What does a midterm split decision mean for Democrats?

The votes are still being counted, but Democrats could yet win a split decision in the 2022 midterm elections. So much for the red tsunami giddily forecast by conservative commentators in the run-up to Tuesday’s vote.

There’s little doubt Republicans will take over the House of Representatives, albeit by a much narrower margin than they expected. But control of the Senate will probably be decided in the same place and manner as it was in the 2020 elections — a high-stakes run-off election in Georgia.

On Dec. 6, Sen. Raphael Warnock, the Democratic incumbent, will face off again against his Republican challenger, Herschel Walker. It’s a strange reprise that tells us several interesting things about U.S. politics.

First, the two parties are stalemated, and little has changed in two years. Second, Georgia and a handful of familiar swing states still hold the balance of power in national politics. Third, it’s hard to argue that America isn’t making racial progress when two Black men are vying for the pivotal Senate seat in a Deep South state.

Warnock’s strong showing in Georgia, together with Democratic victories in Pennsylvania and Arizona (Nevada is still too close to call) suggest that the anti-Trump coalition of 2020 is still intact in those states.

In fact, the ex-president may have been the biggest loser Tuesday night. Not only did many of the candidates he endorsed – Mehmet Oz and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, Donald Bolduc in New Hampshire and Blake Masters in Arizona – lose (or are projected to lose) but Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s sweeping victory thrusts him to the forefront of the 2024 GOP presidential field.

But Democrats shouldn’t be popping corks just yet. Tuesday’s biggest disappointment was voters’ failure to reject hundreds of Republican election deniers in federal and state races. That means Trump’s seditious campaign to sabotage U.S. elections will find echoes elsewhere. Already, Trump acolyte Kari Lake, trailing in Arizona’s gubernatorial race, is making unfounded claims about voting irregularities there. 

What’s more, Tuesday’s vote spotlighted some serious Democratic vulnerabilities, especially on the economy, crime and immigration.  

The Biden administration needs a more convincing plan for fighting inflation, which voters Tuesday said was their top issue. Looking ahead to 2024, Democrats need to reorient their economic message around lifting the prospects of working-class Americans, regardless of race and ethnicity.

For most of the last decade, the party’s economic message has been shaped by the ideological preoccupations of white, college-educated progressives. They inveigh against the supposed evils of “neoliberalism” (basically, a free market economy) and fill the air with sanctimonious demands for social justice, acknowledgement of “systemic racism” and dire warnings of imminent planetary extinction.

Such abstractions are far removed from the everyday struggles and aspirations of U.S. workers without college degrees (59 percent of the 2020 electorate). They’re tightly focused on pocketbook issues: better skills and jobs, opportunities to work for themselves or start small businesses and affordable housing and health care.

That’s particularly true of working-class Hispanics. Following the classic immigrant trajectory, they want what drew them to this country — a shot at the American dream of upward mobility through individual initiative and hard work.

But Democrats are also seeing erosion in their support among Black men without college degrees. To expand their coalition, they also need to whittle away at Republicans’ enormous advantage (27 points) among white working-class voters.

Both the basic electoral math and their party’s own history point in the same direction: To build a new progressive majority, Democrats must enlarge their base of support in working-class America.

They also need to dig out from a deep hole on crime and public safety. How important were these issues Tuesday? Liberal pollster Stan Greenberg asked voters just before the election what they feared most if Democrats prevailed. Their answer: “crime and homelessness out of control in cities and policy coming under attack.”

Going into the election, Republicans held a 13-point advantage on handling crime. Astonishingly, even a quarter of Democrats – including many Black, Hispanic and Asian voters – thought Republicans would do a better job.

This partly reflects the baleful legacy of progressive demands to “defund the police.” But Democrats are in charge in many U.S. cities where shootings routinely claim children’s lives and homeless encampments turn into dystopian mini-cities.

Instead of ceding law and order to their opponents, Democrats need to call for more community-oriented police, more surveillance technology in dangerous areas, and for testing ideas like California’s Health Courts, which are intended to get mentally ill people off the streets and into treatment, through compulsion if necessary.   

Voters’ second biggest qualm (43 percent) about a Democratic victory, Greenberg found, was “the Southern border being open to immigrants.”

Hispanic leaders in traditionally Democratic communities along the border say they are being overwhelmed by an unprecedented wave of illegal immigrants from Haiti, Venezuela, Central America and Mexico. They’re furious that national Democrats in Washington have ignored their pleas for help in stemming the influx.

“Right now, these migrants feel like they’ve got a standing invitation from this administration to cross the border,” Val Verde County Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez, a Democrat, told The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta.

Democrats indignantly claim they’re not for open borders, but they have no visible policy that says otherwise. Trying to ease the plight of “Dreamers” is necessary but far from sufficient. It’s time for a thorough overhaul of our basic immigration laws, which date back to 1965. A new immigration policy should deter illegal entries, expand legal immigration and tailor it better to the nation’s economic and labor needs.

U.S. voters Tuesday were reluctant to entrust a Trump-dominated Republican Party with complete control of Congress. But the razor-thin Senate margins weren’t exactly a rousing vote of confidence for Democrats, either.

The midterms gave them a temporary reprieve. They should use it to make course corrections before the main bout in 2024.

Will Marshall is president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI).