As the year has drawn to a close, I’ve been hung up in recent days thinking about the things I *don’t* want to write about, which isn’t great for the writing process! Probably first on that list is Elon Musk, about whom seemingly every political obsessive on social media can’t stop yakking about. I may try, in the new year, to muster the energy to say something useful about content moderation (a preview: Musk’s dipshittery is distracting too many liberals from the serious conversation that *should* be happening around content moderation. In that vein, this piece in The Nation, by Ross Barkan, is the most helpful I’ve read so far). But about Musk himself - my goal is to read/hear/think less about him, not more.
I also am not all that interested in Trump’s tax returns, whose release only confirms that the pathological liar was, surprise, surprise, pathologically lying about his income, business activity, etc. And speaking of pathological liars I really don’t want to write about, what else is there to say about Congressman-elect George Santos, the New York Republican who has apparently fabricated his entire life story, other than the that he’s clearly a depressingly disturbed conman?
Ok, having cleared away that underbrush, I’m going to briefly list some of the good news that happened in 2022, in no particular order. There is a lengthy rejoinder to all of the following, but in the spirit of closing out the year on a glass half full note, I submit the following:
As I’ve written about before, the election deniers and Big Lie fabulists had a bad year in 2022, which is good news for the rest of us. Kari Lake is still trying to pull a mini-Trump to get her loss in the Arizona governor’s race overturned but she, along with kindred Trump backed election deniers went down to defeat in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and, as an added bonus, Brazil. This didn’t just happen. Political campaigns and legions of grassroots organizations around the country mobilized to highlight the stakes and turn out voters in robust numbers. Many of these victories were razor thin, which only highlights the fact that we confront an ongoing political slog in 2023 and beyond. But against pretty daunting odds, the wins outweighed the losses this year.
From a liberal policy perspective, these two years have also been surprisingly successful. Far from ideal (needless to say), but lots to feel hopeful about, including the Inflation Reduction Act, the American Rescue Plan (passed in 2021), the student loan forgiveness order (if it survives court challenges), the Respect for Marriage Act and more. Surprising in part because the legislative victories were accomplished with the slimmest margins to work with in both houses of Congress. The Washington Post’s Paul Waldman, who is not a Biden cheerleader, had this to say in summarizing the glass half full view of Biden’s first two years in the Oval Office:
Biden came into office with smaller congressional majorities than any incoming Democratic president in the history of his party, dating all the way back to Andrew Jackson: a single-digit advantage in the House, and a 50-50 Senate that meant he had zero votes to spare. Yet despite all the attention paid to the whims of Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-turned-I-Ariz.), Democrats hung together on almost everything. The major exception was the Build Back Better bill, which Manchin managed to torpedo, but which got a second (albeit diminished) life as the IRA — and which even in its lesser form was still a huge win.
(As always, for a more sober, well-grounded view of this record, David Dayen is an invaluable source).
While labor unions in the United States have mostly been in retreat for four decades (and if you’re a liberal, this has been an unambiguous political disaster, whether you’re in a union or not), 2022 was - there’s that word again - surprisingly good. As documented by Rani Molla, unions won more collective bargaining elections and at a higher rate than they have in decades. Progressive advocates are still pushing the Biden administration to better fund the National Labor Relations Board. But Biden’s NLRB has arguably been a better advocate for organized labor than we’ve seen in a long time, in part because of the work of Jennifer Abruzzo, whom Biden appointed to be NLRB’s chief counsel in 2021.
(and here’s a generally upbeat assessment of Biden’s regulatory appointments more broadly).
Wishing everyone happiness and wellness in the new year.