The party that wins the White House traditionally takes a hit in the midterm elections two years later, a fate Democrats thought they might avoid this November as recently as Labor Day weekend. With Election Day looming, however, that optimism is dwindling, and Democrats are now scrambling to revise a shortsighted campaign strategy. It may be too late.
In 1992, James Carville, the top campaign adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton, coined the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid” to remind campaign leaders of where their primary focus should be. The strategy worked, and Clinton defeated Republican incumbent George H.W. Bush.
This campaign season, Democrats have studiously avoided talk of the economy because of high inflation and signs that the nation is near a recession if it is not already in one. This has allowed Republican candidates to bash their Democratic foes even though the GOP has few ideas as to how to improve the economy and the ideas it has are potentially disastrous.
Democrats instead focused on an issue they believed was a sure winner: abortion rights. The deplorable decision of Supreme Court extremists to overturn Roe v. Wade, and the ensuing talk in Republican circles of proposing a nationwide ban on abortion if they win Congress, should have and did fire up Democrats offended by this assault on women’s rights and the implied threat upon other rights won by Americans.
The gift that was to keep on giving stopped giving, however, as Democrats and independents tend not to be one-issue voters, and polls reflected that. Democrats also went after Republican election deniers and apologists for the Jan. 6 coup attempt, what a fictional Republican politician called “playing the democracy card” in a recent Doonesbury strip. There is no bigger issue than the fate of our democracy but it nonetheless may be too abstract - at least for now - to motivate most voters.
Democrats also largely conceded the crime issue to Republicans although it is Democrats who have long confronted a critical partner to crime: guns. If an elected official is soft on gun laws he or she is by definition soft on crime. Democrats in the states have fought for and passed strict gun laws in the wake of endless massacres, and with the help of courageous moderate Republicans, passed the first significant federal gun control law in three decades earlier this year. Democratic candidates haven’t emphasized these accomplishments enough.
Led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Democratic candidates have recently pushed financial issues to the fore. Inflation is a global problem, a product of the pandemic, supply shortages, the war in Ukraine and corporations making record profits by raising their prices far higher than their costs. Combatting inflation means working with other nations and addressing corporate greed, neither of which Republicans are philosophically capable of doing.
While Republicans have no good ideas about improving the economy they don’t lack for bad ones. The party is always seeking to tinker with Medicare and Social Security and their current ideas of what constitutes reform involve making Medicare and Social Security spending discretionary rather than mandatory and somehow tying both to the debt ceiling, which is a Republican white whale the party is determined to pursue even if it means sinking the economy. If you are a senior or hope to be one someday, consider what experiments Republicans want to conduct upon long established entitlement programs before casting your ballot.
Adding to the Democrats’ strategic mistakes are the passage of voter suppression laws in some traditional red states, most notoriously Georgia, out of pique that their states went blue in 2020. Stopping the steal is likely to be another challenge for Democrats on Election Day and in the following days and weeks.
With early voting underway, the Democrats’ window to change the midterm election dynamic is closing rapidly. The last two years have been frustrating for Americans but there have been accomplishments in the areas of gun control, climate change and infrastructure. Should Republicans who have embraced the MAGA philosophy of partisanship and confrontation above all else win one or both houses of Congress Nov. 8, the last two years will seem like an age of enlightenment compared to what happens next.
Bill Everhart is the former editorial page editor of The Berkshire Eagle and is an occasional Eagle contributor.
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