A Moment To Breathe, A Moment To Fight: 5 Takeaways from the 2022 Midterms
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Well. Here we are. What a night. A lot of you spent it with me, Nick Hauselman, Danielle Moodie, Wajahat Ali, and Dr. Jason Neidleman, breaking down the breaking news and analyzing the trends we saw play out across the nation.
It was a fascinating affair. I’ve been watching Midterms for decades now, and though they’re often portrayed as lacking the fundamental drama of a presidential contest, they are incredible glimpses into the political environment as it stands. Leading to Tuesday night, it had become the prevailing narrative across media platforms and Beltway circles that the Republican Party would not only gain power but absolutely crush the Democrats to the point of extinction. The articles had been published. The pundits had already leveled their fingers. Political consultants of all stripes were out in force, either spinning their victories or skulking around looking for anyone to blame for their defeats.
And yet, the supposed Red Wave never materialized. What did emerge, however, was a complicated and telling picture of a nation at a crossroads. And a portrait of a crisis that could either worsen or, hopefully, thankfully, might recede.
FIVE TAKEAWAYS FROM THE 2022 MIDTERMS
1. The People Are Speaking
I will remember November 8th, 2022 as the night John Fetterman won the Senate seat in Pennsylvania. In a field crowded by idiots and also-rans, Fetterman has stood out from the beginning as an authentic and powerful presence. He is a man of the people and by the people and after years and years of groomed and practiced politicians, you cannot help but marvel when you see the real deal. It isn’t the hoodies or the tattoos or anything else cosmetic. It is his approach, his demeanor, the soul with which he operates.
There were questions regarding his health, largely drummed up by a media salivating at the prospect of a close-to-election story that might take an open-and-shut contest and turn it into a ratings-catching barnburner. But the people of Pennsylvania had no time for that nonsense. Instead, they chose one of their own over a grifter reality TV C-lister who drove into the state to try and steal some power and wealth.
Fetterman is the type of candidate the Democratic Party should run to. Not necessarily as president, but across the board. Instead of chasing lawyers, former CIA agents, and Republican-lite “sure bets,” it’s time to return to the base. Democrats have moved away from the voters who gave them power for decades, trading in vulnerable communities, including people of color, labor unions, and the poor for corporations, professional managers, and the economically affluent. There is a reason why many Americans don’t trust them. They don’t recognize them and they don’t hear them speaking to them.
I want to make this clear: whatever victory we can declare from last night, including an almost unthinkable defense of seats in the face of overwhelming odds, belongs to the people. In voting against charlatans like Mehmet Oz and Blake Masters, they sent a clear signal. They are not necessarily supporting Democratic leaders, including Joe Biden, but rejecting the GOP.
The question now is how to make amends, build bridges, and change course. And whether the Democratic Party can fully appreciate just how necessary that is.
2. Donald Trump Is Not The Future
This was the Clown Election. Smarting from his 2020 defeat, Donald Trump gathered together the most embarassing spate of absurdities and grifters he could find. For Herschel Walker to be so close to standing in the Senate is an astonishing failure of the system. What we are looking at, and what has been largely rejected, is Trumpism in its most pure and concentrated form. Antidemocratic actors and hucksters determined to use political discord and fear to line their pockets and seize power.
That rejection is going to have major consequences. Trump is more than likely going to declare his candidacy soon and absolutely wash his hands of these defeats, as he has already predictably signaled.
The GOP knows that Trump is used up and that his brand is toxic to the vast majority of Americans. It is still necessary for them to pay him lipservice and marshal his power and visage in certain places. They still must keep their base loyal and tied to the party, but Republicans like Governor Brian Kemp in Georgia and, more importantly, Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida have shown that big wins can be had by keeping the links alive while projecting a sense of “respectability” beyond what Trump is capable of.
No doubt, the party is spending today and the next few days preparing for the runoff in Georgia, but also hoping like hell they can move beyond Trump and transfer the energies of his movement into some other package. This is a relief in that it might mean the end, or at least end in the nearterm, of people like Walker or Oz, but also another step in what a lot of us have been fearing all along.
What concerns me, and has concerned for awhile, is the laundering of the worst authoritarian elements into a more disciplined and polished vessel. That would mean better electoral chances and also more of an opportunity for the Far Right to legitimize itself. Our media has already shown a desire to get there through normalizing the awful actions of thugs like DeSantis, and in comparison to Trump, it might very well be welcomed with open arms.
3. Georgia Will Show Us The Way
It is just deflating as all get out that it’s going to take a runoff in Georgia. The race should be over and the fact that it isn’t is a blemish for the Peach State. Herschel Walker has been revealed many times over as unqualified for the job and a danger to himself and others. I have political problems with Raphael Warnock, but comparing the two is simply disrespectful to the sitting senator.
Based on the importance of this run and escalating polarization, I expect Georgia is going to be a battleground unlike any other before the runoff. The money that has been spent so far will only balloon and both parties will flood the state with cash, strategists, and surrogates. The question is whether Trump, who convinced Walker to run in the first place, will get the call or if DeSantis or Kemp will make the trek. Politically speaking, the latter two make more sense, but Kemp has stayed out of the fray, leading to a flood of split Kemp/Warnock ballots and Trump is so inextricably linked to Walker that it’s almost unthinkable that he’ll stay away.
Also, just try keeping him from that hot of a spotlight.
The GOP marriage with Walker has been fraught from the beginning, and the traditional wing worked against him in the primaries until there was no denying him the nomination. Like the odd arrangement between Trump and the GOP, this thing is set to explode and how it explodes will tell us so much about the direction of this party and what the next few years might hold.
4. Reasons For Concern
The Democratic Party’s campaign in 2022 was, in a word, shitty. No message, no plan, nothing but reaction to whatever the polls showed and not much in the way of opposition to what the GOP is devolving into. And, along the same lines, we watched the increased radicalization grow and challenge the very notion of liberal democracy itself.
There were armed groups of paramilitary thugs intimidating voters. Bomb threats. Denial of election monitors. Vast campaigns of misinformation and disinformation. A full-on social media campaign of bots and malevolent actors (more on this below). All of it and more troubling indicators of where we are heading.
The horse race mentality is good for the news. It supplies drama that demands viewers tune in so that they can try and stay ahead of their panic. It keeps you from turning the channel. But yesterday’s election was about more than who garnered the most votes. It was a glimpse at a system breaking down. Election officials were harassed, their families threatened, and the entire apparatus creaked and groaned as if it might collapse at any moment.
And that’s because it could. The election denying Big Lie of 2020 was another step in a longer road that got us to this powderkeg. It isn’t going to simply stop, as we are seeing in the relentless claims of lost contests and ongoing counts where GOP candidates are claiming fraud and blaming vast conspiracies. And that will only be worse come 2024.
5. A Crucial Moment
I spent a lot of time with my work warning of possible disaster and collapse. And that’s because there is a danger. But I’m feeling exponentially more optimistic of late, and its for a variety of reasons.
Simply put, people are tired of this nonsense and all the various types of nonsense.
The ridiculous candidates. The screaming about absurdities like the gender of the Potato Head doll. Dr. Seuss. What comic book movies say about our culture and whatever bullshit Fox News is serving up.
But also other things. Bigger things than Oz or Walker or Lauren Boebert. In Iran, the people are fighting for a revolution. In Russia, they’re risking their lives and fortunes standing up against Vladimir Putin’s totalitarian regime. China is even struggling. And here, in America, this election felt like a breath before a larger fight.
I see it with social media. Facebook is flatlining because people are sick of its divisiveness, its corruption of the public sphere, its lack of care regarding reality or radicalization. Elon Musk’s reign at Twitter is a massive embarassment because no one wants to swim in an authoritarian cesspool. Two of the biggest and most powerful companies are struggling, possibly in an irreversible way, because the world is giving way to something else.
We have an incredible opportunity. Right now it is so frightening because these systems are so huge and overwhelming. But they are fragile and they do change. Things feel unmalleable until they are malleable, and then things that seemed impossible are suddenly irrepresible. What happened Tuesday is not the end of a fight, but the beginning. As I keep reminding people, voting is the absolute minimum for democracies. We have to grow and fight and heal and demand change. The Democratic Party did not win this fight. We did. And now we must push forward.
This was a stay of execution. The GOP and Trumpism could have taken the power for themselves in almost totality and set up the country for a death march to 2024. Now, we can take a quick moment to rest, lick our wounds, and determine what is to come. And there is no choice. We simply have no other choice.
I watched all 4 hours of your analysis and it was amazing. After spending time handing out material at the polls for the afternoon and worrying about outcomes, it was refreshing to spend the evening with like minded friends and getting info I could never get on mainstream.
Thank you, Jared, from the bottom of my heart for providing that and everything else you do. You are a true visionary. You give us both truth and a way out. Without that, we are forever stuck in wondering why the Dems are always falling short and do not seem up to the task of truly helping their people. Kind of like the child of a battered wife who wonders why his mother cannot protect him from his father.
In appreciation,
Carolyn
Thank you for your insight.