Democratic prospects post-Trump: honestly pretty A’ight
By: Sergio Prado
Tags: Democratic Party, Politics, Joe Biden, Democracy, Donald Trump

As we recover from the Election Week Hangover™, it’s becoming clear that we have a lot of questions in front of us.

Yes, Biden/Harris achieved a big victory: The Blue Wall was rebuilt with solid margins, and the Democratic electoral map probably expanded to include two Republican states (Arizona and Georgia). The popular vote margin will be ~5%, the second-largest since 2000.

All of this was done while running against an incumbent president with high job approval ratings on the economy and a determination to ratfuck the electoral process to death with outright destruction of the USPS, rampant misinformation, endless voter suppression, and every lesson in the authoritarian playbook.

We stopped authoritarianism. Democracy won. That doesn’t always happen. This is big. But in a country that didn’t utterly shut down this administration that could have prevented at least 130,000 covid deaths and happily caged children: how do we stop this from happening again?

Let’s talk about the Senate

Democrats may not win the Senate in 2020. The Georgia Runoffs (and, outside shot, Alaska) could win the senate for the Dems, but it’s far from guaranteed. The party line from many pundits is that midterms always go poorly for the President’s party, so we wouldn’t be able to take the Senate in 2022.

Except: the previous rules of turnout don’t actually seem to apply as much in the Trump Era. 2018 was way bigger for Dems than many people expected because “Democrats don’t turn out in the midterms”, and 2020 was the largest turnout election in 120 years. Special elections “historically” go poorly for Democrats, but we did much better than expected 2016–2020. They won a senate race in freaking Alabama.

The Midterm Slump appears to happen part because the President’s party gets complacent. Except the 2020 election has Democrats pissed that they didn’t win bigger, and the Republicans are not doing great.

Typically a defeated party can turn it around in 2 years, but when you: 1) build your entire party around a single person, 2) that person builds their entire identity around “strength”, 3) that person loses big, and 4) looks pretty pathetic in the loss…you’re gonna have a bad time.

In the Trump era, Trump’s base turns out when Trump is on the ballot, and the Dems’ base turns out every time. For all the Dada-esque moronic ramblings of Donald Trump, he has a charisma that can’t be easily replicated; his base can’t be easily coopted by another. Just ask his son. Or *holds back vomit* Ted Cruz.

We had our once-in-a-generation charismatic leader with Obama and are still searching for his successor 4 years later. Not to mention the simple math that 2022 has nearly 2x as many Republican-held senate seats as Democratic seats. And Republicans clearly don’t have the same disdain for Biden as they did for Obama. A Democratic gain in 2022 is actually doable.

Now we have a much better idea of how bad things have gotten and can actually organize around it

Yeah. Kids in cages isn’t a dealbreaker for a lot of Americans. Things are worse than some people thought. Except now they do know. And we can work with that. We can win in the Georgia runoffs, and we can win in the 2022 midterms — as long as we start working and organizing now. Stacey Abrams, Black Lives Matter, and countless organizations proved that this work matters and can actually make the difference in elections. We can do it again.

If you want to get involved in the Georgia Runoffs (happening January 5th):

Phonebank. Phone calls are the most critical way to motivate voters and make sure everyone has a plan to vote. The voter registration deadline is December 7th, so early phone calls can make a big difference. Donate. It sucks that so much money has to be involved in our elections, but the campaigns need money right now to spin up their GOTV efforts. They are already making decisions based on how much money they have on-hand early on, so if you’re going to donate, do it now.

Let’s do this.