Opinion: The Red Wave is Unlikely… Behold, the Red Ripple
When people first started talking about midterm elections, it seemed the so-called “Red Wave” was at the forefront of everyone's mind. For the first time since 2019, a political party (Democrats in this case) controlled the Presidency, House, and Senate, and while their margins were slim they were there. Many Americans hoped that, after a tumultuous transition and polarizing previous 4 years, Democrats could finally legislate on some of their biggest promises.
The problem was, they couldn’t. The first year of the Biden presidency was marked by an unseen immigration crisis and bungled “Remain in Mexico” policy, record-breaking inflation, COVID mismanagement, and a failure to actually pass his Build Back Better agenda. While President Biden is not the only one to blame for some of these failures Biden is after all, the President, which led many Americans to blame him nonetheless. Within 222 days of attaining the Presidency, Biden’s poll numbers flipped, and more Americans grew to disapprove of him than approve of him as their Commander in Chief.
Republicans jumped on their chance. Knowing that this was their best chance at reclaiming control of Congress, some Republican officials and strategists assumed that this midterm cycle was almost a guaranteed win for them. Presenting good candidates, running campaigns based on Democratic mistakes, and even just gauging how much a district will appeal to Trumpism were all mentioned as some of the hallmarks of the Red Wave, and for a time, really seemed like they were working.
Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on whom you support), the Red Wave is no longer looking like a wave anymore, more like a ripple. While this is especially evident in the Senate, many forecasts put the number of seats to be gained in the House significantly smaller than early forecasts predicted. In my opinion, this is due to a few things. The first and foremost thing is the landmark Supreme Court case that was Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. While the social and cultural impacts of this decision are enough to write a whole other article (and probably a slew of them), I’ll focus on some of the general political implications for the upcoming midterms. At the time of the decison, Americans tended to view abortion rights positively, with one Pew Research poll indicating that 61% of Americans think it should be legal in all or most cases.
After the decision was released on June 24, 2022, some Republican candidates celebrated it, while others tried to soften their positions on abortion to keep votes. Many Republican’s kept their pro-life stances that they had held in the past, even while a majority of American’s disapproved of the Dobbs decision. Republicans disregarded the opinion of those they were appealing to. In other words, while the pro-life movement has been a tenet of the party for a long time, a complete and total ban is unpopular, even with some members of their base. In my mind, this is when the country turned on the Red Wave.
What came next is the country turning on Republican candidates, exposing them for how ludicrous some of them were and still are. Media outlets and the public alike began to recognize that GOP candidates in competitive races, not just the solid R districts, were people that had committed serious crimes in the past, lied about service records, acknowledged they breached the Capitol during Jan. 6, and the list goes on. Some GOP candidates have gone so far as to actually appear to call for physical violence to be used against their opponents. Trying to put up sound candidates was a bust.
Finally, one of the major reasons the Red Wave is so much smaller than initially hoped by millions around the country is that, to some degree, Biden has been pretty successful. He signed his Infrastructure Bill and the Inflation Reduction Act, as well as legislation lowering the costs of prescription drugs by allowing Medicare to negotiate with companies and buttressing Obama Care. The PACT Act, veterans health care expansion, and the bill to supercharge semiconductor production have all been passed in recent months. The Biden Administration seems to have finally hit its stride. And while the current state of the nation is far from perfect (still-raging inflation, for example), Americans are taking notice of Biden’s successes as his approval rating has begun slowly climbing since August.
Recent Democratic successes (and GOP blunders) have shifted the tide to make it seem as though the Legislative losses the Democratic party was going to suffer are going to be much smaller than initially anticipated at the beginning of the year. While Republicans historically have the polls shift back to their favor as Election Day nears and a Democrat is in the Executive Office, GOP ineptness and recent Democratic success is shaping the Red Wave to actually be a red ripple.
"red wave" by Rosmarie Voegtli is licensed under CC BY 2.0.