According to Nate Cohn, “the final Times/Siena polls showed that voters in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada preferred Republican control of the Senate.” Yet, in every case, they elected a Democrat to represent them in the U.S. Senate. It also appears that more registered Republicans turned out to vote than registered Democrats, so the only way this could have happened is that a lot of Republican voters simply could not support their candidates. It was so bad, in fact, that not even their preference for a GOP-controlled Senate could convince them to cast a ballot for their own party.
It’s the natural order of the political universe that the president’s party has a harder time turning out its voters in midterm elections than the opposition party. The Democrats succeeding in minimizing this effect, but they couldn’t eliminate it. Their relative success in the midterms was instead based on persuasion. In this, they got a giant assist from the Republican base which made one bad decision after another in selecting candidates in their primary elections. They got another assist in the Republican messaging, which was effective when it focused on crime and inflation but was too much bogged down in nonsense and trivial issues like Trump’s Big Lie and the supposed existential threat of transgenderism.
The Democrats need to be mindful that there is no guarantee that the GOP will continue to gift them seats, especially at the scale we just witnessed in 2022. It’s frankly appalling that the swing-state voters went into Election Night with a generic preference for Republican control of Congress. I don’t know what else the GOP could do to convince the public that they should not be within a country mile of being in control of anything, and yet the public still preferred them. Yeah, so, they often didn’t actually vote for them, but enough did to win the House and some winnable Senate seats in Wisconsin, Ohio, and North Carolina.
There’s a weird split here in the Republican Party. The base is completely radicalized and continues to pump out unfit candidates, but the party’s electorate as a whole seems emphatic that it wants the government to be run by conservatives–just more mainstream and competent conservatives.
To win, however, both pillars of the GOP must be satisfied at the same time, and that’s becoming a feat that is harder and harder to pull off. The country someone accepted a moron like George W. Bush because he had a gift for keeping one foot in the fever swamp and the other in the Establishment. John McCain and Mitt Romney did not do well enough with the unhinged base, and Trump could never rally the Establishment. His 2016 election was an Electoral College fluke, and he completely misunderstood what he needed to do to strengthen his position for 2020. Doubling down on the base was the wrong move.
Kevin McCarthy is now Exhibit A of this conundrum. As he seeks the votes to become Speaker of the House, he must satisfy both wings of the party at once, and he’s no George W. Bush. In fact, one of Trump’s main contributions to this problem was to convince the base that the Bushes, and anyone remotely like them, are phonies who only serve the Establishment. The result is that Dubya’s “rancher” act no longer sells, so even he would probably not be able to successfully navigate the waters McCarthy is traveling.
The Democrats clearly have daunting challenges and should not be optimistic based on the 2022 midterm results, but at least they are very united. That gives them some real advantages, as they can utilize their numbers to the fullest, while the Republicans punch below their weight.
But this unity could also be a trap, because the lack of internal debate and dissent could prevent the Dems from being proactive about their problems. For example, looking at the Senate seats up for election in 2024, I think it’s safe to say that Texas (Ted Cruz) and Florida (Rick Scott) probably offer their most realistic pickup opportunities. After that, the cupboard is bare unless you think the party is in a condition to compete in states like Wyoming, North Dakota, Nebraska, Missouri, Tennessee, and Mississippi. They’ll also be defending seats in states like Ohio, West Virginia and Montana. These are not places they are favored to win in the presidential election of 2024, or even to be competitive. Is there anything, anything at all, that the Democrats could do in the next two years to change that?
Someone should be asking that question, even if they ultimately conclude that the answer is that there is not. But the party might be convinced that all is well, especially when they compare themselves to their opponents.
Look around, though, because all is definitely not well in this country right now. In far too much of the country, the left is completely toxic and uncompetitive. And we can’t be satisfied with a plan based on the GOP continuing to shoot itself in the foot.
What every Democratic leader and their followers should be talking about right now!
There’s almost 2 years until the 2024 election, and while the Senate map itself sucks, the one good thing is that Democrats turn out better in Presidential elections, and the last 2 midterms weren’t that bad for Democrats, all things considered.
That’s not to say 2024 will be better than 2022 just because it’s a Presidential election, but if there isn’t a prolonged and deep recession or some black swan war/scandal, it should hopefully be decent.
Also, I think Stacey Abrams should step away from running for governor of Georgia and become DNC chair. She knows how to get a turnout ground game set up, and that’s literally one of the most important things the head of the DNC can do. If she could expand what she did in Georgia to the rest of the country, perhaps we can avoid fascism and civil strife.
“The lack of internal debate and dissent could prevent the Dems from being proactive about their problems.” Interestingly, the highest return would come from recasting the Democratic Party as a republican (egalitarian, meritocratic) and majoritarian based on individual participation and benefit from government, especially state and local government in “swing” or “emerging” states like PA or TX, respectively.
That entails, at least, a new business model for the party itself built around deliberative and fraternal institutions rooted in “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”.
Instead, we have a conduit, run by 17th century mercenaries and organized around protection of senior incumbents and dispensing very petty patronage rather than government policies and functions that are inspiring rather than baffling or plainly deceptive — “Deregulation!” — or outlandish “Homeland Security!”.
The success of such a model would be measured by majority support for Democrats in competitive states and counties. That requires Fetterman-like replacement of technocrats and placeholders with genuine leaders at the state and local level. Again, that takes a different business model one that the party’s rentier patrons would lose control of when loyal Democratic voters got not a commercially mediated “voice”. Instead, we should look forward to “universal suffrage” rooted in uniform military or alternative service, not a credit-scored “franchise”. We should stand conspicuously for “diverse, equitable, inclusive”, i.e. progressive, TAXATION — not self-righteous extractive legalism from a condescending “donor class”.