Can Democrats Beat the Odds in 2022?

Can Democrats Beat the Odds in 2022?

One big donor is banking on President Biden’s recovery efforts to preserve the Democrats’ majority in the 2022 midterms.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

Would you put big money on Democrats winning big in 2022? Recently, a wealthy progressive donor stated on a Listserv for political junkies that he expected Democrats to sweep the House and Senate by large margins. Conventional wisdom, of course, holds that Democrats are likely to lose control of the House and quite possibly the Senate, putting an abrupt end to the progressive reforms that President Biden is advancing. But can Democrats beat the odds next year?

The donor’s argument is that the recovery will be in full gear by 2022, with unemployment plummeting and spirits rising. At the same time, former president Donald Trump is destroying the Republican Party, dividing it internally, and discrediting it externally with his demand that its leaders and candidates avow his “big lie” about the 2020 election, and embrace the hate and the craziness that he spouts. The party has no coherent agenda, offering only obstruction and rants about impending socialism, defunding the police and cancel culture. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is again devoted to blocking anything Democrats support, including even a bipartisan independent commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection.

No wonder then that, according to Gallup, Republican identification is down to 40 percent of adults with Democrats at 49 percent, the largest gap the polling firm has reported in nearly a decade. Supporters of the establishment wing of the GOP announce (still unformed) efforts to challenge Trump for the control of the party. Some corporations have expressed at least passing dismay at Republican efforts to suppress the vote in states.

Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

We cannot back down

We now confront a second Trump presidency.

There’s not a moment to lose. We must harness our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger, to resist the dangerous policies Donald Trump will unleash on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists and writers of principle and conscience.

Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Project 2025, a far-right supreme court, political authoritarianism, increasing inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis, and conflicts abroad. The Nation will expose and propose, nurture investigative reporting, and stand together as a community to keep hope and possibility alive. The Nation’s work will continue—as it has in good and not-so-good times—to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further solidarity in a nation divided.

Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

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Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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