It's June 23, 2022 as I type this. We are just slightly over four months away from the 2022 midterm election - and the the Democratic party mainstream appears to be hanging on by a thread.
Decades of catering to the middle of the road Road White soccer moms in the suburbs instead of the people who historically make up their base have created a situation where the party has largely failed to gain that vote and has partially damaged the power of Labor teachers and civil rights organizations that decades ago made up their base. As a result, mainstream wisdom is predicting a big win for the Coupublicans this November with third-party winning either one or both houses of Congress in the process.Meanwhile, on a variety of issues, establishment Democrats appear to be playing from behind when it comes to messaging. From the various culture war issues that the American right-wing seems to rely on this bread and butter even issues of the economy and energy issues the dumb seem to accept the right-wing messaging spread through the corporate own mainstream media rather than go out and create their own or fight back.
Part of this lies in the fact that the democratic party establishment manage to hold on to what power they had through constant appealing to the center instead of standing on what they're supposed to stand for. While this strategy was successful in earning money from wealthy donors it also gave the party at appearance of being wishy-washy and wimpy in the eyes of many people.
So what does this have to do with the Democratic party establishment today? Even as they're facing a crucial midterm election establishment Dems sing to go out their way to point out a difference between who they call "typical Republicans" and the Mad Fuhrer (Now currently in Exile @) Mar-A-Lago. On the surface it is an old political ploy play in a way to get votes On The Other Side by claiming they're not like the guy at the top of the ticket. While an approach like this may have worked somewhat in the past it is a dangerous road to go down to in an age of political polarization like the last twenty or so years.
In the 2016 election, for example, this approach almost cost them the Senate as a number of GOP voters either voted for Biden or left the top of the ticket blank but still voted for Coupublicans in the Senate and House races. On the surface right now it appears they're going to try the same tactic for the 2022 midterms.
What the strategy leaves out is that, to varying degrees, each of our two major political parties how shockingly different attitudes towards the other one. Establishment Democrats have often gone on record claiming the need for a strong opposition party; an understandable point but one seemingly at odds with the current political climate. Mainstream Coupublican politics, meanwhile, has gotten increasingly wrapped up in conspiracy theories such as QANON and the like and as such have been feeding the worst amongst them (and their supposed belief that all Democrats are a satanic cabal who do sick things to children [all without any actual concrete proof] and need to be wiped off the face of the Earth). As you can see, the two parties are not the same when it comes to how they regard each other. One is showing respect to the other in a dignified way and the other is increasing engaged (either out of a sincere belief or in bad faith messaging to gain votes) with bad faith based arguments that dehumanize their political opposition and appear to be edging closer and closer to being fascism adjacent. It also means that the Democratic party establishment I may be blind to the fact that these conspiracies are somewhat of an existential threat and and they can't be reasoned with.
So what do the Democrats need to do? First up they need to fight and fight hard against the Coupublicans instead of hoping to chip away at a few of their votes. Now is not the time to try and claim that the average person in the opposition party can be reasoned with and is not as extreme ask the guy who led them for 5 plus years (especially since many of them either hope to vote for him again or are looking at someone equally as extreme such as Florida Gov. Ron Desantis, for example). They need to try and get has many of the Dems in office as possible and not cave when it turns out an establishment Dem loses a primary or something like that.
It's not that the Democratic party establishment is incapable of fighting. In fact, they can be quite vicious when they need to be. Unfortunately, they are more likely to be aggressive when fighting progressives on their side(such as the Congresspeople involved in what's called The Squad or Sen. Bernie Sanders (I know Bernie's technically an independent but it still qualifies)) than their political enemies on the other party that are way more willing to go for the throat. If they really want to win that shit has to stop, they need to focus some of that anger they spew towards non moderates on their side and aim it at the Republicans. More often than just during a campaign ad a month before election.
At this point the good news is nothing is absolutely certain. The January 6th select Congressional committee hearings actually found the domes leading on the issue rather than catching up with right-wing framing in regards to the coup attempt year-and-a-half ago. While there is no guarantee that this will win over those few moderate Republicans left (who appear to be getting more and more rare by the minute) it has managed to put on the map pure Earth than there was during the first hearing a couple weeks back (according to polls a majority of Americans claim to want the Mad Fuhrer prosecuted for his role leading up to the January 6th coup attempt). But there is still four months until the midterm elections and a lot can change between now and then.
What is true when all is said and done is that the Democratic party establishment needs to stop its constant catering to the middle and fight like hell to make sure they went in November. The fact that the progressives in the HOuse and Senate the Dems often tend to attack in one way or another were the ones fighting hardest to try and make President Biden'[s agenda happen while "moderates" such as Senators Joe Machin (WV) or Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) do almost more damage to Biden than the GOP does a lot of times is proof that they need to get the courage and adapt to changing political times. If that means speaking to more and doing things for more average people than their wealthy donors they need to take that step.
It's up to them to do so. Nobody else can do it for them. While I cannot see how the midterms will turn out I can say that if the Coupublicans when one or both houses of Congress then this country's future will be very bleak indeed.
