by John Stoer
November 17, 2022
Introduction:
Read more here: https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/respe ... emocrats/(Alternet) The Republicans reached the 218-seat threshold late last night to officially take over the House of Representatives. The vote-counting continues. We don’t yet know how big their majority will be. We do know it will be teensy. (About six races are pending, per the AP.)
We also know the Republicans would have lost without aggressive gerrymandering in Florida and interference by the US Supreme Court in Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana. The Democrats should have won the Congress. As it is, “voters delivered a split verdict.”
“Despite concerns about Biden’s handling of the economy and the prospects of a recession,” reported Bloomberg, “voters delivered a split verdict over who was to blame and how much weight to put on issues such as abortion rights and election deniers’ threats to democracy.”
But was that split really despite economic concerns?
As I said Wednesday, “the economy” isn’t only the economy. “The economy” can include abortion, which is, to many, another “kitchen table issue.” “The economy” (inflation, jobs) and abortion are not mutually exclusive. So did the Democrats overperform in spite of it, as Bloomberg reported? Or did they overperform because of it?