Will 2022 Midterms Be a 2016 Democratic Redux?

The upcoming 2022 Democratic midterms look to be a repeat of their 2016 political failures. In both instances, strategic-singlemindedness caused the Democrats to drive their campaigns off a political cliff. Unlike the central characters in the movie, Thelma and Louise, who intentionally drove to their deaths, Democrats believe they will prevail.

Several Democratic campaign operatives see the looming political clouds on the horizon, but progressive Democrats led by Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-WA 7th District), chair of the House Progressive Caucus, is resolute in her belief that her rigid stance on the House reconciliation bill is a winner for the Biden presidency and the Democratic Party, despite bright signs to the contrary.

Jayapal’s approach is to blame and attack the two Senate Democratic moderates/centrists, Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), who have questioned the costs of the legislation, even though she will need both of their votes if the bill has any chance of passing in a 50-50 Senate. She also faults the print and broadcast media for not promoting the positive aspects of the proposed law. Jayapal and her cohorts are unyielding.

In attempting to break the stalemate, President Biden has met with Jayapal, Manchin, and Sinema frequently in recent weeks to push the reconciliation and bipartisan infrastructure bills forward. Since the progressives have joined the two together: one does not move forward without the other.

We have all seen this movie before. In 2016, Hillary Clinton, the first female nominated for president of the U.S. by a major political party, and widely expected to win the election over her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, spent tens of millions of dollars in TV ads criticizing Trump’s broadly heralded womanizing and sexual peccadillos. She failed to recognize that the public did not care enough about them to make a difference in the election.

Trump responded by bringing four women, who accused Bill Clinton of sexually assaulting and/or harassing them while serving as President and as Governor of Arkansas, to one of the presidential debates. Trump’s response checkmated Hillary’s political ad tactic. She never recovered from this political mistake as it increasingly appears that neither Rep. Jayapal nor her party, will recover from her flawed political plan.

That these political wounds are being self-inflicted by Democrats is extremely puzzling and may be written up as a political case study as to what not to do in future political campaigns. The most critical part of this emerging Democratic disaster is the lack of effective messaging. The Democrats seem to feel no need to tell their own story.

National Democrats could take a lesson from Terry McAuliffe, who is in the last weeks of running for governor of Virginia against a Trump Republican and has created a clear, succinct message for each element of his Democratic base: ethnic minorities, women, the LGBTQ+ community, Whites, young people, and the elderly with strong outreach.

Although the polls have narrowed between him and Glen Youngkin, his Republican opponent, McAuliffe is pounding his message home with significant positive effect and has also deployed credible, well-known representatives of each component of the Democratic coalition to help. Doug Wilder, the first elected African American and Democratic Governor of Virginia, implemented this messaging scheme in 1989.

A snowball poll of Virginia citizens (conducted by this writer) during the past week shows that enthusiasm for McAuliffe is rising, and he has a solid chance of winning and is being aided by having served an earlier 4-year term (VA governors are not permitted to serve successive terms), and his previous record is viewed favorably by a majority of citizens.

Congressional Democrats could learn much from the McAuliffe race that they could put to good use in their current internal political debates. They are at a crossroads in their struggle to hold on to power and function as a governing majority with incredibly slim margins in the House and Senate. They appear naïve to this political reality.

The Republicans, for the moment, are still in lockstep in countering Democrats at every turn. Their messaging is consistent and reinforced in their caucus meetings and by state party leaders. What is rapidly emerging on the Republican political horizon is the view that anything Democrats propose is too costly and anti-personal freedom.

Presently, Democrats appear headed toward a political redux of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential race debacle. By dithering on a political time bomb, Democrats are abetting their own political demise. However, Katherine Clark, Assistant Speaker of the House, falsely insists that the Democrats are united behind each other and the legislative items they have proposed, which is an observable LIE!

They need to speak to their voters and come to a joint consensus on a collective agenda sooner rather than later.