Why Republicans are so 'enthusiastic' about 2022
To preserve democracy, Democrats need to hold both Houses of Congress in the midterms. But they haven’t done that under a Democratic president since… 1978.
The Cook Political Report has shifted the Virginia governor’s race to a “toss up,” noting sluggish early vote numbers in bluer areas of the state and a national political environment that’s “souring” for Dems. Larry Sabato’s UVA-based Crystal Ball still rates the race as “leans Democrat,” though Larry has long made a point of insisting that you can’t count the GOP out.
This is good advice, even when you don’t have a superrich Carlyle Group apparatchik like Glenn Youngkin prepared to spend tens of millions of dollars to capitalize on the advantage the party that doesn’t hold the White House usually enjoys in off-year elections.
Are you freaked by this potential tightening of race in a state Joe Biden won by more than 10%? If you’re a Democrat, of course.
But how freaked should you be?
Should you be “Trump using the White House for the Republican National Convention” freaked out or “Trump has an actual plan to overturn the election and dozens of Republicans in Congress and an violent mob outside the Capitol willing to go along with it” freaked out?
It’s a split the baby situation, of course.
“Virginia Democrats shouldn’t panic about this, but we SHOULD be worried about this election for a lot of reasons,” Blue Virginia’s lowkell writes, in a tightly reasoned look at the reality of the race.
Sounds right.
You probably heard similar alarm bells in California recall race a month or two out from Newsom’s eventual massive win. SO you might be inclined to assume this is just more trademark Dem panic. Chances are Terry McAulifff — a prototypical-90s-machine-Democrat-who-turned-out-to-be-a-better-governor-than-anyone-expected — will win.
But let me remind you about chances — the year 2016 reminds us— they are no guarantee! And what ultimately changed the story in California was a deluge of early voting that now seems to have led to a larger total turnout than the Democratic wave year of 2018.
We’re not in seeing that yet in Virginia. Instead, anecdotally, “Republicans have a motivation advantage, an enthusiasm advantage.”
This points to larger reasons to nurture worries about political environment going forward since, the threats we face are so dire:
a) Republicans have a plan to never accept another presidential loss that will help Donald Trump take power in 2024, whether he wins the electoral college or not;
b) the GOP’s advantage heading into the 2022 midterms from a illegal gerrymandering will be so vast that this alone may be enough to guarantee they take back at least half of Congress.
Comprehending the unique threat to democracy we’re charged with repelling is not easy. But elections expert Rick Hasen clarified the crisis in an interview with Politico:
“What would have happened if the election was exactly the same, except Kevin McCarthy was Speaker of the House?” Hasen asks. “I don’t know that we’d have a President Biden right now.”
So these are the stakes. And there are a million reasons to worry, if we’re to believe the warning bells in Virginia. But let’s focus on two others.
Worry #1: Republicans have activated their base
The coordinated attack on Critical Race Theory looks and feels like a book-burning farce. And it is. But it’s also worked to a degree, as Brian Beutler notes, to consolidate the base.
And it’s been matched by a QAnon/Steve Bannon effort, funded by the remaining Koch brother, to “swarm” school board meetings and get elected to the seats.
The long-term goal is to gut education, end academic freedom and, eventually, gerrymander history.
But in the short-term, the goal is simpler: power. Generate and harness political outrage to organize and fuel a 2022 wave.
Call it the CRTea Party, as Greg Greene has.
The goal is to activate not just the GOP base but expand it by bringing in the Jim Crow Faction that loves Trump as much as they hate certain minorities that align with the Democratic Party — a faction that doesn’t always vote Republican, or vote at all. And that may be enough to take back the House and possibly the Senate, though that would require actually winning some contested seats, including Wisconsin and Georgia.
Also key is how much easier it is to run against something — especially, Donald Trump — than on your record of achievement.
Which leads us to…
Worry #2: Democrats have to do something that’s almost impossible
A president’s party holding on to both Houses of Congress in a midterm election almost never happens. It happened in 2002 in the war-crazed shock following 9/11. Before that, it hadn’t happened since 1978 when Democrats won the House popular vote by 8.9% and still lost 15 House seats.
Democrats obviously don’t have 15 House seats to give. And they have less than one to give in the Senate.
There are a number of reasons why it’s hard to hold on a government trifecta. The most decisive one is a snowball of expectations. Voters expect you to deliver, while not understanding the rigged mechanics that make majority rule difficult-to-impossible. The party’s base expects very specific tangible results, which often get whittled to nubs or less than nubs (innie nubs) given those mechanics. And no matter what, a party enjoying complete rule is going to be blamed for any negative news.
These are the normal dynamics. Add in Republicans owning the redistricting process in shameless, power-mad way that will likely be backed up by a stolen Supreme Court. Add in a right-wing fear machine that turned a handful of deaths from Ebola in the United States into full-on panic that helped the GOP take the Senate (and the Supreme Court). Add in Facebook, right-wing billionaires trying to stave off or punish tax increases, and a pandemic that the right is purposely extending indefinitely.
Also, add in burnout.
People are tuned out of politics. They say this in polls, news ratings and focus groups.
Who can blame them? Trump’s bleating has been muted through his Facebook and Twitter bans. Thus the threat of his ominous plan to rig the next election by continually questioning the last is only obvious to people willing to punish themselves with that knowledge. Paying attention to a Democratic administration attempt to learn from the mistakes of the last Democratic administration while trying to save the country from the disaster of the last Republican administration is always a painful process. And when the entire Democratic agenda hinges on the whims of two Senators, whose actions seem designed to please the Republican Party of the 1990s or the hiring managers at prominent lobbying firms, or both.
It’s a formula for apathy.
Yet, as Democrats proved in California, we’re still defiant. The neuropathways of resistance still exist and they can still be activated when the stakes and possibilities of elections are artfully made clear.
What can you do about it?
Start here: