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What a Progressive Champion From Rural Maine Can Teach Democrats About Winning

Chloe Maxmin can show Democrats new paths to victory.

Katrina vanden Heuvel

January 11, 2022

Chloe Maxmin, left, and Canyon Woodward.(Photo: Kristin Dillon)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

The 2022 midterms are still 10 months away—but if much of the media is to be believed, the fight is already over before it’s even begun.

The Wall Street Journal reports that “alarm bells are ringing in the Democratic Party.” Politico says Democrats are confronting “the prospect of a 2022 hurricane.” CNN depicts “dejected” Democrats facing a “grim 2022 outlook.” One prognosticator at Vox has pegged Democratic chances of losing the House and Senate at 95 percent.

It’s true that history doesn’t bode well for the sitting president’s party during a midterm election. But if Democrats accept failure as inevitable instead of changing course, resignation will turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

Katrina vanden HeuvelTwitterKatrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of The Nation, America’s leading source of progressive politics and culture. An expert on international affairs and US politics, she is an award-winning columnist and frequent contributor to The Guardian. Vanden Heuvel is the author of several books, including The Change I Believe In: Fighting for Progress in The Age of Obama, and co-author (with Stephen F. Cohen) of Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev’s Reformers.


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