V.O. Key, a renowned political scientist in the early/mid 1900s, made a simple but often overlooked observation about American voters: people vote their interests. On November 8, in an election that was promised to deliver a Red Wave if not a Red Tsunami, people voted their interests.
While it remains to be seen whether millions of voters voted for a political agenda, they clearly rejected an agenda that promised little more than hate, fear, division, and a perversion of the democratic principles that undergirds this country.
As I write this, the democrats retained control of the senate (Georgia will be resolved in December but will not impact the leadership of the senate), the control of the House remains in doubt (approximately 19 races are still processing votes) with both parties having a path to victory, and the governor’s race in Arizona is still unresolved.
Over the coming weeks pundits will try to unpack the message voters sent. I won’t pretend that I have any informed insights on that topic. Frankly, I think it will be months before we have any clarity on the voters’ message.
But because elections in the United States result in binary zero-sum outcomes, we can tell who won and who lost. Using the time honored methodology of Chicago journalist Mike Royko, who years ago wrote at the end of one election cycle “only suckers beef,” it’s pretty easy to see who lost. To that end, a small list:
Kevin McCarthy - days after the election, several members of the republican House caucus talked like they’d stuff McCarty in the trunk of a car, drive up to NewJersey, and bury him in the same end zone where Jimmy Hoffa eternally rests. Depending on whether the republicans win or lose the House, one of three outcomes will occur: McCarthy keeps his minority leadership position; McCarthy is elected by the full house (by a vote of 219-216) as Speaker; or, McCarthy’s caucus moves him aside and nominates/elects someone else (the lean and hungry Elise Stefanik?) as Speaker (by a vote of 219-216). Any of the three outcomes should make McCarthy yearn for a car ride to the Meadowlands.
Mitch McConnell - last year the movie Knives Out was released, and this year its sequel will be released. McConnell is taking a lot of heat from his caucus for not providing sufficient resources to senate candidates (e.g., Blake Masters in Arizona), not providing a clear policy agenda for Republican candidates, and for having a not so disguised animus toward Trump and his endorsed candidates.
As much as I hate to say this, in an environment where campaigns are too often awash with money (e.g. $15-30 millions from Peter Thiel to Masters in Arizona), I’m pretty sure that any losses suffered by senate candidates was not solely due to a lack of funds from McConnell’s Leadership PAC.
As for no agenda, while McConnell publicly stated that his sole focus was in retaining control of the Senate, Rick Scott who was heading the Republican Senate Campaign Committee did publish an 11 point agenda. Chief among them was the institution of a five rear review/renewal of social security and Medicare. Maybe McConnell was right to stay silent.
But none of this will matter to the group trying to execute a power play for party leadership in the senate. Given the storied history of knives out in a senate, the demise of McConnell’s leadership could easily be measured with an egg timer. Who knows, maybe McConnell will join McCarthy on the brief car ride to Jersey.
Donald J. Trump - The Prince of Mar a Lago did not have a great night, but not as bad a night as his critics are arguing. Sure he lost Oz and Mastriano in Pennsylvania, but he did score with non-Hillbilly J.D. Vance in Ohio. His candidates lost in Arizona but Kari Lake is still locked in electoral battle in the Arizona governor’s race. Adam Laxalt ran close but ultimately lost his senate race in Nevada.
Trump, like McConnell, is being criticized for raising millions in PAC money but spending little of it on behalf of Republican candidates, even those he endorsed. But let’s cut the guy some slack. Maybe he has other, more noble plans for that money, plans to be revealed in the future? Maybe the reveal will be on or about November 15th?! Hmmm….I wonder what that could be?
Whatever happens, the Trump brand got pretty beat up, but he was nowhere near the sole cause of the drought that dried up the anticipated Red Wave.
MAGA - let’s get a few things out of the way. First, Trump did not create the madness that became MAGA. This is a movement that’s been building for decades, long before Trump descended on the golden escalator. MAGA is a successor to the Tea Party movement, itself something of a successor to various “populists” movements of the 1990s (think Ross Perot), and so on back to the “America First“ movement of the 1930s.
Why these movements form and sustain themselves is anyone’s guess, but what is sure is that millions feel abandoned by their government - a failure of democracy. The roots lie in our historic ant-government culture, a systematic failure to rigorously teach government and American history in our public schools. Economic progress, like elections, are often binary with one group of workers benefiting and another group being left behind. This is no recent phenomena, you could read The Other America published in the 1950s to see that the structure of our binary economy hasn’t changed too much over the last 65 years.
And there’s race. And newcomers to our shores. And women who are more actively competing in the marketplace. These “others” crowd out the established economic order, leaving the displaced with few opportunities equal to those they lost. MIT economist Lester Thurow described the American economy as a zero-sum game - one can win only if another loses. He wasn’t wrong.
On this political MAGA stew, is poured a hyper-charged media dispensing information to anyone who’ll listen. In the early 1970s, an MIT professor named Donald Schon wrote Beyond the Stable State, where he forecast that the deluge of information doubling every few years would overwhelm citizens to the point that they wouldn’t be able to select valid from the invalid information, thus preventing the people from making informed political decisions in a democracy.
Schon wrote this book when there were only three commercial networks, daily newspapers, no computers, no cable, and definitely no internet. There were standards to which news outlets and broadcasters adhered. This was their duty to the public. Obviously they sometimes hit short of the mark, or they were too cozy with government figures to ask the tough questions, but all in all there were guard rails on the flow of information. And even at that, with Schon anticipating no changes in the means by which people received information, he was worried that the constant doubling of information would destabilize democracy.
If only Schon could see it now. The standard internet and its evil(er) twin the Dark Web, dispenses unmonitored, unfiltered, unverifiable information to anyone with a few minutes to kill. We get bombarded with so much information that the only way many of us can deal with it is by receiving information that confirms our already preconceived notions - confirmation bias.
Some cable news networks don’t even pretend to be news anymore. Newspapers, historically leaning to one over another political/social viewpoint, has discarded any pretense of journalistic standards and professionalism.
All of this has resulted in the siloing of the public, silos where people hear what they want to hear, see only what they want to see, speaking only with those who share their siloed view of the world. Thus they become ripe for a political predator to light them up by echoing their collective voice. And the predator does this not for the sake of the siloed but for his own purpose of gaining power for himself.
Donald Trump didn’t create MAGA, it was already there when he came along, and will remain long after he shuffles off from the scene.
Trumpists - this is a subset of the MAGA movement. These are the people who, if Trump directed them, would walk barefoot over hot coals straight through the Gates of Hell. Or through the Capitol doors on a cold January day.
These are the foot soldiers of the MAGA movement. They run for office, jump on social media, build Youtube shows, operate individual websites, podcast their views, and most importantly they vote. Especially in republican primaries.
The views of the Trumpists span everything from election denials to JFK Jr coming back from the dead (or Montana) to serve as Trump’s vice-president in the January 6 ascension to the presidency. Perhaps their most pernicious belief is that Donald Trump, the blue collar billionaire, gives a rip about them. They continue to hang on his every word, follow his directions and most important to Trump, continue to give him money.
Fortunately (from my perspective) the clout they demonstrate in Republican primaries doesn’t easily transfer to the general election. That said, according to the Washington Post, 299 election deniers ran for office at all levels in the 2022 midterms. While many lost in the general election, at least 163 election deniers did win their races.
Too much focus has been on the Trumpists’ losses, promoting a narrative that Trump and MAGA suffered and egregious defeat, the kind of defeat that pierced the veil of Trump’s invincibility. Before we pop the Champaign cork, high five each other, and light our victory cigars, a word of caution. Cults, I mean movements, like MAGA follow and protect the leader. In 2022, Trump wasn’t on a ballot, but that could change in 2024. The last time he was on a ballot was 2020 when he lost. However, in losing he still received over 75 million votes.
As the world famous philosopher, Yogi Berra, once said, “it ain’t over ‘til the fat lady sings.” She may be warming up but she hasn’t begun to sing - yet.
Democrats - the democrats won. Sort of. They didn’t lose, so in this midterm that constitutes a “win.” You take what you can get. This isn’t to say they didn’t do well. Any day you can look history in the eye and change its course is a good day.
Changing the course of history is exactly what happened. In his first midterms in 2018, Trump lost 40 congressional seats; in 2010, Obama lost 63 seats; in 1994, Clinton lost 52 seats. In Biden’s first midterm election, the democrats fought for at least a draw in the senate (with Georgia to be decided in December), and the control of the House could go either way. But if the republicans prevail, it would only result in a single digit loss for the democrats.
In this vein, losing is winning if you buck the tides of history.
Democracy - democracy won(ish). I put the “ish” in only because there’s still so much to do. Yes, autocracy was on the ballot and the majority of voters rejected it. That by itself is a big deal!
However, there’s too much money flowing through our politics. The early reports estimate that $1-2 billion was spent in the 2022 general elections. An additional $100 million will be spent on the Georgia runoff election. And this is the money we can see. As Jane Meyer and recently Senator Sheldon Whitehouse observe, there’s an unknown amount of “dark“ money flowing through our elections.
[Pop Trivia Quiz: in the 1980 democratic primary for Rhode Island’s second congressional district, one candidate, warning of the danger of unlimited money would have on our democratic processes, argued for the public financing of congressional campaigns. I bring this up to highlight that for forty years we’ve known that the impact of too much money spent on elections would not only unduly influence the outcomes of elections, but also perversely impact the governing process. I’m sorry that there’s no prize but whoever comes up with the right answer will earn top marks and a public shoutout!]
In order to preserve and expand our democracy, more has to be done with voter registration, institution of early and mail-in ballots, and elimination of our politically gerrymandered voting districts. We can challenge voter suppression laws that make a mockery of te old principle of “one man, one vote.”
This election provides hope for the future. Gen Z made its electoral debut and had an important impact on the outcomes of the elections. It appears that kids who grew up practicing active shooter drills, or who actually survived the real thing, might want to rid themselves of public officials who stood idly by with empty offers of “thoughts and prayers.”
Women registered in droves after the Dobbs decision in late spring. It seems that people get a bit prickly when a fundamental liberty interest is taken away. Some estimates claim that this past election had the highest rate of participation in 30 years. Early forecasts saw that a possible 120-130 million voters would participate in the midterm elections. We’ll see but one thing is certain, whether one’s preferred outcomes were met in a given race, these midterms were a vindication of the democratic process.
And whether one is a democrat, Republican, or an unaffiliated voter, we can all celebrate that!
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