in mind that the “best environment in 80 years” business was at R+2. That’s now R+3.5. No precedent whatsoever. pic.twitter.com/ZMpBxQykry

— Liam Donovan (@LPDonovan) June 15, 2022

If Griffin was guilty of anything in what she told her colleagues, she was guilty of pulling her punches. To hear her tell it, Republicans are on track for a big win in the midterms. In reality, they’re on track for their biggest House majority in nearly a century.

As Emmer points out, the true magic number that would indicate a historic wave is 35, the number of pickups that would give the party its highest number of seats, 248, since the 1928 elections…

Even using the less-precise method of generic-congressional-ballot polling, this year’s political environment could be more favorable to Republicans than the 2010 high-water mark. In mid-June of 2010, Republicans averaged a 1.3-point edge on the generic ballot, according to the RealClearPolitics average at the time. The current RCP polling average shows Republicans with 3.5-point edge—nearly three times as large. In 2010, Republicans won the actual House vote by a seven-point margin, the largest margin since 1946…

Just how dismal could things get for Democrats? That’s where measuring the wave the right way is important. It’s not the number of House seats that Republicans pick up that’s the relevant measure, but the overall number of seats won. So mark the number 248 (or +35 net) on your scorecards as a sign of a true political tsunami. Simply winning 242 seats (+29 net) would match the GOP’s 2010 standing. And anything at 233 or higher (+20 net) would give Kevin McCarthy enough breathing room to manage his caucus effectively, without having to fear the most extreme House Republicans would disrupt his best-laid plans.

It would take a black-swan event an order of magnitude bigger than Roe being overturned to meaningfully disrupt that dynamic, I think. And even if, God forbid, there were a terrorist attack or some similar catastrophe, I doubt we’d see the sort of “rally ’round the president” skyrocketing job approval for Biden that we saw for Bush 43 after 9/11. It’s a different country now, more polarized and entrenched in that polarization. If anything, Tucker would be airing nightly segments on whether the attack was an inside job by Team Biden.

So, yes, needless to say, Griffin is right that a House GOP takeover is baked in. The suspense lies entirely in what the final margins will be.

But in a country populated by wishcasters, there’s always naive hope. And so:

"You don't know that!" Joy Behar denies "the red wave is coming" in November as noted by "conservative" Alyssa Farah Griffin.
"Let's wait and see what the people vote," Whoopi Goldberg demands.

They ignored the historic win of Republican Mayra Flores over an incumbent Dem. pic.twitter.com/emhNKnT7wZ

— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) June 15, 2022

That wasn’t even the cringiest part. Sunny Hostin continued her recent hot streak by suggesting that hearts and minds might be changed by … the January 6 committee, a premise even congressional Democrats reject:

Sunny Hostin suggests the red wave will be broken by the January 6 Committee hearings.
She claims Democrats have all the solutions to inflation, gas prices, baby formula, est., but blames Republicans for the failure to implement despite Dems holding Congress and the White House. pic.twitter.com/DYbyeDFhiK

— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) June 15, 2022

The January 6 committee is doing noble work but we are not a noble people, and even if we were it’d be asking a lot of voters to ratify two more years of total Democratic control of government when inflation and gas prices are what they are. A parent who’s frantic about finding baby formula for their child doesn’t have the luxury of prioritizing the next January 6 hearing on their daily schedule. And as I say, Dems know that:

[T]he effects of the Democrats’ narrative might not show right away, and they know it; many privately say they don’t see the hearings dramatically reversing the headwinds against them in November…

Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.), whose district backed Trump in both 2016 and 2020, said the interest in his own district is mixed.

“People who read POLITICO in my district will be watching. Most people, though, are just concerned on keeping shelter over their heads and doing the best for their families,” Cartwright said.

The January 6 hearings aren’t about convincing voters to support Democrats this fall. There’s no hope of that. They’re about convincing Americans not to support Trump in 2024, starting with the Republican voters who’ll get first crack at him in that year’s primaries. There is a scenario in which we don’t end up with Trump back in the White House, although that scenario may depend more on Ron DeSantis than it does on Joe Biden. There’s no scenario in which the midterms aren’t a bloodbath for Dems. And they understand that even if the “View” crew doesn’t.