How'd the Dems do? | The drama of voting
What did we learn from the midterms?
There's a big debate going on about the true scope and meaning of Tuesday's elections. Specifically, over whether the Democrats did well as they "should have" given Trump's historically abysmal ratings, and what it says about whether the Democratic Party needs to tack to the left or stay closer to the center for 2020.
In a sentence I'd summarize the results like this: the Democratic Party, which is growing more diverse and moving to the left, did fairly well, but the results offer no clear prescription for the future.
The Democrats did best in the House. They picked up more seats than in any other midterm election since 1974. In that case, the surge was driven by Richard Nixon's resignation just three months prior. In this case, exit polling data suggests it's Trump and the GOP's attacks on healthcare that drove well-educated suburbanites to flip from red to blue. The results were especially striking given the health of the economy and a very low unemployment rate.
Thanks to the Democrats, a record number of women will be serving in Congress. Two will be the first Native American women elected. Another two will be the first Muslim women elected to Congress. One of them arrived in the US as a refugee. A self-avowed democratic socialist Latina who talks of creating a new kind of progressive voting bloc in the House is primed to become a political superstar. There are lively things going on in the House Democratic caucus.
In the Senate, the Democrats did ... okay. Given how tough the map was for them — they were defending three times as many seats as Republicans — things didn't go terribly. But there were hopes that Democrats — especially Beto O'Rourke — would outperform their polls based on the Trump effect, and that didn't happen. Instead, Republicans have maintained their majority, and depending on how a few more races conclude, will likely extend their majority. Perhaps most strikingly, three incumbent Democratic senators lost on Tuesday, marking the first time an opposition party incumbent senator has lost an election since 2002.
The margin of Republicans' victory in the Senate doesn't necessarily matter much for the next two years, given the Democrats' control of the House, but it could matter a hell of a lot for 2020. Vox's Dylan Matthews estimates that given how tricky the 2020 map is Democrats could very well remain a minority in the Senate until 2022.
The Dems picked up seven governorships — the best pickup either party has pulled off since 1994. That matters a lot for Democratic policy in those states and congressional redistricting. But it's worth noting that they lost in the presidential battleground states of Florida, Iowa and Ohio. As for state legislatures, Dems did good not great.
In terms of what the races tell us about the right kind of candidates to run for Congress and the presidency in 2020, I'm with Eric Levitz: there's evidence that both deeply progressive and centrist candidates can perform well in swing states. And the ouster of a number of centrist Democratic senators in red states suggests that being a moderate isn't a surefire bet against the right.
As for the losses of Gillum, O'Rourke and Abrams in the South, I'm hesitant to call them failures (especially Abrams, since Georgia has shamelessly assaulted the democratic process in recent years) — they broke new ground in hostile territory, and it would be foolish to write off their attempts as an exhaustion of the kind of political styles they represented. I will say, though, that I have a hunch that Trump may have been able to mobilize a non-trivial number of Republicans against them in the final weeks before the race through his aggressive interventions at rallies and on social media. I remain convinced that Trump has killer instincts as a culture war campaigner.
Housekeeping
A quick note: I will now be sending these newsletters out weekly, but I have no intention of ever sending them out more frequently than that. Sometimes they'll be longer, sometimes they'll be shorter, and most often they'll be sent out toward the end of the week. As always, I welcome any and all feedback.
Let's talk about talking about voting
This one quote from a viral New York Magazine article about millennials and voting really struck me: “Over the years, I’ve started to think maybe we don’t have to frame this so much as an individual act with these moral consequences and that I need to stop being so dramatic about it.”
It’s a quote from a 28-year-old on the far left who earlier in his life had believed that voting was immoral because it was giving ”approval to a system” that he did not “want to validate.” But over time he decided to look at voting a bit more casually — he said that recently he was willing to take five minutes to vote in the NY primaries because he felt that Cynthia Nixon (who ran for governor as a Democrat) might’ve made a difference in his life as a teacher.
I think there’s real insight here for both reluctant radical voters and for voting evangelists.
For citizens whose radical politics makes them feel that voting is a morally reprehensible form of complicity in a broken system: stop being so dramatic. All of our lives involve countless daily compromises and acts of complicity with unjust systems — wearing clothes made in sweatshops, eating food made in slaughterhouses, buying medicines from companies with avaricious patent practices, shopping at stores that pay non-living wages, using carbon-emitting transportation, working jobs for companies that exploit workers and fail to deliver on our ideals. Of course one should strive to change all these things, but the point is that unless you live on some kind of self-sustaining commune on some isolated plot of land, chances are you probably helped give “approval” to several screwed up institutions by lunch time every day. It’s a near-universal part of lived experience in modern society.
I would say it’s best to view voting as just one heavily flawed tool for helping change those screwed up institutions. It’s not an endorsement of everything that a politician you voted for does, just like no other individual act comprehensively summarizes your intentions in the world. Think of it as one way to minimize societal harm, and as a modest and coldly strategic act for maximizing the likelihood of bigger reforms in the future. (But if you subscribe to the idea that things have to “get worse to get better” the gap in our worldviews is probably unbridgeable.)
For the vote evangelists engaging with reluctant voters of any kind: there’s an argument to be made that at least some of you too would benefit from being less dramatic. Please hear me out — I’m talking about a specific set of people. Not the people constructively and patiently encouraging fellow citizens to vote and volunteering for GOTV operations. I’m talking about the social media scolds who think that people who don’t vote are desecrating the most sacred realm of political life, who argue that non-voting is personally insulting to every individual who has ever struggled or died for the right to vote.
Of course voting matters, but you need to reckon with why many people aren’t motivated to do it. I don’t think shaming is the best way to get apathetic or skeptical people to the polls, and I don’t think talking in abstract terms about the historic importance of suffrage is super inspiring either. Instead, try to meet people where they are, and get tangible, get specific. Talk with them about what they see as problems and how voting could help manage those problems. Remember that this democracy was explicitly designed to keep non-elites out of the voting booth, and that this legacy lives with us to this day in the form of countless logistical obstacles to voting, in the feeling, for many, that the whole thing is for somebody else. And lastly remember that many non-voters intuitively and correctly recognize that most of political life happens outside the voting booth. It's important to respect that instinct.
What I'm reading
Does Oprah’s invocation of “ancestral trauma” in Georgia distract from voter suppression?
Should we care about inequality?
Wonky post on how Republican candidates are being punished for Trump's sexism.
Private equity controls the gatekeepers of American democracy.
House Democrats must resist Trump’s infrastructure trap.
Senior citizens are replacing teens at fast-food joints.
Three long reads:
Mark Mayer’s essay on caring for an imperious rabbit and falling in love is not long but it is sweet and funny. [Link]
Democracy and capitalism have fallen out of balance. Can and should the truce between them should be restored? [Link]
For Jill Lepore, history is essentially a writing problem. [Link]
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