2020, 2022, And A Narrative In Search Of Facts

Something I Don't Understand

There’s this consistent belief Democrats are going to lose the House in 2022 - either because of gerrymandering, or because of the Midterm Penalty, or some combination of the both - that is the dead bang lock amongst the commentariat. The fact that it is kinda full of shit doesn’t really matter to people, it is the consensus view. The thing that baffles me is the fact that there is no reckoning with whether it’s true or not? I’m not really looking to litigate what is and isn’t likely in 2022 - I’ve done it enough, my archives are full of it, and I’m sure I’ll litigate it again very fucking soon. But how in the name of fuck is the consensus - which, by the way, was horrendously wrong in 2020 - deciding to coalesce so easily, without any amount of introspection or room for error?

The origin of this latest bound of questioning comes as Monmouth released a poll of the New Jersey Governorship election this fall, showing a 16% lead for the Democratic incumbent. This is notable only in the context of the fact he won by 14% last time and Biden won it by 16% last year, meaning this result is not at all in line with any notion of reversion or pullback or really any sort of political trouble for Democrats, heading into the midterms. Now, this poll could easily be wrong - trust me, I know it could be, easily - but it does come at an opportune time to think about this very basic question - if Biden was in serious political trouble, wouldn’t we know if by now?

You could say that the 2009 Congressional specials weren’t actually that bad for Democrats, and they weren’t, genuinely - the special to replace Gillibrand was closer than Democrats would have wanted, but that seat wasn’t deep blue or anything, it was a mid-single digits Obama seat, and they won by half a point. It’s not great, but they also flipped New York 23 later that year. They looked fine, but they blew New Jersey, didn’t credibly contest Virginia because they were dead in the water, and then blew the Ted Kennedy Senate seat in January of 2010. Like, I know it’s dumb revisionism, but shouldn’t we have all known the House was gone the second Martha Coakley shit the bed?

Like, maybe it’s too early to be writing this, but it really seems to me that there would be some evidence - whether it is perfect or not - of a deteriorating political position for the President if 2022 was going to go badly for him, and I can’t find it. The Federal specials look fine, on average, the state and federal average (against 538’s partisanship metric) is a D+2 swing, the Generic Ballot polling is of mediocre quality but also not any consistent bad trend for Democrats, and while the polls in Virginia aren’t good for Dems, there’s been one non-partisan poll of that race, and it’s not exactly great when that poll has the defect of Terry McAuliffe at 61% of the Black vote. There’s nothing happening now that would make one confident in saying Dems are dead in the water, but the history is what has so many people thinking they’re right, and that Democrats are dead in just over a year.

Maybe they’re right - I’m not engaging in that debate, honestly. I just don’t know what it would take for people to actually, seriously engage with the idea of a midterm that might go well for Democrats, because right now, there’s no evidence for a bad one. The history isn’t evidence, it’s a guide for what to look for, and nothing else. It’s about expectations, not prediction. Past results are not predictions in and of themselves of the future - because if they were, I wouldn’t have gotten Georgia right after the shitshow that was my 2020 predictions. What people are assuming is the same midterm backlash, and maybe it will come, but as of right now, there’s nothing happening to prove it.

…

I’m clearly sensitive to this because of my past, but it feels so clear in this moment that the consensus has its head up its ass in the same way I spent the vast majority of 2020 - and it’s entirely possible that the outcome will be the same, because in the most basic, overarching way, I was right. Like, I said Biden was gonna win and we’d get a trifecta, and we did get that trifecta, but it certainly wasn’t right and it was shit analysis and I would never pretend it was good. Doesn’t it feel like the consensus is going to be 15 GOP pickups going into the night and then a bunch of the expected pickups don’t end up coming through, and the House majority ends up being much closer than everyone expects? Doesn’t that seem extremely plausible? And nobody is reckoning with that fact, and it is driving me up a wall.

One of the things I did very badly in 2020 was showing who I actually was - I was playing a character in my writing, and while that character was a version of myself, I ended up typecasting myself, in a sense. I was a one-dimensional take artist, trying to find the well of contempt for the moronic every day. I was obsessed with my metrics, and I knew what got views and built a platform, and what didn’t. Reflection didn’t happen, and it made people think that I was incapable of it. It was a mistake, and one I still pay the price for - because I was such an asshole, the unbridaled contempt many have for me is never going to be paid off. Were I as wrong, but much less a dick about it, I probably would have avoided much of the strife. This isn’t a cry that I have been in some ways wronged, merely a statement of fact. Sometimes when you fuck around, you find out.

I am actually much more reflective than my 2020 output would suggest - I’m more reflective now than I was in 2020, admittedly, but it seems so clear to me that people have the narrative they want, and as shaky as it might be, they have it, Goddamn it. Democrats are dead, move on, but in many ways that was the same thing I wrote for months about Trump. Was the data firmer then? Sure, but let’s be honest here, I wasn’t exactly going out of my way to check my priors at the door and see if there was good news for Trump. I thought I knew the answer and everything was an excuse or an opportunity to build up the site and confirm we were geniuses. Did I ever write that Trump had, for sure, lost, before November 3rd? No, but I did everything up to it, and I got caught. I didn’t ever give any room for the chance I was wrong, because I was so sure, and it feels like this weird inversion right now about 2022. The case for this certain (or near certain) GOP win feels as weak as ever, but nobody is reckoning with what it could mean?

If this column feels unfocused, in a sense, don’t worry, I get it, because this is less a column than just me getting my thoughts and deciding for reasons to publish it, but this is driving me up a wall. The proponents of increased uncertainty in 2020 were right, and now many of the same people are the 2022 is already decided caucus. I don’t fucking get it, and it makes no sense. The actual lesson of 2020 is that anything is possible, and yet the takeaway for 2022 seems to be Dems are a dead certainty to lose.

Make it make sense.