Ignoring a death in the democratic family.
As the polls close in Virginia and New Jersey, it’s time to extrapolate two races into a national narrative that will shape our understanding of the otherwise completely unrelated house and senate elections happening a whole 12 months from now. It’s electoral hot take season and far be it from me to miss out on this opportunity!
Republican Glenn Youngkin has beaten former Governor, Democrat Terry McAuliffe in a state which Biden won by +10 just a year ago and in deep blue New Jersey, Democratic Incumbent Phil Murphys seems likely to just squeak by challenger Jack Ciattarelli in a state Biden won by +16. These outcomes portend ill winds for Democrats heading into next year’s midterm elections. No doubt countless pieces will be written about the contours of the races and what strategies both Republican candidates used to overperform their state’s partisan lean. Other articles will chastise House and Senate Democrats for failing to pass either of President Biden’s key infrastructure bills in time to help their flailing Democratic co-partisans. Further still, articles will be penned about the successful tightrope Youngkin walked between being an “issue focused” Republican and a candidate who could still bring in the majority of the Trump base. While none of these takes will necessarily be wrong (or necessarily right for that matter), the take I want to have isn’t so granular or temporally focused.
What last night's elections showed was a continuation of the trends that have dictated American politics for the last two decades. Americans, by and large, always punish the party in power and elevate the out party. It doesn't matter what the party in power does, it doesn’t matter what the out party does, voters almost instinctively vote change.
This truism of American politics isn’t some new revelation, in fact, many Democratic lawmakers and strategists have been clear that they felt the Democrats put into power in 2020 should enact sweeping and noticeable change to the American social safety net. This strategy was explicitly in order to show voters that putting Democrats in power means something tangible and that they shouldn’t just grow tired and vote for change in 2022 and 2024. Of course, institutional realities quickly came to bear as Sen. Krysten Sinema (AZ) and Sen. Joe Manchin (WV) decided that this national strategy had nothing in common with their personal electoral strategies or idea of politics. The tethering of legislating to Democratic hopes nationwide were clear to Terry McAuliffe who desperately implored Democrats to work out a deal and pass President Biden’s infrastructure platform before he was due to face Youngkin. It’s a recognition that, while going the opposite direction of the afferism, all politics are actually national now. Biden’s low approval rating was hurting McAuliffe’s chances in Virginia even as those two positions should have little to no correlation between them.
But the nationalization of American politics isn’t the only noticeable trend in partisan whiplash. Growing polarization has led voters to almost uniformly vote for either one of the two major parties. Furthermore, that predictability leaves decision making increasingly in the hands of fewer and fewer swing voters. Those swing voters tend to be less invested, less interested in politics, and less informed about the candidates and their positions or past behavior. Which means our elections are increasingly decided by the members of the public who have the least understanding of what is at stake. This is of course troubling from a normative perspective, ideally voters would make rational choices built on a weighing of information from a host of sources, but also from a structural perspective, democracy cannot survive if anti-democratic or illiberal politicians and parties are not punished at the ballot box.
Is America sleep voting its way into democratic collapse?
In the late fall of 2020, voters went to the polls in numbers unseen in over 100 years. The race wasn’t particularly close overall, but a combination of the quirks of the electoral college and the extra load of mail in ballots caused by the Covid-19 pandemic meant that the final results dragged on for days. Incumbent President Donald Trump had long been signaling that any future loss would only be through fraud or mishandling, so when the results were clear that Joe Biden had won with room to spare, Trump nearly immediately started casting doubt on the validity of the outcome. These efforts led to numerous failed lawsuits, attempts to use the political machinery to delay the certification, and finally, as if in some large crescendo, the former President called his supporter to attack the capitol on January 6th of this year. A day that would live in infamy, as democratic decisions were violently questioned by the vitriol of a maddened crowd. At least, it would live in infamy for half the population. Because, even though most Republicans denounced the event in its immediate aftermath, many of them having themselves been put at physical risk by the crowd, the narrative would soon turn. Republican legislators ruled out a bipartisan commission to investigate the events of the 6th because it would cast their party in a negative light. Lawmakers downplayed the event and pivoted to the death of one rioter who, after being told to stop climbing a barricade just outside the chamber of the house, was shot and killed by capitol police. The 6th went from being a definingly terrible event in American political history to just another chapter in partisan warfare and epistemological confusion.
In a healthy democracy, voters and politicians would do their best to distance themselves from any movement that would storm the center of democratic lawmaking. Politicians would recognize their role in the event and broadcast to their voters that those who took part in such an event are not patriots and should never be supported. But because American politics are so partisan and polarized, the Republican party instead pivoted to diminishment. In a healthy democracy, voters would not reward the party that supported such an event until it had rid itself of its most odious members and atoned for its sins against American values. But, that hasn’t happened in America and the elections last night indicate that the strategy of diminishment and avoidance by the Republican party works just fine.
Americans, by and large, don’t care about their democracy and don’t understand the stakes.
How else can we explain the support for Republican candidates who were unwilling to vocalize the legitimacy of the 2020 election or distance themselves from the Jan. 6th raid? If all it takes is a single year for Americans to completely forget assaults on their own democracy then what extra assaults should we be ready for? Barring some major unforeseen circumstances I have little doubt that Republicans will win back both the House and Senate in 2022. With those majorities we will move into a familiar phase of American lawmaking: stagnation. Nothing of note will become law and instead the chambers will use their own obstruction to tell American voters that President Biden is ineffective. And American voters will listen, paying no attention to the structural realities of the chambers and having no comprehension of what a President is or isn’t capable of, they will go to the polls “fed up” with a system they don’t care to learn about and elect someone who will “shake things up.” This system will probably repeat in the following four years but only if we’re lucky. Because just as plausible will be the dismantling of American democracy by the hands of the Republican party.
Donald Trump is no longer president because he was deeply unpopular, but also because partisan election officials in 2020 were able to overcome their personal preferences for their duty to the country. I don’t expect 2024 and beyond to have the same level of character. Immediately following the 2020 election officials in Republican states were replaced by partisan stoolies who espoused the stolen election narrative and will undoubtedly overturn democratic decisions they don’t like in the future. Furthermore, Republican led states quickly started passing laws making it more difficult to vote, particularly if you live in urban (read: democratic leaning) areas. Finally, the reapportionment of House seats following the 2020 census has Republican led states trying their hardest to implant even more disproportionately Republican districts than they did in 2010, while Democratic led states increasingly hand the function over to nonpartisan committees.
The reality is that one party in America believes in democracy while the other party does not.
Differences in ideology don’t matter much when one party is willing to dismantle the ability of the other party to ever take control. I’d argue that Democrats should approach every election as a referendum on democracy, forcing their Republican opponents to firmly take a stand on what they believe about the 2020 election and how highly they value our foundational value. But unfortunately, I don’t think American voters care. At least, the voters who decide elections, the swing voter, the “moderate,” the low-information voter, these people don’t care because they don’t know enough to understand that elections don’t just go on forever. The end of democracy in America won’t happen with a bang because people may actually notice, rather, American democracy will drudge forward until it is talked about in the same light as Russian or Hungarian democracy: a show put on to placate the uninformed.
