RUNNING AS THE OPPOSITION PARTY (UPDATED)
For starters, a nice piece of Good News:
THE INFLATION REDUCTION ACT JUST PASSED THE SENATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is a huge win, a great legislative victory. But rather than going out to dance in the streets, allow me to write about what I was writing about when I heard that good news, because the two are not disconnected.
Historically, in midterm elections, the party out of the White House casts itself as a check on the party in power, and does so even moreso when the president’s party controls both chambers of Congress. The elections of 1994, 2006, 2010, and 2018 all started with unified government and all ended with the out-party winning control of the House.
Right now, the Republicans are running against The Biden Agenda so strongly that, in the vote-a-rama around the Inflation Adjustment Act, 43 of them voted this morning to uphold a filibuster against the attempt by Democrats to cap the cost of insulin in private health care plans after the Parliamentarian announced that such a step violated the “Byrd Rule” for inclusion in a budgetary reconciliation legislation.
Think about that. 43 Republicans VOTED AGAINST capping the cost of insulin in private health care plans. How many of their voters do you think need insulin and get their health insurance through private plans?
AND THEY VOTED AGAINST THAT.
How many of their voters are among the diabetics in this country who have had to reduce their use of the insulin that saves their lives, because they couldn’t afford it?
In all the elections past since we have held elections, the in-power party has never been able to wear the “check and balance” mantle. Until now.
In this 2022 midterm, there are a number of ways in which the Democrat’s appeal is essentially that they will act as a counterweight against an out-of-step Republican Party that opposes measures the overwhelming majority of people support. 52% of Republicans, 78% of Independents, and 92% of Democrats support what’s in the Inflation Reduction Act.
We can go out and say: “Hey! We voted to cap the cost of insulin for all of you who have private health insurance - something the Republicans don’t want to do for you!”
Do you think that won’t work?
Then there is the Supreme Court. While historically the legislative and executive branches have been seen as “political,” as opposed to the “apolitical” judicial branch, the public no longer sees the Supreme Court that way. In a Quinnipiac University survey taken after the court overturned Roe v. Wade, 63% of voters agreed that “the Supreme Court is mainly motivated by politics.” A Yahoo News/YouGov poll found 74% of adults say the Court has become “too politicized.”
If people regard the Court as a political branch that is overreaching what the public wants, then they may view the midterms as a way to check it. The example of Kansas this past Tuesday is proof that when the argument is made in broad general terms against “government overreach” that a state that went for Trump by 27% in 2020 can go 59-41 in favor of keeping the right of (regulated) abortion in their state constitution.
That’s important.
Earlier this year, a C-SPAN survey asked likely voters to name any Supreme Court cases. Only one case was broadly familiar to respondents: Roe v. Wade, which was named by 40%; Brown v. Board of Education came in second at 6%.
When the Court overturned Roe with the Dobbs decision, public disapproval was quick and emphatic.
Questions about the Court extend beyond abortion. Justice Thomas’ suggestion in Dobbs that the Court should revisit same-sex marriage and contraception, handed Democrats a sharp rhetorical weapon.
They are using it.
The Democrats have followed up in the House by passing bills to codify various quite popular rights that could be under threat from the Court. Whether or not any such legislation makes it into law this year, the roll-call votes are putting the GOP on the defensive and keeping “the Republican Supreme Court” in voters’ minds.
The Court is on the ballot. Democrats saw their polling decline stop only after the Dobbs decision as released. Before Roe, they were trailing badly in the generic congressional ballot. This past Friday, the Quinnipiac Poll found the public wanting Democrats in control of the House 44-40. In almost all polls since Dobbs was announced, abortion ranks high as an election issue.
Polling from YouGov and Indivisible in Arizona found voters overwhelmingly reject both Blake Masters for Senate and Kari Lake for Governor, as candidates who supported Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” and in favor of restricting abortion in the state. 51% said they would view a candidate who believed the 2020 election results were fraudulent “less favorably,” while only 23% said they would view them “more favorably.” That 23% may have voted for Masters and Lake last Tuesday, but the 51% will be voting against them on November 3.
This mid-term campaign, Democrats can go out and say “If the Republicans win, these rights are going to be overturned.” They can point to their votes in the House and say “Give us two more Senators, and we can pass these bills in the Senate and protect your rights from the Republicans who want to take them away.”
They can run as the Opposition Party. The opposition to Republican Overreach.
There’s another target for checks and balances: Donald Trump.
If this was a normal time, a normal mid-term, voters would not see the loser of the last presidential election as a problem. But these are not normal times. Trump keeps teasing that he will run again in 2024.
And if Republicans win this year, if they take the House, if the Big Lie candidates take office in the states, the threat of Donald Trump and what he would do once back in office is as real a threat as his re-election was in 2020.
As a writer of horror movies, it is traditional that it takes three tries to Really Kill The Monster. We tried and lost in 2016. We seriously injured the monster in 2020. Now we have to drive the stake through the monster’s heart and leave the body outside in the sunlight.
70% of Republican voters believe the Big Lie that Trump won the 2020 election.
Trump and his followers are openly trying to stock Congress and state governments with election deniers.
Thus, a vote for Democrats is a vote against a powerful foe: a government-in-waiting and its accomplices.
In a just-released CBS poll, 45% of likely voters said that their vote for Congress will be about Donald Trump, statistically tied with the 47% who it is about Joe Biden.
UPDATE:
A Monmouth University poll shows Democrats gaining ground on the generic congressional ballot — another sign that the party's fortunes may have improved over the last month. The poll finds Democrats with a 7-point lead on the generic ballot (50%-43%), up from a tie in the pollster's June survey. More Democrats (74%) said it was "very important" for them to vote than Republicans (69%) — a sign of increased Democratic engagement in the runup to the midterms.
Democrats have been handed the opportunity to portray themselves as the opposition party. For the last five election cycles, that has been the good place to be.
Speaking loudly on issues voters actually care about matters. Democrats have proof that voters will respond to aggressive campaigning and boisterous rhetoric in defense of reproductive rights and our democracy—both of which are under threat from extremists.
And with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act today, on top of the bipartisan infrastructure act last year, Democrats can tell the voters who were “disappointed” that the two bills didn’t go “far enough” that keeping that now-attainable control of the House, and adding more Democratic Senators, will mean that those “lost” parts of the bills can be “found” next year.
And if that happens, 2024 will take care of itself. The angst over Biden will be gone. The threat of Trump will be contained. And with a re-election in 2024, the prospect of Trumpism winning afterwards will go down with each victory for Things People Want chalked up.
We are the Opposition Party. We oppose authoritarianism and promote democracy.
As Adlai Stevenson pointed out 70 years ago:
“The strange alchemy of time has somehow converted the Democrats into the truly conservative party of this country - the party dedicated to conserving all that is best, and building solidly and safely on these foundations.”
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Going on my refrigerator door: "As a writer of horror movies, it is traditional that it takes three tries to Really Kill The Monster. We tried and lost in 2016. We seriously injured the monster in 2020. Now we have to drive the stake through the monster’s heart and leave the body outside in the sunlight."
An important part of the outcome in Kansas is that the get-out-the-vote literature against the amendment didn't mention abortion at all. The emphasis was, as it should be, on keeping "personal health decisions private" and that's what won the day. Careful messaging hasn't been a recent strong point for the Democrats but will be critical in the next two elections.
A piece of potentially positive news is that John Wood, a noted conservative attorney, is on the November ballot as an Independent candidate for the Senate. Supported by John Danforth as a more rational alternative to Eric Schmitt, there is scant chance that he'll win but a fair shot that he could split the Republican vote enough to carry the day for Trudy Valentine. It's a seat the GOP is counting on holding and would be a great pickup.