Virginia is for (slow your roll, progressives) lovers
What yesterday's election results mean for Democrats, Republicans and America's would-be second progressive era.
Did you ever notice that politics are weird? No, I don’t mean weird in the way those QAnon people who gathered yesterday in Dallas’s Dealey Plaza to await the reappearance, at the site of his father’s assassination, of JFK Jr., widely but falsely considered dead since 1999 and destined soon to be named vice president by Donald Trump who will have at some point been reinstated as president because in 1871 the U.S. accidentally became a corporation instead of a country are weird.
I mean, that sure is weird, but the weirdness I’m referring to is how actual, meaningful data points in politics are so few. We call those data points elections, and the most important elections happen only every two years. But in between, it’s not like politics go away between elections - we still think and write about them [ed.: insert ad nauseum here if you must, dear reader] - but elections remain the only mechanism we have for not only determining the future policy direction of the jurisdictions holding elections, but also gaining some insight into how voters think about issues and candidates in real life.
When it comes to data points, yesterday’s elections held in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere did not disappoint. But to better appreciate their import, let’s review what was on the ballot, metaphorically speaking, yesterday: Democrats’ interpretation of the confluence of big events that have occurred since January 2020 as creating a mandate, or at least an electorally plausible opportunity, for massive progressive reforms at all levels of government.
To Democrats, Covid demonstrated the efficacy of government and the Neanderthal-ish mindset of all who disagreed. The murder of George Floyd proved America is irredeemably racist, a fact which must be imparted upon Americans of all ages by any private or public institutions over which progressives hold sway, which is to say almost all the important institutions. The unpopularity and defeat of Donald Trump signaled a rejection of conservative or even mainstream policies by the electorate. The one-two punch of Democrats winning both U.S. Senate seats in Georgia, and thus control of the Senate, on January 5, and the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters the very next day rendered the Republican Party incapable, both procedurally and rhetorically, of stopping the second American progressive era.
Yesterday’s data points reveal that Democrats likely have misinterpreted events
Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, won the governorship in Virginia as part of a GOP sweep of statewide offices there. The race was dominated by issues swirling around public education in the state: the teaching of critical race theory and CRT-adjacent curriculum; the degree to which parents should have a role in determining school curriculum; and masking requirements for students. Joe Biden won Virginia in 2020 by 10 percentage points.
As I write Wednesday morning, New Jersey incumbent Democrat governor Phil Murphy is leading his Republican challenger by only about 7,000 votes. Biden won the state by 16 points in 2020.
In Minneapolis, where the murder by a police officer of a black man instigated protests throughout the country calling to defund the police, voters were asked whether to
remove the Police Department and replace it with a Department of Public Safety that employs a comprehensive public health approach . . . . [which] could include licensed peace officers (police officers)[.]
[Emphasis added]. Voters were not enthused by the prospect of replacing police officers with public health officials; Minneapolitans rejected the measure by a 12-point margin.
In Buffalo, a write-in candidacy by the mainstream Democrat incumbent mayor appears to have bested the party’s nominee, a self-described socialist, who promised to defund the city’s police department to the tune of $7.5 million.
Voters, even voters in progressive parts of the country, aren’t buying the more extreme positions sold by today’s progressive Democrat party. The real results from yesterday confirm recent polling that shows Joe Biden’s job approval at 42% and Republicans trusted by wide margins on issues at the forefront of voters’ minds like border security, the economy, fighting inflation, and national security. Most people still don’t like the Republican Party, but they’re increasingly willing to give the GOP a shot having gotten a taste of unified Democrat control of the federal government over the past 11 months.
The impact of yesterday’s results are likely to extend well beyond the relatively small number of places that held elections. Before Biden left for his trip to Europe last week, he told congressional Democrats that his presidency would be determined by what happened over the coming week. Well, House Democrats were forced to pull a vote on his infrastructure bill the very next day, and the framework agreement Biden claimed to have on his $1.75 trillion budget reconciliation bill turns out not to have been agreed upon after all. Then yesterday happened. If Biden was right that his presidency rests on what has transpired in the past seven days, his presidency is in trouble.
In the near term, that probably means that Biden’s “Build Back Better” domestic agenda, largely consisting of the aforementioned bills, is up against it. Biden’s personal unpopularity mixed with voters’ speaking with their ballots yesterday is likely to put further doubt into the minds of known skeptics of Biden’s agenda like Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. But at least as importantly, Democrat senators who are up for re-election in purple-ish states next year will probably be more reticent to tie themselves to the progressive policies. New Hampshire’s Maggie Hassan, Arizona’s Mark Kelly and Georgia’s Raphael Warnock have to be nervous this morning. Biden won New Hampshire by eight points, Arizona by about 10,000 votes, and Georgia by about 12,000 votes. If, in 2022, those states move away from Democrats even a fraction of the 10-15 point shift we saw between 2020 and yesterday in Virginia and New Jersey, those three senators are on very, very thin electoral ice. Depending on the quality of their challengers, they very likely should be considered underdogs. They may and should be increasingly reticent to help an unpopular president double down on progressive policies.
In the longer term, the Democratic Party will, at some point, probably need to re-assess its adherence to progressive and woke policies. Insisting, simultaneously, that (a) CRT doesn’t really exist; but (b) CRT is good; and anyway (c) parents should shut up about it doesn’t work. Having Roundup favorite and teacher union boss Randi Weingarten swoop in to defend the Democrat-public sector union cabal is a mistake. Defunding the police during a national crime wave is patently ridiculous, and it’s even worse to defund the police and try to fool voters into thinking you’re not defunding the police. This Democratic reckoning will probably not come unless and until the party receives the thumping in the 2022 congressional elections that yesterday’s results appear to portend.
Republicans have some reckoning to do too. Youngkin won in Virginia by focusing on education. He was not a personality candidate, he was an issue candidate. And when the issues are running in your favor, in this case because Democrats have misinterpreted the mood of the country, you don’t want or need a personality-driven candidate. Because Youngkin remained focused on the issues Virginians cared about, Terry McAuliffe’s attempt to tie him to Donald Trump failed to sway voters. And while Republicans won’t be so fortunate as to have their opponents say the quiet part out loud, like McAuliffe did when he said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what to teach,” voters know now more than ever that, left to their own devices, the public education system, the unions that dominate it, and the Democratic politicians who do the unions’ bidding are more concerned with enriching themselves and indoctrinating kids than educating them.
Moreover, yesterday’s results show Republicans what a post-Trump party could look like. One that focuses conservative principles on the issues that matter to voters; one that is not dependent upon, nor weighed down by, the personality quirks of a specific candidate. Today’s Republican Party exists, or should exist, to thwart the would-be second progressive era. It took steps to embrace that role yesterday. But it should remember that Democrats felt emboldened to go all-in on progressivism in large measure because of their electoral success during Republicans’ experiment with Donald Trump. Choosing a different leader of the party in advance of 2024 would not concede anything to progressives; it would be a choice most likely to beat them.
Programming alert
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like when I talk instead of write, that’s kind of odd but also here’s your chance. There’s a Roundup podcast coming soon only for paid Roundup subscribers. The podcasts will come out approximately weekly starting in the next week, and will, at least initially, consist of me talking about stuff in a room by myself. If you’re into that kind of thing, become a paid subscriber so you can get the inaugural episode!