Biden’s guaranteeing a red wave in 2022.
Like it or not, the 2022 midterms are shaping up to be a red wave and a bloodbath, at least for centrist Democrats.
Like it or not, the 2022 midterms are shaping up to be a red wave and a bloodbath, at least for centrist Democrats. Let’s look back in history to the 2010 and 2014 midterms, and the how the GOP wrestled away power from the Democrats. When Senator Barack Obama ran for president in 2008, he ran on a message of “hope and change”, on of left-wing populism, however, he simply didn’t deliver once entering office. Yes, the Affordable Care Act was monumental and a definite improvement over the status quo, however you’ve got to consider how overall it was a terrible right-wing system. Not to mention the millions of home foreclosures and the opioid crisis, as well as the drone strikes and deportations. Oh, and you can’t forget the outsourcing of hundreds of thousands of jobs in the Rust Belt. The point is, when Obama had a supermajority in both houses of Congress from 2009 to 2010, he didn’t use his massive political capital and his 64% approval rating to his advantage, but pressuring the Blue Dog Democrats to commit to supporting initiatives such as single-payer healthcare. This led to a red wave in the 2010 midterms, where the GOP flipped 63 seats in the House of Representatives, and along with it, the chamber itself. In the United States Senate, the GOP flipped 6 seats, a pretty impressive feat. Obama had squandered his political capital, and from 2011 to 2014, he got little done, resulting in the red wave of 2014, where the GOP flipped 13 House seats, and flipped 9 Senate seats, an extremely impressive feat for modern day politics, and along with it, they won the Senate. Of course you can imagine, the last 2 years of the Obama presidency was labeled as “lame duck” or “do-nothing”.
My guess is that the same will happen to Biden, at least in a four year time span, where the Biden administration accomplishes very little in terms of progressive advances, which results in the reenergizing of the GOP base towards flipping back the House, and almost certainly taking the Senate. If Biden wants to avoid this, he needs to be ready to flex the power of the executive pen, by signing executive orders to cancel all federal student debt, giving Medicare to everyone (through the Section 1881A loophole of the Social Security Act), as well as reversing Trump’s immigration policies and working with Congress to legalize marijuana.
There is however, a shining light for progressives in all of this. As people get fed up with Biden’s neoliberalism, many are turning to progressive down-ballot candidates, who I expect to do well in the 2021/2022 races, and this can be proven through the fact of how centrist Democrats have been very vulnerable to successful primary challenges by leftists.
