2022 Midterm Postmortem and Outlook for the 118th Congress

What went wrong, what went right, and how can congressional Republicans tee up a 2024 victory up and down ballot

Late on November 8, when the much-anticipated red wave failed to materialize, people began pointing fingers. Political prognosticators, pundits and politicians alike, raised any number of excuses to explain the moribund results. None of them matter to any significant degree. For example, it is hard to argue candidate quality matters too much when Pennsylvania elected a literal sack of meat who cannot answer questions, cannot speak coherently, and who is definitionally unfit to serve given he will not be unable to fully participate in Senate hearings. But the fact of the matter is that Republicans have only ourselves to blame. We made two key errors. First, the sum total of the Republican argument for why Americans should vote for them was “we are not Democrats.” Second, Republicans didn’t play the same electioneering game Democrats did. Republicans need to figure out what they stand for, how the 118th Congress can help materialize that platform, and begin playing the same electioneering games Democrats do.

What Did Republicans Stand For in 2022?

For all their many flaws, Americans knew what it would mean to check a box by the name of the Democrat in their state in 2022. The same cannot be said of the Republican. The nature of divided government means much of the agenda on which the opposition party campaigns will never be enacted. Nevertheless, Democrats had a strong positive message chock full of policies and proactively made their case to Americans in 2018. Democrats ran on universal Medicare, reversing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, implementing new-age energy sources, and more. The closest 2022 Republicans came to making an argument about an agenda was to be a speed bump for the Biden Administration. Americans are an inherently optimistic people. They don’t want to vote to stop something, they want to vote for something.

So what were they voting for when they voted for Republicans in 2022? To stop spending and address inflation, to secure the border, and to address crime. But after 4 years of profligate spending under President Trump, and the trillions upon trillions of excess COVID spending, the argument the GOP is the party of fiscal responsibility is implausible at best. Similarly, while the GOP has paid significant lip service to address crime, the GOP led in the First Step Act, and crime is largely a local issue outside the purview of Congress, anyway. That leaves the border and immigration as the sole plausible argument for why Americans should’ve voted Republican, not Democrat. It’s not nothing, but it clearly wasn’t enough. Where were the arguments about how Republicans would stop the Biden Administration from using COVID funds for wokeness in schools? The most notable thing Republicans argued they would actually do to roll back the Biden agenda would be to repeal the funding for 87,000 IRS agents. Lowering the likelihood of potentially maybe getting an audit at some point is not the most compelling argument.

So What Can the 118th Congress Do?

With gavels in hand, House Republicans can begin to tee up 2024. Oversight will obviously be a big part of the next two years, but it must be forward-looking oversight designed to draw a contrast between Republicans and the Biden Administration. As the old adage goes, there’s no sense crying over spilled milk. For example, did the Biden Administration botch the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan? Absolutely. Should the House Foreign Affairs Committee spend all of its time telling and re-telling a story Americans already know? No. The House Republicans cannot let its legislative prerogative wither on the vine, either. Nancy Pelosi’s House did a great job of passing Dead-On-Arrival messaging bills to try and force Mitch McConnell’s hand. Passing bills must be a major part of the House in the 118th Congress.

Even from the minority, Senate Republicans have a role, too. For decades, Senators have delegated their power to party leadership. There is perhaps no more atrophied power in Washington, D.C. than that of the U.S. Senator. But even if they don’t use it each Senator still has it within his or her power to force the entire body to vote on anything he or she wants. It is incumbent upon Republican Senators to, as is practicable, put vulnerable Democratic Senators on record early and often in the 118th Congress.

What the House Republicans should not do is to re-litigate 2020. We are at risk of navel-gazing. Getting too far into the din of politics inside the beltway and focusing on issues that do not impact the day-to-day lives of Americans (and no, “if they can do it to Trump they can do it to you” is not persuasive).

Time to Begin Electioneering

This is a policy blog, not a politics blog, but even comparatively naive observers of elections can tell Democrats have built themselves an institutional advantage. With ballot harvesting, vote-by-mail, and early voting, Republicans go into Election Day with mountains to climb. Whereas Republicans try to get out the vote on one day, Democrats spend however much time state laws give them to collect early and mail-in votes from the least motivated voters. Even in high turnout elections, the average turnout is only roughly 50 percent of Americans. But Democrats make it easy for their low-energy voters to fill out a ballot three weeks prior to Election Day and then forget about it. Republicans make their low-energy voters show up on Election Day. Which one is more likely to follow through and vote?

In sum, there are two lessons Republicans need to learn from the 2022 midterm elections. First, no matter how terrible Democrats are at governing, we must still articulate a forward-looking agenda that Americans believe we will at least try to implement. Second, until we beat Democrats at their own electioneering game, the electoral outcomes won’t get better. Elections are no longer about policy ideas or persuasion. They’re about electioneering. Congress has a role to play in the former in advance of 2024, not so much the latter. One hopes congressional Republicans will step up to the challenge and help set the agenda for 2024, unlike their substandard assistance in 2022.