| We will soon know whether the Democrats took the drubbing that so many commentators have been forecasting, or whether the pundits were stuck in their
own echo chamber, and Democrats do better than predicted. But even if the Democrats do manage to hold onto one or even both houses of Congress, it’s important to learn the right lessons.
One lesson is much bigger than the 2022 midterms: This entire period of American life, from the 1980s on, and intensifying after 2016, has been a huge missed opportunity that will not be reversed in a single election cycle.
The Democrats, after all, are allegedly the party of working people. The past several decades have been an era when working people have been suffering one assault after another on their living standards, their
economic security, their future horizons, and the life prospects for their children and grandchildren.
This should have been a golden age for ordinary people flocking to the banner of Democrats as their champions, against a corporate class that has grown ever more rapacious at the expense of the common American. Instead, it was a time when working-class voters deserted Democrats for a Republican Party that slavishly favors corporations and bankers over workers. And this was happening well before Donald Trump used crude racism and hyper-nationalism to divert popular frustrations from pocketbook issues.
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