‘Democrats Are Going to Lose’ in 2022 Without More Action: Sen. Elizabeth Warren

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) speaks during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 8, 2021. (Evelyn Hockstein/Getty Images)

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has raised the alarm about her party’s prospects in the 2022 midterm elections, saying that without more legislative victories, Democrats will lose badly in November.

Warren made the comments during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Asked whether Democrats in the 117th Congress should boast about their record on the campaign trail, Warren said: “I am very glad to talk about what we’ve done, obviously, and I think the president deserves real credit, but it’s not enough.

“We’ve got less than 200 days until the election, and American families are hurting. Our job while we are here in the majority is to deliver on behalf of those families, and that means making government work for them. There is so much we can do, and if we do it over the next 200 days, we’re gonna be in fine shape. This is what democracy is about. Take it to the people what we’ve done, but we need to get the work done.”

If Democrats don’t use these 200 days to deliver big results, Warren said that they were “going to be in real trouble.”

“Then I believe that Democrats are going to lose,” she said. “Democrats win when they do what? When they work on behalf of working people, and we can’t just rest on what we’ve already done. We need to be fighting going forward.”

Even though Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) have each expressed optimism that they'll hold onto both chambers of Congress, many forecasters on both sides of the aisle have said that they expect Republicans to sweep through the House and possibly to take over the Senate.

Historically, off-year elections go in the favor of the out-of-White-House party, with only a handful of exceptions since World War II that didn’t see the opposition party picking up seats in Congress.

Democrats have also been marred by the unpopularity of President Joe Biden as inflation and gas prices have continued to rise.

According to Rasmussen’s daily presidential tracking poll, since September 2021, Biden’s approval rating has remained well below the approval rating of President Donald Trump at the same point in his presidency. As of April 25, Biden’s approval rating was sitting at 42 percent, six points below Trump’s at the same time in April 2018.

Biden’s approval rating began to plummet in the aftermath of the controversial Afghanistan withdrawal, which saw the United States pull out of the 20-year conflict and cede control to the Taliban terrorist group. During the evacuation, more than a dozen U.S. service members died and billions of dollars’ worth of equipment was left behind with the Taliban. Democrats found themselves forced to break with Biden to preserve their own image.

Since then, domestic issues—including unprecedented rates of illegal immigration via the southern border, skyrocketing inflation, and rising gas prices not seen since the Obama administration—have been at the forefront for Americans and Republican strategists.

Although some Democrats have continued to profess loyalty to Biden, many—particularly lawmakers facing tough reelection battles, such as Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.)—have begun to break publicly with the administration over the mounting border crisis.

Worsening the situation further, after months of negotiation and compromise to pass his multi-trillion-dollar Build Back Better Act, the legislation was defeated by objections from key swing voting Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) in the evenly divided Senate.

Recently, Democrats have made their biggest push yet to revive the spending package in closed-door meetings, and Warren’s comments suggest that these and other major policy victories will be necessary if Democrats want to hold out against a deluge of red victories in November.

However, with midterm season about to be well underway, such a major package could be difficult for Democrats to pass while campaigning in tough battles.

Warren isn’t the only Democrat to warn of the dangers the party faces.

In February, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave similar warnings, saying that Democrats are “headed for a wipeout in November, up and down the ballot,” unless an “immediate course correction” is implemented.

Bloomberg pointed to Republicans winning key elections in Virginia and New Jersey in 2020, as well as the recent ouster of three school board members in San Francisco as evidence of what could happen across the nation in the months ahead.

“Swing voters will decide the 2022 midterm elections, and right now, polls show they are swinging away from Democrats,” he said.

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.