Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) speaks during the House Rules Committee meeting on Thursday, December 2, 2021. (Photo by Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
EDITOR’S NOTE:Each week we publish an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column on WashingtonPost.com. Read the full archive of Katrina’s Post columns here.
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As early voting begins in some states, Republicans’ closing argument focuses on the economy, the top concern of American voters and the issue of the majority of GOP ad buys. Meanwhile, the closing argument of the Democrats revolves around abortion, the abolition of women’s suffrage.
However, a recent poll by the New York Times and Siena College shows that economic concerns are causing a significant shift of independent voters — including women — toward Republicans. The message to Democrats should be loud and clear: Change course, now.
Democratic campaign workers make a reasonable case for showing the GOP attack on abortion. In our era of bitter partisan divisions, midterm elections tend to be turnout-driven. With President Biden unpopular and much of his program blocked by Senate Republicans — along with two Democrats — Democratic demoralization was rampant even before the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court decisively crushed abortion rights. The startling results of an abortion referendum in Kansas and a special election in New York that debated the issue demonstrated his power to mobilize voters, particularly women and young people who have historically under-participated in midterms.
At the same time, there is no doubt that voters hold the incumbent president and his party responsible for the economy, even when it is governed by forces beyond their control. Biden inherited a closed economy, opened it up, and enjoyed record employment. But this fast-recovering economy was then hit by widespread supply chain problems, exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, causing gas and food prices to spike. An abrupt reversal by the Federal Reserve, which has been raising interest rates at breakneck speed to curb inflation, weighed on the stock market. Now voters are blaming Biden for their pain.
So Democrats are following the conventional wisdom of campaigning — highlight the issues that favor your side, not those that favor the other. While polls show voters give Republicans a distinct advantage in handling the economy, Democrats are focused on the threat Republicans pose to abortion and democracy.
In a speech before the Maryland AFL-CIO last week, Rep. Jamie B. Raskin, one of the most popular Democratic leaders, laid out the situation. “Democracy is on the ballot,” he said, citing not only the former’s efforts President Donald Trump to overthrow the 2020 election, but also to the Republicans’ continued efforts to spread the big lie, suppress the vote and put partisans in charge of the election. “Justice is on the ballot,” Raskin said, including not only the outrageous Dobbs decision on abortion, but the ongoing assault on civil liberties, affirmative action, the power to protect consumers and the environment from corporate wrongdoing. “Progress is on the ballot,” he added, juxtaposing Biden’s success in passing long-overdue legislation to rebuild our infrastructure and invest in renewable energy against Trump’s inability or unwillingness to act on either.
All of this is true — and compelling — but it doesn’t address the soaring prices voters are grappling with. The failure to address inflation has Republicans forgoing the issue, even as they say little about what they would do to address it. Their ads rail against price increases, blaming their opponents and promising to fight them. But the only policy clue they provide is lurking in talk of creating a debt-ceiling crisis to force Biden to participate in debilitating “entitlements programs” — read Social Security and Medicare. If that’s their plan, they won’t admit it until November.
Stan Greenberg, the legendary Democratic pollster, warns that there will be a price for Democrats to ignore the economy. Once again, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is showing Democrats how to get their way. Corporations, he says, are raking in record profits while workers’ wages are lagging behind rising prices. When Democrats push for lower drug prices, Republicans stand with drug companies. When Democrats push to extend the child tax credit to help working families with soaring prices and pay for it by taxing the corporations that act like bandits, Republicans are behind the corporations. They want to use the economic troubles to roll back Social Security and Medicare, which they opposed in the first place. Democrats want to respond to the economic pain by helping working families and taking on the predatory corporations and CEOs raking in record profits.
At the end of the day, purse problems still dominate – the economy, fool – the elections. While the Democrats are right that democracy and justice are options, they will only be able to thwart the attack on both if they convincingly demonstrate that they side with working people – and are willing to do it with the corporate, entrenched interests and take the Republicans in the way.
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