Midterms: Sing One You Know

On Narratives Without Fact

The thing I probably feel the worst about, in terms of my personal 2020 opinions, is my optimism about the Senate. I believed that Democrats were in a solid position not just to gain four seats, which they did (while losing Doug Jones), but to gain 6, 7, even 8 at times. I believed in Maine and North Carolina (defensibly), I believed in Iowa and Montana (less defensibly), and even South Carolina for a while (absolutely indefensibly). The big error was that I trusted the data - or, at least, my flawed interpretation of the data - and never really properly acknowledged how fragile everything was. The notion of broad amounts of states ticket splitting should have seemed absurd, but didn't to me. Sure, Democrats got the Senate, but it didn't exactly happen in the manner, or on the timeline, I - or anyone else - expected.

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I'm thinking about this in the context of the fragility of this 50/50 Senate majority, or the lack of fragility, in my view. I see a whole lot of Republican chances in 2022 that look like Iowa in 2020 - gettable, in theory, but not particularly so, once you remember that federal partisanship is one hell of a drug, and I see Democratic chances of a higher quality in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin (and, honestly, North Carolina too). And yet, chamber control is talked about as if it's not particularly knowable. Democrats are clearly favoured to retain 50 seats, and I don't get what evidence there would be to say they aren't.

Now, that's not really true - I do know why the conventional wisdom is that the GOP will gain a Senate seat somewhere, and why they're House favourites. It's because it's a Biden midterm, and God Forbid anyone in DC does any sort of analysis beyond a basic "the average midterm costs the President's Party __ House seats and __ Senate seats," and ignoring the map, and the facts, accordingly. I've done this rant many times before, and I'll do it again in just a moment, but 2022 is not 2010. And yet, so many of the pundits and reporters have decided that those sorts of analyses are still fit for purpose. They're not.

"Did I drive you away?

I know what you'll say

You'll say, oh, "Sing one you know"

All that political reporting and Democratic Doomerism is doing is singing one they know. They're singing the song they think they need to sing at this point in a Democratic Presidency because that's what they do. Clinton got wiped out in '94, Obama got wiped out in '10, and now Biden gets wiped out in '22. It's simple, easy, hard to argue against, because they have the benefit of a lot of facts and a lot of stats that are true, just meaningless.

Politics are about a fundamentally different thing, and respond in a fundamentally different way, when Southlake, Texas, swings 34% left in 8 years. However this shit used to work, it doesn't work that way anymore, and I'm thoroughly uninterested in the lessons of 1922 in understanding 2022. The case for a good 2022 for Democrats is really easy to make - the GOP ran Biden close in 2020 because of low-propensity, Trumpy voters turning out, who won't turn out again. It's really a simple argument - they didn't turn out in Georgia, or Virginia, or Kentucky, or any other off year election, all of which almost uniformly were worse for the GOP than either 2016 or 2020.

We know from international elections that an explicitly pro-gay marriage, pro-action on climate centre right leader can get an amount of reversion amongst the voters of Southlake, but at the cost of voters in places like Mahoning, so that isn't a strategy without costs. More to the point, there isn't a single person in the federal GOP with those two viewpoints, and Charlie Baker isn't suddenly going to walk through that door and successfully lead an anti-Trump, anti-populist revolution before 2022. The GOP have no interest in pulling a Malcolm Turnbull-style moderate turn anyways, but for some reason people think that the benefits accrued from running an avowed moderate of a decade's standing can come when you have leadership enthralled to fascists and Qultists.

These arguments aren't being described as much more than vapid nonsense, but that's because they aren't more than vapid nonsense. I'm not just going to the well of takes over logic because I'm too cowardly to actually step out and check whether or not something is fundamentally different nowadays. I was ridiculed, lambasted, mocked, and attacked after the General Election, and boy did I deserve it. I took it in stride, because I was really, really wrong. But I also understood how the Georgia runoffs would be different, and I was right where most everyone else was wrong. You think I wasn't aware every single time I tweeted anything pro-Democratic (in a numerical sense) that I was potentially ending any chance of ever being respected again? To paraphrase Marx, to bet on Democrats winning and fail miserably once is a tragedy. To do so a second time is a farce. I knew that I was all in, because no matter how many different ways I said "Lean is not Safe," if I had blue Georgia and it went red people would have run me out of the proverbial building. And yet, I did it anyways.

There is no greater failure than either stupidity from smart people or mendacity from supposed truthtellers, and right now we have at least of, or both of, those on display. Reporters and pundits who just pass along rote displays of performative Democratic Doom are either too stupid to realize what they've done, or too scared to see the many reasons why this is different. Either way, there is no compelling argument to suggest that Democrats are in some huge hole walking into 2022, and all anyone who says they are is doing is singing one they know.