How Big of an Opportunity are Democrats (and Joe Manchin) Wasting Right Now?

Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Joe Manchin (D-WV)

Provocative thoughts on Twitter are, to put it mildly, probably not something you should keep in mind when you consider political articles.  Twitter is the "id" of the internet, where the worst ideas & the worst instincts & the worst fears you harbor come pouring out, oftentimes with foolish results.  But a recent tweet from G. Elliott Morris, a political writer for The Economist, got me thinking.  Morris wrote "Not sure of the precise probability, but I think R's win Congress 2022, D's don't get unified control back again until 2036 is very high, maybe even > 0.5, and Dems are going to regret not blowing up the filibuster, passing redistricting reform,  & adding states for a looong (sic) time."  Morris got a more provocative response from San Francisco Elections Commissioner Charlotte Hill who replied "2036 is generous.  It's possible D's never get it back."

These are two statements that are pretty easy to dismiss out-of-hand as being too bold, but I think they have merit.  You can quibble about the odds, but Democrats are at the very least not favored to win the House next year.  A combination of "the president's party suffers in midterms" and Republicans' ability to gerrymander in a dozen or so consequential southern states makes the Democrats underdogs to hold the House, even if you are willing to concede that the Democrats might be able to hold the Senate.

The Senate, though, is a harder sell in the future.  Let's say that the Democrats lose the House next year, possibly by a 10-12 seat margin, but due to drawing a solid hand either are 50-50 or 51-49 in the Senate, keeping a slim majority.  They head into 2024 with a rough deck against them.  Democrats have to defend seats in three states that Donald Trump won in 2024 by a sizable margin (WV/MT/OH), as well as defend a number of states that Joe Biden barely won (WI/PA/AZ/MI/NV).  Meanwhile the Republicans really only have Florida & Texas to defend, both of which are tough reaches for the Democrats (certainly tougher than any of the states I just listed).  Unless the Democrats can get out of the 2022 midterms with 52 seats (or better), there's a decent chance that the Republicans have the Senate after that, even if the Democrats could grab the White House for another term or retake the House.

Things get worse after that.  Unless the Democrats can start to convert a place like North Carolina & Texas, they essentially have to run the table in all elections going forward for the Senate, which means beating Susan Collins in 2026 (which they have had zilch luck in doing), and not letting anything slip going forward in places like Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, or Arizona.  Even if they can maintain that balancing act, the House will be a reach again in 2026, particularly with gerrymandered maps to contend with (and that's assuming that the Democrats won it back in the first place-it might just be lost for the decade if R's draw well & Democrats don't press their luck in Maryland, Illinois, New Mexico, & New York).  And by 2028, we'll have had eight years of Democrats in the White House-just ask Al Gore & Hillary Clinton how well the country reacted to such a situation.  When you look at it this way, Morris's allegations are correct-2036 might be their next chance.

Which makes it all the more frustrating for progressives that they aren't doing more with this time-in-power.  After all, the Democrats could conceivably pass voting reforms to make life easier on them the next decade, or at least fairer.  You could pass voting rights reforms, making it simpler to vote (though honestly that's the least of the issues facing the Democrats right now even if it gets the most attention).  You could pass sweeping gerrymandering reforms, which would heavily blunt the Republicans' advantages in a number of states like Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Missouri, & Utah, where they otherwise will be slicing up the Democrats' seats.  

And these are just the reforms heavily discussed.  Had they been proactive, they could have made this a LOT easier on themselves.  Chief amongst their opportunities could have been passing the Wyoming Rule, which could've made it a lot easier to gain districts in growing metropolitan areas across the country (and it would have downplayed the importance of small red states in the House)-it also would've put more value on winning larger states in the electoral college, which is going to increasingly be a problem for Democrats in coming years.  They could have made DC & Puerto Rico states, helping to combat their inherent disadvantage in the Senate & the electoral college.  They could've implemented judicial reforms (either federal term limits or increasing the size of the Courts) to make up for decades of Republican advantages nationally.  And these are just the electoral reforms (forget about the countless other issue bills they could have passed, potentially making them more popular with voters in the process, or in the case of climate change, saving the planet).

This is a missed opportunity, and every day that goes by is another sign that the Democrats don't understand that this is a moment-in-time that might not come again for another generation.  Hill's statement is hard to suss out on-its-surface (it's hard to tell how much she's factoring in Republicans' using their power to increase their stranglehold in states like Texas & Florida), but it's worth noting that she has history on her side.  From 1933 to 1996, a 62-year-time frame, the Republicans held control of the White House, Senate, & House for precisely two years: 1953-55, during the first two years of the Eisenhower administration.  I'm not saying that's the Democrats' fate, but what I am saying is that the deck is already heavily stacked against the Democrats, and this might be their last time to draw an ace.  It's criminal that they aren't exploring one of the many ways they could try to actually win the game in the coming twenty years of federal elections.