We’re seeing a rash of Democrat Representatives announcing that they will not seek re-election in 2022 lately. On the surface, this might seem like a good thing: fewer establishment Democrats to deal with, apparent dissention in the ranks, yada yada yada. Well, I hate to break this to you, but this is not, in fact, a good thing at all. Retiring establishment Democrats will result in a farther-Left, more hardcore Marxist Democrat Caucus in 2022.
First let’s talk about something called the Cook Partisan Voter Index (PVI), which is a way to rate which way a given Congressional district leans. Without getting too wonky, the PVI score looks at how the winning candidate in the district performed against the national average for their party over the last two election cycles, and is expressed as a party affiliation plus a number representing percentage points above the national average. For instance, my Congressional district, GA-1, has a Cook PVI of R+9. That means my Congressman, Buddy Carter (R), performed 9 percentage points better for a Republican than the national average in this district. GA-2, on the other hand, is a D+4 district, meaning Sanford Bishop (D) performed 4 percentage points better than the Democrat national average. These numbers are used to gauge “winnability” in a given district; generally, anything 4 or below either direction indicates a district that could be swung to the other party; anything above 6 is pretty reliably going to go for that party every time.
Now with that in mind, let’s look at a couple of the recent retirement announcements: David Price, (D) NC-4 and Mike Doyle, (D) PA-18. Price’s district, North Carolina’s 4th, has a Cook PVI of D+16; it’s deep blue. Not even the best-funded Republican candidate could ever hope to win there, because there simply aren’t enough Republican or Independent voters to get them over the top. Doyle’s district, Pennsylvania’s 18th, is D+13; again, deep, deep blue. Neither one of those announcements has any chance at all of altering the balance of power in favor of Republicans in the House. So the question then becomes who will replace those Representatives?
Recent history has shown that elderly establishment Democrats in reliably Democrat districts tend to get replaced by younger, much more radical, and even openly Marxist candidates. Take the saga of NY-14, currently represented by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D). Who was there before her? Joe Crowley (D). He held the seat for 10 terms (that’s 20 years). He voted reliably with the bulk of the Democrats, supporting abortion on demand, Obamacare, and TARP; GovTrack puts him pretty squarely in the middle of the Democrat caucus for his voting record. But that wasn’t good enough for the younger, “progressive” (read: Marxist) Democrats; they needed someone further left. AOC was it. She beat incumbent Crowley by 15 points in 2018. NY-14’s PVI: D+25.
How about Massachusetts’s 7th District, a D+35 district? Formerly represented by Michael Capuano (D), who started in MA-8 and ended up in MA-7, serving 10 terms in Congress. He was again squarely in the middle of the Democrat pack on GovTrack; reliable, but not very radical. He was beaten by none other than Ayanna Pressley, who is even further to the left on GovTrack’s ideology scale than even AOC. Do you see the trend now?
2022 is going to be a net loss for Democrats in terms of seats, that much is already obvious in contested districts. There may even be some upsets, but not in districts that are double-digit Democrat. Those districts are going to go further left. The Marxists have organization, money, and sheer force of will on their side. These long-serving old heads are simply getting out of the way to let younger, more radical members take their place. So even though the Democrat caucus is going to be somewhat smaller (and probably in the minority, but let’s not count our chickens before they hatch), it will be exponentially more radical. Democrats have already shown that they excel in obstructing and frustrating Republican majorities in the past with far less radical members. They will still control the Executive Branch, and have enough tentacles spread throughout the Judicial Branch to maintain at least the status quo, which is de facto control. 2022 is going to be the political fight of our lives, but even victory does not get us out of the woods. We have our own establishment politician problem on the right, and the Marxists are nothing if not determined.
So while sudden retirement announcements from various long-serving Democrats might seem tantalizing, they are actually harbingers of bad things to come.