Joe Biden will be the next President of the United States. Although this is likely not news to anyone, it still bears repeating. Further, despite the presidential victory, the Democratic Party saw disappointing results in both state and local elections. As a result, Democrats look unlikely to seize a Senate majority, and have even lost some of their House seats.
These losses are shocking to Democrats, who were confident about their chances of winning, especially once the pandemic started. Democratic Senatorial candidates Cal Cunningham (NC), Sara Gideon (ME), and Doug Jones (AL), all officially lost races that they were favored to win. It is worth mentioning that Jones was only favored to win in two polls, but Cunningham and Gideon were portrayed as likely winners.
Further, in Georgia, there are still uncalled Senate races. Senatorial candidates Jon Ossoff (Democratic) and Raphael Warnock (Democratic) will go into runoffs against David Perdue (Republican) and Kelly Loeffler (Republican), respectively. With those elections expected to lean towards the incumbent Republicans Perdue and Loeffler, the Democrats will likely be unable to flip the Senate. With such disappointing election results, the Democrats should wonder: what caused these results?
As I mentioned previously, Democrats lost seats in the House: specifically, many moderate candidates lost their seats in close races. Although it’s impossible to make a blanket claim that moderates are unpopular in today’s climate, the loss of many moderate candidates shows a clear failure of moderates to unite the left and win over voters from the right.
One of the most obvious takeaways from these election results is that split ticket voting, the practice of voting for candidates from different parties on the ballot, is not working. In states that Republicans won, a fervently Republican supporter base was able to usher their victories. This means that Democratic candidates couldn’t match the vast Republican turnout with their own supporter base or turn enough moderate Republicans to win. However, this illustrates that the Democrats must play a careful balancing act; they must seek to inspire their own supporters while still attempting to draw out moderates.
Biden’s victory, perhaps, is illustrative of his ability to appeal to a variety of voters. Biden drew over moderate Republicans and solidified the Democratic base. It is important to note that Biden greatly benefitted from the incompetence of his opponent, Donald Trump, who provoked outrage from both moderate Republicans and the entire left. Thus, although Trump’s brand of politics consolidated moderates and progressives, this union seems unstable at best and practically unsustainable at worst.
In the next election, we can guess that the Republicans are going to try to move more moderate to try and gain back the voters who defected to Biden. The question then becomes: what will the Democrats do in response?
The Democrats need to make a move in response—they can’t afford to get complacent here after the long and taxing campaign they just ran. They need to move left. Young progressives are going to be the new base of the Democratic Party soon, and the party needs to energize them and get them to vote. There isn’t a future for the party in denying the progressive wing a voice—there isn’t a future in the status quo. The arrow of history has been moving left for a while now, and the Democrats can ride with the arrow or get shot by it. That’s how they can win.