Yes, Democrats absolutely have a chance to hold the House in 2022
But that chance requires facing stark reality.
If 2022 were a typical year, Republicans would be on the verge of a massive wave election. You know this.
It may piss you off. But you know it.
A new president has only survived his first midterm election without being hammered once since 1982, and that was in George W. Bush in the fullest plume of post-9/11 and pre-Iraq War paranoia. A Democratic president hasn’t survived a midterm with a House and Senate majority since 1978.
Republicans also have unfair advantages. There’s gerrymandering. There’s Citizens United. There’s voter consistency born of a movement that has the battery clamps of Fox News and AM radio hooked to their nipples 24/7, with megachurches and the gun range making Sunday the most political day of all.
There’s also gas prices spiked mostly thanks to Trump’s pal Putin plus an undying pandemic multiplied by Joe Manchin. These are all terrible things.
But clearly this isn’t a normal year.
The end of Roe and the horrors this disaster has and will unleashed will outrage the same exact people, women mostly, who helped lead the charge to resist Donald Trump in 2018. And Trump hovering behind all of us like we’re Hillary Clinton trying to give a town hall debate answer will supercharge their anger.
Is that enough to overcome all the odds and hold the House?
History says no. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
You can make the argument that this and recent polling suggest that a GOP wave is far from inevitable, as Simon Rosenberg has.
But Blue Walls isn’t about punditry. It’s about what we can and need to do.
Here’s and the basic argument of this project:
2022 will decide if we still have a democracy in 2024. And it will also decide what abortion rights look like for tens of millions of Americans.
Republicans have multiple advantages in 2022.
The horrors of what the GOP is and what their 50-year quest to end Roe looks like in reality could obliterate those advantages.
Democrats can fight off the GOP and history, but only if we’re very, very smart.
If we waste most of $100 million trying to defeat Marjorie Taylor Greene while under-funding the dozens of actually competitive House races, history and the GOP will win. For instance.
This isn’t a normal year but if we treat it like a normal year and use our energy and money as catharsis, November will look very normal. Joe Biden won’t fare any better than his far more politically adroit predecessors, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
And the consequences of a GOP wave, as the party’s depravity is more obvious than ever, will last the rest of our lives.
I don’t want to scare you or depress you. But I do want everyone to start with the premise that we’re behind by a dozen seats, or maybe two dozen. There’s no time or money to waste. And what we definitely cannot afford is any delusions whatsoever.
This requires even accepting that our energies and resources are best spent lower on the ballot, trying to win key seats in key state legislatures, where our money matters far more than any federal race. More on that coming soon.