Democrats Need To Wake Up
Democrats Need to Concentrate on Eliminating MAGA Republican Legislative Supermajorities and Defeating MAGA Republican Statewide Office Holders Who Work with Them
Democrats across the country are rightfully celebrating some key victories in the recent off year elections.
Republicans were skewered once again on abortion and women’s reproductive rights. Voters in Ohio voted to codify abortion rights as part of the state constitution. In Virginia, voters decided to allow Democrats to retain control of the state senate and flipped control of the House of Delegates from a Republican to Democratic majority, albeit by a razor thin margin and despite the efforts of Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin and the national GOP to alter the outcome. Democratic incumbent governor Andy Beshear decisively won another four year term in Kentucky, showing that centrist Democrats can win in deep “red” and rural states.
Yes, Democrats should be encouraged by the results of this election, but they should not become smug.
As we speak, the airwaves and social media are filled with Democratic triumphalism and blathering, snarky commentary about the beginning of the end of MAGA, the rejection of the MAGA agenda, especially on abortion and reproductive rights (true, in a huge way), and if Gen Z and other Democrats just turn out in 2024, all will be well with the world.
It’s the Democratic Party mantra; win the White House, win a majority in the Senate, retake the House, and MAGA will slink away, returning to the dark recesses from whence it came.
Don’t buy it. Nothing could be further from the truth.
MAGA Is Alive and Well at the State Level
What many of the nationally oriented, inside the Beltway political pundits and talking heads never really talk about, and seemingly fail to understand, is the entrenchment of MAGA Republicanism at the state level.
Well, this is a wakeup call.
The MAGA Republican presence and, to varying degrees, acceptance in American politics at the state level is wide, deep, and very, very real and it isn’t going away anytime soon.
Let’s look at some basic facts:
Sixteen states are governed by Republican supermajority (veto proof) state legislatures and led by Republican governors (AL, AR, FL, ID, IN, MO, MT, NE, ND, OH, OK, SD, TN, UT, WV, WY);
Four states (KY, KS, LA, NC) are governed by Republican supermajority state legislatures and led by a Democratic governor (www.ballotpedia.com);
Those 20 states control 171 electoral votes (32%) of the 538 total electoral votes being contested in a presidential election;
Those 20 states control 171 of 270 electoral votes (64%) needed to win a presidential election.
In many of these states (not all), the Attorney General and Secretary of State, the state officials who are most responsible for setting election rules, running elections, and challenging outcomes, are also Republicans (the same can be said in states with Democratic supermajorities and Democratic statewide elected officials).
This is not to say that MAGA is deeply entrenched in every Republican state. Each state is unique. There are Republican governors, like Spencer Cox in Utah and, to a lesser extent, Jeff Kemp in Georgia, who are very conservative but work to govern in a style that is conducive to problem solving and governing effectively (Cox is one of the really good people in politics. I don’t agree with him on most issues, but he works hard to reduce the level of polarization in politics and wants to do what he believes is in the best interests of his state and its citizens.)
In many cases, however, leaders like Cox, Kemp, and a few others, are the exception rather that the rule.
Missouri: A Textbook Example of MAGA Control of State Government
Missouri, the state in which I live, is a prime example of the proliferation of the MAGA Republican presence in many so called “red” states.
Again, some facts:
At the national level, both Missouri U.S. senators are MAGA Republicans (Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt). Hawley and Schmitt (when Schmitt was Missouri attorney general) were deeply involved in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election;
Of eight House seats, six are controlled by MAGA Republicans; three of these representatives voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election (Sam Graves, Blaine Luetkemeyer, Jason Smith). Two other MAGAs, who are no longer in Congress (Vicki Hartzler and Billy Long), also voted to overturn the 2020 results. Long and Hartzler, who both ran unsuccessfully for the senate seat won by Schmitt, were replaced by Marc Alford and Eric Burlison, both dedicated MAGAs. Ann Wagner, the other Republican, while not MAGA, has voted to support MAGA causes during her time in office;
The Missouri governor is lame duck “MAGA lite” Republican Mike Parson;
The current attorney general is MAGA Republican Andrew Bailey, who was appointed by Parson to succeed Eric Schmitt when he won his senate seat in 2022. Bailey has continued the MAGA tradition, started by Hawley and Schmitt when they were attorneys general, of filing frivolous, performative lawsuits that rarely go anywhere, all in the effort to support his own campaign for attorney general in 2024;
The current Secretary of State is Jay Ashcroft, the son of former Missouri Governor and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. Jay Ashcroft is running for governor on a platform of making Missouri the leading “ultra conservative” MAGA state in the nation, “more MAGA conservative than Tennessee and Florida;”
Both the state House of Representatives and state Senate are controlled by Republican supermajorities (69% Republican majority in the House, 72% majority in the Senate). While not all Republicans fully embrace all aspects of the MAGA agenda, many of the most influential members of both bodies, and much of the legislative leadership, are openly and publicly declared MAGA Republicans;
In 2022, 79% of Republican incumbents who ran for the Missouri state House were not opposed by a Democrat in the general election;
In Pike County, there were no Democrats on the 2022 general election ballot for any state House or Senate race, nor were there any Democrats running for any county or municipal offices (see my Politics From the Heartland piece “At the State and Local Level, Pike County, Missouri is “One Party, Take It or Leave It,” Substack, July 14, 2022)
So, What Does Missouri Get for its MAGA Dollar?
This is an interesting question.
In some cases, voters who have supported MAGA Republican candidates have also voted to support what some might consider more progressive causes, many times in opposition to stated MAGA Republican wishes. For example, over the past few years voters have rejected efforts to make Missouri a “right to work” state. They have also voted, against MAGA wishes, to expand Medicaid access for the poor, especially poor children, and for the legalization of medical and recreational cannabis.
That said, strong support for most of the MAGA policy positions is alive and well in the state legislature, within the executive branch, and the state judiciary. This is especially true with respect to many of the “culture war” issues that motivate the MAGA Republican movement.
Below is a partial list:
The MAGA Republican state legislature, supported by the governor and attorney general, has criminalized abortion and reproductive rights with some of the most restrictive anti abortion laws in the country;
The state legislature passed, and the governor signed, what was called a “2nd Amendment protection law” that authorized state law enforcement agencies, mostly local sheriffs, to refuse to enforce federal gun laws (Missouri is an open carry state);
The legislature spent most of its past session working on and passing legislation prohibiting trans high school age males from participating in female high school sports (there were five, yes five, trans athletes in the state who were impacted by this legislation);
The state legislature has fully embraced the national effort to implement “school choice”, a policy that will adversely impact many, if not most, small rural school districts in the state;
During the last legislative session, MAGA Republicans in the state House worked with Secretary of State Ashcroft to remove state funding from public libraries that kept certain “woke” books on library shelves;
A sitting state representative, Ben Baker, stood on the Missouri house floor and argued that child marriage is a legitimate means of controlling abortion;
A MAGA candidate for Missouri governor, Rep. Bob Eigel, is running on a platform of burning “pornographic” books located on library shelves, implying that he gets to decide what is, and isn’t “pornographic;”
Eigel, and another MAGA firebrand state senator, Nick Schroer, were videoed “burning down the woke agenda” with flamethrowers (the agenda was represented with cardboard boxes) at a recent Republican political function in St. Charles County.
The list goes on, but the trend is clear.
While MAGA state government concentrates on the “important stuff” that they argue voters care about, Missouri continues its slide to the bottom, ranking near or at the bottom of states in funding public education (MAGA calls them “government” schools), teacher salaries, infrastructure development (especially in rural areas), rural economic development, rural health care, and other areas that directly impact the lives of the very voters they claim to care about.
While Missouri burns in its slide to the bottom, the MAGA Republican political leadership continues its performative politics reality show.
What a joke.
So, What’s Next?
What’s next?
Who knows, but it probably won’t be good.
What is truly frightening about all of this is that the Missouri MAGA clown show is being replicated, to varying degrees, in state after state led by MAGA Republicans. In many ways, Missouri has actually been late to the MAGA game. Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kansas, and Oklahoma, among others, are shining examples of where this is heading if the country doesn’t come to its senses.
MAGA Republicans deserve credit for recognizing that political control and the implementation their agenda at the state and local level was key to being able to attain power, govern as a minority, and implement their agenda at the national level. MAGA spent the time and monetary resources to do what needed to be done while Democrats, for the most part, walked away from their traditional working class and middle class constituencies and became a political party of the coasts, large urban areas, and the more educated and “progressive” professional class.
Democrats have walked away from heartland states like Missouri that were historically strong supporters of the Democratic Party and Democratic candidates. The facts, as outlined above, are the facts; the data speaks for itself. Unless Democrats are willing to rebuild their MAGA state political operational organizations, dedicate the monetary resources needed to reduce the number of uncontested elections at the state level, and support Democratic candidates through encouraging people to run and supporting them financially and operationally, this turn toward MAGA will not end.
Democrats will continue to win at the top while the foundation of their support at the state, and yes, local levels continues to rot. That building can only stand for so long.
Democrats need to return to their roots and embrace the words of the late, great, Democratic Speaker of the House, Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, who always believed that “all politics is local.”
Unless Democrats begin to heed O’Neill’s words and embrace the state and local political blocking and tackling that it is going to take to reverse the MAGA Republican movement, America will become Missouri, Texas, Florida, Arkansas, and Tennessee, continuing its descent into the black hole of authoritarian, christo-authoritarian, nativist, isolationist MAGA Republicanism, a political philosophy built upon a foundation of grievance, victimhood, toxic nostalgia, and “us versus them” retribution.
It will be the end of America, warts and all, as we know it.
MAGA, by its words and actions, has made it clear what the future holds.
Believe them.