Tuesday’s Republican sweep at the polls has left Democrats in Congress questioning whether their ambitious social welfare spending agenda turned off voters or perhaps didn’t go far enough to win their support.
Republicans swept statewide races in Virginia, effectively flipping the Legislature to the GOP and installing a Republican governor for the first time since 2014.
An unknown, underfunded Republican candidate nearly defeated incumbent Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy in deep-blue New Jersey, while GOP candidates eliminated every Democrat from the Newark City Council. In other races, liberal and socialist candidates were defeated in favor of mainstream Democrats in New York and Ohio. At the same time, Minneapolis voters rejected a far-left proposal to replace the Police Department with a public safety agency.
House and Senate Democrats pondered what last Tuesday’s result could mean for them in the critical 2022 midterm elections and how it should govern their legislative agenda.
The Senate is now evenly split between the two parties, while Democrats hold a three-seat advantage in the House.
Republicans, vying to retake both chambers next year, offered their own assessment of Tuesday’s results.
“This week, voters delivered a clear message to the Democratic Party,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said. “You were not elected to radically change America. Period.”
The election occurred at a pivotal time for Democrats as they try to use their rare control of both Congress and the White House to usher through one of the largest spending and policy packages in history.
Intraparty wrangling over the size and scope of the package had stalled the legislation for weeks, and Tuesday’s results left Democrats pointing fingers at each other as they continued to negotiate.
The bill in its latest form would provide free preschool, four weeks of paid family leave, money for healthcare subsidies, an extension of the child tax credit, and would implement new green energy policies.
Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia centrist who has nearly single-handedly forced his party to cut in half their initial plan to spend $3.5 trillion on the social welfare spending bill, argued voters want the party to slow down their spending spree over concerns about inflation, debt, and creating an entitlement society that hurts jobs and the economy.
Manchin pointed to the election results in southwest Virginia, where voters went for the entire GOP ticket, rejecting former Gov. Terry McAuliffe in favor of Republican Glenn Youngkin.
Manchin said those voters mirror his constituents in West Virginia.
“These are people I talk to all the time,” Manchin said. “And I knew what they were concerned about. They were concerned about inflation, high costs, making it more difficult for them. And they spoke loud and clear at the voting booths. So, I hope everybody listens.”
In an interview this week with CNN, Manchin argued Democrats should stick to the center with their agenda if they hope to win and maintain support from voters.
“We have to work together,” Manchin said. “We can’t go too far left.”
“This is not a center-left or a left country,” Manchin added. “We are, if anything, a little center-right country, and this means that’s being shown. And we ought to be able to recognize that.”
The party’s liberal wing disagreed, arguing House and Senate Democrats need to go further to provide government programs and subsidies that help working-class voters struggling to make ends meet.
House Democrat and liberal party superstar Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to her Instagram account to offer the liberal assessment of the disappointing election results in Virginia.
The New York Democrat argued the party could have brought out more voters by accelerating the liberal agenda, which Manchin and other congressional centrists have arguably slowed.
“If anything, I think that the results show the limits of trying to run a fully 100%, super-moderated campaign that does not excite, speak to, or energize a progressive base,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “And frankly, we weren’t even really invited to contribute on that race.”
Lawmakers lamented not passing a $1.2 trillion infrastructure package that the Senate approved last summer.
The measure had been hung up in the House by liberal Democrats who demanded lawmakers first pass the social welfare spending package.
Polls in October showed voters knew little about what is included in the social welfare spending package, while Biden’s approval rating fell to new lows on his handling of the economy, which rated as the most pressing concern for the public.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who worked fervently but unsuccessfully to pass the infrastructure measure ahead of the Nov. 2 election, refused to blame her party’s inaction on the bill for the significant losses on Tuesday, telling reporters the data are not yet conclusive.
“Let’s see what the data is as it comes out,” Pelosi said.
House Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal told reporters the big swing in Virginia wasn’t likely the result of the stalled legislative agenda in Congress but rather more closely tied to Youngkin’s stance against critical race theory and other local school-related issues driving turnout.
But, she added, the losses will provide Democrats with the momentum to finally get the two bills finished.
“I think we were already in high gear,” Jayapal said. “But if there’s a higher gear, we certainly went into it.”
Democratic strategist Christopher Hahn said the party might have been hurt by lack of turnout among the smaller base of voters who participate in off-year elections. He said those voters might lose their enthusiasm after the party failed to pass major agenda items, including the infrastructure and social welfare spending bills.
“Democrats stayed home because the casual Democrats rarely show up in the off-year, and the activists didn’t show up in as full a force because they don’t feel enough has been accomplished,” Hahn, a former top aide to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, said.
Ron Faucheux, a nonpartisan political analyst and publisher of Lunchtime Politics, analyzed the results differently. He told the Washington Examiner that voters on Tuesday registered their discontent with the far-left agenda on spending, education, and policing.
“Democrats need to get out of the bubble that the progressive Left has created for them and start focusing on reality,” Faucheux said. “If they don’t, the 2022 elections will be a disaster for them.”
