Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
The day young voters lined up to keep the American republic for two more years
As the darkness descended across America Tuesday, editors at The New York Times locked in their doom-for-democrats front page while 3,000 miles west in Arizona, the extremist femme fatale Kari Lake was boasting to reporters that “I’m going to be your worst frickin’ nightmare” as Arizona’s next governor. Inside the Beltway, the pundits who’d issued a political tsunami watch gazed out on the waters with their binoculars, waiting for a “red wave” to roll ashore.
Hardly anyone was paying attention to what was happening on college campuses from Tempe, Ariz., to Champaign, Ill., where teens and 20-somethings stood and waited for hours to cast their ballots in the 2022 midterms, patiently scrolling through their iphones or even sneaking in some homework. At the University of Michigan, in a state where abortion rights were on the ballot through both a referendum and a pro-choice governor, hundreds of students — some draped in blankets as the mercury plunged — stood on a line for two to three hours to cast their ballot. It was a new twist on the save-america battle cry of “Wolverines!” from the 1984 movie “Red Dawn.”
“I was voting based on women’s rights in terms of candidates who were supporting women’s choice,” said Lauren Snyder, who endured Tuesday’s massive line at the University of Illinois. She added: “It’s important — as a student — as a young person to come out and vote for issues that I care about.”
As bright sunshine broke across America on Wednesday morning, the outlines of an epic and truly historic election were starting to come into clear focus. If democracy was on the ballot in 2022, as President Joe Biden and so many others had warned, then it was young Americans — especially those under 30, including women like Snyder — who just saved it. Shocked into action by the loss of their reproductive rights and repulsed by candidates who threatened not to count their votes going forward, Millennials and Gen Z put down their books to make sure any “red wave” was subsumed by the deep blue sea.
That was especially true in Pennsylvania, where a preliminary CBS exit poll showed the No. 1 voter concern was not inflation, as experts predicted, but abortion rights, cited by 36%. CNN’S national exit poll showed the GOP won over-45 voters, while Democrats, who narrowly won the 30-to-44 bracket, gained from a whopping 28% win among voters aged 18 to 29.
The determination of young voters to be counted in 2022 clearly flummoxed a political establishment and a punditry that looked like a cadre of baffled generals fighting the last wars. Certainly in the past, midterm elections have tended to be disastrous for the party in the White House, especially with exacerbating factors like high inflation. Remember, Politico had commissioned a poll that picked up the late Democratic surge on the congressional ballot but dismissed it as “an outlier.”
Spoiler alert: It wasn’t an outlier. “The president is doing what he could,” retired steelworker Helysel Gonzalez, 55, of Northeast Philadelphia, told my Inquirer colleagues as he voted Tuesday. “You can’t blame him — companies are making big profits. Oil, gas, they make so much money.” Likewise, retired Philadelphia nurse Diana Santiago complained to a reporter that “everything is so expensive now” — before pulling the lever for Democrats who she thought had a better plan.
Abortion rights proved different, as a hot-button issue that clearly helped the Democrats. The aftermath of the Supreme Court’s undoing abortion rights provided an enthusiasm edge that the GOP proved unable to overcome.
To be sure, there were a couple of notable wins for Republicans nationwide — none more so than the landslide victory for Florida Gov. Ron Desantis. In particular, Desantis’ success in wooing Latino voters — not just Cuban Americans, who have a long history of supporting Republicans, but non-cuban voters, who had gone for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in recent elections — could offer a national road map for his party to win the Hispanic working class in 2024. Clearly, Desantis’ good night has him hoping he will be that 2024 White House candidate.
Former President Donald Trump clearly had the worst night of anyone who was not an active candidate. As the fortunes of Desantis — or “Ron Desanctimonious” as an increasingly jealous Trump called him — rise, and as Trump’s tarnished star continues to fall, prosecutors probing his 2020 election tampering and his attempted Jan. 6, 2021, coup are sure to notice. Suddenly, it looks more likely that Trump will wake up Jan. 21, 2025, in a prison cell than in the White House.
Instead, it’s the most-often underestimated U.S. politician of the past half-century — Joe Biden — who yet again has surprised Americans on the upside. His recent moves to cancel an estimated $400 to $500 billion of student debt, and his legislative wins on climate change and gun safety, are looking better and better in light of the energized youth turnout.
That fight for democracy is far from over, but now the forecast for 2024 suddenly looks a lot better — with Big Lie election believers denied influence over that election in key swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
The flame of the American experiment was not extinguished in the 2022 midterms. Instead, the torch was passed to a new generation.