Red November

AMAC Exclusive – By Barry Casselman

The conservatives’ pursuit of a red November will reach its conclusion in just a few days, and along the way, the GOP appears to have added to its ranks numerous independents and other non-affiliated voters, as well as some disillusioned Democrats.

Just how red the wave will be is of course unknown before it happens.

Among other consequences, sweeping Republican victories could restore some balance to hyper-partisan Washington, D.C.— although a GOP-controlled Congress will engender fresh partisanship and debate of its own.

Anything is possible, but it is now very likely that Republicans will control the next session of the House of Representatives with a new speaker. Less inevitable, but not unlikely, U.S. Senate control might also pass to Republicans, setting the Congress in direct opposition to Democratic President Joe Biden.

The political chemistry, then, will change dramatically not only in Washington, DC, but throughout the nation, a nation now and in the near future coping with the severe impact of a pandemic, high inflation, energy and goods shortages, a lingering crisis in secondary school and university education, a crisis at the southern border, a volatile stock market and recession, and an unpredictable global period of rapid change and risk.

Winning a midterm mandate for a new direction is no guarantee that Republicans will be successful in this new environment. The recent fiasco for the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom illustrates that electoral victory is not always followed by governing success. Despite a historic parliamentary victory in 2019, British Conservatives are now on their third prime minister in four months and are beset with political and economic crises and a drastic loss of public support.

Republicans will aim to win the presidency in 2024, but that quest, should they win control of Congress next week, would depend at least in part on their performance as stewards of the legislative branch between January 2023 and the next election cycle.

Taking a page from Newt Gingrich and his colleagues in 1994 with their “Contract With America,” House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy and his colleagues have set down their agenda with a “Commitment To America,” describing new policies under Republican leadership. If Republicans win the House majority, they will have to advance these policies in negotiation with the White House, hoping for constructive negotiation and bipartisan implementation. In the face of a 2022 voter mandate, the President and his party would ignore serious negotiation and compromise at their own electoral peril in 2024 and beyond.

President Biden has sidestepped congressional stalemate with numerous executive orders, but this strategy could prove unsustainable with a GOP Congress which controls the purse strings and must confirm presidential appointments.

After the 1994 midterms, Bill Clinton negotiated with the new Republican majority and won reelection.  President Obama also won his reelection in 2012 after losing both Houses in 2010. This is a warning to Republicans that winning the midterms does not always translate into winning the presidency the next time around.

It will be interesting to compare all the pollsters in this midterm cycle after the election, specifically their final polls with actual results. Historically, many of the “big-name” polls have undermeasured Republican voters — especially in 2016, 2020 and 2021. They have apparently done this again throughout the 2022 cycle. It will not be enough just to have picked winners and losers. As we have just observed in the first and second rounds of the Brazilian presidential elections, the Brazilian pollsters undermeasured the voter support for President Bolsonaro. In both cases, they indicated large margins for the challenger Lula, who won both times, but the races in each case were notably closer than the polls indicated they would be. In the past, pollsters have rationalized their failures by citing so-called “margins of error.” But polls, to be truly fair and useful, need to do more than predict who will win. Especially just before an election, they should, if they are to be a reliable tool, be reasonably close to actual results.

We are now in the final days of the 2022 midterm election campaign cycle. There are a limited number of potential outcomes. Each of these outcomes has somewhat different political consequences that will resound not only in the nation’s beleaguered capital, but also throughout the country.

We await what the voters have to say.