2022 And Self Fulfilling Prophecies
If Dems Lose In 2022, They Only Can Blame Themselves
"That fear will become self fulfilling, you get that, right?"
One of the long-running fears of my life has been my sexuality, a fact that will surprise absolutely nobody who has read my work in the past. Sometimes, my resolve is not what it should be, and I worry about whether I will get everything I want in life, or whether my sexuality will end up being a constraint - both on my ambitions and my happiness. I have a history - although, less frequent in recent months and years - of depressive episodes and dangerous thoughts, and it always is caused by panic and fear about that concept of being constrained by something I didn't choose and had no choice in.
One night, I vocalized that fear to a friend - the idea that I couldn't have everything because I'm gay, and his response was simple, and correct. It is a self fulfilling prophecy, because if I let that fear run my life, then I won't try to reach the ambitions I hold or have the happiness I desire. It is simple, but fear and self doubt have the effect of achieving the outcome you fear quite often. I've started writing fiction in recent months - or, before the jokes come in, intentional fiction, for those who would use that term to describe my 2020 writing - as a form of therapy, and it's helped me understand both myself and my fears, despite the fact it remains unpublished. But what it's also done is clarified my understanding of 2022, and it has hardened one opinion I've been struggling to articulate in recent weeks and months.
The biggest threat to a blue-leaning 2022 isn't the GOP, or voter suppression, or anything like that - but the belief that all hope is lost because it's a Biden midterm.
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Here's the combined Black and Hispanic share of the US Electorate over the 5 cycles starting with 2012, per Catalist and Lakshya Jain: 20%, 16%, 21%, 20%, 22%. If you just want Black voters, here you go: 13%, 10%, 12%, 12%, 12%.
Guess which is the only Republican leaning year of the 5. I mean, you don't get a prize or anything, but guess anyways. Oh, you mean the year where non-white voters didn't turn out was the year Democrats got destroyed? What a concept.
You want more proof that it was a failure of Democratic turnout that lost Democrats 2014, here you go: the GOP vote share with white voters in Colorado, Florida, and North Carolina fell between 2012 and 2014. In Colorado, Romney got 54% of the vote white and lost, and Cory Gardner got 50% and won. In Florida, Mitt got 61% of the white vote in a loss, while Rick Scott won reelection two years later with 58% of the white vote. And in North Carolina, the GOP vote share with whites fell *6%* - from 68% to 62% - and the GOP margin of victorybarely changed. Oh, and in North Carolina, our turnout problems have gotten even worse since then, since even in 2014 the electorate was 21% Black - a number that's fallen to 19%.
So, if 2014 wasn't actually about people changing their minds en masse, but non-white Democrats not turning out, what's that mean for 2022? It means that whether or not Democrats can or will win in 2022 is very much in their own hands, and the doom that so many ascribe to the prospects of the Democratic Party aren't cogent analysis, but the fear and doubt - and that fear and doubt will only have the effect of reducing the chances of a Democratic victory because instead of focusing on how Democrats can win, the focus of many is on what will happen after they lose.
I laid out all the reasons Democrats should have hope on Saturday night, but I keep thinking back to that comment from my friend, because it's right. My fear of not being myself, not being able to be honest and forthright about who I am and what I want in life kept me from relationships, kept friendships at a distance, and kept myself from experiencing much joy and happiness. Now that I'm starting to understand myself and find my way through without that fear and self doubt, it seems so suffocating, but also so wrong. I don't have to choose between being myself and being with friends I like. The false binary I feared for so long was just crap, but it hemmed me in for so long anyways.
In the same way, the tautology of 2022 - it's a Biden midterm so Democrats are fucked - is as false, but also as suffocating, as the self fulfilling prophecy that did so much damage to my life. If you want to give up on the House and on offensive Senate targets, that's your right, but just know that there's nothing to say that you're actually correct. If Democrats spend the next 16 months relentlessly focused on turning out their voters - which they singularly failed to do in 2014 - then not only do they have a good chance of winning the House again, but the Senate map shifts from whether or not Democrats can hold their 50 to whether Democrats can get to 53 or even 54, if everything in Ohio breaks right. I'm not saying that's a lock, but I am saying that this is in the control of Democrats much more than people realize.
For nearly a decade, my homosexuality was a form of internal get out of jail free card - my shit circumstances were an unfixable result of being gay, and so I put off necessary self reflection and work because it was a waste of time - because the result was preordained. The only problem was, it wasn't, and actually putting in the time, energy, and effort without prejudging the outcome led to a better outcome. If Democrats want to make the same mistake I made and presume to know how an outcome will come before it happens, they're free to - but the biggest threat that Democrats face in 2022 is letting "it's a Biden midterm" become a self fulfilling prophecy, and losing control because of it. If they lose in 2022, it won't be because of a midterm curse or the GOP - but it will be because they let a self fulfilling prophecy end their chances before it even really began.