It’s risky business to draw too many conclusions from a single midterm primary election, but I can’t resist a few. Face it, the results last week were mind-blowing. Political prognosticators are resetting their calculators not just in Colorado, but all across the country.
One undeniable outcome from Tuesday’s election is that democratic socialists are having a moment. When Melat Kiros told her supporters at her victory party “this is a movement,” she wasn’t just pumping up the crowd after her stunning defeat of 15-term Congresswoman Diana DeGette. She was surfing a ginormous sick wave breaking across the country.
It should come as no surprise that democratic socialism has appeal at a time when the top 1% of incomes control 31.7% of the country’s wealth — a total of about $50 trillion. Through their unchecked ability to finance election campaigns, these oligarchs also have purchased control of many political leaders, who at their behest have slashed healthcare, public education and programs to support working families.
The stage was set. All the democratic socialists needed was some charismatic candidates.
On its website, the Democratic Socialists of America explain their philosophy: “Capitalism is a system designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us for their own profit. We must replace it with democratic socialism, a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society….
“We want a democracy powered by everyday people. The capitalist class tells us we are powerless, but together we can take back control.”
If you’re looking for somebody to blame for this dramatic political upheaval, here are the leading candidates: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and, of course, the Grifter-in-Chief.
They have paved the path for success for Zorhan Mamdani, Melat Kiros, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the rest. Voters were drawn to them in the hope of relief from a decade of corrupt MAGA extremism and sinister redistribution of money and power to the rich.
No wonder Trump and his goons are losing their minds and calling them Communists. If all this continues, they might actually have to start paying taxes.
Also, it seems clear Kamala Harris is right about Gen Z.
At her appearance in Denver in April, Harris praised the 14- to 29-year-olds. “They are beautiful and extraordinarily impatient,” she said, “and they’re not waiting around for us” to solve the country’s problems.
They have grown up with active shooter drills, the impacts of climate change and a resurgence in overt racism, misogyny and homophobia, and they see no evidence that our leaders care even a little.
The stunning success of 29-year-old Kiros certainly appears to be Exhibit A in that case.
By 2028, Gen Z will comprise the majority of eligible voters in the United States. Sure, young people historically have been low-turnout voters, but as DeGette discovered, politicians ignore them at their own peril.
Tuesday’s results further suggested that while money still matters, it’s no guarantee of success. Sure, 74-year-old John Hickenlooper cruised to an easy victory over Julie Gonzales with his $7.7 million campaign fund compared to her measly $869,000, but others were not so lucky.
Sen. Michael Bennet wielded a powerful financial advantage over Attorney General Phil Weiser in the race to be the Democratic nominee for governor with $4.6 million in direct campaign contributions and more than $10 million in his PAC. Weiser’s campaign raised $6 million in direct contributions, but received only $1.3 million in PAC money.
Despite that, Weiser had a decisive win over Bennet’s well-financed campaign machine, beating him by about 10 points.
Similarly DeGette had about twice as much money as Kiros had for her campaign, and Kiros won by a 10% margin.
There’s no question that money still matters, but smart messaging, hard work and the zeitgeist often matter more.
Finally, and this may just be wishful thinking, but all this mid-decade gerrymandering to rig the midterm elections just may backfire because, as Tuesday’s election so vividly revealed, voters are highly unpredictable. As we have seen in Colorado and so many other states, voters refuse to behave like the party hacks, the algorithms and the bots think they should.
For starters, how they voted last time is not necessarily a slam-dunk for the future.
Then, even if many voters do remain reliable partisans, in order to eliminate a solid, say, Democratic district, those Democrats are distributed among Republican districts, which reduces the majority’s margins in those districts. All it takes is a ripple of an anti-Republican incumbent wave and the majority party can lose a seat — or several.
This is what’s called a “dummymander.” It’s when over-confident party leaders are such dummies they gerrymander their way into big losses.
And one other big factor: most voters like to believe the system is fair.
The word “gerrymander” has long been a pejorative, a source of ridicule and perceived accurately to be a deliberate attempt to make the system unfair.
The move to frantically redistrict across the country before the midterm elections is not a good look for either party and contributes to widespread disgust for politics. It risks turning off voters or motivating them to vote against the party behind the political chicanery.
So ultimately, the voters just might outsmart the party goons, pay attention to more than the usual ugly campaign ads and vote for the people they believe are the best candidates. We caught a glimpse of that on Tuesday.
Don’t you love it when that happens?
Diane Carman is a Denver communications consultant.
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