Kristopher Radder/The Brattleboro Reformer via AP
Jeremy Honeycutt, of Hinsdale, New Hampshire, exits the voting booth after filling out his ballot at the Hinsdale polling station during the state’s primary, Tuesday, September 13, 2022.
With the resolution of Tuesday’s primaries in New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Delaware, the 2022 primary season has ended and the contours of the general-election stakes are set. Congressional Democrats currently appear in better political shape than they have at any time this year.
If Democrats manage to defy political gravity in 2022 by expanding their Senate majority and keeping their narrow hold on the House, it will be because a handful of progressive candidates won key races in a variety of battleground states and districts. And it will be a vindication of President Biden’s decision to move left post-primary in 2020 in order to unify his party, a move that Democratic leaders have now replicated down-ballot.
While there were several high-profile losses for left-leaning candidates, the overall policy profile of the eventual nominees is remarkably similar, and it reflects a populist viewpoint. Candidates across the political spectrum are campaigning on aggressively defending abortion rights and a host of populist measures to bring down costs, such as Medicare expansion, a public option, and cracking down on oil companies for price-gouging consumers. In Rhode Island’s Second District, for example, while David Segal lost his primary to state treasurer Seth Magaziner, by the end of the race, Magaziner and all of the other candidates were sounding extremely Segal-like in wanting to take on corporate monopolies and other special interests.
Progressive Democrats have largely stood by Biden, and candidates who obstructed Biden’s agenda—or who appeared poised to try—struggled throughout. Meanwhile, centrist Democrats appear to have, for the most part, gotten the message that Republicans are the ones they should be accusing of extremism for the time being. Messaging from candidates who have previously been eager to bash the left, like Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), is now firmly directed at their opponents’ radical positions on issues like abortion.
But despite the present unity, the 2022 Democratic primary season will prove highly consequential in progressives’ long-run fight to push the party to the left, especially if they manage to hold the House. The national party’s continued policy shift means Democratic voters have high expectations of any potential Democratic government, no matter how slim the majority. As happened in 2021, those expectations are likely to run aground in the gap between which policies the party’s moderate and conservative nominees say they support on the campaign trail, and which policies they will actually vote for.
That tension is sure to be exacerbated by the other key development of the cycle: the entrance of heavyweight outside spenders backed by pro-Israel and cryptocurrency interests. These interests have proved willing to turn virtually all competitive contests featuring progressive candidates into multimillion-dollar affairs—a dynamic that does not appear to be going anywhere anytime soon.
The emergence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, as the largest outside spender in Democratic primary politics is especially alarming. Their ordained super PAC, United Democracy Project, and their network of allied PACs, such as DMFI PAC and Mainstream Democrats PAC, spent tens of millions of dollars on ads attacking Democratic candidates this cycle. Some of those candidates who nevertheless won their primaries, like Jamie McLeod-Skinner and Michelle Vallejo, must hold on to key Democratic-held swing seats if Democrats are to keep their majority.
Despite the present unity, the 2022 Democratic primary season will prove highly consequential in progressives’ long-run fight to push the party to the left.
AIPAC representative Marshall Wittmann told the Prospect that the lobby may make independent expenditures in the general election. “We are continuing to review races and will engage where we see a clear opportunity to support pro-Israel candidates and defeat detractors of the U.S.-Israel relationship,” Wittmann said. Given the Republican Party’s mostly uniform support for Israel’s right-wing regime, the “detractors” Wittmann mentions are almost certain to be Democrats.
The other new entrant, the crypto-aligned and allegedly pandemic prevention–focused Protect Our Future PAC, has suspended its operations after spending tens of millions of dollars across a variety of races.
The PAC, which is funded by cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, has attempted to distance itself from other anti-progressive efforts this cycle. But AIPAC and its affiliates rarely spent money in the same races as Protect Our Future PAC when the two organizations supported opposing candidates, and the PAC’s recent announcement that it plans to suspend independent expenditures following the Democratic primary season gives away the game—if pandemic preparedness is truly the issue at stake, then electing a Democratic Congress of any ideological makeup would be the first priority.
The relationship between national Democratic campaign leaders and the leaders of AIPAC and Protect Our Future PAC has been a subject of intrigue. House leaders appear to have coordinated with Protect Our Future PAC in Oregon’s Sixth District, where failed candidate Carrick Flynn benefited from over $10 million in support from Bankman-Fried, as well as money from leadership-aligned PACs that had taken large donations from Bankman-Fried. (Flynn ultimately lost the Democratic nomination for this swing district to progressive state representative Andrea Salinas.)
Overall, national Democratic leaders took a more hands-off approach to nominating contests than they have in some recent cycles. They resisted calls to push back against the conservative interests spending in Democratic primaries. But while Biden and/or House leadership supported Flynn and some conservative incumbents—including anti-choice Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar and ousted Oregon Rep. Kurt Schrader—they largely stayed out of open primaries. In a rare instance where House leadership did weigh in, it was to support former Rep. Donna Edwards in an attempted return to Congress that was ultimately thwarted by AIPAC.
This hands-off approach allowed big-money outside groups to play the antagonistic role that the DCCC has performed against progressive candidates in recent cycles. On the Senate side, the national party actively worked to clear the field for progressive front-runners in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Progressive candidates, in return, have modulated their rhetoric about President Biden and the rest of party leadership. Whereas moderate candidates have taken shots at Biden’s potential re-election in 2024, progressives have largely defended the president. This dynamic was on full display in Minnesota, where swing-seat Democrats Angie Craig and Dean Phillips both suggested Biden forgo re-election, as opposed to progressive stalwart Ilhan Omar, who dismissed criticism of Biden as “unhelpful” during her surprisingly competitive re-election battle.
This relative lack of open warfare between the progressive and moderate wings is what has left Democrats surprisingly unified heading into the general election in eight weeks. But that unity raises questions about whether Biden’s strategy of defusing criticism from progressive activists by granting them increased levels of influence and access has been replicated in the party’s nominating contests.
It also remains to be seen whether national party organizations like the DCCC leave some of the more progressive candidates running in swing seats out in the cold, as they famously did with Kara Eastman in Nebraska’s Second District in 2018. (The DCCC reversed course and supported Eastman in 2020.)
At the moment, though, it seems unlikely the DCCC will give progressive nominees the cold shoulder. A slew of seats in Oregon, Pennsylvania, and even Texas that are essential to a potential Democratic majority in the House are being contested by progressives. And Democratic donors have already shown they are all in for Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin and John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, whose wins are necessary for the expanded Senate majority that would allow Democrats to follow through on the party’s promises on abortion, voting rights, and consumer costs.
Republicans, meanwhile, are as fractured as ever, as evidenced by ongoing disputes about spending in key Senate races like Arizona. That fracture was on full display in New Hampshire Tuesday, where MAGA Republicans won bitterly contested primaries for a United States Senate seat and two seats in the House of Representatives. Dan Bolduc, the Republicans’ nominee against incumbent senator and former governor Maggie Hassan, overcame millions of dollars in spending directly tied to national Republican leadership. He joins a slate of flawed GOP candidates across most of the competitive Senate seats.
Should Democrats’ unified front break the midterm curse and enable them to maintain control of both chambers of Congress—a once unthinkable outcome that forecasts suggest should now be taken seriously—the simmering tensions lying just beneath the surface will no doubt re-emerge. Because moderates have made no moves to distance themselves from the progressive priorities the party is once again campaigning on, it is likely that a Democratic Congress in 2023 would be poised to wage another large intra-caucus battle over social-spending priorities left out of the Inflation Reduction Act, like child and elder care, housing, and universal health care.
