Can Democrats avoid a looming electoral disaster? | #192 – April 17, 2022

The Democratic Party was strongest electorally when it was a party for class-based economic liberalism. Regaining that identity will require compromise, but is its best chance at survival

I have read quite a few articles recently about the Democratic Party’s bleak near- and medium-term electoral future. As far as I can tell, this all started with a guest post by Simon Bazelon, a Yale political science and philosophy student, in Matthew Yglesias’s newsletter Slow Boring. I think the article is good and worth a read; Bazelon presents a good amount of historical data which suggests Democrats are in trouble in the House in 2022 and Senate in 2024.

The post spread widely thereafter. Bazelon went on Slate’s popular Political Gabfest podcast, and the underlying data he cited — analyzed by progressive prognosticator and friend of the blog David Shor — was mentioned in a New York Times Opinion column by Ross Douthat. “Will Democrats Soon Be Locked Out of Power?”, Douthat asks— and answers thus:

According to calculations by liberalism’s Cassandra, David Shor, the convergence of an unfavorable Senate map for Democrats with their pre-existing Electoral College and Senate disadvanta…