Final Thoughts on the 2022 Midterms

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) & Sen. Chuck Schumer
(D-NY) celebrating Warnock's victory

With all of the craziness that came from the announcement this past Friday that Sen. Krysten Sinema was switching her party registration, we didn't really get to talk through arguably the biggest news (until that point) of last week, the victory of Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) in Georgia.  Warnock's victory was a capper on an election cycle that showed that Democrats are willing to not just fight back, but also willing to defy convention.  I had planned on writing this article on Friday, while I was on vacation, but alas Sinema sucked up all of the political energy so I wasn't able to do so (we did discuss her more fully here).   So today, we're going to finish the 2022 midterms.  In the next week, I'll briefly kickoff the 2024 discussions, and likely hibernate from politics until the new year unless something big happens as we're in the heat of Oscar season (you wouldn't know it from the bulk of articles in the past week, but this blog also focuses on film), and will get into the 2024 season in the new year, including discussions of the 2024 presidential election which we had been forbidden to discuss prior (the midterms are just as important as the presidential cycle-they deserve their moment!).

Warnock's victory was a sigh of relief for Democrats in a variety of ways.  First-and-foremost, with the House now in the hands of the Republicans (though it isn't quite clear yet whether it's in the hands of Kevin McCarthy), a clear-cut majority in the Senate means that Democrats have control over all committees.  Right now, they are in a power-sharing agreement where they cannot subpoena witnesses or ensure a quorum call, which is partially why you didn't see a Senate equivalent of the January 6th committee in the past year-that changes now.  The Democrats can move through nominees much more quickly, and they have a one-seat cushion headed into the brutal 2024 map.

On a personal level, more than almost any other race, Warnock's victory means that we are not stuck with a truly embarrassing senator in office for the next years from a Biden state.  I don't subscribe to the belief that Herschel Walker was the worst candidate of the cycle.  I personally believe that it was Blake Masters, whose creepy obsession with guns & German superiority, combined with his connections to Peter Thiel & his horrid mismanagement of a winnable race, makes him one of the worst candidates I've seen since at least Christine O'Donnell in 2010.  But Walker is clearly not fit to serve as a US Senator.  He has never held public office, he has no sense of public policy (he frequently would argue completely illogical non-sequitors in even the friendliest of interviews), and while it's inappropriate to armchair diagnose, a man who exhibits every symptom of CTE, who has a history in the NFL, & whose public speeches became something of a word salad every time he got off script...it would've been bad for all involved if he won this.  I honestly think on some level that Mitch McConnell is relieved he doesn't have to deal with Walker for six more years, even if he has to make up for this loss in 2024.  I will say, before we leave Walker behind, the way that Republicans like Rick Scott & Mike Lee used Walker's campaign to fundraise for themselves, while people like Lindsey Graham propped up Walker publicly in interviews...it felt icky for a party with a really rough history on racial politics to clearly be taking advantage of a Black man, their only major race with an African-American challenger.

With Warnock's victory, we now know the results of every federal race on the map.  There are a couple of races that are still in recount territory (most notably the Arizona Attorney General's race, where Democrat Kris Mayes is expected to win by roughly 500 votes but that recount could go into the end of the month), but Congress is settled.  This begs the question-where does 2022 rank with other elections?  Obviously, this was a good election for the Democrats.  The margins in the House were tighter than expected, Democrats netting a Senate seat ensures they defied expectations there, and the governor's races were a clear home-run (netting two seats there).  It is the best Democratic midterm where they held the White House since the Roosevelt administration in 1934.

It also, it's worth noting, doesn't quite compare in terms of raw win totals to something like 2006 or 2008, which still stand apart as the best Democratic years in recent memory, and perhaps will stand that way for another 20-30 years.  The thing that I keep coming back to, as I assure myself that this was a good year (it was), is that we were just millimeters away from a great year.  Much of the late summer & early fall, in the wake of the Dobbs decision when people like Pat Ryan & Mary Peltola were winning unexpected victories, the prospect of holding the House & getting 52 Senators was within reach...many thought a pipe dream that we couldn't dare say out-loud was possible, including yours truly.  But October's polling was bad, and dampened that quite a bit.  We talked about this this past month, but that might well have cost the Democrats their filibuster-proof Senate with a House majority, which we had talked about here as being a groundbreaking opportunity for the Democrats.

Rep. Cindy Axne (D-IA)

Just how close did they get?  They were one Senate race away, and it was unfathomably close.  Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes (D) was just one vote away (or a little less than 27,000 votes) in Wisconsin from beating Ron Johnson.  This is extraordinarily close, and given that Barnes was the only underfunded Democrat on the map, a sign that Democrats fouled up.  It's worth noting in general that Democrats did better in the Senate than anyone expected.  We'll talk about this when I do our State of the Senate article in the next week, but not only was Wisconsin closer than Georgia (which was not expected), but North Carolina was closer than Arizona or Pennsylvania (on no one's radar), and Ohio was closer than New Hampshire (the latter of which many people were shifting to a tossup race in the days headed into the election but which Maggie Hassan breezed through).  Democrats not only picked up a Senate seat, they were close to taking 52 or 53 seats.

The House, which pretty much everyone (including, I'll own it, yours truly) had written off in the days leading up to the election, was almost comically tight.  The Democrats won 213 seats, so they needed five seats.  Their five closest races appear to be CA-13, CO-3, IA-3, MI-10, & NY-17.  All of these seats were decided by less-than-a-point, and in total they were decided by just 7,177 votes.  If you want to get technical, Democrats likely would be in a pinch with the death of Rep. Don McEachin in getting to 218 (the next tipping point seat, Arizona's 1st, was also decided by less than a point though and brings you up to 10,372 votes).  Less than 11k, votes, and the Democrats would've won not only the House, but the biggest upset victory in 74 years.  It cannot be denied that all of these races were largely dismissed by the DCCC.  NY-17 & CA-13 were assumed to be safe by most pundits headed into October (Democrats in California & New York, particularly the incumbent in the 17th, Sean Patrick Maloney, royally screwed up by not understanding how exposed they were), and the other four seats were assumed to be Republican victories, and were given tacit support nationally (I made a comment on election night to a friend "is Cindy Axne going to win in Iowa?" and he said assuredly "no"...he was right, but I suspect even he was doubting it when she got within inches of victory).  Six races, and all of which were clearly extremely winnable, and the Democrats dropped the bag...though going into the night no one had any idea they were holding the bag.

So where does 2022 rank?  In the long scheme of things it's going to be considered a Democratic win, albeit not a blue wave.  For the first time in many years (likely since 2012), the Democrats caught most of the lucky breaks in the close elections, and nearly took both houses of Congress.  And it will make conventional wisdom about 2026 (which has a lot of plum Senate options for the Democrats if they can take them) much harder to suss out.  But it'll be hard not to look back on 2022 without a little bit of a wistful glow, like a Cinderella team making it to the playoffs, but ultimately not winning the championship.  It was good, but oh what could've been.