If you’re looking for any sign of hope, the latest results from Morning Consult might do the trick. While they confirm that President Biden has catastrophically bad approval numbers, they also show the Democratic Party with a shocking plus-eight advantage on the generic congressional preference question. That’s the kind of number the Dems need if they have any hope of maintaining their slim control of the House of Representatives, and it signals a likely hold of their control of the Senate.

Most of the movement has come from independents, and it’s notable that independents have also reacted to the January 6 committee hearings by being more willing (63 percent) to assign responsibility to the disgraced ex-president Donald Trump.

Truthfully, I don’t think the hearings have been nearly as harmful to the Republicans as recent mass shootings and the Supreme Court’s decision to throw out Roe v. Wade, but there is now a clear disconnect between how people feel about Biden and how they intend to vote in the midterms.

On Tuesday, the Washington Post predicted that Biden will soon get some significant legislative wins out of Congress. Specifically,

The first major prescription drug legislation in nearly 20 years. More than $50 billion to subsidize computer chip manufacturing and research. A bill that would enshrine protection for same-sex marriage.

At the end of June, Biden signed the first significant gun violence control bill to come out of Congress in 30 years. If part of Biden’s image problem is related to his ineffectiveness, that perception could see some improvement.

Gas prices have been plummeting, too, but inflation is expected to be a persistent problem through to November which is why the Democrats are running less on their own record than on the threat of Republican extremism. This isn’t mere political posturing. They have a convincing case that our system of representative democracy cannot survive a near-term Republican majority in Congress, let alone a second term in the Oval Office for Trump.

There will be more January 6 committee hearings in September which can serve as a kind of booster shot to remind people what they learned in June and July. And it increasingly looks like the Department of Justice might actually have a grand jury ready to bring the hammer down on Trump and his coup conspirators.

All of this is lined up to present a broad and credible case against Republican extremism, and it will be aided by many of the extremely radical and/or incompetent candidates the GOP base (often acting on Trump’s recommendation and encouraged by the Dems) has chosen to represent them. I’m thinking of people like Herschel Walker in Georgia, Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, and Dan Cox in Maryland. These folks are the absolute bottom of the barrel, and they’re most likely going to lose what should be winnable races in this political environment. They’re so bad, in fact, that they’ll hurt Republican candidates all across the country.

Everything looks pretty bleak right now, but there’s a path that might just avoid armageddon.