David Graham of the Atlantic says that Democrats are fooling themselves if they think they’ll be rewarded for passing this big infrastructure package in the midterms because voters rarely care about stuff like this. I think this misses the point. It may not make people come out to vote as a sign of gratitude for all the Democrats have done for them. But failure could mean a serious decline in Democratic enthusiasm.
He says Democrats are unlikely to win in the midterms no matter what they do, which I think is much too pessimistic. In an era of polarization with the Republicans in even more dissaray than the Democrats and a Democratic base agitated about the GOP’s extremism, nothing is preordained.
But he does make a good point here:
This kind of political fatalism is bleak, and it runs counter to the kind of can-do spirit it takes to run for Congress. Political scientists are rarely a hit at any party, especially a political party. Members want to believe they’re representing voters, and if they provide for those voters, they’ll be rewarded with another term. That’s why politicians such as Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who knows the dispiriting history well, still publicly insist that Democrats will hold the House. In reality, members’ fates will be mostly decided by how strongly Democratic their district is.
For the endangered moderates, that’s painful. It’s one thing to say Democrats will probably lose their majority, and another to tell a swing-district House member she’s going to lose her job, no matter what she does now. She’s likely to take any step she can to appeal to moderate and swing voters, even if it means undermining the party’s policy aims, rather than admit that her fate is out of her hands.
But fatalism can be freeing too. If the timing of a bill passing, or even failing, doesn’t matter to your chances of reelection, the stakes of these intramural skirmishes over process are much smaller. Members can stress less about mechanics and more about results. After all, the point of a majority is to enact legislation—not simply to maintain that majority.
I don’t agree that the party won’t win the midterms. However, I do believe that if the Democratic “moderates” think they’ll be rewarded for destroying the Biden agenda, they really need to think again. Moderates won’t win without Democratic votes and suppressing the Democratic vote by tanking the president’s signature program will result in their loss either way. They might as well do the right thing because if they don’t they are the one’s who will lose their seats, not the progressives who voted for it.
Of course, there is always the possibility (probability) that they are calculating they’re going to lose and are setting themselves up for lucrative post political office employment. But that’s a different problem.