The 2022 election

After the billions of dollars, the negative ads, the rallies, the polling, and the rest of it, now it comes down to election day and the vote count after. There are some who disagree, but the emerging consensus appears to be that the hyper-involvement that followed the Dobbs decision has cooled and we’re back to an election following the classic trends: first term off-year election, unpopular president, economic woes, “right track, wrong track” numbers add up to a loss for the Dems. Maybe not the epic beatdown expected earlier this year, but decisive.

And the electoral map isn’t encouraging.  There don’t seem to be any more vulnerable Republican candidates than there were two weeks ago. But Kathy Hochul is having a race in New York? Gretchen Whitmer? Patty Murray? Meanwhile, Abbott, Kemp, and DeSantis seem barely to have broken a sweat.

There are a few voices saying all is not lost. There does appear to be a last minute swing in the Dem’s direction. One school of thought holds that the Dem turnout machine will put enough over the top in tossup races to prevent a disaster. And one pollster, John Della Volpe of the Harvard Institute of Politics, who has done thousands of hours of interviews with Millennials and Gen Z’ers (he moderated the recent town hall at the College put on by the college’s Eisenhower Institute) claims that young people are much more politically engaged than anyone believes and that the young voters are substantially under-represented in every turnout model. Anyway, we’ll see.

In Pennsylvania, it appears that Shapiro has a fairly safe lead – if the Dems turn out – and that Oz has narrowed the Senate race, perhaps into tossup country. If Oz prevails, a major assist will go to the news media for never once calling Oz on his “keep your hands clean” campaign, where the PACs run the nastiest and most deceptive ads ever seen in a Pennsylvania election and then Oz appears with his grandchildren and talks about “restoring civility.”

If it is a bad night for Democrats, a few conclusions will leap out. First, as always, we see two branches of the media. First there’s Fox News and other right-wing outfits who are signed on as charter members of the MAGA team and feed a steady diet of crime and Hunter Biden and replacement theory and “FBI Gestapo tactics.”

And then there’s the “mainstream media,” which, as always, obsesses with Democratic candidates: “what are you doing about inflation and gas prices? why did you screw up Afghanistan?” and any number of issues, and never once ask the Republicans what their plan about inflation is and never once challenge them about their lunatic plans and claims about “open borders,” “defunding the police,” etc.

If the reports of an “enthusiasm gap” turn out to be true, we’ll also, once again, be able to wonder what’s wrong with Democrats. One of the most successfol first two years imaginable and it’s not enough?

It’s not like the Republicans are being subtle about this. They tell us they’re coming after Social Security, Medicare, tuition relief, and Biden’s Medicare caps and drug price reductions. They openly brag they plan to end gay marriage and end funding for Ukraine. They plainly have no plan about inflation and will repeal Biden’s victories in the inflation fight. If you stay home and don’t vote, you deserve the hell that the Republicans are bringing. Vote. And tell your friends. It matters.