It’s been a terrible January here in Northern Virginia (we don't do snow, but that doesn't stop the snow! And, Youngkin, *groan*) but I got a feeling that 2022 is gonna be a good year, even in Virginia.
Granted, this isn’t conventional wisdom. Midyear elections are supposed to be awful for the party that holds the White House. And Democrats are supposed to lose redistricting because, quite frankly, we have allowed our state parties to atrophy, disintegrate, even — in some places — disappear.
But I’ve got a feeling.
Now that may not be conventional wisdom but it is insight borne out of contact with actual voters. Last year, volunteers led by Hope Springs from Field organizers knocked on 371,020 doors in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Texas. Those knocks led us to have conversations with 45,317 voters and 18,243 answered questions on the Issues Survey we asked engaged voters to answer. So we came away with some idea about what Democrats and Independents in these (mostly) Senate Swing States were concerned about, the issues about which they would be thinking about when they decide how to vote, or even if they will vote in the 2022 elections.
So I’ve got a feeling. This year. Is gonna be a good year. Oh yeah.
While the radical right and their fellow travelers are determined to own the libs, we don’t have to take it lying down. It’s kind of weird that we are asking (especially) our Senators to put up a bigger fight and not expect the same from those driving that demand (the grassroots). Nope, I got a feeling.
2022 isn’t going to be a normal mid-year election. Maybe that is a uniquely Virginian perspective because the election of Youngkin was almost as surprising as the results of 2016. But let’s face it, what happened in Virginia and New Jersey was a wake up call. And it is one we need to answer.
You hear the argument that, well, if they (Congress) don’t do anything — even though this Congress has actually accomplished a lot (not that you would know it from all the in-fighting on both sides of the aisle) — that critical elements of the Democratic coalition are going to sit this election out. Now Trump makes everyone stupid, it seems, but we probably shouldn’t assume Democrats and our independent allies are going to be *that* stupid. We already have issues turning out voters in midterm elections (because we rely on infrequent voters to win). But infrequent voters are the ones campaigns tend not to contact, unless they have a strategy targeting them. So threatening that the base is going to stay home is tantamount to surrender, to letting conservatives “own the libs.”
Who wants to live in Trumpworld again? I know I don’t.
But infrequent voters need informational (and persuasion) contact, and a reason to vote. Lots of people argue that they need to see their prized issues passed through Congress and signed into law, but that is definitely not been our observation last year. So here’s the first piece of the puzzle that gives me hope that we will do better than expected in 2022: we didn’t do much (or any) field organizing in 2020, and this definitely meant that presidential cycle voter registration on the Democratic side did not happen. And everyone knows this. What’s more is that the Trump campaign definitely did not let Covid stand in their way of identifying, registering and turning out sympathetic voters that year.
I won’t argue that we should have been knocking on doors or doing mass voter registration projects during the first wave of Covid because our voters — our people — had legitimate health concerns where that kind of activity would have annoyed many of our supporters. I am merely noting that we lost an opportunity in 2020 — and that the opportunity still exists in 2022. We can fulfill our cyclical mission of registering new voters to make up for those we lost in the past five years this year, and there is definitely an effort to try. And if we do so, especially if we register voters in swing states and districts, we have a historical opportunity to beat the midterm doldrums.
We need to do this. We have lost ground in our voter registration advantage in key states:
Democrats are confronting narrowing voter registration advantages in key battleground states ahead of next year’s midterm elections, stirring concern among some party members of a coming Republican wave in 2022.
In Pennsylvania, Democrats now lead Republicans in voter registration by about 632,000 people, down from 813,885 two years ago. The same is true in another battleground state, North Carolina, where Democrats’ advantage has shrunk by more than 140,000 since October 2019. There are fewer active registered Democrats on the books in North Carolina now than there were six years ago.
The situation is most dire for Democrats in Florida, the nation’s largest and most volatile swing state. The party has long held a yawning voter registration advantage over Republicans, but it has shrunk by more than 200,000 over the past two years. The latest numbers from the Florida Division of Elections show the GOP trailing the Democrats by fewer than 24,000 registered voters.
But we know that the Trump campaign focused on voter registration and we didn’t in 2020. We know that we have to make up that ground. And that is something all of us can do something about.
The second reason that I am more confident about 2022 than others is because, well, we have a lot of people retiring, at least in the House (a sign that many think we will lose big this year). The average age for those Democratic members retiring is 69 years old (11 years older than the average age of Democrats in the House). We have long known that we have an aging problem among our elected representatives, but that problem has grown as Millennials and Gen Zs become more focused on politics. New voices — diverse voices — are critical for Democrats to be successful in 2022 and 2024 (and if they are really interested in legislating instead of tweeting, all the better!).
The need for new voices, and more diverse voices, was made clear in the Issues Surveys Hope Springs from Field did this summer and fall in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania Wisconsin and Texas. Among the Democrats and independents we talked to, that need came up every single weekend, in every single state. New Democrats in the Senate and the House is a start. But I suspect that new voices running for Congress this year will break through and encourage voters who are suspicious or even despondent to get out and vote. (I personally believe that have a district-appropriate diverse ticket on the ballot will help, as well.)
Is it easier to run as an incumbent? Clearly. Do we need to have more age-appropriate representatives that understand the issues and interests of Millennials and Gen Zs? You betcha.
The third reason I am more confident about 2022 is Donald Trump. Glenn Youngkin won the Governor’s race in Virgina because Donald Trump kept his mouth shut and the only people talking about Donald Trump was Democrats. Hopefully, in 2022, that will be reversed. We will be talking about the future and Donald Trump will be whining about 2020.
Now Glenn Youngkin will swear that he didn’t talk about Trump during the general election campaign but he certainly seemed to encourage Democrats and Terry McAuliffe to do so. At every McAuliffe campaign event I attended, there was always a large group of Trumpies at the event entrance, including at least one with a large Trump flag. Twice, I engaged with these groups (in different counties) and found out that they were being paid (in cash) to protest. I don’t know if that was the strategy here, to encourage Democratic focus on the disgraced former “president,” but that was definitely one of the effects of those protests.
Here’s the thing. While the Youngkin campaign successfully encouraged Trump’s silence during the general election, there is no way that Trump will stay silent during 2022. And the more that Trump demands the center of attention, the more that independents and infrequent Democratic voters will be annoyed. I knocked on more than a thousand doors in October and November before election day and I didn’t hear a single comment about Trump (unlike in 2017 & 2018). We just want to forget about that f’ing moron. So the less we talk about Trump the better.
But his need, his obsession, for grabbing the spotlight does help us. 2018 proved that. We need to let Trump drive that, let Trump remind voters of what they want to get away from. We need to stay focused on the future.
And the fourth reason I am confident is because Kevin McCarthy doesn’t have a plan/ vision outside of supporting whatever Trump wants. This will help drive Republican mentions of Trump, which, I remind you, Glenn Youngkin avoided in the 2021 general election campaign. Democratic “conflict” over enacting our vision for the future is a reminder that we have a vision for the future. We need to remind voters of that, and contrast it with the Republican’s lack of a vision (outside of supporting Trump).
Finally, I am more confident than conventional wisdom about our chances in 2022 is because redistricting either went better than we expected or, where it didn’t, the challenges made against onerous remaps were taken seriously by the courts. New York looks to be better than expected, and we may even gain seats in California. Illinois was very nice to us.
We’ve got a fight on our hands. And there’s enough hyperbole out there that I don’t need to mention how important these next few year’s elections are. But I’ve got a feeling. That this year. 2022. I gonna be a good year. And we need that...