In Today’s Divided State and Nation, You Have to Start Throwing Punches Earlier and Harder to Win January 24, 2023 Vol. XVI, No. 1 10:13 am “Retire or Get Fired” TV Ads Already Running for 2024 Races “Retire or Get Fired:” It never ends. Politics. A news story in The Hill last week reported that
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In Today’s Divided State and Nation, You Have to Start Throwing Punches Earlier and Harder to Win
January 24, 2023 Vol. XVI, No. 1 10:13 am
“Retire or Get Fired” TV Ads Already Running for 2024 Races
“Retire or Get Fired:” It never ends. Politics. A news story in The Hill last week reported that the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee is already running attack ads against Democratic US Senators from Montana, Ohio, and West Virginia, three Republican-friendly states carried by former GOP President Donald Trump in 2020.
The ad campaign, titled, “Retire or Get Fired,” is targeting Montana Democrat Sen. Jon Tester, Ohio Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown, and West Virginia Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin. The attack ad issues? An army of 87,000 new IRS agents. Open borders. Higher taxes. More spending. Votes with Biden.
Alarming at first glance. November 2024 is lightyears away. On the other hand, it might be working. US Sen. Joe Manchin indicated in an interview Sunday on Meet the Press that he may run as a Republican in 2024, saying, “Everything is on the table.”
Under the U.S. Constitution, you can’t govern if you don’t win a campaign for public office. And in today’s divided America, where neither political party has a guaranteed political advantage, you have to start throwing punches earlier and harder to win.
Who Really Wields the Power in US Politics?
$1.66 billion spent on US Senate races: Political fights have gotten especially ugly since the advent of unlimited campaign spending by wealthy individuals, corporations, labor unions, and independent groups following the US Supreme Court decision Citizens United in 2010. The 2022 US Senate races saw $1.66 billion spent (Democrats $898 million; GOP $743 million), per OpenSecrets.
All that money spent, $1.66 billion, yet only one seat flipped parties, retiring GOP Sen. Rob Portman’s seat in Pennsylvania. Democrat John Fetterman defeated Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz with 51% of the vote. North Carolina’s US Senate race saw Democrat Cheri Beasley and allied groups spend $57.4 million, losing to Republican Ted Budd and allies who spent $83 million to win with only 50.7%.
Who really wields the power in US politics?: But think for a minute who all that money is spent on. It’s not upper class voters. There are not enough upper class voters to win a campaign in any state or congressional district in the United States. Most ad money is spent on middle and working class voters. They are the dominant market share of the most important commodity in politics, individual votes.
Every four years, presidential contenders who dream of being the most influential political leader in the world must humble themselves for the votes of middle and working class Americans, voters who can’t afford to make a political contribution. A Bankrate national survey in 2022 revealed that only six-of-ten Americans had enough in savings to cover a $1,000 unexpected family emergency.
Yet these same voters, who live from paycheck to paycheck, have refused to allow either party to serve more than two terms in the White House since World War II, with one exception, when GOP President GHW Bush followed President Ronald Reagan in 1988, giving the GOP three terms.
In 2020, $6.5 billion was spent on the presidential race alone. Most of that money was spent by candidates who lost the argument to middle and working class voters that they were the better choice. Only $1.6 billion of the $6.5 billion in presidential campaign spending was spent either by the Joe Biden campaign ($1.04 billion) or outside groups on Biden’s behalf ($572 million).
President Donald Trump and his allies, despite wielding the power of the White House, spent $1.091 billion on a failed effort to persuade American voters that he had earned another term.
So, who really wields the power in U.S. politics? In the final analysis, power in America is in the hands of middle and working class voters. They decide who will be president, who will lead the US Senate, and who serves as Speaker of the US House.
Seven Speakers in 25 Years: Just in the last 25 years, there have been seven US House Speakerships: Republicans Newt Gingrich and Dennis Hastert, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, Republicans John Boehner and Paul Ryan, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, and Republican Kevin McCarthy. The U.S. House flipped from Democrat to Republican in 1994, then back to the Democrats in 2006, then back to the Republicans in 2010, then back to the Democrats in 2018, then back to the Republicans in 2022.
After nearly five decades of experience in the political vineyards, the most invaluable conclusion I have drawn is that average American middle and working class voters are absolutely in control of our national, state and local governments. They are the reason our democracy is not in peril!
In America, all leaders are accountable to middle and working class voters. In today’s divided state and nation, they are the reason you have to start throwing punches earlier and harder to win.
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Thank you for reading the John Davis Political Report
John N. Davis
Check John Davis’s availability to speak in 2023 at www.johndavisconsulting.com
