The 2022 midterms and beyond

[BootmanLA]

I figured I'd start a new thread for folks to discuss the 2022 midterm elections (in the US, obviously) and beyond.

Most of the time, in midterm elections (those which happen two years into a president's four-year term), the party to which the president does not belong usually makes gains, sometimes substantial ones, in at least one chamber of Congress and often both. We've seen this happen in 2018, 2014, 2010, and 2006 this century, and for many of the elections of the late 20th century as well. You'd have to go back to 2002 (when the Republicans gained seats in both the House and Senate while George Bush was president) to find an exception, but then the country was newly at war then, and Bush was riding high on approval at the time.

Five or six months ago, pundits were predicting "the usual" for this year's midterms, with the Democrats projected to lose the House and Senate both. Given that inflation has been running high and we've very possibly been in a recession for some months - recessions are easier to diagnose retrospectively - things should be weighing even more heavily in favor of the Republicans this year. And yet...

Looking at the Senate, it's looking increasingly like the Democrats will not only hold control of the Senate, but likely (by a small margin, but still) make gains of 2 or 3 seats. What once looked like a bloodbath in the House - the GOP was salivating over possibly gaining 40 or more seats - is looking more like a very close match. In the five special elections held to fill vacancies this calendar year, the Democratic candidate has outperformed Biden's 2020 showing in their particular district in every one - that is, in districts Biden carried, the Democrat won it by an even wider margin, and in districts Trump carried, the Democrat came closer to defeating the Republican candidate than the spread between Biden and Trump.

In Tuesday's Alaska special House rate, in fact, the Democrat flipped the district from R to D (the Republicans had held the seat for nearly 50 years). Granted, that was partly to do with Alaska implementing ranked-choice voting; had the state held traditional closed primaries, the R vote might have consolidated around Sarah Palin. But perhaps not: what the ranked vote results show us is that only about half the voters who initially selected the second Republican marked Palin as their second choice; the other half chose the Democrat. It's pretty clear that a significant number of Alaskans did not want Palin, even enough usually solidly Republican voters, that when the choice came down to a Democrat or Palin, they chose the Democrat.

And part of that is due to Trump's enthusiastic backing of Palin. While his endorsed candidates are often winning GOP primaries - see, for instance, Blake Masters, Mehmet Oz, Josh Mandel - many of them are facing a stiff challenge in states the GOP used to win handily. Just as disgust over Trump fueled the 2018 House Blue Wave, and swept Joe Biden into office, his insistence on being the public face of every race both boosts his endorsee with the GOP hard-core base and hurts him with moderate GOP-leaning voters while driving up turnout among Dems.

Then, too, despite people months ago despairing over any part of the Biden agenda passing, But since then, he's gotten the Infrastructure Bill passed (after how many "Infrastructure Weeks" under Trump?), and the "Inflation Reduction Act" (which includes climate change provisions, drug pricing caps, extending ACA subsidies, and more), and he's taken executive action on things like student loan forgiveness and others - all told, far more actual legislating and action than The Former Guy got done in four years.

And lastly, we can't discount the effect SCOTUS's overturning of Roe is having on galvanizing voters to turn out. In ruby-red Kansas, an attempt to strip abortion rights from protection in the state constitution failed by a huge margin - roughly 60/40 against taking away abortion rights. In KANSAS, a state that hasn't gone for the Democrats in a presidential election since 1964.

So what are your thoughts on how the midterms are going to turn out? 

[BootmanLA]

I'll go first: I don't see any of the current Democratic seats flipping to the Republicans. Only three were ever really possible flips: Kelly (AZ), Warnock (GA), and Cortez Masto (NV). The Dems had the advantage of only having 14 seats up for election and most of them are solidly, solidly blue. AZ was a possible problem, but Kelly leads Masters in virtually every poll, and it appears to be his race to lose. (The GOP's Senate fund has started canceling ad buys scheduled to run in AZ, a sign they think the money would be wasted there.) Warnock is in a tighter race in GA, but almost every day Herschel Walker sticks his foot into his mouth AGAIN, or another previously undisclosed child by yet another mother turns up, or fact-checkers find out he's lied about another part of his life story. Cortez Masto is leading in her race by 7 points and with the abortion issue now out front and center, in a state that was long noted as a place where women's rights (especially for quickie marriages and quickie divorces) are respected, she might well expand that margin.

On the other side of the aisle, the Fetterman-Oz (PA) matchup seems almost like a rout, with Fetterman leading Oz by as much as double-digit margins in many polls. This seat looks like the most likely to flip. Ron Johnson's seat in Wisconsin also seems to be falling behind his challenger in recent polls, in part because he's seen as closely tied to Trump (and possibly participated in the attempts to have Pence throw out WI's electoral votes), and in part because of his vocal support of abortion restrictions (which play out differently now, in a post-Dobbs world, than they did a year or more ago). For the open seat in OH, J.D. Vance is struggling to raise funds, and his Democratic opponent, Tim Ryan, is both well-known and generally liked - and Vance, like Masters, Walker, and Oz, has Trump hanging around his neck. NC's race is also very close, but the polls are tightening and NC has a LOT of well-educated women voters who may very well respond to the Democrat (Beasley) rather than the Trump-endorsed GOP candidate (Budd). And finally, while Marco Rubio still leads his Democratic opponent Val Demings in Florida, it's also a tight race and one that could go south at any point for him - especially with the volatility of the governor's race also affecting turnout.

My thought is that at least two of these five GOP-held Senate seats are likely to flip.

As for the House, having flipped one seat (Alaska) and lost one seat (Texas) in special elections this term, the margin of control is almost as thin currently as the Senate's. And because of gerrymandering (which is more prevalent in Republican controlled states than in Democratic controlled ones, especially among the larger states), more voters preferring Democrats over Republicans doesn't mean Democrats are likely to control (or continue to control) the House. House races are won over much smaller districts and the vast majority are solidly in the hands of one party or the other.

The national preference for who controls Congress is expressed as the winning party followed by the margin by which they're preferred over the other; for example, D+2 means roughly 51% want the Democrats to control Congress, 49% want the Republicans.

If the national mood is D+2 or less, the Republicans usually win (or keep) control of the House. Even a D+3 is typically barely enough to maintain only a couple of seats majority. 

The good news is that lately, that number (on average, across multiple polls) has been more like anywhere from D+4 to D+8, on average, though it's varied considerably over the year. The trend, though, is in favor of the Democrats over the last couple of months (I think largely due to the abortion decision, and to Trump).

The wildcard will be: how much more is going to come out about Hair Furor? Right now, his base, of course, is eating up his fury over the FBI's search warrant for Mar-a-Lago, but every new revelation in the case makes him look that much worse. The more he inserts himself into congressional races, the more he seems to spur turnout - for the Democrats. When he was on the ballot in 2020, his side turned out even more than they did in 2016 - but the Democrats bested that, with even more gains. This year, with the fury against him not subsiding and facing new legal challenges, some portion of his 2020 vote will stay home or vote third party or (in some cases) vote for the Democrat.

I'm predicting that the House stays Democratic and maybe even gains a one or two seats; if it goes to the Republicans, it will only be by a few seats. And they will promptly fall into disarray because there's no one who can unite the Trump faction and the traditionalists. 

[BootmanLA]

Finally: obviously this should be clear, but that's what I see at this point, two months out. I'm sure my view will change a little (or a lot) one direction or the other as election day in November approaches. So I'll be ignoring all the "Ha ha look how off you were" comments that only look at this post, and not any changes I acknowledge during the next couple of months. It's a current long-range forecast, which looks different than it did four months ago and different from what we'll be seeing November 1.

[PozBearWI]

I've definitely given up on giving any credence to polling numbers.  Here in Wisconsin there is a huge amount of attention being given to polling and hardly anything to what the candidates are actually saying.  When I filter out the big money ads and just pay attention to direct candidate ads, there is an interesting contrast to Michels vs Evers.  Evers has a long list of impressive accomplishments even though legislators were of the other party.  Michels simply talks about destroying things; and what he wants to destroy are people who disagree with his Trump backed agenda.  Pretty troubling.

Overall, I suspect midterms on average won't change much at all.  The R's of course are dominated by Trump which is troubling in so many ways.  I rather hope that Kinzinger or Chaney make a run to oppose Trump in 2024.  While IMO Trump has earned prison time, I think it unlikely that will happen.

Democrats have some pretty far left agenda items which is almost as concerning as the right wing.  In my best hopes; I would love to see is start ignoring both wingtips and move back to centrist which should get us back to meeting the needs of the 80% (ish).   

I would love to see Citizens United overturned.  The ads have gotten old and the intensity and content now is absurd.  

[NEDenver]

The states congressional districts are still massively gerrymandered.  Colorado just redistricted after a referendum that said every district should be as competitive as possible and they still packed Denver into one district and are giving most of the states to Republicans.  There are really only two ways to counter that, strategic moving and finding new unaccounted for voters, and the Democrats seem to be passively hoping post Dobbs the latter will happen.

[Rillion]

So from my perspective as a Nevada resident, I'm not as confident in the Senate race here as you are. Yes Nevada has been trending Blue but the Republicans here have been receiving reinforcements from California. The irony is that the native Nevadan Republicans blame Californians for blue trend, the actual data shows we are getting more Republicans fleeing California than Democrats.

Also the big sea change we had here is that after Bernie won the caucus in 2020, his supporters have taken over the state Democratic party from the old Harry Reid holdovers. So there has been some internal cconflict

On the House side in Nevada, three of the four seats are currently held by Democrats, but the local gerrymander was pretty agressive so instead of the previous 2010 districts that had one safe R seat, one safe D seat and two more competitive discticts, we now have one safe R disctict and three very slightly D districts. So it is actually possible that Nevada could go from 1 R rep and 3 D reps to 4 R's.

NNow having expressed the reasons to be concerned, there is also some good reasons to be optimistic. One is that there is also some infighting on the R side.

Second, the Democrats took advantage of having unified control of the state government to make it easy to vote. All registered voters will be sent a mail in ballot. So that will hopefully help turnout and the higher the turnout the better Democrats chances.

Third, Nevada is a fairly libertarian state and has abortion rright enshrined in the state constitution by way of a voter referendum (as well as having added gay marriage proactively to the state constitution in 2020), so the Republican overreach on social issues doesn't help them here.

Edited September 2, 2022 by Rillion

[BootmanLA]

On 9/1/2022 at 7:39 AM, JimInWisc said:

I've definitely given up on giving any credence to polling numbers.

Generally I agree, except that the more of them you push together, it becomes easier to see bigger trends even if the details aren't quite right. What it looks like, for now, is that Trump's death-grip on the GOP is hurting more than it's helping - that may not continue to be the case, but, as noted, in all five special House races this year, the Dems are outperforming how Biden did in that same district just two years ago, suggesting a broader movement against Trumpism.

On 9/1/2022 at 7:39 AM, JimInWisc said:

Overall, I suspect midterms on average won't change much at all. 

I don't think we'll see massive change either direction either. But with things as closely balanced as they are right now in Congress, even a little shift one way or the other could spell either massive success or dismal failure.

For instance, if we pick up two Senate seats, that instantly sidelines Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema from their obstructionist agendas (as long as the rest of the Dems hold together). Things like a stronger reaction to climate change or closing the carried interest loophole suddenly become possible again (at least on the Senate side). And even things that haven't been pushed in the Senate yet might be seen as feasible.

On the other side: we'd need to hold the House to get those things through, and that's a tougher order. I'm becoming more hopeful, though, that we can do that, and the Alaska flip is sweet, sweet news on that front (assuming Palin doesn't drop out of the race for the regular election this fall).

If we lose the House, that's the end of any legislative achievements for the Biden administration, as the Republicans are as mad at him as they were at Obama for daring to win an election they think they own. At that point it becomes Executive Order City and, if we hold the Senate, judgeship confirmations galore.

[1stimebare]

It will be closer than some expected, but I will be surprised if the House does not change hands.  The Senate was always more favorable  to the dems this time due to the states up.  Two years from now will be drastically different.  As for Cheney making a presidential run as a Republican, LMFAO.  She would get no where.  She might be planning a John Anderson sort of run, but that would hurt the democrats because 2/3's or more of her voters would come from them so I bet they cut off her money or worse before they let that happen.

[viking8x6]

On 9/1/2022 at 8:39 AM, JimInWisc said:

The R's of course are dominated by Trump which is troubling in so many ways.  I rather hope that Kinzinger or Chaney make a run to oppose Trump in 2024.

Absolutely agree. I will certainly vote against Trump in the '24 Republican primary if I'm still in my current state of residence, and depending on what happens in the next year I think it's quite possible that Cheney could make a credible run against him.

[BootmanLA]

1 hour ago, viking8x6 said:

Absolutely agree. I will certainly vote against Trump in the '24 Republican primary if I'm still in my current state of residence, and depending on what happens in the next year I think it's quite possible that Cheney could make a credible run against him.

I would like to see Cheney defeat Trump for the nomination, even though I don't want her to win the general election (she's still very much a right-winger, just one that doesn't countenance coups). Remember that she voted for all the bad things Trump wanted to do, and while she's FINALLY come around on same-sex marriage (after opposing it even while her lesbian sister was getting married), she's still very much a solidly Republican official - just not one enamored with the Mango Mussolini.

But honestly, I don't see Cheney being able to defeat Trump in the primaries. While his iron grip on the party's faithful has slipped somewhat since he left office, the pro-Trump crowd in the GOP outnumbers the anti-Trump crowd. Things could change, especially if he's indicted and convicted by then, but even then I'm not sure I'd rule out him getting the nomination.

I made the mistake of underestimating his appeal in 2016, thinking (like many) that there was no way he could win. Never again.

[PozBearWI]

23 minutes ago, BootmanLA said:

I would like to see Cheney defeat Trump for the nomination, even though I don't want her to win the general election (she's still very much a right-winger, just one that doesn't countenance coups). Remember that she voted for all the bad things Trump wanted to do, and while she's FINALLY come around on same-sex marriage (after opposing it even while her lesbian sister was getting married), she's still very much a solidly Republican official - just not one enamored with the Mango Mussolini.

But honestly, I don't see Cheney being able to defeat Trump in the primaries. While his iron grip on the party's faithful has slipped somewhat since he left office, the pro-Trump crowd in the GOP outnumbers the anti-Trump crowd. Things could change, especially if he's indicted and convicted by then, but even then I'm not sure I'd rule out him getting the nomination.

I made the mistake of underestimating his appeal in 2016, thinking (like many) that there was no way he could win. Never again.

I think I could easily get behind Adam Kinzinger.

[NEDenver]

12 hours ago, JimInWisc said:

I think I could easily get behind Adam Kinzinger.

He still votes 100% for all the Republican things like starving children, corporate takeover of agriculture, pre-existing conditions in healthcare, monopolization of every industry, bonuses to companies that move overseas, and shifting tax burdens from large corporations and wealthy individuals to the vanishing middle and working classes.  Same with Cheney.  There are no good Republicans.  There are just two who aren’t quite ready to murder the Republic.

[PozBearWI]

6 hours ago, NEDenver said:

He still votes 100% for all the Republican things like starving children, corporate takeover of agriculture, pre-existing conditions in healthcare, monopolization of every industry, bonuses to companies that move overseas, and shifting tax burdens from large corporations and wealthy individuals to the vanishing middle and working classes.  Same with Cheney.  There are no good Republicans.  There are just two who aren’t quite ready to murder the Republic.

Honestly I agree with George Washington on parties.  Both absolutely suck; just that at this point in history, Dems suck hugely less than Reps.  

Right now we're not in a position to make effective; and well accepted advances on social causes until we tackle this ugly 50/50 split in our society.  Before we can even do that; we've lost our way on accepted facts.  The majority of us in this particular discussion on BZ are I believe in agreement with facts.  Trump lost the 2020 election.  It was not rigged.  (recall before the 2016 election Trump decried it as already rigged and that "if" he lost, it would be because of that rigging.  He didn't lose...).  On his inaugural address he proclaimed it with gloom and doom; how destroyed the USA was and how he would rebuild it.  My part of the US is definitely not destroyed.  And I've driven across quite vast stretches of it and there is none of that destruction he proclaimed.  Recall that he also proclaimed his inauguration was the largest ever (and if the metric is money spent; he might be right).  But the crowd size was massively different than the inaugurations of his  predecessor.  So out of the box, newly minted president; he has lied to us.

Have you ever noticed that if you listen to Trump's references about others; he is actually talking about himself?  When he says "they are so unfair..." we need to correct his choice of object from "they are" to "I am".  If one does that and compares it to observable events; thy match.  

Throughout his term he bombarded the news with false and incorrect information and the drumbeat became so loud many just believed him because it was all they heard.

 

So; our challenge right now before anything else is to encourage each other to start exploring facts and to make active observations of what is fact and what is not.  

 

Then sure, lots of social causes and national advances we likely will improve the lot in life for MOST we can address.  

[BootmanLA]

37 minutes ago, JimInWisc said:

Honestly I agree with George Washington on parties.  Both absolutely suck; just that at this point in history, Dems suck hugely less than Reps.  

Right now we're not in a position to make effective; and well accepted advances on social causes until we tackle this ugly 50/50 split in our society. 

Personally, I disagree on the idea that both parties "absolutely" suck; it's true that I'm not 100% in agreement with either party, but my quibbles with the Democrats are marginal at best. In fact, I think it's kind of hard to square saying both parties "absolutely" suck with saying one party sucks "hugely less". If that's the case, then the suckage in the first case isn't absolute, not by a long shot.

More importantly: we do not have a 50/50 split in society. We have, at best, a 55/45 split broadly speaking, with the split increasing in width on particular issues, all in favor of the Democrats and their agenda in general. The problem is that the way our political structure works, a minority can, and often does, control.

Consider:

The last time a Republican candidate for president actually got the majority of the votes was in 2004, and that was when we were at war and not yet broadly aware of the false pretenses under which we went to war nor were we aware of all the atrocities we were committing there. Had we been, I don't think Bush II would have won a majority (and he might not have won re-election-even then, Bush only got 286 EVs, so still fairly close). The election before that where the GOP candidate got the majority of the vote was in 1988.

The Senate's non-representational qualities are so well-known that it hardly bears repeating, but one statistic: The 50 Democrats in the Senate represent 41.5 MILLION more people than the 50 Republicans do. Since senators are elected statewide, they more accurately reflect the political will of an entire state than the makeup of the often gerrymandered House delegations. If senators were proportional to the population like House members, but still elected statewide, the Senate would never have been in Republican hands this century.

The House was majority-Democrat from 1952 (!) to 1994 (42 years) for a reason - before extensive gerrymandering with the aid of computers, the House more adequately reflected the mood of the people, which was decidedly non-Republican. The House only flipped GOP under Gingrich because of a long campaign of disinformation and misinformation and outright lies (techniques the GOP hasn't abandoned since),  And even with the huge shift toward the GOP in 1994, they still ended up with a 230-204 split, a spread that rapidly declined in subsequent elections; after a small rally under the sexual predator Dennis Hastert, the shift in the House went back toward the Democrats and culminated in taking the House in 2006. Only extreme gerrymandering after the 2010 census coupled with ugly racist rhetoric flipped the House back to the Republicans. In fact, in 2012, Democratic candidates for the House collectively got 1.4 million more votes than Republican candidates, but the GOP still kept control with 234 seats. The same happened in 2000; Dem candidates got more votes than R ones, but the Republicans kept control of the House. NEVER has the GOP won the popular vote while losing the House.

More importantly: the points at which the GOP took control (always at midterms) were in very low turnout elections (lower than typical even for a midterm). The points at which the Dems took control (in 2006 and 2018) both were high-turnout elections and the margin of the Democrats over the Republicans was huge.

On the issues: Two-thirds of Americans support same-sex marriage. 71% say abortion should be legal in at least some cases and a majority say those cases go beyond "life of the mother, rape and incest". Two-thirds of Americans think taxes need to be raised on the rich. A majority supports cutting defense spending. More than half of Americans support forgiving student debt (at least at the level Biden has moved to do), while even larger majorities support making higher education less expensive so that student debt isn't such a problem.

We are not a 50-50 country and we are NOT, as certain asshole politicians and right-wing media figures like to lie, a "center-right" country that has been co-opted by the liberals. We are a center-left country under occupation by the GOP, and increasingly, that GOP is becoming more and more authoritarian, more fascist, and more desperate to cling to power by any means necessary.

[ErosWired]

On 9/1/2022 at 1:33 AM, BootmanLA said:

had the state held traditional closed primaries, the R vote might have consolidated around Sarah Palin.

See, now, given the peculiar arrangements of this forum, I can’t be sure you didn’t just say that the Alaskan Republican vote might have consolidated around the devil. Not that there’s a significant distinction.