Democrats Outperform in the 2022 Midterm Elections and Other Takeaways
One metric illustrates the Democratic outperformance in the 2022 Midterm Elections: share of independent voters. According to a WSJ poll, independent voters tilted Democrat.
Shocking to think centrist voters might dislike baseless claims of election fraud, January 6th conspirators and enablers, and a Republican Party that increasingly flirts with fascism.
Of course, not everyone disliked what Republicans currently stand for, including white suburban women, apparently. The people of Florida sure loved Ron DeSantis and Marco Rubio, giving the former a giant mandate with his nearly 20 point bashing of Democrat Charlie Crist. It was only four years ago that DeSantis barely eked out a win by 0.4% against Democrat Andrew Gillum.
There are some obvious and not so obvious reasons why DeSantis largely beat the field of Republicans, who by and large underperformed, especially if they were Trump-selected candidates. But first, let’s examine why the Democrats outperformed.
Most Americans are not extreme
Sure, many of us are divided along ideological lines. Polarization is real. But within those tribes, many of us begrudgingly identify more with one side over the other. We aren’t always ecstatic about everything that party does. We aren’t always thrilled about everything that party stands for.
It’s more like a lesser evils approach.
American democracy is messy. It’s designed that way intentionally. If one party was able to push their agenda too easily, we’d have tyranny of the majority. If the other party could block that agenda too easily, we’d have tyranny of the minority.
The push and pull of American democracy is what has made America (mostly) thrive since 1776. And most Americans are neither completely in the push or pull camp.
So when Trump-backed candidates like Dr. Mehmet Oz and Doug Mastriano, to name a couple, campaign on his conspiracy theories about 2020 election fraud, the majority of voters pause. Only about one third of Americans fully entertain that rubbish. That rhetoric may win some very conservative districts, but it’s not going to prevail in most statewide races.
We witnessed that aversion to extremism on full display Tuesday night. Voters everywhere (but Florida) largely denounced Trumpism. They denounced an extremist Supreme Court that overturned an abortion precedent that had been reaffirmed multiple times for 50 years. They shunned candidates who were willing to attack democratic institutions and sway elections in their favor.
The Republicans should have cleaned up on Tuesday. They should have had a historic performance. From Biden’s awful exit from Afghanistan to inflation (which many unfairly pin on Democrats even though it’s a global issue), the conditions were probably the most favorable in decades for the Republicans to win the House and Senate. Easily.
Instead of a red wave or tsunami, we witnessed a red trickle, as conservative commentator Ben Shapiro called it. And it was barely even a trickle. Republicans will likely only have a small majority in the House, and the Senate may remain in Democratic control.
The extremist rhetoric from many Trump-backed candidates turned off many independent voters. For lovers of democracy, that’s a reassuring sign. But it should also be a warning shot to Democrats that the next two years are critical in adjusting and unifying their message to focus on core pocketbook issues.
Voters made it clear that while they weren’t looking to elect extremists, they also weren’t totally sold on the message that all Republicans are fascists. If the Democrats are going to continue to outperform and not rely on Republicans beating themselves, they need to clean up their messaging around inflation and economic issues. They need to give their candidates in 2024 something to point to that helped the wallets of average Americans or improved the decaying infrastructure of the country.
Otherwise, the red tsunami that swept across Florida will sweep across America.
Florida is no longer a swing state
Four years ago, Ron DeSantis barely won a home in Florida’s governor’s mansion. This time around he surfed a giant 20 foot wave into Tallahassee.
What changed? And why did he perform so much better than many other Republican candidates?
People often point to his attacks on COVID-19 lockdowns or his culture wars on “woke” ideology. But I think the best way to sum up his past four years is in the following way:
He’s a lethal combination of populist Donald Trump and someone who can competently discuss policy issues.
And when I compare him to Trump, that’s only insofar as he’s talented at riling up the same Trump base. He has a far more effective way of executing it, however.
DeSantis will charge up the crowd on allegations of critical race theory, he’ll take on powerful forces within his state like Disney, but he does it in a much more measured and controlled way than Trump.
Instead of lashing out at his enemies with name calling, he makes seemingly competent points about policy, even if they clearly come from a place of bad faith. Instead of coming unhinged, he almost always stays composed and calculated.
DeSantis led Florida to major Republican success in the Midterms. It naturally should raise the question – how will his success in Florida, on a night when many Trump-backed candidates struggled, impact the party heading into the 2024 presidential election?
What to do with Donald Trump
Heads should roll in the Republican Party after their disastrous Midterms performance. It’s not only Donald Trump’s fault either. How Kevin McCarthy becomes Speaker of the House, crawling into the U.S. Capitol when he should have been surfing in like DeSantis, is beyond me. Who wants a party leader who oversees a performance of maybe +10 seats when in reality it should have been +50 or +60.
But the ultimate responsibility of this disastrous performance has to stop somewhere. Donald Trump is still the head of the party until someone finally dethrones him. Of course, he would only like to enjoy all of the credit while accepting none of the blame.
How long will Republicans put up with this megalomaniac narcissist?
I’m hesitant to say he’s done after that Midterms performance, and after DeSantis’ strong performance, because he has always found a way to stay alive politically. He’s always found a way to escape criminality. But it may all be finally catching up.
The Republican Party needs to do serious soul-searching after getting whooped when the political conditions were perfect for them to deliver the whooping. The fact is that Trump pushed and supported bad candidates. He promoted snake oil salesmen like Dr. Oz who he thought would be good for television but turned out to be a complete fraud who barely lived in Pennsylvania. Even John Fetterman – recovering from a stroke and all – was able to illustrate how fake and fraudulent he was with just a few sentences.
Compare Trump’s candidates to DeSantis’s performance and there’s a stark contrast. There’s an obvious path for Republicans to take heading into 2024 and it’s on the back of DeSantis’s surfboard.
Democrats cannot sit back and enjoy their outperformance
The Democrats should not be celebrating. They were lucky that Republicans whiffed and largely beat themselves. If they want to win in 2024 and beyond, they must adjust their messaging and control the fringes of their base.
Messaging like defund the police and other socialist rhetoric will only push away the very independent voters they need to court. It will dissuade the white suburban women from joining them. And most importantly, It will not stand up against someone like Ron DeSantis who has persuasive counters to much of the Democratic messaging (even though most of it is in bad faith).
If the Democrats cannot unify their messaging and redirect their focus to core pocketbook issues over the next two years, Joe Biden will be a one term President and 2024 will likely usher in Republican control of the House, Senate, White House, and Supreme Court.
And Ron DeSantis will be in the White House with his surfboard.
