Legit question. Joe Biden’s not the only one who can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, after all. Republicans managed to blow chances to win Senate control in 2010 and in 2012 despite having that goal within reach. Those failures came mainly from too much poll-based cockiness, especially in 2010, and poor candidate selection.

The Washington Post’s political team wonders if Republicans aren’t making all of the same mistakes in 2022, and at least provides a good argument for concern:

Democrats are defending the narrowest possible Senate majority — the chamber is split 50-50, with Vice President Harris breaking ties — in November, and their vulnerable incumbents in states such as Georgia, Arizona and Nevada are top targets for Republicans charting a path back to power. But none is a sure-bet pickup. The GOP is also defending seats in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where it had hoped to be in a more favorable position.

Nathan Gonzales, a nonpartisan political analyst, said Republicans, even with their candidate struggles, remain in a strong position to take the Senate. “They don’t need to win all of these races; they need a net gain of one seat, and they have at least three, four or five takeover opportunities and two vulnerabilities. Out of that combination, netting one seat looks better,” Gonzales said.

But behind the scenes, Republican operatives are growing increasingly nervous. One GOP strategist watching the Senate race closely, who like others interviewed for this article requested anonymity to speak more openly about internal deliberations, said that “there are massive problems on the candidate front.” The Republican likened the situation to 2010 and 2012, when the party fell short of winning the Senate majority because of undisciplined and polarizing candidates such as Sharron Angle in Nevada, Todd Akin in Missouri and Richard Mourdock in Indiana.

The two biggest worries for the GOP in this cycle are Herschel Walker and Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania. Oz is the bigger worry, since a loss there would be a Democratic takeaway that makes it even tougher for Republicans to win control of the Senate. Oz opponent John Fetterman has had serious health issues that have kept him off the campaign trail since before the primary, but so far Fetterman’s absence hasn’t hurt his standing in the polls. He’s up nine in the first head-to-head poll from USA Today/Suffolk, but it’s been three weeks since Fetterman scored that 46/37 result too. If Fetterman doesn’t start showing up in earnest, and if Oz can improve his performance with voters in the Keystone State, that could change rapidly.

Oz’s issues have more to do with his carpetbagging into PA more than behavior, scandal, or extremism. Walker’s issues are more about stability and preparation, but he’s still competitive in Georgia. Last week’s Dem-leaning Data in Progress survey result put him up two over Raphael Warnock in a state where Joe Biden’s approval rating sits around 25%. Walker has had a series of scandal-tinged revelations prior to that survey, so the worst may be behind him if Walker can remained disciplined on the campaign trail from this point forward. There are still a lot of risks in Georgia, but one has to figure that Brian Kemp’s large lead over Stacey Abrams and Biden’s horrible support numbers in the Peach State suggest the turnout will carry Walker over the threshold.

Wisconsin is a wild card too, but not because of candidate choice. The GOP thought they had scored a real win by convincing Ron Johnson to run for a third term. It’s not looking like such a win at the moment, the Post muses:

It’s not just political novices who are struggling. In Wisconsin, GOP Sen. Ron Johnson is roughly even with three of his four potential Democratic rivals in a Marquette University poll last month, taken before new disclosures that his office had attempted to play a role in pushing an alternate slate of electors for the 2020 election. Johnson was viewed favorably by 37 percent of the state’s registered voters in that poll and unfavorably by 46 percent.

That will be a problem in heavily partisanized Wisconsin, certainly. However, the GOP really didn’t have any better options than Johnson, who will at least provide some value of incumbency. They could have tried to draft Scott Walker, but Walker had decided against running for the Senate three years ago when it still looked like Johnson would stick to his two-term pledge. Instead, Walker opted to run Young America’s Foundation in January 2021, and has stuck to that plan. That didn’t leave Wisconsin’s GOP much choice for a successor, or at least that’s how they saw it.

However, 2022 will differ from 2010 and 2012 in at least one very significant way. Both of those cycles got driven by a president with mildly negative job approval ratings but rather good personal favorability ratings. That is most assuredly not the case in 2022.  In Civiqs, for instance, Biden flirted with a 29% job approval rating over the weekend before getting back to 30/58 this morning. Biden’s personal favorability in the same tracking poll is at a series-worst 37/57, where Barack Obama never got underwater until after winning a second term, and even then only mildly.

Joe Biden has crashed so badly, Politico reports today, that Republicans have begun to spend heavily in House districts where Democrats usually win by double digits:

With just four months until the midterms, Democrats were already on the defensive in at least 30 highly competitive districts. But Biden’s toxicity has given the GOP optimism about seriously contesting a fresh crop of about a dozen seats that the president won in 2020 by 9 points or more — from western Rhode Island to California’s Central Valley to the suburbs of Arizona’s capital.

The result is a House map that has expanded to an uncomfortable place for Democrats. Survey data obtained by POLITICO shows the president underwater by double-digit margins in 11 districts he carried. …

Biden is down 15 points in a pro-Democrat group’s polling of a now-open Oregon seat he won by 9 points in 2020; down 16 points in GOP polling of Rep. Annie Kuster‘s (D-N.H.), which he won by 9 points; and down 17 points in a recent Republican survey of Rep. Angie Craig‘s (D-Minn.) seat, which he carried by 7 points four years ago. All three surveys were conducted in June.

The atmosphere has become so abysmal for Democrats that strategists see the potential for a slew of bluer districts to come into play, including ones Biden carried by double-digits two years ago. That includes seats held by Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.), Jahana Hayes (D-Conn.); the seats left open by Reps. Josh Harder (D-Calif.) and Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), who jumped districts; and the seats represented by Reps. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.) and Jim Langevin (D-R.I.), who are retiring.

For instance, Biden is upside down by 19 points in a June GOP poll of Democratic Rep. Frank Mrvan’s northwest Indiana district, which backed the president by 9 points in 2020.

The impact of Biden’s collapse and subsequent Republican campaigning in these districts will go beyond the House races. If Democrats start losing D+10 districts in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and other places where key Senate races are on the line, then that turnout will lift the GOP’s Senate candidates as well. That goes well beyond what we saw in 2010, when huge Republican gains came mainly in GOP-leaning districts they lost in the previous two cycles more than converted from Democrats. That was a wave; this looks like a tsunami, and potentially a massive realignment if the polling holds up.

And let’s not forget how Biden’s doing in these states, according to the latest Civiqs poll, in both job approval and favorability:

• Arizona: 26/63 approval, 34/60 favorability
• Colorado: 31/55, 39/54
• Florida: 30/59, 36/59
• Georgia: 25/63, 34/60
• Iowa: 28/58, 34/59
• Michigan: 32/56, 37/57
• Missouri: 23/68, 28/67
• Nevada: 29/60, 37/57
• New Hampshire: 34/52, 42/52
• North Carolina: 30/59, 38/56
• Ohio: 26/63, 32/63
• Wisconsin: 32/58, 41/54

That’s a dire position for Democrats in both chambers of Congress in November, and that doesn’t even mention state legislative and gubernatorial elections that will be impacted by the turnout models these numbers suggest. Republicans will have a much larger margin of error on candidate selection in this cycle, regardless of whether they should.