November 14, 2018
Page 13
O PINION
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Midterm Takeaway: We Need More Democracy
Vote backstopped
by suppression,
gerrymandering
p eter C erto
I can’t be the only
one who spent the night
of the midterms tossing
and turning. Though I
managed to shut off the
coverage and try to sleep,
spasms of anxiety woke
me repeatedly throughout the dreary hours.
Ultimately, Republicans picked off sev-
eral red-state Senate seats while Democrats
won back the House and at least seven gov-
ernships.
A Democratic House will serve as a bad-
ly needed check after two years of aggres-
sive Republican monopoly, but I can’t help
feeling uneasy. For one thing, I can’t shake
the last days of the campaign.
For a while, Republicans “merely” lied
about their policy agenda.
Rather than campaigning on the $2 tril-
lion tax cut for rich people they actually
passed, they promised a middle class tax
cut they never even had a bill for. And after
spending all last year trying to throw 20 to
30 million Americans off their health care,
they (unbelievably!) promised to defend
Americans’ pre-existing condition coverage
— even as they actively sought to under-
mine it.
But the lies took a much darker turn as
the White House took hold of the narrative.
by
Led by the president, GOP propagandists
turned a few thousand refugees — over a
thousand miles away in southern Mexico —
into an “invading army.” The White House
put out an ad about it so shockingly racist
and false that even Fox News stopped air-
ing it.
Unashamed, President Trump kept re-
peating the obvious lie that the homeless
refugees were funded by Jewish philan-
thropist George Soros — even after a refu-
gee-hating extremist murdered 11 Jews at a
Pittsburgh synagogue.
Such vile hatred may have been key to
red-state Republican gains in the Senate.
But where that wasn’t enough, it was back-
stopped by voter suppression and gerry-
mandering.
Suppression may have helped the GOP
governor candidates fend off strong chal-
lenges in Florida and especially Georgia,
where tens of thousands of voters were
scrubbed from the rolls and lines in Dem-
ocratic precincts ran up to five hours long.
And thanks to gerrymandering, it took
an extraordinary effort for Democrats to
win even a slim House majority. They’re
up only a few seats despite decisively win-
ning the popular vote by at least 9 points.
Had it been “only” a 4 or 5 point win, Vox’s
Matthew Yglesias estimates, the GOP might
have retained its majority.
Also worth noting: Democratic Senate
candidates actually racked up over 10 mil-
lion more votes than Republicans, even as
Republicans picked up Senate seats on a
GOP-tilting map,
To me these results show that Republi-
cans can’t win with their actual policy agen-
da — not even in many red states, judging
by some ballot initiative results.
For instance, red-state voters in Mis-
souri and Arkansas raised their minimum
wages against the wishes of state Repub-
licans. Missouri also legalized medicinal
marijuana, along with deeply conservative
Utah, and purple-state Michigan voters
brought legal recreational marijuana to the
Midwest.
Along with Utah, ruby red Idaho and
Nebraska expanded Medicaid under
Obamacare, a big win for health care.
These progressive policies are far more
popular than their right-wing alternatives.
So Republicans rely on a potent combina-
tion of lies, fear-mongering, and rule-rig-
ging to win.
If Democrats ever hope to really come in
from the wilderness, they need to support a
host of radical pro-democracy reforms.
In that they can take inspiration from a
stunning movement in Florida, where vot-
ers re-enfranchised over 1 million of their
neighbors with felony convictions. And
from Michigan, Colorado, Utah, and Mis-
souri, which all passed initiatives to support
citizen-led redistricting. And from Mary-
land, Michigan, and Nevada, which all
made voter registration easier.
Uneasiness is part and parcel of drawing
breath in 2018. But if I sleep a little better
tonight, it’ll be thanks to movements like
those.
Peter Certo is the editorial manager of
the Institute for Policy Studies and the edi-
tor of OtherWords.org.
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