In 2022, We Must Hold the Line. But How and Where?

The 2022 Midterms. Democrats look to them with a mixture of fear and resolve, knowing that, at least historically, the party in power loses a significant number of seats. That would mean disaster in a Congress that today is evenly divided. A Congress controlled in both chambers by the GOP after 2022 would not just result in government paralysis; the GOP has used its majority in the past to launch baseless investigations such as Benghazi to create a drumbeat of negativity to serve its political purposes, and we would expect the same and more from this extremely partisan, radicalized GOP. Some have even speculated that Trump himself would make an early return to politics by demanding he be made Speaker in a GOP-controlled House, if only so he could oversee revenge impeachment proceedings against his successor, President Joe Biden.

More dangerous still is the possibility—some argue strong likelihood—that the electoral votes of states that are only narrowly carried by the Democrats in 2024 would be challenged at the federal level and actually discarded by a vote of Congress. After all, if two-thirds of the GOP delegation in the House in 2020 was willing to throw out the votes of Pennsylvania and Arizona, even after a violent insurrection at the Capitol driven by the Big Lie and zero evidence of actual election fraud, what would they be willing to do once they actually have the power to change the electoral outcome? We would be naive to assume the GOP has moderated its anti-democratic thirst for power over the past half year. If anything, based on the extremists running in the GOP primaries, the incoming class of Republican Congressmembers in 2022 will be more radical than ever.

These nightmare scenarios should scare any Democrat (or small-case democracy supporter) into voting in 2022 against the GOP. But as is typical with the supporters of the party in power, there is an inevitable complacency that develops by mid-term, and the opposition has an advantage in dialing up the outrage and turning out its voters. Add to this the GOP’s redistricting advantage from the 2020 census (giving them a +5 count—alone enough to tip the balance), the gerrymandering that heavily favors the GOP, and the weight of numerous voter suppression bills surgically designed to depress minority turnout, and it’s clear the GOP goes into the House races in 2022 with a strong and in many ways unfair systemic advantage.

So is all hope lost? No. But with such strong currents operating against Democrats, we need to be laser-focused on the paths that still remain to us. Moreover, we need to prioritize the list of potential horribles in order to keep our country from spiraling completely into chaos. That means we must be thinking about the 2024 election by applying learned lessons from 2020.

If, as most believe, we are quite vulnerable to losing the House, then we must work to preserve our control of at least one of the chambers of Congress to avoid a vote of Congress overturning a democratically elected president in 2024. This is not an academic exercise; it is a practical necessity. If Democrats still control the Senate after 2022, then the House can vote all it wants to undo the Electoral College, and the Senate still can reject it. That must be our line in the sand.

Courtesy of racetothewh.com

Here’s the good news: The map for the Senate remains favorable for Democrats. That is because among the seven races considered competitive by most political handicappers, six of them are in “Biden country”—blue states that Biden carried in 2020, though in three cases admittedly quite narrowly. These include two defensible senate seats held by Sens. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Raphael Warnock (D-GA). The GOP will be trying to flip these two seats red, along with blue seats in New Hampshire and Nevada, but it faces an uphill climb unless it can produce stellar candidates in these races, none of whom has yet to emerge. Sens. Kelly and Warnock, meanwhile, have raised significant war chests in advance of their races, and the GOP appears fractured between MAGA loyalists and traditional GOP conservatives.

Meanwhile, the GOP is defending an open seat in blue Pennsylvania after the retirement of Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), and this is a chance for a pick-up. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) has not announced whether he will run again, but he is also in a blue state (Wisconsin) that was narrowly carried by Biden, and he is widely viewed as unpopular and out of touch. Marco Rubio (R-FL) faces a strong challenge in Florida from Rep. Val Demings (D-FL), who outraised him in the last quarter. And there are two open seats in Ohio and Missouri that the GOP ought to hold but for the fact that they are running some insanely bad candidates in the primaries, including Eric Greitens in Missouri, a hard-core Trumper and former governor who resigned in disgrace after accusations of abuse from a woman with whom he was in an extramarital affair. 

If we can ensure Sens. Warnock and Kelly hold their seats through focused support, and we push hard for added “insurance” wins in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, we could hold the line and even pick up one or two seats. That would be just enough to buy us time against the growing GOP threat and perhaps win back Congress completely in 2024 when we’re not in the off-cycle. 

This doesn’t mean we should give up on the House. There are narrow paths there as well, but presently they are less clear. Once the primaries are underway—which will undoubtedly be some of the best entertainment of the political season on the GOP side—our strategies will become clearer. But we already know what we must do in the Senate, so that means that if we want to organize, fundraise and help out now, we must do so in GA, AZ, PA and WI—and in that order. 

In short, we must hold the line at the Senate. And who knows? If we actually do pick up two seats in 2022, even the filibuster rule could be weakened or eliminated for the purpose of passing key voting rights legislation, as many have urged.

Wouldn’t that be grand?