What the Midterm Election Taught Us
CHARLES IDELSON In Common Dreams
Democracy,
as President Biden emphasized, was on the ballot, and a clear majority of
voters had no truck for those most aligned with a lurch toward authoritarian
rule. Despite the dreams of the far right, and predictions of many pundits and
pollsters that voters would overlook the insurrection and election conspiracy
theories because of inflation, the results largely told a different story.
Election
denier Republicans, those most likely to overturn future elections, lost
critical Governor and Secretary of State races, often by large margins,
especially in swing states Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada.
(Despite their high profile defeats, as the Washington Post noted, at least 150
election deniers were winning in House races as of November 12.)
Retaining
Democratic Party control of the Senate alone is a major triumph in blunting a
Mitch McConnell-led Senate that would likely forward major assaults on social
insurance programs and block the critical appointment of federal judges need to
provide balance to a court system corrupted by Trump and McConnell the past
four years.
Democrats
also flipped several state legislatures, notably both Michigan's House and
State Senate, as well as Pennsylvania's House, and Minnesota's State Senate,
all major efforts to defend democracy in that state and block punishing attacks
on working people and families as seen so often, especially in Michigan the
past decade.
"We had a very narrow path to saving American democracy this year, and we just might have begun that journey," Robert Kuttner wrote.
How
did those steps—which also reversed the historic trend of huge losses for the
party in power in a first midterm election—begin? Continued repudiation of
Trump and Trumpism and disgust with the most extreme conspiracy advocates like
Tudor Dixon in Michigan, Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Blake Masters in
Arizona is a major part of the story. But many other factors were in play as
well.
The
Supreme Court's fanatic ruling overturning a half century of abortion rights
was a major factor in turning out votes for supporters of reproductive freedom,
especially among women with an ongoing gender gap, though that margin was less
than in the past two elections.
Voters
also backed abortion rights on several ballot measures, most prominently in
Michigan where reproductive rights were enshrined in the state constitution,
and in deep red Kentucky where voters defeated an anti-abortion proposal.
Nearly
half of Michigan voters and a third of Pennsylvania voters named abortion as
their most important issue, a major factor in Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's
re-election win and for John Fetterman in flipping a Pennsylvania Senate seat.
Abortion
rights was a key factor in the
demographic group that probably served as the greatest barrier to the red wave,
Gen Z and young Millennial voters.
A
CNN poll found that voters under 30 favored Democratic House candidates by a
massive 28 points. At the University of Michigan, student voters favored Whitmer by 94 percent. Despite
his election loss overall in Texas, University of Texas in Austin
students voted by 89 percent for
Beto O'Rourke for governor. In Pennsylvania, Fetterman racked up 70 percent of the
under 30 vote.
Climate
crisis and gun safety were other major concerns for
the youth vote. Max Frost, a progressive activist who will be the youngest
member in the new Congress after winning a Florida House seat, has said he became active at
15 after the Sandy Hook gun massacre.
Young
voters were also the least manipulated by GOP efforts to exploit cultural war
issues including grotesque ad campaigns seeking to terrorize trans youth and
their families, on which far right dark money groups spent over $50 million
with such little success Semafor's Benjy Sarlin tweeted "some
R's are pointing fingers."
Black,
Latino, and Asian American/Pacific Islander communities remain the most
prominent base for Democrats, despite much chronicled attempts by Republicans,
often with blatant efforts to divide communities of color with openly racist appeals based
on immigration and fear mongering on crime and cultural issues.
Exit
polls did show Republicans making inroads of four and seven points among Black
voters, seven points among AAPI and up to 10 points among Latino voters, said
the Washington Post. Latino erosion was most evident in
Florida among conservative immigrants from Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, but
could also be seen in South Texas.
"Black
and brown voters, particularly Black and brown women, continue to be the base
of the party," Aimee Allison, president of She the People told the Post,
"but the Democrats cannot take their support for granted. They need to
take action."
Some
community leaders and activists cite the inability of
Democrats to stop the assault on voting rights, and the shift away from the
goals of policing reform that followed the murder of George Floyd goaded by
Republican demagogic rhetoric on crime.
Others
also note Democratic Party establishment strategists who prioritize outreach to
white working class voters who continue to vote by a majority for Republicans
over the economic struggles and discrimination faced by communities of color
that led to insufficient mobilization of Black voters.
Though
the Democrats did repel much of the predicted wave, questions about poor Democratic Party
messaging undercut the ability to further limit losses. In
addition to abortion rights, which most Democratic candidates did emphasize,
exit polls illustrated other critical issues that had only minimal focus,
especially on the rising costs, jobs, health care, climate change, public health
in the face of the ongoing pandemic, and gun safety.
Democrats
had a story to tell on all those issues, but little of it appeared in many
campaigns. As the New York Times reported, Democrats
spent more than 10 times as much on ads focused on abortion rights than they
did on economic concerns about rising costs.
And
while allocating just $31 million on spots on inflation, the Democrats spent
nearly $140 million on crime ads. The Democrats message on crime symbolized a
defensive posture that characterized too much of their overall campaign, trying to outdo Republicans in
being tough on crime rather than calling out the disinformation
of the alarmist GOP rhetoric, pointing out that crime rates were not exploding,
or condemning the racist undertones of the GOP messaging on crime.
"I
definitely think that we weren't wrong by focusing on Dobbs when it happened,
because it was so earth-shattering," Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist
who focuses on Latino voters told the New
York Times. "The question should have been: Could we have done that
and packaged together economic populism along with the Dobbs decision?
Voters,
of course, have the ability to process messaging about both. Where was the
recognition, for example, of Democratic achievements providing child tax
credits and rental assistance in their Covid stimulus bill, creation of
infrastructure and green economy jobs, and cuts in drug prices and other Medicare
costs in major legislation enacted by the Democratic-led Congress.
Where
were the ads citing Republican hypocrisy on inflation by the GOP unanimous
opposition to extending the child tax credits, universal pre-school aid, paid
family and medical leave, a cap on insulin costs, additional health care
support, and more assistance for affordable housing.
Only
late in the campaign, especially in campaign stops by Barack Obama and Bernie
Sanders, did voters hear more about the Republican agenda—gutting Social
Security and Medicare, repealing the provision for Medicare to negotiate lower
drug prices, and more tax cuts for the super wealthy and corporate executives.
The
power of more issue focused campaigns should be evident in little reported
victories beyond the wins on the abortion rights measures.
On voting rights, Michigan, voters approved a
measure requiring nine days of early voting, and more ballot drop boxes.
Arizonans passed an initiative requiring more transparency for campaign
contributions. Connecticut voters approved a constitutional amendment allowing
for early voting.
On health care, South
Dakota's voters became the seventh state to rebel against their Republican
lawmakers' refusal to expand Medicaid, choosing by a large majority to expand
Medicaid coverage and add language to the state constitution barring additional
restrictions on eligibility or enrollment. Many Medicare for All supporters
were reelected to Congress, and new single payer advocates will be coming to
Congress, including progressive House winners Summer Lee in Pennsylvania, Greg
Casar in Texas, and Maxwell Frost in Florida, and Fetterman in the Senate.
Voters
in Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont elected to end the
draconian practice of involuntary labor and slavery as punishment for a
criminal conviction.
Illinois
voters approved a sweeping
labor rights amendment to the state constitution that would declare collective
bargaining a constitutional right, and bar anti-union "right to work"
laws and any other law that "interferes with, negates, or diminishes the
right of employees to organize and bargain collectively."
"The
battle to save democracy is far from over, but these trends are a sign that at
least the "ballot fraud" fever has peaked," said Kuttner, adding "some of the deeper
problems with democracy are still baked in—the grotesque amounts of
special-interest money being spent; the partisan gerrymandering; and the
far-right capture of the Supreme Court."
Writing
in The Nation, Elie Mystal warns that "Republican governors,
legislatures, and judges have stacked the deck so that a merely good night
isn't enough—Democrats need to have great nights to stay in the game… Even
though voters largely rejected antidemocratic candidates, the antidemocratic
gerrymanders (stacked courts and other voter suppression) still produced
Republican victories. If losing only a little feels good, it's because the
system is designed to make Democrats lose by a lot."
The
key, of course, remains for broad coalitions that will both fully challenge the
right, especially the entrenched anti-democratic tendencies and the racist,
misogynist, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-immigrant threats they have engendered, and
overcome the resistance of the corporate-dominated Democratic establishment.
Progressive
activists and organizations, including many in labor, in this election did the
hard work on the ground and in campaigns that, as Max Elbaum maintains in Convergence were
crucial to a number of the victories in battleground states.
He
notes in particular: Pennsylvania Stands Up, LUCHA in
Arizona, New Georgia Project Action Fund;
grassroots-focused groups in communities of color like Black Voters Matter; UNITE HERE's leadership
role in canvassing (especially in Nevada), National Nurses United's Nurses
for Democracy organizing in a number of states; Showing Up for Racial Justice in
Georgia, Seed the Vote deploying volunteers from
blue to battleground states, and Working Families Party, Our
Revolution, Justice Democrats,
and Progressive Democrats of America.
Our
work is not done.
Charles Idelson is
the Communications Director for the California Nurses Association/National
Nurses Organizing Committee.