2022 Midterms: Red Ripple, Blue Stagnation

By Sean Case

Republicans Bungled the Midterms, but Democrats didn’t Win

The 2022 midterm elections were the Republicans’ to lose, and they lost them. Much of the liberal media depicts the results as a victory for the Democrats. To be sure, the results are remarkable and even historic. No sitting president in recent memory has seen his party perform so well. And given Biden’s dismal approval rating and a looming cost-of-living crisis, the results are even more striking. But these midterm results were not a win for Democratic strategy. They reflect a deeply polarized electorate, blowback from the Supreme Court’s overreach in the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, and a growing dissatisfaction and anger with both major parties.

Voters seemed to be motivated not by enthusiasm for their chosen party, but rather by fear of and hatred for the other side. Democrats won among voters who “somewhat disapprove” of Biden’s job performance, and 70 percent of all voters are “dissatisfied” or “angry” with the state of the country. 

Abortion Saved the Democrats

In the wake of SCOTUS’s decision in Dobbs this past summer, it was clear the right had overreached. Mass anger at the overturning of Roe v. Wade was on display immediately, with large protests across the country. 

In states with abortion-related referenda on the ballot (Michigan, California, Vermont, Montana, and Kentucky), those referenda boosted Democratic performance. Michigan is a striking example. Incumbent Governor Gretchen Whitmer easily defeated her opponent in what was expected to be a close race, and Democrats took control of the state legislature for the first time in nearly 40 years.

But it would be a mistake to equate the popularity of abortion rights with support for the Democratic Party. A referendum to ban abortion in the Kentucky state constitution was handily defeated; at the same time, Rand Paul cruised to reelection there, as did five Republican House members. Many of those who voted for Paul and other Republicans also rejected the anti-abortion referendum.

The Democrats’ Failing Strategy

The donors and politicians of the Democratic establishment are patting themselves on the back for their performance in the midterms. Biden, when asked a day after the elections what he plans to do differently going forward, given that upwards of 70 percent of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction, simply said: “Nothing.” 

On the congressional side, Nancy Pelosi and other senior Democrats did not seek leadership roles in the next Congress. But their hand-picked successors, while younger, are their political doppelgangers.

Inflation was top of mind for most voters this year, and for good reason. Yet Democratic messaging on economic issues was almost nonexistent. Instead, they went all in on abortion and Trump’s threat to democracy. That strategy worked in states where abortion rights were on the ballot and in many high-profile races featuring truly right-wing, “Stop the Steal” candidates. But such a strategy has limits and offers no positive alternative for people to vote for.

Things went wrong where Democrats tacked to the right, for example by nominating a former Republican governor in Florida to run against current Republican governor DeSantis. The Democrats’ votes in that race fell from 4.0 million in 2018 to 3.1 million in 2022.  

In New York State, Democrats performed terribly and arguably cost the Party control of the House (Republicans had to flip five seats nationwide to win a majority in the House; they flipped four in New York State alone). 

Five-term incumbent Sean Patrick Maloney, leader of the DCCC and responsible for the Democrats’ national House strategy, lost his race to a first-time Republican candidate. Every single county in New York State swung to the right compared to 2020 voting patterns.

Nationwide, but particularly in New York, Democrats were hammered from the right on crime, which was the third highest concern among voters this year. Rather than present a coherent rebuttal to Republicans’ cynical crime hysteria or a program to address working people’s real concerns over rising crime rates, Democrats largely bought into the GOP’s narrative. Candidates went out of their way to distance themselves from the movement to defund police and presented themselves as tough-on-crime Democrats. It didn’t work.

Meanwhile, socialists and progressives did well in New York. Several DSA members, including Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC), won various races in New York, some featuring strong Democratic Socialist messaging. 

Socialists and progressives also did well across the country. Four new members will join the “Squad” this January: Greg Casar in Texas, Maxwell Frost in Florida, Summer Lee in Pennsylvania, and Delia Ramirez in Illinois.

The growth of the number of socialists and progressives in Congress does not appear to stop them from their drift towards becoming loyal oppositionists within the Democrats.

Though it’s positive that the number of socialists and progressives in Congress continues to (slowly) grow, it won’t stop the establishment from backing incumbents against left insurgent candidates to the hilt. Nor does it appear that this growth will stop the likes of the Squad from their drift towards becoming loyal oppositionists within the Democratic Party rather than radical insurgents, as they initially promised. Just look at AOC’s posture when she got elected and protested in front of Nancy Pelosi’s office with the Sunrise movement compared to today, when she heaps praise on Pelosi and the Squad fails to raise any opposition to the continuation of moderate Democratic leadership in the House.

A contradictory process is playing out in the left wing of the Democratic Party. While the ranks of progressives are growing, their influence seems to be waning. Socialists and progressives in Congress should be feeling emboldened to demand concessions from Party leadership and stake out positions that put them in clear contrast with the establishment. Instead, they walk back from modest requests for diplomacy in the war in Ukraine and shamefully vote to take away the strike power of railroad workers. Meanwhile, the growing ranks of the far-right in the Republican Party are showing much more capacity to put up a fight against the GOP leadership.

Openings for DSA and the Left

The Democrats missed some potentially huge opportunities this year. They were able to beat back the Red Wave with empty rhetoric about abortion and were also likely helped by Biden’s modest student debt cancellation. Imagine how well they’d do if Biden had canceled all student debt, as organizations like the Debt Collective are continuing to fight for. What if Democrats had backed up their rhetoric on abortion rights with concrete promises to abolish the filibuster to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act and pack the Supreme Court? What if Democrats had campaigned on passing the PRO Act rather than leaving it languishing on the Senate floor?

While it’s clear that both major parties are deeply unpopular with the majority of working and poor people, what is popular is also clear. In addition to nationwide victories for abortion rights, this year’s midterms saw voters turn out to tax millionaires (Massachusetts), ban anti-worker “right to work” legislation (Illinois), legalize marijuana (Maryland and Missouri), expand Medicaid (South Dakota), and raise the minimum wage (Nebraska and Washington, DC). In deep-red Dunn County, Wisconsin, voters approved a ballot measure calling on Congress to institute a single-payer healthcare program. Save for abortion, none of these winning issues were featured in Democratic strategy. All of these victories passed with comfortable and even huge margins in some cases, picking up plenty of Republican votes. (Not all referenda and initiatives showed the electorate firmly to the left of the Democratic Party—voters in Tennessee overwhelmingly approved codifying “right-to-work” into the state’s constitution, though this result seems to be an outlier in the overall picture). 

The popularity of these issues—and the fact that neither Democrats or Republicans give them any more than lip service at best—points toward an opening for the Left. 

DSA should be running coordinated campaigns on the national and local level on abortion rights, worker rights, climate, and more. There are surely opportunities in many states and localities for bold ballot initiatives and independent socialist candidates. DSA should systematically sniff those opportunities out. But in order to do so, DSA needs to deal with its current crisis.

An independent force is needed in US politics—to fight the right, to tax the rich, to take on the fossil fuel industry and win a Green New Deal. But DSA leadership is currently dominated by people who believe we can realign the Democratic Party into a party for the working class. I don’t see it. It’s great that the Squad is ever-so-slowly growing. But their politics have shifted rightward, and only five of them are actually DSA members. And the DSA leadership has failed to take meaningful steps to exert political discipline over our members in Congress. The need for such discipline is illustrated by Jamaal Bowman’s votes to fund the Israeli military earlier this year, and more recently by the votes of Bowman, Cori Bush, and AOC to wrest strike power away from rail workers.

As we approach next year’s DSA national convention, Marxists within the organization need to get organized. We should move resolutions that get DSA back on track toward a dirty break with the Democratic Party, and run candidates for the NPC dedicated to making DSA into a more structured and militant organization.

The Democrats eked this one out, and we can breathe a sigh of relief that Republicans didn’t come away form the midterms with a mandate for their racist, sexist, homophobic, and anti-worker agenda. But as the social and economic crises in the US and the world deepen, as the inter-imperialist war drags on in Ukraine, as the Federal Reserve continues its war on the working class, as corporations continue to reap record profits, we as socialists must diligently build a mass organization of class struggle. Otherwise we cede ground to right-wing populism, which in the absence of a Left alternative stands to attract working class support with its faux-pro-labor politics and red-meat culture wars. Socialists have a positive vision for a better world that doesn’t come at the expense of any oppressed group, but rather comes from the rising up of the oppressed masses together against our true class enemies. Let’s organize to make that vision a reality.

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Trump as Millstone

Republican Party Keeps Trying to Ride the MAGA Tiger

Donald Trump is central to the growing political polarization in the US—fueling it as well as being an expression of it. He continues to be a problem for the GOP. Much of the Republican base remains loyal to him, but he’s widely despised outside that base. 

Most Trump-backed candidates won their election, the highest-profile winner being Senator-elect JD Vance in Ohio. But many of Trump’s most controversial and consequential picks didn’t cut it. In Pennsylvania, Mehmet Oz was easily defeated by progressive Democratic nominee John Fetterman, despite being slightly favored to win in pre-election polling and with Fetterman recovering from a stroke. Trump’s pick for Governor there, Doug Mastriano, was trounced by Democrat John Shapiro. Other closely-watched races—like Nevada’s Senate race and Arizona’s Senate and Gubernatorial races—were closer, but voters there ultimately rejected candidates with big MAGA energy.

The Republican establishment can’t compete with Trump-aligned candidates at the primary level; they’ve captured too much of the party base.

Georgia’s Senate race went to a December runoff, which Democrat Raphael Warnock eventually won. If the GOP ran anyone less clownish than Herschel Walker there, they would have beaten Warnock easily. But that’s the problem: the Republican establishment can’t compete with Trump and Trump-aligned candidates at the primary level because they’ve captured too much of the party base. 

The GOP will continue to ride the MAGA tiger, but it has no way of stabilizing itself. With a slim House majority and a growing and emboldened right wing of the party, we’re likely to see a power struggle in the GOP in the coming months and years, including the possibility of increasingly reactionary politics emerging from it.

Playing into that power struggle will be Ron DeSantis, the re-elected Governor of Florida. While the red wave failed to rise nationwide, it flooded the Sunshine State. DeSantis annihilated his Democratic (formerly Republican) challenger, and Republicans swept both houses of the state legislature. Republicans also made serious gains among Latino voters in Florida. After beating progressive Democrat Andrew Gillum in the 2018 Florida Gubernatorial race by a mere 0.4 percent, DeSantis crushed conservative Democrat Charlie Crist by nearly 20 points this year.

DeSantis is emerging as a viable rival to Trump for the 2024 Republican Presidential nomination. The Republican establishment views DeSantis as a more stable candidate who can be relied on to protect the party’s overall interests as opposed to Trump’s personal agenda. While his relatively moderate stance on abortion helped distinguish him from many more extreme GOP candidates this election cycle, DeSantis is extreme in his own right. He’s championed anti-LGBTQ legislation in the state, and has helped fuel the racist, homophobic, and transphobic culture wars that have become the bread-and-butter of the GOP.

Trump clearly views DeSantis as a threat. His 2024 campaign launch speech—tame by his standards—shows a clear shift in strategy likely informed by DeSantis’s rising star. 

Several big Republican donors are abandoning Trump. Media baron Rupert Murdoch, whose media empire includes Fox News, has reportedly warned Donald Trump that his outlets will not back another attempt to return to the White House. 

However, Trump’s political appeal has been his appearance as an outsider, challenging all establishment politicians and institutions. If Fox and the Republican leadership decide—as in 2016—not to support Trump, that could ironically strengthen his support by reinforcing his anti-establishment credentials.

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