This piece appears this weekend in newspapers in my very red congressional district (VA-06).
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I. The Republican Base is Pushing Away from the American Center
Overall, in the primaries run across America seeking Republican nominations, candidates endorsed by Trump are winning most of the contests. (Most, but not all – e.g. the incumbent Governor of Georgia, opposed by Trump for not helping overturn the election results in his state, won handily.) Trump-endorsed candidates will be vying in the general election for governorships in Pennsylvania and Arizona, for example, and for Senate seats from those states as well as Ohio and Alabama.
These primaries also show that the “Big Lie” (about Trump being the real winner of the 2020 election) remains central to the Republican world. The Republican base is repeatedly rewarding candidates – like Kari Lake, the winner of the Republican nomination for Governor of Arizona – who make that Big Lie the center of their campaign.
However, these candidates cannot win the general election with just a large fraction of the atypical primary electorate. So these primary results threaten Republicans’ prospects in the midterms if those primary voters push their party toward “extremes” that the American majority finds repellent.
That’s why the Democrats have engaged in a controversial practice of trying to boost some more extreme candidates, running ads that purport to criticize the more extreme candidates, but frame that “criticism” in language that will increase their appeal to Republican primary voters.
This tactic can work strategically. (For example, back in 2012 when Claire McCaskill won a Senate seat from Missouri by running ads to boost the candidacy of the Republican who’d disastrously talked about “legitimate rape.”) Enough people who would have voted for a more reasonable Republican might switch to the Democrat if the Republican nominee turns them off.
But, tempting though this tactic may be, and though the exceptional threat to the survival of American democracy may provide some justification, in general I don’t approve of it.
- Not only does it run the risk – if the tactic fails in the general election -- of putting power into more extreme hands;
- And not only -- especially now – does the nation need a Republican Party that has important political virtues. (For example, the Democrats’ ads in support of an election-denier may well have caused the defeat – in a very close primary -- of one of the few House Republicans (Peter Meijer of Michigan) who had the integrity to vote to impeach Trump, honoring his oath of office rather than making his own political survival his priority.)
- But in addition, I believe that the right to “free association” should allow political parties to make their own choices regarding their leadership, without outsiders meddling in those choices. (Which is why I am against “open primaries,” which give every voter a voice in parties to which they have no allegiance.)
Nonetheless, even without the Democrats’ meddling, the Republican primary electorate is making choices – gravitating toward the extreme -- that the futures markets apparently believe increase the chances for the Democrats to hold onto the Senate.
2. The Supreme’s Abortion Decision Leads to the Stunner in Kansas.
In a previous piece regarding the midterm elections, I identified the Supreme Court’s upcoming overturning of Roe v. Wade as one potential factor that could change the trajectory of the election (which then gave the Republicans a 3:1 chance of gaining control of Congress).
That possibility may have been affirmed by the most stunning result of this primary season: the primary voters of Kansas – one of the most Republican states – chose by a 59-41 margin to keep the right to abortion in the Kansas Constitution.
It is uncertain what this vote in Kansas says about how people will vote in the general election in November. But it clearly does demonstrate a few things.
- A lot of people were powerfully motivated to work to prevent their state from going where the Republicans are trying to take the nation on the issue of abortion.
- A lot of Republicans – including some “pro-life” Republicans – did not want the state to be making such decisions – seen as “personal” and “private -- for American women and families.
Polls had shown all along that a substantial American majority did not want Roe overturned, and a still bigger majority didn’t want it overturned in the extreme way it did (no exceptions). The result in Kansas suggests that a lot of people from both parties held that view strongly.
3. How Biden Can Empower the American Majority
Many parts of Biden’s Build Back Better package were supported by big majorities of Americans. But Republican obstruction in Congress prevented many popular measures from being enacted.
The just-passed “Inflation Reduction Act” enacted only some of these measures.
Biden can put together a carefully composed package of other measures supported by big majorities but not yet accomplished, and say to that American majority:
“Together we can get good things done.
- I promise that I will submit this package the moment the new Congress convenes.
- If you will elect a Congress that will enact these measures – if the American majority will vote only for candidates who pledge to respect “the will of the people” -- you will pass these popular measures.
With that approach, Biden can serve the American majority, fortify our democracy, and help his party in the upcoming Midterms.