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The 2022 midterms won’t just decide who’s holding gavels in Congress for the next two years.
These elections will decide whether American democracy, Social Security and the planet can be saved—or if a new idiocratic age of autocracy, austerity, fear and fascism will destroy the hopes and dreams of anyone not already rich and/or holding a fully paid-off mortgage and/or a rapture-ready self-proclaimed “Christian Nationalist.”
Republicans—with help from billionaire fascists, Fox News and the increasingly right-wing corporate media—are encouraging Americans to do what Trump told them to: ignore the evidence of their own eyes and ears.
Ignore that 10 million jobs have been created under Biden. That unemployment is at a new 50-year low of 3.5%. That wages are up 5% since last year. That manufacturing is booming. That historic investments are, finally, being made in infrastructure and fighting climate change.
Biden is not only getting it done in the immediate now. He’s also putting America on a path to a more competitive, inclusive, prosperous and sustainable future.
Burn, Baby, Burn
Republicans, of course, hate it when America succeeds. They’ll be more than happy if the rest of us go to hell in a handbasket as they bring on plagues and apocalypses to support their belief that the End Times are upon us and it’s time for the Almighty to start lifting God-fearing white people up to heaven in beams of light.
That’s why Republicans are rejoicing that their sponsors in Russia and Saudi Arabia are attacking America with higher gas prices in the weeks before the elections.
That’s why we’re being told that September’s jobs number—263,000 jobs added!!— “fell short of expectations,” despite the fact that it’s 45% higher than the 182,000 jobs per month that Trump averaged in his first three years. Back then, that level of jobs growth was supposedly “the best economy in the history of the world, believe me.”
And that’s being kind to Trump. By the time he left office after his disastrous failure with Covid and his failed coup in 2021, there were 3 million fewer jobs in America than when he started, reflecting an average of 62,500 jobs LOST per month during his absymal single term.
So instead of celebrating the Biden Boom, Republicans are running on the very serious issues that (if the Rapture doesn’t come), precisely no one will be talking about in 50 years: short-term inflation and Hunter Biden’s laptop and why kids shouldn’t be allowed to read The Handmaid’s Tale because it contains so many spoilers about Lindsey Graham’s future plans.
The fact that the GOP remains beholden to Cheeto Jesus and his millions of delusional, QAnon-embracing followers—plus the fact that those who have not been killed in the Covid-19 MAGA Massacre can still be relied upon to show up in November—means that nothing is guaranteed.
We’re either doomed… or Gen Z saves us
Of course, Democrats of all ages are highly motivated to vote this November.
But as the GOP’s attack ads ramp up and the polls tighten, everything hangs in the balance.
If one group could truly make a difference in the midterms, it’s the group that has the most to lose if the GOP’s crackpot conspiracy theorists and election deniers take over: Gen Z.
The good news for Democrats: More than 8 million Gen Z-ers are newly eligible to vote in the 2022 election:
3.2 million of these newly eligible voters live in the South, 2 million in the West, 1.8 million in the Midwest, and 1.3 million in the Northeast…. an estimated 70% of 18- and 19-year-olds in the Midwest are white, only half of 18- and 19-year-olds in the South are White. In the West, Latino and Asian American youth make up the largest shares of this 18 and 19-year-old group of any region: 40% of 18- and 19-year-olds in the West are Latino, and 11% are Asian American.
As The Atlantic noted yesterday:
Millennials and Gen Z are especially crucial to Democratic fortunes across Sun Belt states like Georgia and Arizona. In this region, younger generations are far more racially diverse than the mostly white, older voters who provide the backbone of GOP strength. In Arizona, for instance, Latino voters and other people of color compose almost three-fifths of the population under 30 but less than one-fifth of the population over 65
Whatever the future looks like, Gen Z will own it. And with so much at stake, it’s good to see that this passionate, creative, social media savvy generation is tuning in to politics in a big way—and determined to make its voice heard.
Groups like Gen Z for Change are making a lot of waves—and headlines—this election season. And in Florida, Democrats look set to send the first member of Gen Z to Congress this November in the form of Maxwell Alejandro Frost.
Gen Z has suffered during the pandemic in many ways. But on big issues like gun violence, climate change, education, immigration reform, LGBTQ rights and reproductive freedom, they know that Republicans—from the Ultra MAGA nutjobs to the seemingly “normal” ones—are united against them.
The GOP’s loud squeals following Biden’s recent moves on student loans and marijuana only reinforce how different the parties are on matters important to Gen Z.
America is being presented with two radically different paths this November. But if Gen Z shows up in force, we can still be saved.
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