Ashley Landis/AP Photo/
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi holds a press conference about the expanded Child Tax Credit, July 15, 2021, in Los Angeles.
It’s only the midpoint of 2021, but the outlines of both parties’ 2022 campaigns are already clear. Consequently, it’s also clear that the two parties’ electoral pitches will deal with entirely separate universes.
The Democrats will campaign on the real benefits they’ve delivered to the American public, more particularly the American working class (assuming, of course, that Sens. Manchin, Sinema, and their ilk don’t deep-six the entire Democratic program). Those benefits will include their largely successful effort to diminish the pandemic, their funding for infrastructure, the establishment of an expanded Child Tax Credit and affordable child care, universal pre-K, tuition-free community college, paid family and medical leave; the expansion of Medicare to include dental, vision, and hearing care; more affordable housing; and numerous advances in clean energy. It will also include some of the executive orders that Joe Biden issued last Friday, including a ban on the noncompete agreements currently imposed on tens of millions of workers, and a “right to repair” rule that will enable Americans or their mechanics to fix their own cars or tractors instead of having to take them back to the manufacturer whose proprietary software has blocked anyone else’s attempts to fix the damn things.
All to be funded by Medicare savings derived from negotiating down drug prices, by higher taxes on the wealthiest one percent, and higher taxes on corporations.
In short, a lot of very real and very helpful stuff. As Biden himself once observed, “a big fucking deal.”
And there’s not much here that Republicans can profitably attack. Should they try to persuade farmers that they shouldn’t have the option of repairing their own equipment? Parents that they don’t need the Child Tax Credit? Seniors that they’re better off if they have to purchase supplemental health insurance to cover their teeth, eyes, and ears—or even better off if they simply go without tooth, eye, and ear care because they can’t afford it?
I think not.
Instead, Republicans will run on culture war issues, attacking critical race theory, defunding the police, the influx of immigrants, the threat posed by minorities voting (which will be dog-whistled under the heading of voter fraud)—in short, the threat that Democrats presumably pose to white people. Which, they have to hope, will persuade a sufficient number of those white people to disregard the Medicare expansions, Child Tax Credit, and other actual benefits with which Democrats, and Democrats alone, have provided them.
So Democrats will run against Republicans because they opposed all those benefits. And Republicans will run against Democrats for supporting all those culture war threats, a number of which, like defunding the police, the vast majority of Democrats don’t actually support.
At least the two parties’ ground games will be centered on the same question: who will vote. Republicans will mount a mass voter suppression campaign, particularly in states where they’ve been able to pass voter suppression laws, while Democrats will mount a mass voter turnout campaign. On this issue alone, they’ll directly engage.
