My Vote in 2022 is the Most Important of My Life

I’ll be seventy years old in May. The first time I voted was in 1972; my ballot was enthusiastically cast for George McGovern as an act of opposition to Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War. I since have considered only a few elections to be really important. One was in 1982 to prevent Ronald Reagan from controlling Congress. Another was in 1996, more to stop Newt Gingrich than reelect Bill Clinton. I also put 2008 in this category, not just because it was important to end the legacy of Bush and Cheney, but also because my vote for Obama was an act of hope for a long-awaited new political era.

Then 2010 happened. Just two years after the Democrats won the presidency by almost ten million votes and commanded sizable majorities in both the Senate and House, my act of hope turned out to be just that. Republicans flipped an astonishing sixty-four seats in the House and went on to control the chamber for the next eight years. The results were even worse in state legislatures: Democrats went from controlling twenty-seven to only fourteen in just eight years. By 2014, the Senate would fall into the clutches of Mitch McConnell. What happened in 2010 unleashed Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, the Freedom Caucus, and an identifiable set of events and circumstances that led directly to the election of Donald Trump.

2022 could be 2010 Redux. That’s why my vote in the upcoming midterms will be even more important than the critical one I cast in 2018 to defy the Trump presidency and the essential one I cast in 2020 to end it. Democrats must not forget again that as in actual war, political war isn’t won unless the post-war period is won, for that is when victory is validated and consolidated. As in 2008, Democrats now hold the presidency and both houses of Congress. Unlike 2010, they cannot allow Republican revanchism to curtail another long-awaited new political era. That’s why my vote in November 2022 will be the most important of my life.

Failure looks like Chart 1. Described are the number of votes received by Democratic and Republican Congressional candidates from 2004 to 2010. First, note the crash and burn of the Bush-Cheney regime caused by the collapse in Republican voting from 2004 to 2006, a change that enabled the Democrats to recapture the House only because their votes didn’t fall as much. Then see how excitement with Obama’s candidacy ignited a 54% jump in Democratic voting between 2006 to 2008. And then observe “The Drop.” In 2010, only 60% of the 2008 Democratic votes were there to be counted, enabling Republicans, by having 86% of their votes return, not only win the House but also set the rules of political play for the next ten years.

Success looks like Chart 2. Described are the number of votes received by Democratic and Republican Congressional candidates from 2014 to 2020 — and their projected number of votes in 2022 if 85% of the Democrats and 84% of the Republicans who voted in 2020 vote again. These percentages were not randomly selected; they were the figures posted by the parties in the 1934 midterms following FDR’s first election in 1932 — the last time either party achieved such success by having its victory in a presidential election validated and consolidated in the midterms two years later. Success in 1934 enabled the Democrats to win the presidency over the next sixteen years as well as set the rules of political play for the next four decades.

2022 has to be 1934 Redux.

Or maybe even a little better.

Democrats have good momentum going into 2022. Chart 2 shows how Democratic Congressional votes in 2018 were an unprecedented 98% of the votes the party’s candidates received in the 2016 presidential-year races, and it goes on to show how this number surged another 28% from 2018 to 2020. Of course, the chart also describes how Republican voting rebounded in 2020 from its 20% drop between 2016 to 2018. But only those living under rocks are unfamiliar with the chaos in the current Party of Trump, chaos that may not be resolved in the months ahead.

Perhaps most importantly, however, is that the contemporary Democratic Party is far more unified than its 1930’s ancestor. Biden may have to wrestle with the Sanders-Warren-AOC wing of the party, but they’re preferable to what FDR had to deal with: a solid bloc of archconservative Southern segregationists, his partners in the Faustian arrangement on which the New Deal delicately depended. Today’s Democrats may be a motley mix of moderates, liberals, and progressives, but they represent a more coherent and authentic center-left constituency than FDR and his successors were able to mobilize in support of their agendas. Will Rogers famously said in the 1930’s that “I’m not a member of any organized political party…I’m a Democrat.” I think he’d characterize his party differently today.

What should we do to win in 2022? I suggest we follow these directions:

Mobilize. Vilify. Repeat.

• Mobilize: What Would Stacey Do?

Research repeatedly demonstrates that nothing is more important to winning elections than getting citizens out to vote before or on Election Day, and Stacey Abrams of Georgia has become the patron saint of voter mobilization. She and her colleague Lauren Groh-Wargo honed this complex craft in very hostile territory under the most difficult circumstances. While their strategies and tactics were developed for the task of turning Red states Blue, all are relevant to the equally essential tasks of rendering Red states Pink and making Blue states Bluer.(1)

One compelling prescription Abrams and Groh-Wargo provide is especially pertinent to 2022: the need to reject Democratic orthodoxy that victory requires regaining support among Whites by finding common ground with Republicans. Their Georgia experience demonstrates the opposite. They instead urge an approach rooted in changing demographics and “the moral clarity” of building authentic multiracial, multiethnic, and multigenerational coalitions. Key to this approach is prioritizing the identification and recruitment of untapped or underrepresented citizens to increase the number of voters available for mobilization.

Democrats won nationwide in 2020 primarily by employing this mobilization strategy. We should double-down on it for 2022. Our increased efforts should focus on registering new voters, getting as many 2020 Democratic participants to the polls, and combating ceaseless Republican attempts at voter suppression. Our increased financial support will produce the best returns when directed to organizations also dedicated to driving voter mobilization, combating voter suppression, or both.(2)

• Vilify: Negatively Brand Republicans

Abrams and Groh-Wargo maintain that a key weakness of Democrats has been their ineffectiveness at holding Republicans accountable for their actions. Joseph O’Neill takes this criticism to another level. (3) He calls for Democrats to get serious — very serious — about negatively branding their Republican opponents. He asserts that Republicans “make it their business to wage a permanent war of partisan defamation” against Democrats, and that they have done so very effectively. O’Neill continues:

“Recall what happened to the Democrats after they took over from the tremendously unpopular Republican administration of George W. Bush: they got destroyed in the 2010 midterms even though they introduced a historic health care expansion, restored financial stability, saved the auto industry, and turned the economy around. It was bizarre.”

He concludes:

“This morbid dynamic — Republicans break things, Democrats fix them, Republicans win even more power — won’t change unless Democrats commit to doing what Republicans do: systematically diminishing the standing and credibility of the other party (italics mine).”

Indeed. The contemporary Republican Party, particularly in the monstrous form it’s become from Reagan to Trump, provides an ocean of standing and credibility to diminish. It is simply hard to understand how the party of fabricated wars, election denial, polluted drinking water, tax relief for the rich, extreme weather, multiple recessions, right-wing militias, deregulated power grids, historic national debt, caged children, dead Black people, QAnon conspiracies, and tattered safety nets — as well as irresponsible and inept pandemic management and an unimaginable seditious insurrection — can still be a viable and powerful political force.

2022 will not be just be a time for Democrats to brandish their achievements in restoring the country’s standing in the world, civility to its national governance, and stability and fairness to its economy. It must also be a time to brand Republicans as what they are: the reactionary authoritarian party of greed and prejudice. We don’t have to go low when they continue to go low. We can, however, hit them right between the eyes with the best shots we can take.

• Repeat: Refuse to disengage

We must consistently mobilize Democrats and vilify our Republican opponents as if the 2022 midterms were the most important elections in our lives.

Because they are.

Footnotes:

1 “How to Turn Your Red State Blue,” New York Times, 11 February 2021.

2 An organization created by liberal high net worth citizens concerned with getting the best results from their campaign contributions used research evidence to guide its members toward funding a range of voter mobilization organizations. Subsequent evaluations showed that these contributions were highly effective in producing Democratic victories in 2018 and 2020, particularly in battleground states.

3 “Brand New Dems?” The New York Review, 28 May 2020. See also his “No More Nice Dems,” The New York Review, 19 December 2019, and “Save the Party, Save the World,” The New York Review, 20 August 2020.