Bringing A Little Clarity To The 2022 Discussion

Full Disclosure. This is not definitive, it is not dispositive, and it is not predictive. You all know me, I’ve paddled around in politics for a long time, and I’ve tried to learn the history. But the fact is that, special circumstances notwithstanding, there are certain things that history shows about the midterms. But this year, I’m seeing special circumstances.

For starters, anybody who spends any time at all watching network news programs already knows that in the last 50 years or so, only twice has the party holding the White House not lost seats in the first midterm election. Quite often the losses are substantial, in the 35-50 seat range. But this is based on a simple, the proven principle.

The principle is that it is based on having a fully functional party in the minority, with an established platform agenda for contrast. The party out of power obstructs the party in power wherever and whenever possible, touts their alternate programs and policies, and promises to provide a check on the excesses of the party in power.

The GOP hit the Daily Double on this one. In the first race, they rode home on the fact that they don’t even have a functional policy platform! In 2020, for the first time in history, the GOP declined to write out a party platform, making their basic platform, We’re for what Trump is for. They sold their souls to the orange shitgibbon, and have never even attempted to get it back.

In the second race, the GOP rode home a winner named Ignorance, Stupidity, and Incompetence. Because the GOP has no coherent message, and because they are splitting all of their time fighting with each other and kissing Trump’s ass, they have allowed Biden to do an end run around them. Every GOP incumbent, including the Mar-A-Lago Loser, have abandoned attacking Biden because they can’t make anything stick.

As a result, Biden is taking his platform and programs to the streets, including to GOP strongholds. He is pitching the benefits of his policies and agenda directly to GOP voters, explaining in great detail how they can all benefit.

It turns out that GOP Governors, Mayors, and constituents kind of like what they’re hearing. In a poll released today, Biden is at 70% approval on Covid, and above 60% popularity in three other categories. That ain’t just Democrats responding folks, even sane Republicans are willing to admit that they like what they’re hearing. And the GOP is reduced to touting the benefits of Biden’s programs to their state or district, while omitting the fact that they voted against them. Which the Democrats are more than happy to point out. Since the GOP shows no sign of changing course,

Now let’s look at what I like to call the anomaly cycles. In 1998, the populace brutally punished the GOP in Bill Clinton’s second midterms, both for GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s calamitous shutdown of the government in a budget pissing contest with Clinton, as well as a rejection of the GOP’s impeachment of Clinton for his sexual misadventures. And in 2002, the country united behind a GOP administration then sending US and NATO coalition troops into Afghanistan to root out Osama bin Laden for a foreign terrorist attack on American soil, with the 9/11 attacks.

If the Democrats play their cards right, they can benefit from both of those special circumstances in 2022. In the first place, Trump fucking lost in 2020! Nobody but the die hard Trump base is buying all of this stolen election bullshit, nor the convoluted and twisted recounts and fraudits trying to rewrite history. This is exactly why a record number of voters showed up at the polls in 2020 to vote these mental defectives out of power. And still they persist.

On September 11th, 2001, foreign terrorists conducted an act of terrorism on the shores of the United States. And the country recoiled in shock and revulsion. This was surely an act of war, and the country united. On January 6th, 2021, a bunch of far right, home grown terrorists conducted an attack on the Capitol of the United States, with the specific intent to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power under the constitution, and install Trump as a dictator. And again the country revolted in shock.

The vast majority of the American population supports a bipartisan or neutral commission to examine and determine the origins and mechanics of that assault. But since any fair, impartial investigation would conclude that Trump incited a coup d’état to remain in power, and since the reputation of Traitor Tot must not be shit upon, the GOP must once again stand against the majority of their own constituents.

As I wrote yesterday, you have brainless toadies like Laborious MTG, Sugar Daddy Gaetz, and even Trump himself hitting the road to spout the same lame shit, only ensures that the GOP will go into 2022 carrying the cross of the Capitol insurrection on their backs. The Democrats will only throw together a Select Committee to get to the bottom if it. The thing that both McCarthy and McConnell most want to avoid will be a seminal issue in the 2022 midterms.

As I said, there is all kinds of stuff floating around out there regarding the momentum, or lack of in the Democratic party heading into 2022, it is useful to take a step back. Through its history, there are basic tenets that tend to control the flow of political outcomes. But those tenets still require two functional political parties, along with identifiable criteria that makes them function. Right now, the GOP is bucking the odds of everything that should be lining them up to comfortably take back the House, and may well cost them a clear majority in the Senate. Don’t touch that dial.

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