Any suggestions or strategies for the (Democrats) in this upcoming 2022 midterm election?

I am still capable of writing essays.

I agree with you on this post. #7,226,947.

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The problem is that many anti abortion activists are also against birth control and sex education.

Very true.

Anyone else sick and tired of hearing so-called political experts predict that Democrats are going to lose badly in this year's midterms? Apparently it doesn’t matter that in President Joe Biden’s first year, 6.6 million new jobs were reported, the strongest first year of job gains of any president since our government began collecting such data in 1939. Nor does it appear to matter that unemployment is down from 6.7 percent in former President Donald Trump’s last full month in office to 3.8 percent and that wages are up 5 percent over the past year.

Pundits tell us it’s an “ironclad” rule — as Fivethirtyeight.com put it — that the president’s party loses congressional seats in midterm elections. Hence, headlines that predict Democrats will lose this November in a “wipeout” and a “bloodbath.” If you listen to these people, you might be tempted to cancel the 2022 election and simply crown the GOP the winners of the House and the Senate.

Democrats should be concerned going into November. They hold only a nine-seat margin in the House, and the Senate is divided 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as a tie-breaking vote. However, there are multiple signs that tell us Democrats could not only hold on to the House but even pick up a few Senate seats given that there is an open Senate seat in Pennsylvania and a vulnerable GOP incumbent in Wisconsin, both states Biden won in 2020.

For starters, while Biden won the White House in 2020, Democrats lost 13 seats in the House. That wasn’t good for the party, obviously, but for 2022 purposes, it means the most vulnerable Democrats are already gone. On the flip side, not a single Republican incumbent in the House lost in 2018. Good luck with GOP pulling that trick twice and not losing even one of the 213 House seats they currently hold in 2022. For example, in New York, the recently finalized congressional map that reflects the 2020 census data is expected to result in Democrats picking up three current Republican seats in November.

Plus, history tells us that there have been two times in the modern era that a president’s party gained seats during midterm elections —and the circumstances that led to those victories apply to 2022 in varying degrees. In 1998, with Bill Clinton in the White House, Democrats gained five House seats. How did Democrats buck history? GOP arrogance and overreach. The House GOP, led by then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, impeached Clinton for lying about his affair with an intern, Monica Lewinsky. But as midterm exit polls found, two thirds of voters didn’t think Clinton — who was leading a strong economy — should have been impeached, and they cast their votes accordingly.

Today’s GOP is even more arrogant and heavy-handed than Gingrich’s GOP was. Consider the Texas law that bans abortion after six weeks and forces a woman who is raped to carry her rapist’s fetus to term. That abomination of a law is being copied by numerous Republican-controlled states despite the fact that 65 percent of Americans believe the Supreme Court should uphold its landmark Roe v. Wade decision and only 29 percent support the Supreme Court striking down the constitutional right to abortion access. The Republicans don’t care what a majority of Americans think; they only care about imposing their extreme religious beliefs upon the rest of us.

Ditto for the party’s overreach by banning books and what they wrongly call critical race theory (CRT). Americans are becoming increasingly aware that so-called CRT bans are racist laws designed to prevent teachers from sharing the history of Black achievement and Black suffering at the hands of white bigots. Look at Virginia where Republican Glenn Youngkin won the governor’s race in 2021 based in part on his attacks on CRT. A recent poll found that 57 percent of Virginians oppose banning CRT and only 37 percent support it. That finding helps explain why Youngkin, who won in November with 51 percent of the vote, is already underwater with a 41 percent approval rating.

With only a few exceptions, these extreme abortion bans, bans on books and CRT, and voter suppression efforts in 19 states are embraced by Republicans nationwide. To animate their own voters, Democrats can and should use the GOP’s tyranny against them in 2022.

The second time in recent history that a president’s party picked up seats during a midterm election was 2002, the year after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when President George W. Bush was in the White House with a sky-high approval rating and Republicans gained eight House seats and two in the Senate.

While Jan. 6, 2021, and 9/11 are not nearly the same, the 2022 election will be the first after the “domestic terrorism” waged on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. The big difference, of course, is that after 9/11, Americans united against those who attacked us. In contrast, the GOP overwhelmingly supports and celebrates former President Donald Trump, who radicalized his supporters with lies about the election and called them to Washington to “stop the steal.” Since then, Trump has defended the attackers and suggested he would pardon them if he were elected president again.

Republicans want 2022 to be a referendum on Biden’s performance given that his approval ratings are in the low 40s, but Democrats should turn the tables and frame the election as a referendum on Republican extremism: from the oppressive laws mentioned above to their embrace of the man who gave us Jan. 6. That could spike Democratic turnout.

Midterm elections are won and lost on turnout. In the 2018 midterm, when voter turnout was the highest in 100 years, Democrats won 40 House seats. Contrast that with 2014 when voters came out in the lowest number in over 70 years: Democrats lost 13 House seats and nine Senate seats.

Ignore the pundits and the noise. When Democrats come out big, Democrats win big. This year is no exception; in fact, history tell us that victory in this November’s election is completely in the hands of Democrats.

Anti-abortion groups target women with misleading ads

When Hana found out she was pregnant, she knew she wanted to have an abortion - but her search for a clinic on Google led her to an anti-abortion centre, set on talking her out of her decision.

In many US states, BBC News has seen misleading websites advertising these clinics appearing high up in Google search results - and Facebook adverts with inaccurate medical advice - while genuine abortion providers are having their ads rejected and accounts restricted.

Advice centres, such as the one visited by Hana - a 19-year-old living in the north-eastern US state of Massachusetts - are often run by Christian organisations.

They may offer some medical services such as pregnancy tests and ultrasounds - but some of their online promotion falsely suggests they also provide pregnancy-termination services.

It wasn't until Hana was walking down the centre's corridor, lined with posters comparing the procedure to murder, that it began to dawn on her this was not the abortion clinic she believed it to be.

'Get care'
Hana describes herself as a "nerdy researcher", studying a health-related course at college - but nothing about the clinic's website tipped her off to the service it actually provides.

The home page says: "Take control - start with a free abortion consultation." And in a tab labelled: "Get care," it lists the types of abortion (medical and surgical) that can be performed during different trimesters of pregnancy, under the heading: "You just found out you're pregnant and want to know your options."

Once there, Hana says, she was told, inaccurately, abortions were linked to infertility and breast cancer - and having had a Covid-19 vaccine, she might lose the pregnancy anyway, making abortion unnecessary, despite the evidence suggesting vaccinated people are no more likely to miscarry and, in fact, better protected against the risks of pre-term and still birth associated with Covid.

She was also pressured to view the ultrasound scan against her wishes.

"What kind of mother doesn't want to see a picture of their child?" asked the person attending to her.

Hana was left feeling deceived and betrayed.

Any suggestions or strategies for the (Democrats) in this upcoming 2022 midterm election?

Absentee and mail-in ballots have recently come under the spotlight, with some states struggling to count mail-in ballots during the primaries and President Donald Trump saying that mail-in ballots lead to voter fraud.

Election experts, however, say there's another voting method that's proven effective at tallying counts while reducing lines on Election Day: early in-person voting.


Forty-one states and the District of Columbia have rules that allow their constituents to lock in their vote days before Election Day -- even on weekends -- either at in-person polling stations or through in-person absentee submissions.


Wendy Underhill, the director of elections and redistricting for the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), which as part of its mandate provides information on early in-person options, told ABC News that the early-voting system has previously been instrumental in decreasing lines of voters on Election Day.

"I think any election official would be glad to see them come through earlier, especially during COVID," she told ABC News.

Underhill and other experts say they're concerned that some election officials aren't doing enough to promote early in-person voting or expand it to more locations. But they say there's still time for election officials and state leaders to let voters know the option is available.

A rise in popularity

Early in-person voting has been part of some states’ election laws as far back as 1921, when Louisiana and Texas established in-person absentee balloting, according to the NCSL.


Thirty-eight states have approved early in-person voting for at least some of their counties since the 1960s.


Thirteen states allow voters who opt for mail or absentee voting to (drop off) their ballots at their election office or designated (drop-off) sites.


Some districts count these votes as an absentee ballot in their tallies, according to experts.


Twenty-seven states open up polling sites in some or all of their districts in the weeks before the election and mark the ballots right there and then.