If you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything
Americans last week valued the country’s health came over conservative histrionics about crime and inflation. With few exceptions, the fringiest of fringe-right, election-denying candidates supported by Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans went down to defeat.
Voters said, “We can fix policy later. We’re going to fix crazy right now,” New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) told CNN.
Republicans’ “candidate quality” problem rests “almost entirely on Donald Trump’s shoulders,” observes Slate’s Jim Newell. And Republicans know it. Trump continues to melt down online over the blame heaped on him.
Election Day 2022 “was a good day, I think, for democracy,” President Joe Biden said.
Democrats held control of the U.S. Senate. They may lose the House once vote-counting is complete in several states, but not by much. It was a dramatic, rare hold by an incumbent president in his first midterm election.
There was a vote-counting protest in Maricopa County, Arizona, and isolated efforts to intimidate election workers and voters, but no violence. Election deniers who lost largely slunk away and conceded. Even Doug Mastriano, the Republicans’ Christian-right gubernatorial candidate in Pennsylvania. He conceded Sunday night.
Steve Peoples of AP observes:
Just one of 14 self-described “America First” secretary of state candidates, Indiana’s Diego Morales, won his race. The group of would-be chief election officials, which included candidates in swing states Arizona, Michigan and Nevada, was defined by Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Candidates who embraced such beliefs also lost races for governor in the Midwestern battlegrounds of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin and in the Northeastern battleground of Pennsylvania.
Republicans who denied the legitimacy of the last election did prevail in Senate contests in North Carolina and Ohio. In Georgia, Republican Brian Kemp won reelection outright after fighting Trump’s conspiracy theories, but Senate candidate Herschel Walker, who has promoted lies about the last election, proceeded to a runoff election in December.
But is the crazy gone or just gone into temporary hibernation?
Christian nationalism will continue to find appeal with Republican primary voters, argues Andrew Whitehead, author of “Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States.”
“Because voters in primaries are usually the most motivated, and strong supporters of Christian nationalism are very motivated, candidates who embrace Christian nationalism may continue to win nominations even if they sometimes lose general elections,” he said.
There should be nothing quite so sobering for Republican Party regulars than losing four straight Trump-flavored elections. But true believers will simply see them as evidence of the intractable evil of their political adversaries. In a party organized against facts and learning, writes David Frum, “conservatives have come to view everything that happens, however unwelcome, as proof simply that the most extreme people were the most correct.”
Like Cyberdyne Systems Model 101, they’ll be back in January should Republicans gain control of the House.
“The president’s critics remain unchastened,” writes Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Already lobbyists are urging more policies favoring investors whose wealth stands on the backs of Americans who do the producing:
If Republicans take the House, their majority will be stacked with election deniers who have embraced one overriding goal: the restoration of Donald Trump as president in 2024. They believe economic chaos weakens President Biden, so they are itching to use their leverage to hurt working families. This is the same strategy Republicans used after the 2010 midterms when they set off a debt-ceiling crisis, then demanded family-crushing austerity.
Democrats should fight back by making this lame-duck session of Congress the most productive in decades. We can start by lifting the debt ceiling now to block Republicans from taking our economy hostage next year. Democrats must then continue delivering for families. Where we can pursue legislative action, we should fight aggressively. When Republicans try to obstruct such action and the president can act by executive authority, he must. Most of all, the Democrats should be aggressive in putting Republicans on the defensive, pressing hard on why they are blocking much-needed initiatives to help Americans.
It would be political malpractice for Democrats not to “head ’em off at the pass” while they still can.
Reacting to Run For Something‘s Amanda Litman, Paul Rosenberg of Salon puts it bluntly: “This ahead of us may be the most crucial 2-year period in US history since the Civil War.”
The Obama coalition went home after November 2008 buoyant in feeling they had fundamentally changed the country. Perhaps. But the backlash has yet to subside. The work is not done.