The Democratic Party plan for the midterms was simple: pass a broad-based Build Back Better recovery bill delivering big new programs appealing to most constituencies in the voting population. Run hard on that to defend and expand their majorities.

Then Manchin and Sinema took a meat ax to those plans and, even if a slimmed-down version emerges from negotiations, it’s unlikely to have the scale to be the singular talking point for the midterms that Dems hoped it would be.

Dems need a plan B - and they should borrow a page from their Republican opponents, namely pushing hard on wedge issues that pit swing voters against the extremist politics of elected Republicans.

Try to define the substantive policy of national Republicans and there’s nothing to find, as headlines blared in December: McConnell: No legislative agenda for 2022 midterms. Yet Republicans sure have a lot of wedge issues aimed at swing voters:

CRT, the border, abortion, vaccine mandates - riling up anger is all that Republicans are running on in 2022. And it might help them take back Congress if Dems don’t fight fire with fire.

So what made a winning wedge issue?

The best example of a Republican wedge issue in recent years is “Late-Term Abortion,” banning a procedure covering as few as 0.2 percent of abortions, which Republicans made a centerpiece of their 1998 midterms and, even after enacting a version of the law in 2003, promoted the issue in an updated version in the US Senate in 2020 - and used ads on the issue targeting Democrats to save several vulnerable GOP Senate seats.

What made late-term abortion work so well for Republican messaging?

The issue is simple. A headline on a news story is often barely longer than the text of the bill. That means there’s no dispute over multiple provisions in a bill even if the exact definition of late-term abortion (like CRT) is debated.
The issue is popular. While abortion rights are broadly popular, “late-term abortion” is aimed at the 79% of voters who oppose abortion in the third trimester.
The issue divides the opposition. Multiple Democratic Senators, as well as voters, supported the late-term abortion bills, enraging many pro-choice activists who highlight the medical needs of the few women needing the procedure.
The issue is a stand-in for a broader set of political values. Abortion generally pits the value of Democrats arguing for “women's rights” and “choice” versus the GOP arguing for themselves as defending “life” - and late-term abortion tilts that value debate in favor of the GOP.

Note that Republicans aren’t pushing a broad national ban on abortion, but just a largely symbolic bill that was designed to get them into power, giving them the power to stack the Supreme Court over the last decade to uphold the abortion bans they were enacting as the state level. As importantly for the corporate donors paying for many of the commercials attacking late-term abortion, it put the GOP in position to push through Trump’s corporate tax cuts and now to block many tax increases under Biden. Any single issue is less important than the power it delivers to the party wielding the wedge to expand its numbers in Congress.

Why Dems Don’t Use Wedge Issues as Effectively as the GOP

Democrats have historically used wedge issues less effectively than the GOP.

Partly, it’s easier for a party like the GOP that doesn’t believe in effective government to cynically file bill after bill meant to distract from substantive policy discussion. To its credit, Democrats just get more excited about broad-based bills like Build Back Better than cynical symbolic votes.

More deeply, the nature of wedge policy bills is that they deliberately address only a tiny slice of a social problem, the one slice guaranteed to most embarrass the opposing party. Precisely because Democratic constituencies care more about the substance of policy, those impacted by a problem, whether abortion rights or health care, whose needs are deliberately ignored in a wedge-style bill are likely to protest - even if a more comprehensive bill has little chance of passage.

There is the legitimate worry that if just the most popular slice of a policy gets enacted by itself, we lose out on the chance to have the popular parts help push a broader bill to enactment. On the other hand, without expanding progressive majorities in Congress, it’s even harder to pass comprehensive bills- and even when full bills are filed, controversial parts may be eliminated in any final compromise without more votes.

Those sorts of debates on strategy explain why Dems turn to wedge bill tactics less often than the GOP.

But the prospect of Mitch McConnell regaining control of the Senate and blocking every Biden judicial and administrative nominee - and setting Donald Trump up to run in 2024 on “ending DC gridlock”- should help focus Democrats on using every tactic to keep Congressional control. And wedging the GOP should be part of their arsenal.

Some Key Wedge Issues for the Democrats

Assuming Dems can agree on revving up a wedge strategy, here are a few possibilities.

Protect Right to Abortion in Cases of Rape and Incest- If late-term abortion flips some pro-choice voters to the pro-life side, an overwhelming 77% of voters tell Gallup abortion should be legal in cases of rape and incest. A national law protecting the right to abortion in those cases would not only pit swing voters against the extreme anti-abortion wing of the GOP but would highlight that anti-abortion laws the Supreme Court may uphold in Mississippi and Texas have no exception for rape and incest. GOP Senators would be faced with the choice of alienating swing voters by opposing the Dem bill or enraging their base by violating anti-abortion AND “states rights” by overturning the political work of GOP state legislatures.

Let Employers Require Covid Vaccines for Employees- While the public is divided on the government mandating vaccines, a December poll found 61% want their own employers to require vaccinations at work. A simple bill protecting employers’ rights to require the vaccine would pit corporate lobbies against anti-vax forces and put GOP Senators in a political bind with voters and donors over the ability of employers to provide a disease-free workplace versus overturning state laws that are preventing employers from doing so.

These are just a few possibilities. What’s needed is for Democrats to have a clear strategic focus on each issue in turn, creating as much coordinated messaging as possible across the Democratic caucus and allied activists.

Discipline and repetition is again not always a strong suit of progressives but this would be a good time to learn the game as midterms approach.

Left Future

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