(NewsNation) — Tuesday night’s midterm election is being talked about in the wrong ways. It is all about the game between parties, and the media is post-gaming like a bunch of NFL analysts.
The runoff in Georgia is not a surprise. The remaining House seats are showing no red flags of bad process. We will know the results soon enough, but the real discovery should be that it went down as it did and what it means for where things stand in America. Not the numbers in Congress, but the momentum in America.
Headline: Hooray for us! America worked. The democracy is functioning without any obvious drama. There could still be issues and that is OK, but early spooking was not justified by any discoveries. Problems were remedied. There was potentially record turnout all over the country from various places and faces.
There was massive voter turnout, too. An estimated 45.9 million early ballots were cast, according to the US. Elections Project. Some projections say it’s the second biggest turnout for a midterm election in history, after 2018. Good for us. We did our duty, and the process is legitimate. There’s been no violence, and that’s a win.
Also true: The left and right both lost Tuesday night. The majority is the story — those stuck in the middle. You made the difference. You are the people who reject both parties and you’re also the fastest growing part of the electorate. You’re the majority who want what works everywhere else in our lives: reasonable approaches to better our prospects and problems.
It’s especially true among young independents, who are most receptive to flagging what is deceptive. You were begging for better Tuesday night. But you are not a beggar. You are the chooser, and you chose balance.
The GOP is still expected to control Congress, but the under-performance is telling. The Senate count, especially in Georgia, is proceeding as expected. For the Democrats, this was not a win. Losing less than expected is not a recipe for success. That said, compared to midterms in history, 2022 is the exception to the rule of waves and big change.
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden made a strong and right move. He took questions in one of his longer sessions with the press, and he was intent on saying he would invite the leaders on the right to talk turkey. That was smart. It gives high ground, but also has a low yield. The right is about opposing the left as a bogeyman that is trying to destroy America, so there’s little upside to any deal making.
And yet, what a difference a day makes. If the right ran roughshod as had been expected, Biden would be on his way to Cairo and there would be a lot of yap about whether the Democratic Party even wanted him to come back. He wasn’t looking ready for some ice cream and a cruise in his corvette. While Biden is not the burden, Democrats need to change how they think about common concerns. For example, worrying about crime doesn’t make you a bigot; no cash bail needs to be modified to give discretion to judges to keep known violent offenders inside.
On the right, I don’t know what Rep. Kevin McCarthy was so happy about. Republicans under-performed all over the place, and a big reason was that while they had momentum on the worries, they created bigger worries with their radical election deniers. Americans are not extreme in the main; they don’t easily take to harshness as strength. Denying the legitimacy of our democracy got you turned back. Not everywhere, but a lot of places.
What no one is talking about is how much better things could be. Imagine if we had more than two choices? If it weren’t always the lesser of two bad choices? That’s how you mitigate money. The Supreme Court ruled money is political speech, so there won’t be any outlawing it, but if you get away from the toxic twosome, the money matters less.
OpenSecrets projected $16.7 billion in midterm spending on all state and federal races. Democrats flooded money into ugly ads, supporting the ugliest in the opposing ranks to make the general election easier. The amount of spending on Congressional races more than doubled in 20 years. That’s how much it takes to seduce you to surrendering your own interests to those of the players of this dirty game. To see things the way they want you to, to pick which is worse versus something actually better.
And of course, the players want to talk about Donald Trump being down and Ron DeSantis being the new boss. Ignore it. Who cares who matters to one side in two years? We need to stay focused on what is done for you, not what the next round of the game is.
There is a lot going on, but not all of it matters. The key now is to finish counting in the House and see if the GOP has a spread that allows McCarthy to not be held hostage by the fringe. Then we have the most important race out there: Georgia Senate.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author, and not of NewsNation.