Republicans giving up on courting voters, turning 2022 strategy to election officials.
“Sometimes the vote counter is more important than the candidate,” Trump said over the weekend.
Welcome to The Midterm Report, a newsletter exclusively for our paid subscribers. In The Midterm Report, National Politics Reporter Stephen Wentzell digs deeper at the upcoming U.S. midterm elections in November.
With the Omicron Variant seemingly yet to hit its peak, it’s becoming increasingly likely that COVID-19 will play a central role in yet another U.S. election period.
While Democrats can tout historic moves from President Joe Biden like cutting the child poverty rate in the United States in half—something even The Economist is calling a win—their failure to deliver on key legislation like the Build Back Better plan and stagnation on expanding voter rights has compromised the party’s narrative of success.
Not that Republicans—who continue a downward spiral into an anti-democratic propaganda machine—have offered any platform policies that would demonstrate political contendership.
But when one party is imperfectly fighting in good faith for their citizens’ future while the other plays by a book of their own rules, political reporters have to reevaluate their approach when it comes to success and failure.