A Look Back: Cappuccino's Recap of the 2022 Midterm Elections

I'm pretty sure we need a document of what just happened.

Senator-elect of Pennsylvania John Fetterman

I used to work on Capitol Hill. It was a million years ago. Okay, two million. I worked for Congressman Hammerschmidt, fifth district Arkansas, who was a perfectly nice man. Since I considered myself apolitical back then—stop and marvel at the concept—I’d told HR I was fine working for either a Republican or a Democrat. Hammerschmidt was Republican. In his Congressional water closet, adjacent the impressive wood-paneled office, he had a Razorback toilet seat.

I’m not really an administrative support kind of person. I’m more of a tell-me-what-you-want-and-then-leave-me-alone-so-I-can-freaking-do-it kind of person. Oh, I could type like the wind and answer phones using a beautifully modulated “May I help you” voice, but being a Congressional administrator requires more than that. So I think it’s safe to say I sucked. I was also a teenager. By definition, I was doomed to suck. So did the public-servant pay of $16,000 a year. Even in the 90s, that was barely enough to keep me in Diet Coke and Domino’s pizza.

But something about working in the Rayburn Building on Capitol Hill opened my eyes to the political world around me. I began to see how important representative government was, and how public servants were answerable to their constituency. The constituency called at all hours. They had things to say, which were dutifully noted by staff. Remember how civil political discourse was back in the 90s? Nowadays, I can’t imagine what staffers hear.

Rayburn Building, Washington, D.C.

From that day forward, I morphed into the rabid political animal you see before you. I went from being vaguely lefty to full-on vote-in-every-election lefty. I didn’t arrive there overnight. I studied and read and listened. I considered opinions that were not my own. When better information presented itself, I changed my mind, even about things I had previously held sacred, such as the importance of the Green Party—oh, what a bitter disappointment. I hope to always have the humility and flexibility to change my mind. I would rather be wrong than be a dogmatic churl.

But like you, no doubt, I’d been poll watching this midterm, and those numbers were not encouraging. “Red wave coming,” pundits predicted. The talking heads on MSNBC wrung their collective hands, bemoaning the Republicans’ laser-focused messaging.

For Republicans, it was crime and inflation. For Dems, it was reproductive freedom and an economy (3.5% unemployment rate!) that is remarkably robust compared to what’s happening here in Europe. Enviable, really. As informed as I like to think I am, even I can’t fully account for Biden’s success.

I told John I wasn’t going to watch. “I’ll read tomorrow’s headlines,” I said. “It’s too stressful.” This, coming from the girl who stayed up four nights in a row with only periodic catnaps on the couch while waiting for the outcome of the 2020 election. Do I want to be this way? No. But it’s too late to do anything about it now.

Then John said with full-on snake/Eve/Garden of Eden vibes, “Let’s just watch a few minutes,” which is tantamount to offering a junkie smack. Next thing I knew, it was 7AM and he’d long gone to bed. Like any vampire, I closed the window shutters because it was too bright outside and furiously texted friends, carpet-bombed Facebook, and shouted at my computer screen.

That’s when the earthquake struck.

Where we live in Italy is seismically active. The closer to the “spine” that runs north to south you are, the more you feel it. Hundreds of earthquakes are happening all the time, but most are small and impossible to detect without sophisticated equipment. This wasn’t small. My cat, Olive, leapt to her feet, wild-eyed. I did, too, which is when I heard a groggy expletive coming from the bedroom. “Did you feel that?” John called to me. I rushed to stand inside the doorway (safest place aside from the bathroom) and urged him to join me, but the quake was over by then and John needs his shuteye.

Poor Amatrice in 2016. That earthquake was BAD.

I’m not sure I ever sleep anymore. I certainly couldn’t sleep after the earthquake. More to the point, I couldn’t sleep after our nail-biter of a midterm election. “That wasn’t a red wave,” a friend of mine quipped, “More like light spotting.” (If you’re an XY chromosome, don’t expect to get that menstruation reference.) And it wasn’t. Even with Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia still in play as of this writing, it looks as though the Senate will be either a tie or possibly in the Democrats’ favor, and the Republicans will likely have a slim majority in the House. Which means four years of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House.

He’s no brain trust, our Kevin. Reporters politely refer to him as “a coastal extrovert of ambiguous ideological portfolio who … would far rather talk about personalities than the tax code,” but I assure you that’s shorthand for “dumber than a bag of wet hair.”

“I would never consider him to be smart,” says one anonymously sourced TV figure who has interviewed him several times. But a scrum of Congressional reporters are quick to point out there are plenty of members who are dumber. I prefer this assessment by The New York Times: “Mr. McCarthy, a golden retriever of a man who hates to be by himself, once cozied up to the president by bringing him a curated jar of his favorite cherry and strawberry Starburst candies. He excels at building the kind of relationships that his allies say will be crucial to leading an effective minority.”

Candy? Hell, if I’d’ve known “excelling at relationships” meant supplying people with candy, I’d have done things differently all these years. Screw being there for people. All you have to do is load up on snacks at the gas station. Note to self on that one.

In news that sincerely warms my heart, our nation’s first Gen Z member, Progressive Democrat Maxwell Frost, 25, defeated a Republican in Florida and will now dedicate himself to gun reform legislation. We need young people in this fight. They are the future; our generation is already dwindling into the past. It’s time for Gen Z to accept leadership.

Congressman-elect Maxwell Frost at his victory party in Orlando, Florida, on Tuesday. Photograph: Stephen M Dowell/AP

In Vermont, Progressive Democrat Becca Balint won her House race, making her the first woman and first openly LGBTQ politician to represent the state in Congress. At this point, all fifty states have sent at least one female representative to Capitol Hill. Progress is being made; it’s just messy, slow, and annoying, a dial-up connection when we want fiber optic.

Other progressive House candidates prevailed, such Summer Lee in Pennsylvania and Greg Casar of Texas. I truly believe it’s because young people are turning out in greater numbers to vote. My son, who refers to himself as “Constitutional Conservative,” votes red; my daughter, a budding young wokerati like her mother, votes blue. But Gen Z is voting, and I take great satisfaction in that.

Lee’s victory is especially impressive since the pro-Israel group Aipac spent millions trying to defeat her. Leah Greenberg, co-founder of the progressive group Indivisible, of which I am a member, wrote on Twitter: “The loser of the night is Aipac who revealed they were totally willing to sabotage Democratic chances of keeping the majority, set $4m on fire in an attempt to beat Summer Lee, and still lost.”

That feels good. Real good. I have no patience with Democrats who put political ideals ahead of unity. You’ve got to hand it to Republicans. Do they ever know how to circle the wagons.

Further joy awaited me in John Fetterman’s triumph in Pennsylvania. When it comes to messaging, few candidates on the left or right can hold a candle to that guy. He overcame a stroke to vanquish the candidacy of self-funded millionaire and Oprah hack Mehmet Oz. If that isn’t an example of true Iron Belt grit, I don’t know what is.

And then there was the real issue on the ballot: reproductive rights.

Of the four states that voted on abortion-related ballot initiatives, California, Kentucky, Michigan, and Vermont, only Kentucky was the outlier when it came to sternly rebuking an abortion ban. California, Michigan, and Vermont voters made sure a woman’s right to choose was codified into their states’ constitutions. For many, voting to save reproductive rights was less about abortion and more about protesting government overreach. Try curtailing any sacred American freedoms, and you will see people foaming at the mouth.

There were two losers in this year’s midterm elections: the predictive power of polls and the staying power of Donald Trump. I don’t think it’s premature to say it’s over for the Trump dynasty. While plenty of election deniers—over 200 of them—were elected or returned to Capitol Hill, of all Trump’s various protegees, only Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance went the distance. Like I said in a previous Cappuccino, Trump was as much on the ballot as anyone. He lost. He will continue to lose. But his legacy will live on without him.

Supplanting him is Ron DeSantis, who has less of Trump’s snake oil and huckster “charm,” but all of his rabid survival instincts. DeSantis oozes ambition. He’s the crocodile lurking beneath the swamp water—an appropriate analogy, given that DeSantis is the governor of Florida—and he’s got his eye on the top prize. Expect a clash of the titans come election year. If Trump isn’t in a wheelchair by then, these two are going to rip out each other’s throats.

But here’s what I actually came here to say.

While it’s true that no red wave has been forthcoming, we still have a huge problem in this country. Two years ago, 5000 people a day were dying from Covid. A president of the United States had staged a violent coup. Trump tripled the trade deficit, cozied up to dictators and the Taliban, kissed Russian president Vladimir Putin’s pinkie ring, and did nothing—absolutely not one thing—to improve infrastructure, Covid response, healthcare, or immigration, except to separate children from their parents at the border. Children who remain lost, by the way—over a thousand of them. It is one of the greatest disgraces in American history.

In the U.S., gun control is a dirty word for the same reason abortion ban is a dirty word. Not because all Americans want guns and abortions; just that, like teenagers, they go apoplectic at the thought of someone telling them what to do. Consequently, we don’t have a federal policy on gun control. What we have instead are DNA tests so parents can properly identify the bodies of their dead children after they’ve been mutilated by 600 rounds of gunfire from an AR-15 sniper rifle.

Never mind that the supply chain in the U.S. is gaining strength and the government actually has intelligent, educated, competent people in charge. Remember the near-daily scandals of Trump appointees? I do. Remember when U.S. journalist Adnan Khashoggi was bone-sawed in half by a 15-member squad of Saudi assassins, and then Trump invited the Saudis over for a round of golf? I do. Remember when Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, a Dunning-Kruger sufferer with zero experience doing anything but making bad real estate deals, was put in charge of brokering peace in the Middle East, ending the opioid crisis, reforming the criminal justice system, liaising with Mexico, liaising with China (to be fair, he did effectively liaise with China when he got his wife Ivanka Trump all those valuable trademarks whilst simultaneously offloading a wildly overvalued property on them), and then solving the “Muslim problem”—all this entrusted to a guy who can’t tie his shoes without Velcro.

Do I remember? Hell, yes, I remember.

Not American voters. They’re so terrified of immigrants flooding over the border and trans-women reading books to their preschoolers, they’ll vote for candidates like Herschel Walker. Herschel Freaking Walker, who flashed a sheriff’s badge onstage that had all the authoritative heft of a Chuck E. Cheese token. Herschel Walker, who impregnated multiple women and then lied about it. Herschel Walker, Georgia’s dumbest serial fabulist, who told a big one about helming a multi-million dollar food empire. He’s in an actual runoff election with fair, decent, intelligent Raphael Warnock in Georgia.

Why? You know why. He has an R by his name.

A possibly brain damaged Herschel Walker on the campaign trail.

And this is where we’re at now.

Yes, let’s congratulate ourselves on a job well done. As President Biden said today during his presser, “The giant red wave—it didn’t happen.” America has spoken this midterm, and for once, not everything we said was eye-wateringly stupid.

But our work here is not done.

In fact, there are still miles to go before we sleep.

Copyright © 2022 Stacey Eskelin

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