Introduction
Earl Ofari Hutchinson has written an interesting, well researched, and quite readable book. As the title* indicates, the book is about the importance of midterm elections in the US political process, and about why the voter turnout is often a fraction of that for presidential elections. The book came out in September 2022, and the discussion in it concerns the midterms of November 2022.
The need for a book on the midterms is clear. The old joke among political pollsters is that when man-in-the-street surveys are conducted in the USA by asking folks if they were planning to vote in the midterms, most replied, “What are midterms?”
Thus, Mr. Hutchinson addresses an educational need for Americans.
Hutchinson, however, is not coy about his own political position. He strongly favors participatory democracy. He laments the low turnout in midterm elections. He is also a supporter of the Democratic Party. He regards Trump as a past disaster, and a present danger to democracy.
He offers suggestions as to how the defect of turnout among likely Democratic voters might be remedied. For example, he sees potential among Blacks, Hispanics, the less well-off, and youth for improvement of turnout.
To support his points, he uses plenty of examples from US election history, statistics, and helpful graphs.
The Constitutional Intent for Midterms
The word “midterms,” while not in the Constitution, refers to the congressional elections held in the middle of the presidential four year term. Per the Constitution, the whole of the House of Representatives and one third of the Senate are elected every two years. Thus, congressional elections held in tandem with presidential elections are not “midterm” elections, because they are not held at the mid-point of a presidential term.
Hutchinson notes that the Framers of the Constitution used this election scheme as a part of their efforts to provide “checks and balances” in the exercise of government power. Four year elections for the presidency gave the voters an opportunity to throw out an incompetent or a tyrant. Two year elections in the House gave the people in each state a regular and direct influence over who would represent them. For instance, any supporter of a tyrant in the Executive branch could be voted out of office after two years, thus weakening the tyrant’s power. Having one-third of the Senate up for election would reduce the chances of a tyrant controlling that body by empowering the voters to inject fresh blood, if needed.
Congress can be a check on the President, and the people in their states can be a check on Congress. Thus, participatory democracy can preserve Liberty.
(Originally, the Senate was not to be elected by the people, but by officials in the state governments. This would be a check on the power of the people (as a mob) to dominate Congress. Popular elections for senators began in 1913 with the ratification of the 17th Amendment. Of course, the Constitution does not provide for the popular election of the president, but gives that power to the “electoral college,” which is also chosen by state government officials. Generally, those electors are now required by state law to follow the popular vote for president in their state.)
Mr. Hutchinson wonders why, in doing his research, he has found so few studies about midterms. (5) One reason, which he might not know about, is that in political science the subject is studied under the rubric “congressional elections.” The word “midterm” implies a subordination of congressional elections to presidential elections. This may be the order of importance held in contemporary popular understanding, but the Constitution places Congress in Article One, and the Executive branch in Article Two. The authors of that document meant for Congress to be the leading body in American government. Times have changed, so now the popular elevation of the presidency contradicts the Original Intentions of the Founding Fathers.
Evolution of the Midterms
As political parties evolved to focus on presidential elections they began to use the midterm elections as a kind of referendum on the current president’s job performance. Candidates for the parties that wanted to increase their membership in Congress could praise a popular president, and align themselves with him in the hope that his popularity would rub off on them. Critics of the president could vow to correct his bad performance if they are elected to Congress.
Hutchinson points to the 1862 midterms as an example of an intense election. Lincoln was in the middle of his first term. The Civil War was raging. The political parties used that midterm as a “referendum on Lincoln’s administration, slavery, and the course of the Civil War.” (157) Fortunately, for Lincoln, candidates supporting him won a majority of the votes, and he could continue his policies with the backing of Congress.
Since then, particularly in the 20th and 21st centuries, unlike with Lincoln, the party of the president is more likely to lose seats in the House and Senate than to gain them.
“The average loss for the president’s party is twenty-six seats in the House, and four in the Senate. Only six presidents, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and George Bush Jr. saw their party hold onto or make gains in the midterms.” (2) What’s more, “only Roosevelt in 1934, and George W. Bush in 2002, registered gains in midterm seats in both houses for their parties.” (2)
From Hutchinson’s perspective, then, Biden’s Democratic Party is in trouble. Biden lacks the same confidence of the people and the popularity of those presidents who made gains in their midterms. His party now has a slight majority in both the House and Senate. If his party loses that majority in either the House or the Senate, then he will lack the support he needs to pass the kind of legislation he wants to pass.
Low Turnout
Hutchinson notes that midterm turnout is generally low compared to turnout in presidential elections. He presents a graph showing that from 1972 to 2016, among eligible voters, 56% on average turned out for presidential elections, and only 40% for midterms. (26)
He wants to try and explain why.
One reason is that Congress is currently not held in high esteem by the American electorate. “Since 2010, Congress’s approval ratings have averaged between the high teens and the mid-30s.” (16)
This distain is often due to the belief that members of Congress can’t stop quibbling with each other, and don’t serve their constituents, but only attend to their big campaign contributors. Much of the electorate feels alienated from Congress. They also think their vote doesn’t count anyway, so why bother?
Ironically, however, those who do vote have a strong tendency to re-elect their congress person every two years.
An old adage among observers of US politics is that Americans tend to feel disgust for everyone in Congress, except their own Senator or Representative. Hutchinson refers to one study showing that between 1964 and 2016, 93% of House incumbents were re-elected. In the Senate, 82%.
Another reason for low turnout is that in the midterms there is no actual presidential candidate whose personality can stimulate the interest of voters. (37) Citing examples from history, Hutchinson notes that in high turnout elections there are charismatic candidates, and/or issues that trigger the emotions of the voters with clear choices between the candidates. (24-26)
In addition, the opposition’s negative passion felt for the party in power can be a motivating force for getting them out to vote. Members of the party in power tend to feel more complacent, and are therefore less moved to go out and vote. (37)
Another reason for low turnout is that voters may be disappointed that the president hasn’t delivered on all his campaign promises in the first two years. So, in disgust, many voters stay home.
Even if the president has delivered on some major promises, that does little good for midterm candidates if the electorate is unaware of the Chief Executive’s accomplishments. Thus, Hutchinson stresses that it is very important for Biden to use his access to national media to blow his own horn and create the image of his party as having done Great Things for the people. He must say that he needs a Congress that will continue to support him so that he can continue the fine job he is doing.
Of course, the candidates who are not in the president’s party will say all they can think of to minimize what the president has done in the first two years of his term. Then they can claim that, if elected, they will do better.
Hutchinson says that there is a lesson to be learned from the experiences of Clinton in 1994, and Obama in 2010. The electorate was not sufficiently aware of what each president had accomplished. Then, due in part to opposition misinformation, Clinton’s Democratic Party lost 54 seats in the House, and Obama’s Dems lost a whopping 63 seats. After that, they were both “lame duck” presidents for the next two years. (30)
Also in these two cases, there was the traditional laxity along with widespread indifference and apathy among major segments of young, Hispanics, Blacks, and college-educated suburban women toward the election. These are the Democrats’ core voters.
Perhaps tragically, the very groups of folks who would benefit most from the legislation Biden wants to pass are those who are least likely to participate in the November midterms. They are the non-white, younger, lower educated, low income groups. Thus, they are not pursuing their own interests.
While the percentage of whites who make up the overall electorate dropped considerably since 1986 from making up 85% of the electorate to roughly 72% in 2020, they still make up the substantial majority of the nation’s overall voters. Whites over age 50 are far more likely to vote than younger voters under age 35 in all elections. (57) Older white voters have the highest turnout among all the voting groups. (27)
Thus, Biden and the Dems in Congress must find a way to fire up their core voters. Turnout for these voters drops when they feel taken for granted. They require the party’s attention, which is best given by door to door campaigning and “face time” with candidates. TV soundbites and celebrity appearances are a poor substitute for personal engagement with the voters. (44)
Dems can win in midterms. In 2016, Trump’s GOP “lost almost forty seats and the Democrats took firm control.” They did this largely by reconnecting “with and reenergize their traditional base, African Americans, Hispanics, and youth.” (43)
Accomplishments
The midterm candidates are the ones the voters punish if
they are unhappy with their president.
However, there are several accomplishment that Biden can blow his horn about to help the congressional Dems. High among these are his many judicial appointments, which are of considerable diversity. In particular is Ketanji Brown Jackson’s appointment as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.
Hutchinson thinks that Biden has handled the COVID-19 crises well. And there are other significant foreign policy and legislative initiatives about which the public should be reminded. (29) Even more importantly there is the “$1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan passed in March 2021. This included an expanded child tax credit as well as money for vaccines and small businesses.” These extremely popular measures “boosted Biden’s approval rating in March 2021 to over 60 percent.” (80)
Unfortunately, those numbers later fell into the 40s. Hutchinson recognizes that inflation had much to do with Biden’s drop in approval ratings. (66, 188)
Inflation
As Bill Clinton famously understood, “it’s the economy, stupid.” Hutchinson correctly warns that Biden will have a big problem with voters who are being stripped of spending power by inflation. To a large extent, the current inflation has been caused by the sky-rocketing prices of gas and oil. These two items have an enormous ripple effect on the prices of all the other products American consumers can’t do without, such as food, clothing, and rent. (48)
But Hutchinson errors when he states that “a president has almost no control over” this particular cause of inflation. (81) For one, Nixon once imposed price controls to keep them down. Without doing that, Biden could have controlled inflation by calling the CEOs of each oil company and threatening to denounce them by name on TV as pirates and profiteers, because their profits are up by an unconscionable 300%. To avoid this shame on themselves personally, and on their corporation’s public image, in my opinion, they would likely have cut prices in half the next day. But because Biden did little more than to say he was “fighting inflation,” many voters have come to see him as weak and ineffective.
GOP Dirty Tricks
The Republicans can be expected to be up to their typical
dirty tricks. These include gerrymandering, voter suppression, and other
nefarious conduct like in Georgia and Florida when they removed from voter
registration rolls those names that sounded like Black folks. (64)
Hutchinson rightly laments that the Dems aren’t doing enough to counteract these tricks. (79)
Republicans are often more successful at firing up their core voters – older whites, blue-collar, rural, less educated, and more evangelical whites. (40) These folks respond to the “hot button” (or “dog whistle”) issues like those in the “Culture War,” especially abortion, race, childhood education, and crime.
Issues
Culture War issues, currently include allegations of “critical race theory” being taught in schools, and gay lit in libraries, help Republicans. Hutchinson seems to think that there isn’t much Biden can do about that.
Fear of crime is a standard midterm issue. If crime is thought to be up during a president’s first two years, the midterm voters are more likely to favor his opponent. If folks feel that crime is down, the incumbent could benefit. For Biden, in Hutchinson’s view, the call by radicals to “defund the police” could hurt the Dems in the 2022 midterms. This why the president must explicitly denounce that catchy phrase, and call instead for an increase in the federal budget for local police departments.
At present, it looks to me like the “abortion” issue
could work in favor of Dems. Unfortunately, Hutchinson seems to have written
his book prior to the Dobs v Jackson decision, overturning Roe v Wade.
So Hutchinson doesn’t discuss the Dobs decision’s likely impact on the November
midterms. But it might be moving formerly Republican and Independent women and
their male supporters to turnout in higher numbers than they have in the past
to punish Republicans.
Biden and the Dems understand the opportunity the abortion ruling gives them. (135, 177-178, 203) Hutchinson would surely find it a sweet irony if congressional Republics were to find themselves hung on their own petard (the right wing Supreme Court.)
The Midterm Dangers
The 74M votes for Trump in 2020 show that there is plenty of potential for a Republican victory in the midterms if their voters turnout while Dems stay home. (184) One danger for the US is that the MEGA Republicans are so authoritarian leaning that democracy and Liberty could be lost if they win in 2022. (34f)
More than half of Republicans still claim that the 2020 election
was stolen from Trump.
We know that the Republicans will fire up their base by repeating Trump’s Big Lie that the Dems stole his re-election in 2020. Biden and the Dems must be able to counter that claim, or at least keep it from seeping into the belief system of marginal Dems and right leaning Independents. (185)
Also at stake is that the winning party in the midterms will decide the agenda for Congress over the next two years. Either it will enact laws helping to implement the policies of the White House, or it will obstruct such law-making. (182) Major decisions that affect people’s lives such as programs and spending on education, job creation, the environment, housing, and taxing can be made or decided by Congress and state legislatures after the midterms. (191)
Conclusion:
the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
On the positive side, Hutchinson’s arguments clearly address the objectives he stated in the book’s beginning, and implied in the title. He has shown why the midterms are so important in American governance, and he has given persuasive reasons to explain why they are so ignored.
Organization
However, the book’s narrative could be more clearly organized. Hutchinson seems to meander around US election history sometimes without clearly showing its relevance to the 2022 midterms. But he definitely does get his point across that the Dems are in trouble this year, and that Biden needs to get on his horse and alert the voters to his accomplishments and his need for a supportive Congress during his next two years in office.
Final Grade
As a long time listener to Mr. Hutchinson’s KPFK radio talk show, I would give Earl an “A” for talking. But as a reviewer of The Midterms, I give him a “B” for writing, because of organization and grammar problems (discussed in the post script).
Still, everyone should buy and read the book to learn about the midterms from it, and to judge for themselves its quality as literature.
William J. Kelleher, Ph.D.
* The Midterms Why They Are So Important and So Ignored. Earl Ofari Hutchinson.
Middle Passage Press. 2022. ISBN-10:1088061974 ISBN-13 ::978-1088061978
Post Script for Earl
Grammar
The book appears to be self-published. One problem with that is that if you do it all yourself, then the risk is higher of overlooking some flaws. That seems to be the case here. There are errors that a decent proof reader would likely catch and correct. For example, there is some confusion of pronouns in the first few pages – I, him, Mr. Hutchinson, etc. (see 5-6)
More noticeable is the extended confusion of verb tenses, especially in the second half of the book. The actual midterm vote will be in November. The book came out in September. Therefore, when addressing that event the narrative ought to be couched in the present and future tenses. However, the writing is primarily in the past tense, even when discussing the coming midterm election. (See examples below.) This was a distraction that could have been avoided if properly proof read.
Examples of Verb Tense Confusion
Writing before the midterms he mentions, “issues that the public was disenchanted with Biden on. The four that topped the list were …” (66) And “the ball for the 2022 midterm was squarely in the DNC’s court.” (120) Why not “are”?
“The DNC and RNC though operating from polar opposites of the political spectrum had one thing in common in the run-up to the 2022 midterms.” (125) Why not “have”?
“In the months before the midterms, Biden faced a continuing clean-up job.” (176) Why not “is facing”?
Sounding like they are over he writes, “There was another curious feature to the 2022 midterms that was somewhat different than other midterms.” (189) Why not “is”?
Sounding like he is looking at the past, “In 2022, Biden was faced with the same dilemma and peril that Obama faced …” 197 Why not “is”?
What is going on here? Is the author trying to write a post mortem for the midterms, or a prediction? Or does he have a dual purpose for this book?
If he is trying to do two things at once, one is that he wants, as he says, to explain the importance of the midterm elections coming up in November. But the other seems to be that he wants to prepare for a second edition addressing the midterms after the vote in November.
In other words, one wonders whether Mr. Hutchinson wanted
to save the labor of changing verb tenses in the second, post mortem, edition,
and just use the past tense in the first edition, even though the narrative is
about an event to come.
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