Lessons for the future
A lot remains uncertain about the midterm elections. Republicans will almost certainly run the House, but how will they operate with a tiny margin? Control of the Senate probably won’t be decided until Georgia’s runoff election on Dec. 6. But it’s still possible to draw some useful lessons for the future.
ONE: Voters sent wildly contradictory messages. In exit polls, 75 percent said they were angry or dissatisfied with the country’s direction. Seventy-three percent said the economy was in bad shape. Yet they decided overwhelmingly to keep the same officials in office.
As of this writing, not a single senator or governor who ran for reelection was defeated, and only a handful of House members lost their seats. A few outstanding races in states like Nevada and Arizona could unseat incumbents, but the pattern is clear.
The two parties are engaged in trench warfare. Both are deeply dug into their positions, hurling verbal rockets across no man’s land, but the front lines aren’t moving. Here’s one possible explanation.
The parties are more polarized than ever. Most voters have chosen a team (or an army), and they loyally support their own side. During the campaign, both parties tried to label the other’s candidates as “dangerous,” a basic threat to the nation’s well-being. When those rhetorical weapons of mass destruction are employed, it’s much harder for voters to switch sides, split tickets or evaluate candidates as individuals instead of partisan stereotypes.
TWO: Both parties are led by aging and unpopular leaders, and the next generation is straining — and starting – to emerge. Joe Biden is about to turn 80, his favorable ratings are stuck in the low 40s, and 38 percent of Democrats told exit polls they don’t want him to run again. Donald Trump is 76 and, if anything, even more damaged. Only 37 percent of voters viewed him favorably, and in recent surveys, up to half of all Republicans said they’d prefer another nominee in 2024.
On the GOP side, the brightest new face is clearly Gov. Ron Desantis of Florida. Only 44, he cruised to reelection and turned Miami-dade County red for the first time in decades by running strongly in Hispanic precincts. “Mr. Desantis raised some $200 million for the governor’s race, a staggering amount that he did not come close to spending and that could seed a presidential run,” reported The New York Times.
The Democrats have a much weaker bench and are still looking for their version of Desantis. They’d settle for the next Barack Obama, who was elected at 47, or Bill Clinton, who was 46 when he became president.
This election tentatively started to answer that question. Democratic governors who won reelection and might have larger aspirations include Gavin Newsom in California (55), Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan (51) and Jared Polis in Colorado (47). The most intriguing figure might be Josh Shapiro, 49, who easily captured the governorship in the critical state of Pennsylvania and could soon be generating national attention.
THREE: The Democrats did better than expected, in part because the abortion issue proved to be a powerful asset in states like New Hampshire and Arizona, where they successfully branded Republicans as hard-right “extremists.” But their survival masked the party’s damaging mistakes on the crime issue.
The killing of George Floyd in May 2020, along with other cases of police brutality, spawned valid waves of outrage and calls from liberal activists to “defund the police.” But what might have been morally justified proved politically devastating. As Democratic strategist Paul Begala wrote for CNN, “In my many years in politics, I have never seen a more destructive slogan than ‘defund the police.’”
That one phrase has been repeated countless times by Republican candidates in campaign ads, and an Abc/washington Post poll found voters trusted Republicans over Democrats by a 20-point margin on the crime issue.
Did some of those ads contain despicable racist overtones? Absolutely yes. But Democrats failed to grasp how they also reflected genuine fears about violence and safety. In fact, communities of color are often most impacted by crime and want more cops on their streets, not less.
Stan Greenberg, a veteran Democratic pollster writing in The American Prospect, accused his party’s liberal wing of making “indefensibly elitist” decisions to demonize the police at great political cost. “Black voters are particularly likely to say violent crime is a very important midterm issue,” added the Pew Research Center.
The 2022 elections are not yet over, but the 2024 campaign has already begun.