Del Beccaro: GOP Lost 2022 Midterms Narrative Costing Them Dearly
What issues were the 2022 midterm elections about?
Were they about inflation? Crime? Abortion? Climate Change? A referendum on Biden? Trump? The open border? Abortion? Republicans being a threat to democracy?
Or, all of the above?
The polling throughout the year, and especially down the home-stretch, indicated that those were some of the issues impacting voters’ opinions.
Paradoxically, however, elections are often decided by what did not happen during an election cycle. The 2022 midterms provided another example of just that.
In our system of elections, there are presidential election years and midterm election years.
They usually unfold quite differently. 2022 was no exception.
During presidential election years, almost uniformly, presidential candidates become the nominee by promising to do things once they are elected. Indeed, it’s very hard to win the nomination, let alone attain the presidency, by doing otherwise.
Biden made promises on COVID-19, opening schools, the Keystone XL pipeline, rolling back corporate taxes reductions, and more.
Trump promised to have Keystone approved, undo Barack Obama’s executive orders, save the coal industry, grow the economy — along with a host of other promises.
