Purple State Blues
Recapping the midterm elections, Trump’s reelection campaign, and Kevin McCarthy’s historically humiliating bid to become Speaker.
The 2022 midterm elections are over, and the outcome is clear: the Republican Party lost. Poised to win majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, they fell short in both houses of Congress, only eking out nine seats and a narrow majority in the House, and losing a seat in the Senate, increasing a slim Democratic majority. The projected red wave was, for all intents and purposes, a pink trickle.
This was not the expected result.
The deck was stacked against the Democrats well before November, with record levels of inflation and general economic woes, the historic unpopularity of President Joe Biden, and the historical trend of incumbent presidents facing large defeats in midterm elections. The Democrats lacked a cohesive, economic, kitchen-table message for most of the midterms, instead focusing on defending abortion rights after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Progressives like Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) cautioned against this strategy, and for good reason: abortion was just the fifth most important issue for voters in a September ABC News/Washington Post poll. The economy was supposed to be a winning issue for Republicans, who relentlessly hammered on what they dubbed “Bidenflation.” But this may have backfired, as it became increasingly clear to voters that (some) Republicans were only using inflation as a political tool instead of trying to solve it (case in point: Sen. Rick Scott telling the Wall Street Journal that inflation was a “gold mine”), even though they were generally favored by voters on economic issues.
Unable to capitalize on an “it’s the economy, stupid” message, Republicans faltered in key races across the country. Worse, they lost by wider-than-expected margins in key, tightly contested races, especially the closely-watched Senate races in Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia. Why? For one, the overturning of Roe v. Wade energized the Democratic voter base, with dozens of Republican-led abortion bans across the nation testing the “limit to what voters [would] accept,” in the words of Democratic strategist Tyler Law. Three states—California, Vermont, and Michigan—voted to enshrine abortion rights into their constitutions in November. Montana and Kentucky, typically red states, rejected laws that would have restricted access to abortion. This tracks with what we already know about the national sentiment towards abortion rights: nationwide, abortion is widely popular, with 61% of adults believing abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
So while the Dobbs decision ended up hurting Republican candidates, abortion wasn’t their fatal flaw: the fault was not in the stars but in themselves. Republican candidates in 2022 were simply weaker than they were in years past, which makes sense when you consider that their Senate candidate in the essential battleground state of Pennsylvania was Mehmet Oz (better known as Dr. Oz), who rose to fame by spreading pseudoscientific medical advice on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and that their Senate candidate in Georgia was a former NFL running back accused of abusing his ex-wife and paying a woman to have an abortion. Across the board, Republican Senate candidates in particular underperformed, resulting in a net loss of one seat, while their struggles in the House yielded just nine more seats—enough for a majority that is poised to stymie any further major legislation by the Biden administration but is unable to pass signature legislation of its own without a Republican president or Senate.
Reflections are in order for the Republican Party. Many have pointed the finger for their one step forward, two steps back result at former president Trump, whose announcement that he would make another presidential bid in 2024 only complicated the midterms for Republicans, with many of his top picks (Oz, Walker, and Blake Masters and Kari Lake in Arizona, among others) losing to stronger Democratic candidates. The GOP establishment and voter base are apparently ready to move on from Trump, instead seeming to favor Florida governor Ron DeSantis. DeSantis, who has spent much of his tenure as governor championing far-right culture war causes, including railing against the rights of LGBTQ+ children and the supposed teaching of critical race theory in schools, represents the same sort of far-right MAGA nationalism as Trump but without his flamboyance and open disregard for democratic norms. DeSantis has even overtaken Trump in recent polls as the two men’s war of words continues to simmer. If the 2022 midterms were a repudiation of Trump—which they were—there’s all the more reason to suspect a brewing primary battle between DeSantis and Trump, one that may tear the Republican Party apart.
To further complicate matters, the Republican Party’s divisions have extended to the protracted battle to elect a Speaker of the House. To open the new Congress, now-Speaker of the House Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) failed on 14 separate occasions to win a majority of the 435 House votes, ultimately triumphing on the 15th vote. With only 222 Republican seats, McCarthy repeatedly fell short on the first day, facing an internal rebellion by far-right GOP representatives coalescing behind Jim Jordan (R-OH). After Jordan urged his fellow representatives to “rally around [McCarthy] and come together,” hardline Republicans threw their votes to Byron Donalds (R-FL) on the second day of Congress. Not even former President Trump’s endorsement of McCarthy was enough, with Matt Gaetz (R-FL) describing the move as “sad”—indicating a severely diminished sense of loyalty to Trump among even his formerly closest sycophants—and even a spate of compromises McCarthy made with the far-right bloc couldn’t win their votes for votes number seven to 11. Ultimately, McCarthy surrendered to yet more demands to barely win a majority—216 of the 429 present votes—significantly weakening the Speaker’s power by allowing lawmakers to call snap votes to replace them, and giving the far-right bloc oversight and approval over a third of the seats on the House Rules Committee, giving them outsized power over which bills get debated. Even with the House now able to swear in new members and carry out its official functions, it is extremely apparent how fraught Republican unity is entering the crucial final stretch of President Biden’s first term.
None of this should be taken for granted by the Democratic Party. Having dodged a bullet in November, Democrats need to make sure the party is cohesive and unified entering the 2024 elections. President Biden’s legislative agenda is now effectively dead, so Biden must spend his remaining two years in office focused on uniting the party’s moderate and progressive wings, while overseeing economic stabilization and American aid to Ukraine, whose war against Russia is partly to blame for the economic woes that have befallen the United States. He must also consider his political future, as his age and general unpopularity may play a factor in his decision to avoid seeking a second term.
Leadership changes are afoot in the Democratic Party regardless. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who first assumed the position in 2007 and became the first female House Speaker, stepped down from her position (but stayed in Congress) after avoiding an assassination attempt. In her stead, New York representative Hakeem Jeffries was elected to serve as leader of the House Democrats, entailing a potential future as Speaker of the House should Democrats regain the House. Jeffries’ selection was a clear repudiation of the Democrats’ progressive wing, given his coldness towards progressive issues like the Green New Deal, silence on human rights violations in Palestine, and open hostility to what he called “hard-left democratic socialism.” For his ostensible moderatism, it’s hard to imagine that Jeffries would be amenable to a progressive president like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, or Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker. So Jeffries’ selection is no reason to celebrate; rather, it promises to be a hollow imitation of Nancy Pelosi’s snubbing of progressives during her time as Speaker. At the very moment when transformative change is needed to combat climate change, fundamentally alter American foreign policy, and restructure the economy to provide for the poor and indigent, the most powerful man in the Democratic Party is dead-set on blocking any of it from happening.
Both the Republican and Democratic Parties have something important to take away from these midterms; namely, internal party unity will crash down upon them, whether it be a spat between Trump and DeSantis or a conflict between progressive ideals and neoliberal drudgery, before they can ever take the fight to the other party. Dear Republicans and dear Democrats: prepare two graves before you embark on a path of vengeance.