Podcast: Play in new window
🎉 WINNER
Polls
The 2022 midterms vindicated pollsters who had been under scrutiny ever since they wrongly predicted Hillary Clinton would win against Donald Trump in 2016. Despite anticipations of a “red wave,” nonpartisan polls like Siena College/Recent York Times and FiveThirtyEight found that the Senate race could be much more competitive than people expected — and so they were ultimately right. Democrats celebrated a surprising win, maintaining control of the Senate and losing far fewer House seats than expected. Pollsters like Simon Rosenberg who were mocked for claiming the red wave was a mirage now claim the fitting to say “I told you so” and tout that polling is, in actual fact, not dead yet.
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Pundits
Pundits were purported to learn their lesson after 2016 — to get a grip on what America outside of the Beltway was actually considering and avoid confirmation bias happening inside newsrooms and Hill offices. They may need swung too far the opposite way in 2022, pushing a narrative of “real America” that didn’t actually exist. To wit: They doubted abortion would drive people to the polls, but voters showed up in droves to vote for ladies’s rights. They pushed the narrative of a red wave driven by inflation, crime and immigration, but Democrats as a substitute had a historically good election night. It shows that despite their soul-searching journey because the last election cycle, pundits have yet to emerge fully from a Washington echo chamber that usually reinforces their evaluation.
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Elections
The shadow of 2020’s election denialism loomed large over the midterm as Republican candidates like Kari Lake and Doug Mastriano won their primaries, even after stumping on unfounded claims of election fraud. And yet, at the top of the day, elections — and trust within the system — prevailed. There was no violence on the polls nor widespread claims of election fraud. Lots of the election deniers that were searching for top election official positions in battleground states lost. And much more impressively, those candidates accepted their defeat, acknowledging that their opponents won fair and square. Nov. 8, 2022 felt like a standard Election Day — and that in itself is a win.
😓 LOSER
Institutions
Americans’ trust in institutions is at a record low and who’s in charge? Families have needed to tighten their belts on account of high inflation. The Supreme Court overturned a precedent that a majority of individuals desired to keep in place. Violent crime is rising in major cities. And the pandemic still looms within the background of each day life. It’s no surprise that individuals’s confidence within the three branches of presidency is especially low: the Supreme Court is at 25 percent, the presidency at 23 percent and Congress at 7 percent, based on a Gallup poll. Sadly, confidence within the media’s ability to document major current events can also be dropping.
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🎉 WINNER
The Spirit of George Marshall
Trans-Atlantic relations took a success throughout the Trump years when the previous president threatened privately and repeatedly to withdraw from NATO. Joe Biden is a real believer within the treaty and its obligations, but his administration also lost some standing with allies after the hasty Afghanistan withdrawal. What a difference an actual war in Europe could make with regards to restoring the bonds of mutual defense which have guided the members since post-World War II. That’s when Gen. George Marshall, who became secretary of State, conceived the eponymous plan to place the continent back together again and kept it peaceful and prosperous. Russian President Vladimir Putin has long hoped to drive a wedge between the members, but NATO has stood strong within the face of Russian aggression against Ukraine — the other of what he wanted.
😓 LOSER
The Ghost of Catherine the Great
Before launching his ill-considered invasion of Ukraine, Putin issued a twisted history essay that essentially dressed up his aggression as an try and restore a version of a Russian Empire that dated back to Catherine the Great. Catherine, originally a Prussian princess, denied that Ukraine existed, dubbing it “Little Russia” as she subsumed the region and its peoples into her overextended empire within the 18th century. Within the twenty first century, Ukraine made clear it wasn’t going to let Putin get away with the identical trick. Even when the war is removed from over, Ukraine’s vigorous defense of its territory has made it very clear — to Putin and to the remainder of the world — that it most assuredly does exist.
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Pro-fish politicians
In November, two Democrats won election to the House in red districts by talking about … fish. Alaska Democrat Mary Peltola prevailed in a ranked-choice-voting election, leaning into her background supporting Alaska’s fishermen. The primary sentence of her “story” on her website reads: “I’m a Yup’ik Alaska Native, salmon advocate, and Democrat.” Note her partisan affiliation comes after her fishing policy. In Maine’s 2nd District, Jared Golden won his own RCV election by boldly difficult Joe Biden on his guarantees to Maine’s fishermen. “You can not espouse being a president for working people while concurrently overseeing the destruction of a complete blue-collar fishery,” he wrote to the president in October. Immigration and crime may need dominated the national discussion but these races reminded us how much local issues — especially economic ones — still matter to voters.
😓 LOSER
Crypto politicians
Recent York Mayor Eric Adams has taken a shower on his gambit to take his first three paychecks in crypto. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who called his city the “capital of crypto,” is presiding over the capital of the crash. Blake Masters promoted crypto during his doomed run for Arizona Senate, while Andrew Yang desires to make his dead-on-arrival Forward Party “the crypto party.” Within the wake of the FTX crash that lost an estimated $8 billion of its customers’ assets, Congress is finally seriously talking about regulation within the sector. Because the industry falters, so do the politicians who’re its leading evangelists.
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🎉 WINNER
Gen Z
A generation of voters 25-and-under left their mark on 2022. Midterm exit polls suggest that Gen-Z was the one generation to overwhelmingly support Democrats within the midterms, and so they managed to prove in numbers large enough that they staved off a red wave and made the difference for Democrats in close Senate races in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Nevada. Gen-Z can also be sending certainly one of its own to Congress for the primary time, in Maxwell Frost, the political neophyte from Florida who was still driving for Uber during his campaign to make ends meet. The youngest voting generation now has some political might throughout the Democratic Party. We’ll see what they will do with it.
😓 LOSER
Gerontocrats
After a long time in power and a rash of unflattering coverage in regards to the age of America’s political leaders, some of them are being shown the door. The triumvirate of House Democratic leadership in Reps. Nancy Pelosi (82), Steny Hoyer (83) and Jim Clyburn (82) are all stepping aside for brisker faces. And the jockeying is already starting to exchange Sen. Dianne Feinstein (89), who has faced multiple news reports about her deteriorating cognitive abilities, when her term is up. On the Republican side, their most famous gerontocrat, Donald Trump (76), looks weakened after poor midterm results, but Sen. Chuck Grassley (89) just won one other term and can change into the Senate’s longest-serving member after the retirement of Patrick Leahy (82) at the top of the yr. The large remaining query: Will the gerontocrat within the White House (80) seek one other term himself?
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2024 Governors
Historically, governors have been more successful at winning presidential nominations than other elected officials, but since 2004, no governor has made it out of the first in a presidential election. Now, after a deadly pandemic revealed the importance of state-level management, governors are back. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is the one potential 2024 candidate getting near Donald Trump in polls. A handful of Democratic governors fared well within the midterms, too. Gavin Newsom of California beat back a recall attempt in 2021 and won reelection in 2022 with 59.2 percent of the vote. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer won by double digits in a swing state. Gov. Jared Polis won by almost 20 points in Colorado. If President Joe Biden chooses to not run (a giant if, needless to say), 2024 may very well be the yr that two governors emerge from the primaries, with certainly one of them ultimately landing within the White House.
😓 LOSER
Blue-city Mayors
After surges in population and tax revenues that seemed unstoppable throughout the early 2000s and 2010s, cities are faltering as the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic reshape the country. Distant work has driven down business real estate values and tax bases. Homelessness, crime and — yes — rats have surged. Mayors, especially within the deep-blue megalopolises on the coasts, are struggling. By June, Recent York Mayor Eric Adams saw his approval rating slide to 29 percent. In October, San Francisco Mayor London Breed had an approval rating of 36 percent. The issues in cities don’t appear to be abating. In December, recent Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, in her inaugural speech, announced her first priority could be to declare a state of emergency to tackle homelessness.
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Ranked-choice voting
Once derided as too weird to realize wide acceptance, RCV’s much-touted ability to tamp down partisanship and reward centrists got a lift in Alaska when it helped knock out former Republican Gov. Sarah Palin within the House race and kept Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski in office. Notably, Murkowski was certainly one of the one Republicans who supported Donald Trump’s impeachment to survive the first and general election cycle. Alaska is certainly one of two states (the opposite is Maine) that use RCV. Twenty-five states have RCV laws into account. Throw a bunch of open primary states into the discussion and a definite trend emerges that shows voters are in search of ways out of the two-party primary trap that so often incentivizes extremists.
😓 LOSER
Culture War Ads
The Stephen Miller-run group America First Legal pumped tens of thousands and thousands of dollars into anti-transgender ad campaigns throughout the midterms. “The Biden administration is pushing radical gender experiments on children,” the narrator says in a single radio spot. “Tell Joe Biden and left-wing leaders across America, ‘Hands off our children.’” Voters’ response was a convincing “Hands off our elections.” In Michigan, certainly one of the states that endured essentially the most relentless ad barrage, Democrats won the governor’s race, the attorney general’s race and flipped — albeit narrowly — the state Legislature for the primary time in a long time. One in every of those state legislators is Mallory McMorrow, who vaulted to national attention when she fought back against allegations that she was “grooming and sexualizing children” with a viral speech from the state Senate floor.
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Mediators
In a political world dominated by dug-in, bomb-throwing extremists, the center ground is commonly the least advantageous place to be. However the midterms, with their surprisingly close victory for the GOP within the House, have suddenly placed a dwindling variety of centrists in an unexpectedly influential position. The perennially mocked Problem Solvers Caucus, made up of several dozen Democrats and Republicans, is about to play a job its members have long craved: go-to negotiators in a Congress where any piece of essential laws would require some level of bipartisan support for passage.
😓 LOSER
Conspiracists
2022 was a really rotten yr for individuals with a conspiratorial bent. It got so miserable toward the top it almost seemed as if the world was out to get them. A fast summary of the annus horribilis for the paranoiac crowd: The Jan. 6 committee showcased some riveting examples of 2020 election deniers behaving badly. Leaders of the Oath Keepers militia are headed to prison for seditious conspiracy for showing up on the Capitol armed to the teeth. Distinguished and unabashed antisemites were shunned by the general public (Ye, formerly referred to as Kanye West) and politicians who spread antisemitic tropes on the campaign trail (Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano) were trounced on the polls.
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Book bans
In 2022, conservative candidates and fogeys’ rights organizations equivalent to Mothers for Liberty drove a surge in book bans in public libraries and faculty districts. Based on a report from PEN America, within the yr ending in June 2022 there had been “2,532 instances of individual books being banned, affecting 1,648 unique titles” — some 40 percent of them books that address LGBTQ issues. The American Library Association recorded some 1,600 attempts to ban books in the primary six months of 2022, exceeding the entire for the entire of the preceding yr (1,597), which was also the best number because the group began recording that number greater than 20 years ago. The quantity notwithstanding, it was unclear whether the book bans were a part of a winning political playbook. While Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had aligned themselves with the parents’ rights movement, coasted to reelection, gubernatorial candidates who had supported it lost elections in less red states equivalent to Michigan, Wisconsin, Kansas and Maine.
😓 LOSER
Abortion bans
In the summertime, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, it was tough to argue that abortion rights were winning in 2022. But what got here next showed that nearly all of Americans are only not in favor of full or final abortion bans — even in red states. Soon after abortion rights were kicked back to the states in June, Kansas held a referendum on whether to amend the state structure to make clear that it doesn’t protect the fitting to abortion, thus allowing the Legislature to limit it. The measure failed overwhelmingly. Later, within the midterms, five states voted to guard abortion rights, including within the red or swing states of Kentucky, Michigan and Montana.
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The Old Right
The Republican establishment is back. OK, probably not, but it surely was the Old Right — the GOP’s few remaining moderates and the conservatives who bucked Donald Trump — that largely did best within the midterms. Mike Lawler stunned the House Democrats’ campaign chief in suburban Recent York after distancing himself from the Jan. 6 rebel. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp coasted to victory after he resisted Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election results. And GOP Rep. David Valadao fended off a primary challenge after voting to question Trump after which narrowly held on to his Biden-won California district in November. These figures will not be the dominant force within the Republican Party by any means, but they showed another path to Trumpism was still viable.
😓 LOSER
The Recent Right
In our not-quite-post-Trump era, the longer term of the Republican Party is up for grabs, and one faction specifically has gave the impression to be on the rise: The Recent Right. Skeptical of intervention in Ukraine and disdainful of cultural elites and Big Tech, it’s a populist-nationalist ideology that’s Trumpian in lots of respects, but whose biggest patron is Peter Thiel. The Silicon Valley billionaire spent tens of thousands and thousands of dollars within the midterms to raise his chosen candidates, only to come back up short in key contests. Sure, he helped J.D. Vance win a Senate seat in Ohio, however the far-right congressional hopeful Joe Kent went down in an upset, and worst of all was the defeat of Thiel protégé Blake Masters within the Arizona Senate race. Thiel was reportedly crushed by Masters’ loss and is pulling back from campaigns, at the least for now. The Recent Right surely isn’t going away, but it surely’s definitely limping.
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🎉 WINNER
Unions
Big Labor has the Big Mo. Union membership has been declining for a long time, but labor organizers at the moment are securing toeholds in a few of crucial, and most union-resistant, firms within the country — Amazon, Starbucks, Apple and more. Unions can even boast more public support, a 71 percent approval rating, than they’ve since 1965. One in every of the most important boosters is a White House occupant who vows to be “essentially the most pro-union president” in history. That didn’t stop Joe Biden from forcing rail staff to comply with a contract without the paid sick leave they wanted. The employees’ paradise remains to be a piece in progress, but amid tight labor markets, high inflation and the lingering effects of the pandemic, staff have more leverage than ever and took just a few steps forward in 2022.
😓 LOSER
Billionaires
If you have got (or claim to have) at the least a 10-digit checking account, chances are high that 2022 was not your favorite yr. And mostly it was your personal rattling fault. Elon Musk lost his title as world’s richest person after the worth of Tesla stock plummeted — stemming partially from his erratic, embarrassing reign over Twitter. Fellow tech titan Mark Zuckerberg is struggling to show his dreams of a Metaverse right into a reality and needed to lay off a whopping 11,000 employees amid declining revenue. Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced wunderkind cryptocurrency trader, was indicted for fraud, money laundering and campaign finance violations. And Donald Trump saw his own namesake business, the Trump Organization, get convicted on charges of criminal tax fraud, with more legal problems on the horizon. And that’s not even stepping into Trump’s floundering presidential bid.
