The states may have saved democracy

Right now, the dominant narrative about the midterms is what a relief they were for the Democrats. Weeks of warnings from conservative and “neutral” media about a coming “red tsunami” gave way to an evening of sheer delight on liberal Twitter and MSNBC. But once the smoke clears, it is still probable that those of us who were rooting for progress and rights won’t like what we see: most likely a Republican-controlled House, with a caucus dominated by deniers of the 2020 election; and, at best, a 51-49 Senate once again hostage to the whims of “Coal Joe” Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. (If Adam Laxalt and Herschel Walker pull out victories in Nevada and Georgia, respectively, the GOP will simply take control of the Senate, and bye-bye Supreme Court and cabinet confirmations for the next two years.)

I’m sorry to rain on anyone’s parade, but that’s where things stand. Everyone who worked for this result deserves a lot of credit and appreciation; things could have indeed been so much worse. But that will be little comfort for the next two years if, as it appears, legislating once again grinds to a halt; voting rights, reproductive rights, and climate change fall off the agenda; and the news cycle gets mired in constant threats of government shutdowns and congressional hearings about Hunter Biden’s underpants.

So why am I feeling provisionally okay about how things have gone this week? Thanks to some largely below-the-radar victories in the most retrograde of U.S. political structures: the states.

For the last 12 years, state governments became playthings of the Republican Party. In a state like, say, North Carolina, a single retail magnate could effectively buy a legislative majority at clearance prices, then sit back as it rolled back voting rights, ensured permanent majorities for itself, and helped gerrymander the national party to control of Congress. Perhaps the most extreme example is Wisconsin, where this week Democrat Tony Evers won the governor’s race by 3.5 points. And yet Republicans got themselves a supermajority in the state senate and are just shy of one in the lower chamber, thanks to rigged maps they adopted last year, as Mother Jones’ Ari Berman reported.

The threat is poised to become even greater next year, when the ever-more reactionary Supreme Court is expected to rule on a landmark case called Moore v. Harper. Superficially a case about gerrymandering (in North Carolina, in fact), it is expected to become an official approval of the so-called independent state legislature theory — a skeleton key that would allow any state legislature to throw out its citizens’ votes for president and spontaneously award all of that state’s electoral votes to the candidate of its choice. In other words, it would make Donald Trump’s primary method of carrying out his coup d’état in 2020 the law of the land in 2024. (Will the nakedly partisan Supreme Court learn from the electoral backlash to their unprecedented revocation of a constitutional right in Dobbs? Not if they can just effectively cancel elections.)

That made the Democratic gains in state legislatures crucial this year. And they seem to have delivered. The Democrats held on to every state legislative majority for which ballots have been counted so far. The one outstanding is Nevada; if Democrats can hold on in Carson City, 2022 will be the first midterm in which the party in power hasn’t given up a statehouse chamber since the big New Deal election of 1934, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee said. In Michigan, Democrats flipped both the house and senate, giving newly re-elected governor Gretchen Whitmer a trifecta. They made a trifecta in Minnesota, which has also threatened to become a swing state, by flipping the senate. They kept Republicans from securing a supermajority in Wisconsin’s lower house. And in Pennsylvania, they need just one more seat to flip the lower chamber, with two deadlocked races in the Philly suburbs outstanding.

In addition to Nevada, results from Arizona are still pending. Axios reports: “If Arizona flips, the number of Electoral College votes under full Republican control would decline from 307 to less than the required 270 for a presidential election.”

The Democrats also won key victories in races for secretary of state — whose job overseeing elections in most states made them a key pressure point that the most authoritarian of the Republicans were hoping to exploit. A Democrat won in the swing states of Colorado, New Mexico, Minnesota, and Michigan. Georgia’s secretary of state remains Brad Raffensperger, who refused to cave to Trump’s demands to help him to steal the election there. Pennsylvania’s secretary of the commonwealth is appointed by the governor, which will now be Democrat Josh Shapiro (and not, crucially, January Sixer Doug Mastriano). Democrats are also currently leading the America First secretary of state candidates in Arizona and Nevada, though those races are yet to be called.

Avoiding a guaranteed catastrophe in the next election is not the same as winning it, of course. And neither is the same as using available political power to help people now. If the GOP is able to keep President Biden from accomplishing anything else for the next two years, millions will suffer, and the odds get longer against convincing enough people not to give fascism a go, especially in light of a feared economic downturn and continuing reactionary push against democracy.

But instead of falling into factional bickering between liberals and the left about who fumbled away Congress, this election provides an opening for a much-needed popular front, to do everything that can be done in the time afforded and block MAGA forces from taking back power in two years. The progressive John Fetterman is headed to the U.S. Senate. The liberal Gretchen Whitmer is overseeing a trifecta in Michigan. (Legislators there have promised to, among other things, codify protections for abortion and repeal Michigan’s anti-labor “right to work” laws, which have long been a blight on a historical union stronghold.)

It’s going to be hell of a battle at a national level, especially if the Republicans do end up with one or both houses of Congress. But anger over lost reproductive rights, demand for help from our government, and a desire to protect democracy all played a role in driving a surprisingly young and energized electorate to the polls. There’s energy there, and now, thankfully, an opening, for anyone who wants to use it.