Can the Dems hold the House?
A resounding MAYBE
If you don’t have time to read today’s Take, just look at these three editorial cartoons by Mike Lukovich. They’ll give you the gist.
Can the Democrats hold the House in the 2022 midterms? Two months ago, nearly all the pundits would have answered, no effin’ way. Conventional wisdom was certain that Nancy Pelosi would be destined to surrender the Speaker’s gavel to Kevin McCarthy—or worse, to someone from the trolling chorus of authoritarians who—with no sense of irony—call themselves “The Freedom Caucus.” (Speaker Jim Jordan, anyone?)
There were three chief reasons to expect the House to flip Republican—historical patterns, structural disadvantage, and a wide and deep sense of doldrums, cynicism, and dissatisfaction.
Two of those reasons are still in play—history and structure. But the third—a defeatist sense of doom—has dissipated. Democrats are heading toward November with a positive swagger and pep in their step.
Sunday’s Washington Post carries a story by Annie Linsky and Michael Scherer that documents the case for cautious optimism.
No one is predicting a Democratic romp. But at least most analysts—and professional politicians—have stopped predicting a rout.
Why Democrats still might lose
The historical pattern is clear. The party winning the White House loses House seats—and frequently control—at the next midterms. Remember Barack Obama’s “shellacking” after passing the Affordable Care Act in 2010? (The GOP picked up 63 seats and the House flipped R.) Remember the anti-Trump wave in 2018? (Dems gained 41 House seats and the House flipped D). Since 1934, that pattern has only been beaten twice. In 1998, after the GOP overreached by impeaching Bill Clinton for lying about a blowjob and Democrats gained four seats. In 2002, much of the country rallied around George W. Bush in the wake of the 9-11 attack and supported both his “War on Terror” and his war-mongering propaganda buildup against Iraq and the GOP gained eight seats. Those two exceptions aside, a strong historical pattern favors whichever party is out of the White House.
Beyond historical trends, structural bias consistently favors Republicans. Elections are not like courtroom trials, where two parties make their case to an unbiased jury. Elections are more like sporting events—where opposing teams play in a stadium filled with fans who are already committed to their own teams. In most House districts, one party or the other comes into the election with a strong “home-court” advantage. These advantages are not simply based on regional differences, but are also exaggerated by partisan gerrymandering, a practice that the Supreme Court recently decided was beyond their jurisdiction to stop in Rucho v. Common Cause, 2019. (Another triumph for Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society.)
Justice Kagan’s blistering dissent in Rufo noted:
For the first time ever, this Court refuses to remedy a constitutional violation because it thinks the task beyond judicial capabilities.
And not just any constitutional violation. The partisan gerrymanders in these cases deprived citizens of the most fundamental of their constitutional rights: the rights to participate equally in the political process, to join with others to advance political beliefs, and to choose their political representatives. In so doing, the partisan gerrymanders here debased and dishonored our democracy, turning upside-down the core American idea that all governmental power derives from the people….
Of all times to abandon the Court’s duty to declare the law, this was not the one. The practices challenged in these cases imperil our system of government. Part of the Court’s role in that system is to defend its foundations. None is more important than free and fair elections.
Because of these structural distortions, the only way to get a handle on a Congressional election is treat it as 435 individual elections and examine the partisan dynamics in each district. One of the most reliable sources for that granular level of analysis has long been The Cook Political Report, founded by Charlie Cook in 1984 and now headed by Amy Walter.
According to Walter, this year, a full 80% of House contests will be held in districts that are solidly locked to a party before a single vote has been cast—and among those safe seats, Republicans hold a 26-seat advantage over Democrats.
Walter sees only 20% of House seats in play—and most of those tend to lean one way or the other (shown in the chart below in pale blue and red). The Cook Report rates only 33 Seats out of 435 (8%) as toss-ups (shown in gray).
As a result of both historical trends and structural biases favoring the GOP, the Democrats face an uphill battle to hold the House. Democrats are like the Red Queen in Through the Looking-Glass:
It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!
Despite all that, what makes a Democratic victory possible this year is the third factor—voter enthusiasm. Sentiment. this summer, has taken a dramatic swing toward the Democrats. So much so, that in those 85 competitive seats, voter sentiment may prove enough to not only hold most of the “likely” and “leaning” Democratic districts but also to pull in enough tossups and even some “leaning” Republican districts to keep a Democratic majority.
Why Democrats might hold the House
What turned the tide? There’s a long list of reasons that sentiment is swinging toward the Democrats. I’ll try and list the most important.
The Supreme Court and the Dobbs Decision
The first factor—in both time and impact—was the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and rule that Americans no longer have a Constitutional right to abortion. The human impact of that ruling is devastating. The political impact has been a surge of new voter registrations—especially among women. The New York Times tracked the shift, finding that in Kansas, before the Dobbs decision, women were only 49% of new voter registrations, but afterwards new registrations were running 70% women. New registrations favored Democrats:
Overall, 55 percent of women who registered with either major party chose the Democrats after Dobbs, compared with 44 percent in the month before the leak.
Kansas was the first state to put abortion rights on the ballot and the vote was overwhelming.
Democrats are leaning into abortion access in their political advertising across the board, spending eight times the more on abortion-related ads than Republicans—usually in negative ads highlighting the “pro-life” positions of their opponents.
“Democrats Deliver” on climate, health, taxes, guns, and more
After scoring some quick and substantial wins in early 2021, the Biden agenda stalled late in the year. Bills that passed easily in the House faltered in the Senate, where the Democrats held a bare majority of 50 seats plus the Vice President’s tie-breaker. The lament that voting gets us nothing was heard in the land—especially among younger people. The cynical view that both parties are just cosmetically different brands of identical corporate lackeys was gaining. And then, this summer, the dam broke. Democrats beat back corporate pressure to pass a 15% minimum corporate income tax, and defied lobbying from the big Pharma and the fossil fuel industry to pass negotiation on drug prices for Medicare and the most significant climate legislation in history. A bi-partisan gun-safety bill, while limited, represents the first gun bill to pass in thirty years. The President signed legislation that will bring new semiconductor manufacturing to the U.S. and that will support the health needs of veterans exposed to toxic burn pits. Gas prices have been dropping for ten straight weeks. Inflation shows signs of easing. Job creation remains strong. Unemployment remains low at 3.5%. And, to top it off, Biden last week issued a significant plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student debt.
As the midterm campaign kicks into high gear, “Democrats Deliver” is a slogan that will gain increasing resonance. Expect Democratic House candidates across country to highlight what the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill will deliver specifically in their own district.
Even Biden’s approval ratings, long hovering in the low to mid thirties have ticked up in most polls. The most recent Gallup poll, for example has him rebounding from a low of 38% last month to 44%.
Republicans double down on toxic culture-war issues
As U.S. demographic shifts move to a younger voting base, and the nation tilts to a majority of non-white groups, the GOP’s post-Romney strategy has been to concentrate on riling up the shrinking base of older, white voters. They are abandoning a policy agenda to emphasize “anti-woke” culture war issues. But that’s a two edged sword that not only serves to not only motivate their shrinking base—but also to alarm and energize all of the groups outside of their base. The cynical view that both parties are the same becomes ludicrously untenable when one party invests so heavily in attacking women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, Black rights, etc. and at the same time continues to claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
To the extent that the GOP has a policy agenda, it entails threats to Social Security and Medicare
All-Trump, All-the-Time.
Last November, Republican Glenn Youngkin managed to keep enough distance from Trump to squeak through to the Virginia governorship, beating Terry McAuliffe 50.6% to 48.6%. But this November, Trump will be unavoidable. He won’t be on the ballot. But he will be in everyone’s head. Everyone’s. For the most part, that’s a horrible prospect. But for Democratic campaign purposes, it’s another favorable factor that will boost their candidates across the board.
Between the January 6th Committee’s resumed public hearings next month, and an abundance of legal cases, ranging from the stolen-document case to Fani Willis’s and Tish James’s grand juries, to the October trial in the New York City criminal case against Allen Weisselberg and the Trump Org. and to civil cases too numerous to list here, Trump’s toxicity will be omnipresent throughout the campaign. Democrats won’t need to mention him. Republicans won’t be able to steer clear of his contamination.
Biden, though reluctant to mention his predecessor by name, has found a brilliant way to yoke TFG’s toxicity to the GOP. Whoever on Biden’s comms team that came up with “MAGA Republicans” has earned a bonus. Try, if you will, to argue that not all Republicans are MAGA. It won’t help. The MAGA wing won’t shut up about Trump and the “stolen election” while the non-MAGA establishment wing has simply fallen silent. “MAGA Republicans” is masterful framing that weaponizes Trump’s signature slogan against his Party.
A recent NBC News poll found that threats to Democracy loom as the most important issue for voters. Charlie Bailey, the Democrat running for lieutenant governor of Georgia expressed it, “the party of Trump is a party of extremism, a party of election deniers, a party of authoritarianism." It’s a framing that resonates. It’s a framing that Democrats will use across the country in elections at every level. It’s a framing that flips the midterms from a referendum on Biden to a choice between democracy and, in Biden’s words, “semi-fascism.”
The road ahead: unfinished business
Major pieces of the Democratic agenda remain to be delivered if they hold the House and gain at least two seats in the Senate to nuke the filibuster.
Voting rights (Both the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and anti-gerrymandering and dark money restrictions)
Codifying Roe v. Wade in law
Restoring Paid Parental Leave
Establishing universal Pre-K
Restoring the child tax credit
Enacting an Assault Weapons Ban
Strengthening emission standards (the missing leg of the climate legislation passed as part of the Inflation Reduction Act).
Closing the carried interest tax loophole
Heading into the midterms, the Democrats have the opportunity to craft a campaign message that points to their accomplishments, warns of the authoritarian threats from the MAGA GOP, and promises to deliver further on Biden’s agenda in the future.
Moving from “no effin’ way” to “MAYBE” is huge progress for the Democrats chances of holding the House. And the campaign is just getting underway. Stay tuned.
Make it so!!!
Love your take, Mickeleh! Well-reasoned and written and gives me hope.