[ Progressive and leftist voters are always told we’re too
extreme. The midterm results should quash that narrative. Results
suggest that when the Democratic Party listened to its progressive
flank voters rewarded its politicians.]
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8 LESSONS FROM THE MIDTERM ELECTIONS  
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Julia Rock, Rebecca Burns, Andrew Perez, Matthew Cunningham-Cook,
David Sirota
November 10, 2022
Jacobin
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_ Progressive and leftist voters are always told we’re too extreme.
The midterm results should quash that narrative. Results suggest that
when the Democratic Party listened to its progressive flank voters
rewarded its politicians. _

Pennsylvania Democratic candidate John Fetterman waves onstage at a
watch party during the midterm elections in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
on November 8, 2022., Angela Weiss / Agence France-Presse (AFP) //
Jacobin

 

Corporate media, industry-funded think tanks, and Democratic
operatives were chomping
[[link removed]] at
the bit
[[link removed]] to
blame the party’s anticipated midterm election losses Tuesday on
progressives and a prefabricated narrative about Democrats’
supposedly extreme brand. Then, the results began rolling in.

It’s not clear yet which party will control the House or Senate, but
this was not the “red wave” that polls had projected, nor the
midterm bloodbaths that Democrats faced under President Barack Obama
in 2010 and 2014. In recent decades, the party controlling the White
House has almost always lost seats in the midterms, with the stark
exception of the 2002 midterms when Republicans took back the Senate
thanks to the momentum of President George W. Bush’s “war on
terror.”

While voters this year declined to offer a stiff rebuke of the party
in power, they indicated via ballot measures, exit polls, and large
preelection surveys that on key issues such as abortion rights, health
care, higher minimum wages, workers’ right to collectively bargain,
and legalized cannabis, the electorate is more progressive than
elected officials and corporate media pundits care to admit.

Many factors can explain the Democrats’ unexpectedly strong
performance in a midterm cycle, such as the Supreme Court’s
massively unpopular decision to strike down a constitutional right to
an abortion and voters’ apparent rejection of Republican candidates
closely tied to former president Donald Trump. But there is another
equally important takeaway that Democrats should take to heart.

The results suggest that when the Democratic Party listened to its
progressive flank and adopted bold proposals like the child tax
credit, student debt cancellation, and massive climate spending,
voters rewarded its politicians.

Key Takeaways

1.THE ECONOMIC POPULISM FORMULA WORKS IN SWING STATES.

The conventional wisdom for years has been that Democrats running in
swing states must present themselves as corporate-friendly
conservatives. But in the _Lever’s _deep dive
[[link removed]] on
the Pennsylvania election, the state’s former auditor general told
us that gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro “maintained a
center-left profile the whole time, and I think that’s critical to
winning statewide.” The election results bear that out.

In the Keystone State
[[link removed]],
both Shapiro and Senate candidate John Fetterman ran successful
populist campaigns and significantly outperformed President Joe
Biden’s 2020 results in the most traditionally Republican parts of
the state. The same goes for Ohio
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though Democrat Tim Ryan lost the race, he campaigned on a pro-worker
agenda
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and Democratic performance similarly increased in the state’s GOP
strongholds. And in Colorado
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Democratic senator Michael Bennet campaigned
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populist economic measures like the expanded child tax credit and
likewise benefited from higher Democratic performance in the state’s
GOP regions.

By contrast, more conservative Democratic statewide campaigns
in North Carolina
[[link removed]] and Iowa
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with the opposite trend: higher GOP margins than 2020 in
Republican-leaning parts of the state. In Virginia, Democratic
representative Elaine Luria also lost a close race after calling
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ban on congressional stock trades “bullshit” — and being
attacked
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those comments on the campaign trail.

2. MANY VOTERS DIDN’T BUY THE INFLATION LIE.

Many corporate media talking heads and Republican politicians have
spent months arguing that the Biden administration’s COVID-19
pandemic relief spending is the primary driver of inflation.
Summarizing the argument, Bill Clinton’s Treasury secretary, Larry
Summers, compared
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to Jimmy Carter in April, saying: “The Rescue Plan has crowded out
political space for desirable long-term investments in [Biden’s]
Build Back Better plan. And Carter’s demise suggests that inflation
is a grave threat to progressive politics.”

The latest Fox News voter analysis
[[link removed]] survey,
a massive preelection poll, found this narrative has been effective,
but not overly so: 54 percent of Americans believe that inflation is a
result of Biden’s policies, while 46 percent blame factors outside
Biden’s control.

In reality, corporate
[[link removed]] profiteering
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been the biggest driver of price hikes — not pandemic aid programs
or wage increases, as elite media pundits would have you believe.

The day after the election, Morgan Stanley analysts blasted out
a memo
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that Biden’s party preventing an expected GOP wave would “undercut
the notion that inflation is an electoral liability for the
Democrats.” The memo added: “Investors could see this result as
permission for the party to ease the political and legislative
constraints that kept Congress from enacting some of the fiscally
expansionary policies that were part of President Biden’s original
‘Build Back Better’ agenda.”

3. THE ELECTORATE HOLDS SURPRISINGLY PROGRESSIVE VIEWS.

The same Fox News voter analysis
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that the majority of Americans hold progressive views on health care,
guns, race, and other key issues. The poll results clash mightily with
conventional wisdom among Democratic operatives: just a few days ago,
for instance, Democratic data bro David Shor was quoted in _Politico
Magazine_
[[link removed]] as
saying, “There is no amount of pressure that is going to make
Democrats create Medicare for All, because the public doesn’t want
it.”

The Fox News poll, however, found that 65 percent of the electorate
think it should be the federal government’s responsibility to make
sure that all Americans have health care coverage. Fox’s
2020 preelection survey
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similarly high support — 70 percent — for the idea of allowing
people to buy into a government health care plan, commonly known as a
public option. Biden campaigned on a public option, but hasn’t
mentioned
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once as president.

4. PROGRESSIVES WIN AT THE BALLOT BOX.

Thanks to a handful of under-the-radar House races, congressional
progressives are set to expand their ranks with new arrivals
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Summer Lee in Pennsylvania, Delia Ramirez in Illinois, Maxwell Frost
in Florida, and Greg Casar in Texas.

Progressives also notched victories on their chosen ballot measures,
suggesting voters support policies like raising the minimum wage and
taxing the rich, even as their elected politicians fail to enact them.

Pro-choice measures swept
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the ballot box, as voters enshrined abortion access in state
constitutions in California, Michigan, and Vermont, as well as and
defeated an antiabortion measure in Kentucky. Nebraskans approved
[[link removed]] a
$15 minimum wage, and voters in Washington, DC, voted
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eliminate the subminimum wage for tipped workers. (Take that,
celebrity chef José Andrés
[[link removed]].)
In Massachusetts, voters approved
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4 percent surtax on incomes over $1 million.

That’s not all: a pro–collective bargaining ballot measure won by
a wide margin
[[link removed]] in
Illinois. Voters legalized cannabis
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recreational use in Maryland and Missouri. In South Dakota,
voters passed
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referendum to expand Medicaid. Rent control measures passed
in Richmond
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California, as well as Orange County
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though the Florida measure has an uncertain future
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thanks to a court challenge from landlords.

5. STUDENT DEBT CANCELLATION HELPED DEMOCRATS.

Democrats may have young voters — and student debt cancellation —
to thank for the party’s surprisingly good performance on Tuesday
night. Preliminary data suggest
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of thirty supported Democrats in House races by nearly a 2-1 margin.
While that’s about the margin by which young voters have favored
Democrats in the past couple of cycles, and the youth share of the
electorate has held steady around 12 percent, young voters are
the only age demographic
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a strong majority.

This is exactly what progressives said would happen when they
pressured Biden for over a year to cancel student debt. Support among
young voters for student debt cancellation was as high as
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percent, according to the Harvard Youth Poll conducted in spring 2022.
An April Data for Progress poll
[[link removed]] found
that nearly half of voters in key battleground states would be more
likely to vote if Biden delivered on his campaign promise to cancel
student debt.

The election results have even forced one top critic
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student debt cancellation to admit
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was mistaken. “I thought student debt relief was bad policy and bad
politics,” tweeted former Bush speechwriter David Frum. “I still
think it [is] bad policy — but looking at the youth vote surge,
[it’s] hard to deny its political impact. And if it helped save the
country from Trumpism, the positives more than pay for the
negatives.”

6. CLIMATE ACTION FOR THE WIN.

Democrats passed the largest climate bill in US history this summer
without a single Republican vote, delivering massive investments in
clean energy. But despite their unified opposition,
Republicans barely attacked
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legislation on the campaign trail.

There may be a good reason for that: the Fox News voter analysis
survey
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that 53 percent of Americans believe US energy policy should aim to
expand the use of alternative energy, including wind and solar, rather
than expand fossil fuel production. The same poll found that 61
percent of Americans are very or somewhat concerned about the effect
of climate change in their communities.

7. DEMOCRATIC VOTERS REMAIN DISSATISFIED.

A major factor in Democrats’ stronger-than-expected showing
nationally appears to be the rock-bottom expectations of their voters.
An NBC exit poll
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a deep sigh of resignation at the ballot box, with Democrats winning
among voters who “somewhat disapprove” of Joe Biden’s job
performance. Overall, more than seven in ten voters said they are
“dissatisfied” or “angry,” according to exit polls conducted
by Edison Research
[[link removed]].

Such results suggest that Democratic voters weren’t inspired to vote
for their candidates; they just couldn’t tolerate the alternatives.

So if Democrats manage to hang on to control of Congress, it will be
hard to argue that they have their tired stay-the-course strategy to
thank. Instead, it’s time for the party to take some big, bold
swings. This spring, a little-noticed statistic in an NBC News poll
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nearly two-thirds of Democratic voters said they wanted a candidate
“who proposes larger-scale policies that cost more and might be
harder to pass into law, but could bring major change” — not
someone who fiddles around the margin.

In fact, the new Fox News voter analysis survey
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that 53 percent of Americans said the “government should do more to
solve problems,” compared to 47 percent who said the government is
“doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals.”

8. “WHAT DO WE DO NOW?”

The famous ending of the classic 1972 film _The Candidate_ shows
[[link removed]] the Democratic senate
nominee winning the election and then turning to his aide and asking:
“What do we do now?” There’s a similar dynamic at play right
now. In general, Democrats did not really campaign on an agenda beyond
promising not to let Republicans steal elections or further erode
reproductive rights.

That leaves us with an open question: If the party somehow retains
control of Congress, what does it plan to do for the next two years?
The election results show that Democrats were not punished for huge
investments like the American Rescue Plan, the Inflation Reduction
Act, and student debt relief. So maybe it’s time to go further and
advance a true populist economic agenda — through active and ongoing
grassroots pressure.

_[JULIA ROCK is a reporter for the Lever._

_REBECCA BURNS is an assistant editor at In These Times and a
Chicago-based reporter and housing activist._

_ANDREW PEREZ is senior editor and a reporter at the Lever covering
money and influence._

_MATTHEW CUNNINGHAM-COOK has written for Labor Notes, the Public
Employee Press, Al Jazeera America, and the Nation._

_DAVID SIROTA is editor-at-large at Jacobin. He edits the Lever and
previously served as a senior adviser and speechwriter on Bernie
Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign.]_

_The new issue of Jacobin is out now. Subscribe today
[[link removed]] and get a yearlong
print and digital subscription._

* 2020 elections
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* electoral strategy
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* Democratic Party
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* Healthcare
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* abortion
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* abortion rights
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* Women
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* youth
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* inflation
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* wages
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* Minimum Wage
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* Student Debt
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* economic populist
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* Climate Crisis
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* Climate Change
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* progressive change
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* Pennsylvania
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