I wanted to wait to write this until I knew we were almost certain to hold the Senate, which it now appears we are. My apologies if I jinx it.
So, I wrote a diary predicting that we would get killed, mostly on the theory that pollsters undercounted the right wingers. Fortunately, I was wrong about that. We are likely to hold the Senate (maybe even increase the lead) and might pull an inside straight and keep the house, though it looks like the NY dem state party likely killed that dream.
That diary was mostly a reaction the overwhelm rejection I saw of anything that resembled questions the idea that hope was sufficient, that it was okay to talk about losing. I was very frustrated and as I said at the time, and I let the frustration bleed out in unproductive ways. I apologized in the diary for that and apologize for it now.
The thing is, I am still frustrated, but maybe I can explain it better. We are still not in a good position. If the GOP holds the house, then they will hold the debt ceiling hostage if its available. And one of two things will happen. Biden, who had to be kept from the last debt ceiling negotiations, will trade away Social Secuity and Medicare cuts or the ACA or his signature legislation or he won't, and the GOP will let the country default (I do not believe an institutionalist like Biden will use the trillion dollar coin trick. I do not believe he will ignore it on the obvious point that its unconstitutional and I don’t believe this Supreme Court would let him get away with that even if he tried). I haven’t seen any diaries on this topic, despite the fact that the dems only have the lame duck to prevent this disaster form happening and need to start pressuring the House and Senate and Biden to do it now.
We lost the North Carolina and Ohio Supreme Courts, meaning that the 2024 house maps will be even more gerrymandered against us (though NY seats might be harder to hold in a presidential year for the GOP). We could fix this in the lame duck by outlawing gerrymandering, but I have seen no discussion of these things.
Yes, the midterms were much better for us than expected and that is a good thing. But we keep talking like we won. We did not — at best we tied, and the structural issues that we haven’t fixed are still putting us at severe disadvantage. And I haven’t even mentioned what the court is about to do to free and fair elections with the independent legislature theory.
Maybe we wouldn’t win these fights. We likely won’t on electoral reform, though since Manchin and Siema have broken the filibuster for the debt ceiling once already they would likely do so agian. But we have to make the effort. And we just don’t seem to have any sense of urgency around these things. The front-page posters are taking victory laps when the other side is planning to entrench their advantages. We treat every election as if it is a finish line when it’s just a marker on a journey that doesn’t stop. We did it in 2008, 2012 and we are doing it now.
It is good to be happy when disaster is averted. But the next disaster is looming if we don’t make systematic changes. And the window for doing so is likely very small — so we need to get to work on trying to do the necessary things as soon as we can.