Stacey Abrams' and Beto O'Rourke's Failures Expose Delusion of Democrats

The 2022 midterm elections are shaping up to be a disappointment for the Republican Party as Democrats have been performing better than polls expected.

However, although President Joe Biden's party has scored wins in key senate and gubernatorial races, incumbent Republican governors in Texas and Georgia won re-election in victories that were strongly indicated in polling.

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp had won 53.4 percent of the vote compared with Democrat Stacey Abrams' 45.9 percent with around 95 percent of votes counted.

The Associated Press (AP) has called the race for Kemp and Abrams has conceded in what was a rematch of the 2018 governor's race when Kemp scored a narrower victory over his Democratic opponent.

It's a similar picture in Texas, where former U.S. Representative Beto O'Rourke has been defeated by Republican Governor Greg Abbott. With 83 percent of votes counted, Abbott leads with 54.9 percent to O'Rourke's 43.8 percent and will secure a third term. AP has called the race and O'Rourke has conceded.

O'Rourke also unsuccessfully challenged GOP Senator Ted Cruz in 2018.

Political experts who spoke to Newsweek suggested Democrats had taken the wrong approach in nominating Abrams and O'Rourke.

Rising Stars

Abrams and O'Rourke are two of the best-known Democrats running for governor in 2022 but the elections have seen Democratic candidates with lower national profiles triumph, such as Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania.

They have both been spoken of as future leaders of the party and potential presidential candidates. Thomas Gift, founding director of University College London's Centre on U.S. Politics, told Newsweek that could be a mistake.

"The descriptor 'rising stars' is a hackneyed phrase, but it seems particularly out of place for Democratic candidates Stacey Abrams and Beto O'Rourke," Gift said.

"Both ostensibly appeal to younger generations, both are supposed to represent the future of their party, and both find themselves in key battleground states that the DNC (Democratic National Committee) hopes to flip from red to blue," he said.

"Yet neither seems to have enough resonance with voters to live up to expectations," Gift went on. "Their under-performance reflects the disconnect between the kinds of candidates that elites and the media tell Americans they should want, and the kinds of candidates that voters actually support at the ballot box."

Would-Be Presidents

Though polls in advance of election day suggested this would be a "red wave" year with Republicans performing extremely well, that doesn't appear to be the case as results continue to come in.

Despite this, Abrams and O'Rourke were convincingly defeated in their respective races.

"The red wave did not make shore, but some prominent Democrats nonetheless went out to sea," Robert Singh, a professor at the Department of Politics at Birkbeck, University of London, told Newsweek.

"Abrams and O'Rourke were among the most notable, two would-be presidents with the slimmest of resumes and largest of egos," he said.

"Their fate shows the risks for 'celebrity' candidates who develop a national following on the basis of the most meager credentials. AOC beware," Singh said, referring to Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has just won re-election.

A Future in Politics

The defeats suffered by Abrams and O'Rourke could raise questions about their political futures, according to Paul Quirk, a political scientist at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

"The losses of the governors' races in Texas and Georgia were disappointments for the Democrats, in an election that gave them a lot of unexpected wins," Quirk said.

He noted that Abrams and O'Rourke "had both been losers in prior, high-profile statewide elections."

"Candidates who lose elections often don't get another chance. But both O'Rourke and Abrams were talented politicians with strong credentials. O'Rourke came close to knocking off Ted Cruz in the 2018 Texas Senate election, and then ran a briefly plausible campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination," he said.

"Abrams had nearly won the Georgia governor's race in 2018, and then was seriously mentioned as a possible running mate for Biden in 2020. Both made frequent appearances in national media, and both looked like strong candidates for the 2020 governors' races," Quirk said.

"In the event, both O'Rourke and Abrams lost by bigger margins than expected—running well behind Biden's 2020 vote shares in their respective states; and well behind their own statewide performances in 2018," he said.

President Biden narrowly won Georgia in 2020 with 49.5 percent to former President Donald Trump's 49.2 percent. Biden lost Texas, where he won 46.5 percent of the vote to Trump's 52.1 percent.

"At this point, neither [Abrams nor O'Rourke] may have a future in elective politics. It's one thing to lose once; quite another to lose twice and be on a downward trajectory," Singh said.

Exciting Candidates

Though O'Rourke and Abrams may not have succeeded in this year's elections, David A. Bateman, an associate professor of government at Cornell University, told Newsweek it isn't a mistake to run candidates who've lost in the past.

Bateman said that the process of running and losing "can build wider and deeper connections that can help in future races."

"This is especially true with candidates who have shown the ability to catch a spark, which can drive up turnout and help down ticket races even when the candidates themselves lose," he said.

"Abrams came closer in 2018 than most Democrats expected—running her again made a ton of sense, even if 2022 promised to be a much harder year," Bateman said.

"O'Rourke has shown the ability to energize Texas and national Democrats, and while that's not enough to win such a still-Republican state it can make a difference in down ticket races."

"I don't think these choices were delusional at all, even if they end up not working or even if, like all such choices, they have downsides and trade offs and can be second guessed," Bateman went on.

"And in the big picture, I think it is right and proper that primary electorates choose candidates who excite them," he said. "That's how we find out whether pockets of interest and attention can be aggregated and magnified to higher levels."

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