About Last Night: Youngkin Wins In Virginia, GOP Has Strong Night
Photo by Glenn Youngkin from Virginia, United States, CC BY-SA 2.0
Virginia, Virginia…for those who want to discuss the election results in Virginia and elsewhere last night I will gladly do so…in song form!
Well here she is again on the phone
Just like me hates to be alone
We just like to sit at home, and rip on the President
Meet Virginia
Well she wants to live her life
Then she thinks about her life
Pulls her hair back as she screams
I don’t really wanna live this life…
Let the hair pulling and screaming commence:
For months, the political establishment predicted that Virginia’s gubernatorial race was Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s to lose.
Gov. Ralph Northam (D) had won the state by nine points in 2017 and President Biden had trounced Donald Trump by 10 points last year. Those victories added grist to the prevailing perception that the commonwealth was no longer welcoming to Republicans running statewide.
Yet in the first election since Trump left Washington, Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory over McAuliffe on Tuesday upended any notion that Virginia is a Democratic stronghold.
A dozen years after last winning statewide races in the commonwealth, the Republicans were heading for an apparent sweep of Virginia’s top three races, including the campaigns for lieutenant governor and attorney general.
The results demonstrated that Virginia’s identity as a Democratic safe harbor was fleeting, existing mainly while Trump was the nation’s dominant political force, despite recent election results suggesting otherwise and demographic shifts in Northern Virginia over the past two decades that had helped Democrats.
It wasn’t just Glenn Youngkin. Republican Winsome Sears will became the Commonwealth’s first female person of color to take the Lt. Governor’s seat. The GOP made it a state-wide trifecta with Jason Miyares appearing to have triumphed in Virginia’s Attorney General race, making him the first Latino to hold that office, or a statewide office in general for that matter. To add red insult to blue injury, it appears Republicans have flipped the Virginia House of Delegates as well.
Meanwhile, up north, what was thought to be a comfortable race for New Jersey Governor has turned into a nail biter that looks as though incumbent Governor Phil Murphy(D) survives a scare.
The reaction and overreaction will be swift and loud, so let us just touch on a few key points from the top here before these results start having national narratives and 2022 Midterm implications spliced into them.
Terry McAuliffe ran a terrible campaign. Any discussion of the results in Virginia needs to start there. Not just the numbers of how he ran behind Joe Biden a year ago and Ralph Northam who replaced him as governor, but his own gaffes and strategy. Terry McAuliffe was running a campaign mostly against Donald Trump, occasionally against Glenn Youngkin, and heavily dependent on the narratives of this race that were predominant in news media being the reality on the ground. Meanwhile, Glenn Youngkin ran a campaign mostly against Terry McAuliffe, occasional against Joe Biden, and other than the occasional soundbite mostly avoided Donald Trump all together. Youngkin outran Trump’s results in 2020, expanded his map, turned out voters, and won a race many observers thought to be unwinnable, myself included.
“Thirty-five percent of Virginia voters said the economy and jobs was the most important issue facing the state, while 17% named COVID-19 and 14% chose education” observed the AP. “Health care, climate change, racism, immigration, abortion and law enforcement were all lower-tier issues.” It is easy to note that the amount of coverage in the current political discourse is almost the inverse of that list. With the Supreme Court back in session, the seemingly never-ending negotiations over the president’s legislative agenda, and now no more elections until the Midterm primaries the issues that drive fundraising and engagement are going to be at the fore. It should also be noted that those top issues are at the forefront of folks’ minds after nearly 2 years of Covid-19. The disruption to work, schools, and life in general has affected the electorate in ways that will still be showing up at the ballot box for some time to come.
Not on that list but large in the coverage of Virginia and all things politics was one Donald J. Trump. One major question heading into the Virginia election was how does any Republican deal with Trump. At least for this election in Virginia Glenn Youngkin figured it out; keep the former president at arm’s length while acknowledging the reality of his presence and influence, stick to the issues at hand, focus on opponent, run the race for Governor of Virginia not avatar of all things Republican. It worked. For all the commentary and opinionating that were variations on the theme of “Youngkin is just Trump in a FLEECE” it didn’t stick because things that are different are not the same. Or more to the point, as Jay Caruso put it:
The word unique means “being the only one of its kind; unlike anything else.” If that is the case, attempting to turn Glenn Youngkin into some Trump mini-me makes no sense, and the same goes for Ron DeSantis. You cannot have it both ways. Trump cannot be a “unique threat” while attaching the “just like Trump” label to other Republicans.
Incongruent messaging leads to incongruent election results. No matter how much he might be on the minds of folks both in and out of the news media, Donald Trump was not on the ballot in Virginia. Over and over again we have historical evidence that, with rare exception, running against someone not on the ballot increases one’s risks of losing to someone who is. Thus, you get what we had here last night.
There will be lots of talk of the issues that drove this result — like the economy, education, and social issues — but big picture the overarching theme is clearly one of discontent. And discontent in politics only has one direction to be aimed at, those that are in the elected seats of power. Since these results will inevitably be the new ammunition for the rolling barrage of Midterm election coverage creeping across no-man’s land and into 2022, fair enough to note that the usual electoral backlash against the ruling party sure seems to be on the way.
Great writeupReport
Thank you sirReport
I’d see any lessons as pretty mundane. The biggest is that our system weighs towards cyclical changing of hands. Doesn’t mean leaders shouldn’t be bold about trying to buck the trend but more times than not they will fail.
If there was anything I was going to take away from this it would be how imperative it is to get things done when you can. The window is always narrow and closing.Report
Psychologically, I’m not sure most politicians can internalize that. Their egos are too inflated to permit it.Report
I think so. And in fairness it is often true at the level of the individual offices. Lots of safe seats and powerful inertia. Yet as we know from the last 30 odd years there is going to be a regular anti-incumbent force coming in and out like the tide. The savvy folks know where they are relative to the water mark.Report
Yeah, I’m glumly unsurprised to quote myself from the predictions thread.
There doesn’t seem to be a lot to take away nationally except, like you said, get shit done when you can and stand by it.Report
This is where we chant ‘pass the bill, pass the bill.’Report
Ehhh I’d be chanting “Pass both bills.” I still think the national party will get there on both of them.Report
I don’t think passing both bills would have helped last night. Youngkin’s victory seems to come from white women without college degrees. Trump won this group 56:44 in 2020 and Youngkin won this group 75:25. Interestingly, McAuliffe did slightly better with college-educated women than Biden.
The big issue with the Democratic Party is that we are a big group with a lot of factions with competing pet causes and the trade-offs we need to make in power almost unavoidably end up pissing off one group who is taking it on the chin. In a functioning political system, Manchin and Sinema would be cranky but harmless backbenchers. In a 50-50 Senate, they are more or less co-Presidents. Manchin is being a cranky old man in his dismissive attitude towards paid family leave. Sinema is destroying the ability to lower medicine prices and has developed a strange fondness for the still highly unpopular Trump tax cuts.
In good news, it looks like the SALT deductions will be reinstated because those were passed to mess with blue state UMC liberals in places like New Jersey.
Another paradoxical issue is that further left victories in the past few years have been in areas where their views might not be super popular or run the risk of alienating the white suburban and Asian voters than Democrats need to win.Report
I can not conceive of how reinstating SALT, a massive give away to the wealthy, is in any way good news.
I do, however, agree that I doubt that passing one or both bills would necessarily have change the VA outcome.
I also agree that the Dems are a very big tent coalition with a lot of fractious groups. What is interesting is that the stuff that keeps getting pushed to the forefront, both by media, right wing and left wing politicians and the internet and professional movers and shakers is stuff that doesn’t actually have a strong voting constituency within the Democratic coalition. That is to say CRT, DEI and similar nonsense. It’s hugely popular with twitter, professionals in politics, artists and journalists but it appears to be either a nothingburger or actively disliked by actual, ya know, voters (including the minority voters this stuff claims to serve!)
I remain baffled why our Democratic figures can’t dismiss or even oppose CRT et all without facing hellfire from their own team.Report
Because engagement is more important than votes, and signaling drives engagement.
I mean, truly, if elections were won through engagement on social media, it would be victory laps all day.Report
The paradox of the SALT tax though is that it was an inadvertent progressive win done for trollish reasons by the GOP. It was explicitly capped to mess with UMC Democrats in blue states and margins being what they are, we need those.
The CRT thing is a bit complicated for me. I don’t have children but from what I have been able to groak, school’s generally have a more progressive teaching of history and social studies than they did when I was in K-12 and I grew up in a liberal area without any “won’t someone think about the children?” evangelical fervor. We performed Cabaret has my junior year musical and it was uncensored.
But a lot of the panic over CRT is a combo of successful GOP scarmongering over the normal teaching. As many liberals have pointed out. schools are not teaching CRT. My grand education on CRT included it being the subject of one or two sessions of my jurisprudence elective in my last semester of law school. But what I think is going on is that the even mild traces of Confederate apologia are gone and it is no longer fashionable or correct to state that MLK solved all of over problems with race. These things upset people.Report
The thing about education is that it is a very local policy and this is one area where progressive groups and the very online have more influence especially in deep-blue cities.
Paid family leave is incredibly popular and by huge bipartisan margins yet Manchin seems able to gut it because it does not fit his old man view of politics that are stuck in the past. He is also likely sexist enough to just see “women’s work” as unimportant. Allowing the government to negotiate on drug prices is incredibly popular but for reasons that no one will be able to ever explain Sinema and Rep. Rice campaigned on supporting that measure in 2018 and are now opposed to it adamantly. It is almost like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Sinema receives a lot of pharma money so that is at least some venal explanation, Rep. Rice does not.
But education policy in cities is one place where progressives can have a say without being stymied by cranky man Manchin or spacey Sinema.Report
Saul, I think the paid family leave stuff is important and something Democrats should continue fighting for. But I also think that project is going to be piecemeal in this country. There remains a very real question about whether the middle class is ever going to be willing to pay the taxes they do in European countries to support these things. I hope we get there, but it’s going to be a long road.
However I’d really like you to reconsider where you are on these education DEI or CRT or whatever issues and how they look to parents. Every single county in the NoVA-DC-Baltimore metro area has a reference to Ibram Kendi on its public school website. I’ve looked. They are easy enough to find via google. This is a person with no pedagogical expertise, and who expressly believes that all educational standards of conduct and performance are racist. When parents ask why such a person is referenced, and how his views are influencing the education of their children, they deserve an answer. This area is hardly a hotbed of confederate apologia, and when parents are told it is all a figment of our imagination or get these ultra defensive responses, it makes us wonder what else is going on. Why is it so hard to explain? No one ever says.
And then you see these bizarre, often incredibly racist examples of how the views of Kendi and his fellow travelers are implemented that go viral, and think wow I want nothing to do with this for my child. But there he still is, right on the school system website. Does that make sense?Report
“However I’d really like you to reconsider where you are on these education DEI or CRT or whatever issues and how they look to parents. Every single county in the NoVA-DC-Baltimore metro area has a reference to Ibram Kendi on its public school website. I’ve looked.”
Please provide a link then.
https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1455910004096049152?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1455914540491808768%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es3_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dlawyersgunsmoneyblog-comt_i%3D12114320https3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F3Fp3D121143t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F20212F112Fok-karent_e%3DOK20Karent_d%3DOK20Karen20-20Lawyers2C20Guns202620Moneyt_t%3DOK20Karens_o%3Ddescversion%3Db8cc22d9c3be6916b2ef7fe9e57839bc
I think there was a backlash to Democrats on education but it was not because of CRT but more because of changes to admission into Honors/AP/select schools than CRT.Report
I’m not going to go through and pull examples from all dozen or so districts but Here’s an example from Fairfax County PS’s website.
His work is referenced in the ‘anti-racist’ audit being undertaken by Montgomery County PS.. Kendi himself spoke at an event with a county council member about it.
And you realize that CRT/DEI is the reason for changing (read lowering or eliminating) standards, testing, and tracking, right? Parents want that stuff because these are part of providing a good education.Report
Mod help requested. I am in moderation probably due to providing links at Saul’s request. Please and thank you!Report
Give us an example of what it means to “dismiss or even oppose CRT”.
Like in your local K-12schools, what would such a Democrat do? What books would they ban, what curriculum changes would they make?
Or maybe like the local General Services, how would they hire and fire differently?
How would someone follow your advice?Report
It’s super easy. Simply not conducting racism programs run by Kendi or people like him in the DEI industrial complex would go a long way.
My understanding is that the whole hullabaloo in Loudon county started with the discovery of half a million dollars in taxpayer money given to some bad DEI contractor espousing the usual stupidity typical of these organizations. This was followed by the creation and subsequent discovery of a Facebook page including members of the school board where people discussed ways to retaliate against parents expressing a problem with what was going on.Report
What constitutes a “good DEI” organization? What should they be teaching? Because giving liberals something advocate FOR is a lot better politically.Report
I don’t believe there is any such thing as good DEI. Maybe it exists but if so I haven’t seen it. Definitely think there’s a lot of good history and English and literature though. To that point, Democrats can and should run on delivering the best public education possible to their constituents. High standards, great options, and opportunities for students of all skillsets.Report
Our company did a DEI training for management last year. I was dreading it and expecting the DiAngelesque worst, but it was actually pretty reasonable. Like most of our trainings, not any particularly novel content but some good reminders of things to pay attention to.Report
IMO good DEI teaches practical skills to managers/educators/etc. that help them be more aware of biases and hidden assumptions that they themselves or members of their team/group hold that could negatively affect the mission of their organization. It recognizes patterns of behavior but it doesn’t make blanket statements or negative judgments based on someone’s race or gender, and it certainly doesn’t tell people to feel guilty about their own race/gender, require confessional statements, set lower standards or expectations for certain categories of people, etc. Ideally it also recognizes that this is a two-way street and that people should try to avoid taking offense as much as they try to avoid giving offense.
Really it’s just a subset of good managerial/interpersonal practices in general.Report
There is an interesting Freakonomics podcast that looks at diversity, and one study they looked at was the effects of “Forced Diversity” vs “Organic Diversity”, or what happens when you force diversity on a team as opposed to letting them seek it out. Short answer, forcing the issue is not good, while having it happen organically is at worst a wash. There are, of course, caveats and such to that, but it makes a certain amount of sense.
How this relates to DEI? My general take is that you get more value from the carrot versus the stick. So your “good DEI” is the correct approach, versus DEI that plays on collective guilt, etc.Report
How would this nonWoke Dem respond to that mother in Youngkins ad, whose teenage son had nightmares after reading Beloved?
Or the Tennessee parents David French talks about who want to ban the story of Ruby Bridges because it makes them feel bad?
Or the Texas Republicans who want to ban 850 books?
Does your nonWoke Dem react with scorn and make a bold stand in favor of truthtelling?
Or with sympathy that perhaps yes, Beloved and Ruby Bridges should be banned?
Because this is the real conflict point. Not Kendi or the white fragility lady or the poster at the Smithsonian.Report
Trump voter here. Much more concerned with Youtube/Facebook banning free speech (or AT&T/Portland judiciary forcing people to sign “I am racist” confessions). On the side of “don’t ban books,” and if kids are having nightmares, suck it up, buttercup.Report
I am a parent and the real conflict point for me is Kendi et al. I am not the only one. I know on the internet everyone is a dog but I swear to you that I exist, I pay taxes, and I vote.
The response to those other issues is the same it always has been from liberal people. A defense of exposure to and availability of challenging works of literature, including an ability to openly criticize it, love it, hate it, be confused by it, etc. And frankly there can always be an opt-out for those whose parents don’t think they can handle it but I think those really are the few and far between in the public schools.Report
The primary point is that if you eliminate the low hanging CRT/DEI fruit then you can respond sympathetically but mildly to the more risible GOP attacks like the kid with nightmares or banning books and not shed so much blood. Let us not forget that all the CRT/DEI stuff seems to have very little constituency among the actual fishing voters (and minority voters especially). So being unfriendly/skeptical towards it doesn’t actually cost much electorally.Report
I think the Democrats have real generational issues where lots of younger voters or future voters feel very passionately about certain issues but there is still an old guard that overlearned the lessons of the 1970s-90s and/or has too much old economy Steve about them.
This is why things like parental leave are so hard to pass. But younger Democrats tend to be more liberal regardless of where they run like Michelle Wu in Boston. Ms. Wu also sends her children to Boston public schools so she has real skin in the game.Report
Which of the Youngkin voters would be gettable by the half a loaf of “Kendi No/Beloved Yes”?
Hell, do you think that mother even knows who Kendi is? Or cares? That woman was featured in a commercial because she represents a lot of voters.
Moral panics are not stopped with equivocation and middling hairsplitting.
Tipper Gore wasnt mollified by burning a few Satan worshippers.
Moral panics need forceful pushback against the very concept.Report
A leader would respond to each of these different cases differently, but with a set of guiding principles. “Parents should have no say” isn’t going to be a popular guiding principle, nor do I consider it moral. I’d like to see a prioritization of fact, and considerable parental latitude in regulating analysis.Report
Chip,
I think CRT is a trap that you are falling for. To be fair, I think InMD and North are also falling for variants of the same trap. There is some evidence that education might not have been what killed Terry Mac but it certainly did not help him. He more or less shot himself in the foot when he said parents should not have a say in their children’s education and what gets taught in schools. Now I think from a policy prospective, a lot of parents can be very short-sighted in how they define a good education but they absolutely deserve a say to an extent. This is the heart of the American system.
Keep in mind that even much more liberal San Francisco is upset about the antics of its school board and the SF School Board is closer to the cartoon version of CRT than anything in VIrginia.Report
Chip, you say:
Which of the Youngkin voters would be gettable by the half a loaf of “Kendi No/Beloved Yes”?
I would instead ask you to consider that there are three groups of voters.
1. People who, if they vote, will vote for your guy (no matter what).
2. People who, if they vote, will vote for the other guy (no matter what).
3. People who might vote for your guy or the other guy, depending on various things.
The best things that you can do, of course, are get your #1s fired up, get the #2s to not care one way or the other about who wins (indifference or demoralization are both good outcomes here), and get more of the #3s than the other guy gets.
So I’d say that there are two questions you should ask:
Question The First: Will this motivate #3s to vote for me over the other guy?
Question The Second: Will this get more #1s out of the house and into the voting booth than it’ll get #2s out of the house and into the voting booth?
And if your answers to both those questions are “Heck yeah!”, you’re in a good place.
Look at what happened yesterday.
Would you say that you’re in a good place?Report
Testing, in response to Chip’s apparent problem. Reply link seems to be working now.Report
“Twitter is not a real place” seems to be an important takeaway. I mean, I wouldn’t say that *ALL* politicals are local, but let’s say that 80% of politics are local and if you’re playing heavily toward that 20% without also making sweeping gestures toward the 80, then you’re likely going to find yourself saying “well, I guess the pendulum just swings”.Report
And I’d also say that 99% of politicians misread “they threw out the other guy!” with “I won!”Report
This is very true. Biden won by being the anti-Trump, but as has been repeatedly noted he won’t win again by being the anti-Trump. Democrats need to man up.Report
counterpoint: Twitter is absolutely a real place, there’s just a lot more of it than liberals who work in media are aware of.Report
This is amazing. After getting primaried by a socialist, the incumbent mayor of Buffalo appears to be winning in a write-in landslide.Report
yep – and yet progressives won in Boston and Cleveland of all places. That said, its not unprecedented – Lisa Murkowski won back her Senate seat as a write in after she lost the Republican primary some years ago.Report
Coming back here, I’m not sure I’d call Justin Bibb progressive in as much as you would call Pete Buttigieg progressive. Which still isn’t necessarily a bad thing given what he’s inheriting, he had my suburban support.Report
Per the article I think he must have benefited from the best write-in slogan ever. ‘Write down Byron Brown.’ Whoever came up with that needs to be immediately promoted.Report
Goes to show you what happens when you actually campaign. Too bad, though.Report
Neoliberal Clinton acolytes seem to suffer form this problem in spades. Whether or not they are named Clinton. And they also seem immune to learning this lesson. Plus, as a former governor, McAullife had a record that could be examined against the current situation. That’s almost never good for anyone trying to win back their old job in a political climate that has changed significantly.
This is also true but misses two key points. First that discontent has been building for years (it was and is a big reason that Trumpism rose and continues to flourish) and its gonna take a while to diffuse. Second, that discontent wants solutions NOW, and the modern political process is not designed for instant gratification. which mean sthat folks now turning on Biden and Democrats have no real sense of how we got here, and aren’t going to wait for the sausage to be made. Hence the ire on the left at Republican and Manchin-ian obstructionism.
And this is where Democrats traditional approach (bringing charts and graphs to a knife fight) is weakest. Those disruptions have economic and emotional components. Democrats can and sometimes do frame coherent responses to the economic components; Republicans frame responses to the emotional ones. Because politics is NOT rational decision making (Sorry Haidt) the best emotional story wins the day. And has for most of my life. Democratic politicians clearly refuse to learn this lesson, and the ones that do never seem to get promoted to leadership positions.Report
Even more so in these days of engagement driven social media.Report
There’s emotion in the coalition. It’s just aimed at things like the structural racism and oppressive heteronormativity of traffic signals instead of stuff sane people care about.Report
Sane people care about structural racism – it has economic costs, health costs and political costs. But its harder to tell a a story about then “you lost your job because Joe Biden flooded the borders with illegals who Terry McAuliffe wants to give your house to.”Report
If you can’t understand why downward wage pressure from mass illegal immigration is salient to lots of people (even where the specific threat to them personally is questionable) but believe *rolls the dice* introducing race quotas into teacher hiring decisions is the kind of thing people can really get behind I don’t know how to help you.Report
The thing is, in the current economic climate, where employers can’t even get illegal immigrants to come work for them, one has to question how they are exerting a downward pressure.Report
The pandemic is the quickest answer for the economic slice we currently find ourselves in.
But if you want to read a government report, and I *KNOW* you want to read a government report, I happen to have one handy.Report
But that was from 2020, probably based on 2019 or 2018 data. The world has completely changed!Report
We don’t have a labor shortage – we have a wage and benefits shortage.Report
If you can’t understand how downward wage pressure is created by American business people preferring to hire undocumented migrants – and in industries that used to be populated by Black Americans who were equally economically oppressed – then I can’t help you.Report
McAuliffe won a five-way primary with 62 percent of the vote. There are a bunch of hot takes today that the Democrats would have won if they had a Bernie type as the candidate and I do not think that is true. Turnout was high and Virginia is not California in terms of partisanship. One progressive wrote something on another blog like “Well if we are going to lose, let’s lose with my preferred candidate.” This might as well be an admission that further lefties do not know how to win elections.Report
The companion to this was Youngkin carried himself – at least for the most part publicly – like a normal, functional adult and politician, keeping the loonier parts of Trumpism at arms length. There is a lesson there for Republicans as well but the more Trump-flavored ones will probably ignore it. In an election you have to be a palatable alternative as the entry requirement to getting votes outside your die-hard base.Report
Youngkin did do this and posed as Romney type. The Virginia GOP also had the foresight to shut down the primary process in order to prevent Trumpy Amanda Chase from winning. I will give them credit for that.
Even doing the Romney thing, only eeked out a victory at 50.7 percent though. Virginia’s one term only for governorship is deeply weird and not good policy.Report
Youngkin carried himself – at least for the most part publicly – like a normal, functional adult and politician
Which for me illustrates the danger. He can be counted on to be just as authoritarian and lawless as Trump, but just with a more polished demeanor.
We’ve long commented on the possibilities of a “Trumpism without Trump” and we see it now with De Santis and Youngkin.
The thing to watch for in the coming months and next year is who he appoints to boards under his control and especially those with their hands on the levers of elections.Report
De Santis is too Trumpy to be Trump without Trump.Report
I think this is probably true, but I also think Trump has De Santis on his radar more so than Youngkin was and the probability of conflict there is a whole lot higher either out of spit or jealousy or whatever. How “I don’t want you here” lands with Trump from De Santis after seeing it in action with Youngkin is going to be a dynamic to watch. But just on the surface, De Santis is going to have a much harder time pulling that trick off especially if Trump doesn’t cooperate.Report
Based on what I know of Virginia I think this is pretty unlikely. The state’s entire economy is based around a relationship with the federal government. It’s government contracting/military industrial complex in NoVa and just plain old military infrastructure in the southeast. The important parts of the state have been pretty insulated from the post industrial issues that plague a lot of the midwest and parts the south where Trumpism is strongest.
Now I’m not saying Younkin is ‘good’ but I struggle to imagine his administration being particularly Trump-like. Remember, Trump got his ass kicked in the state. Even the really red parts aren’t his constituency. Younkin comes from the class of Republicans that don’t want Trump ruining their favorite golf course, even if they’re happy enough to take a check from him.Report
Yup, Younkin is from the “Use Trump” wing of the GOP, not the “Believe in Trump” wing.Report
How did “use so and so” work out for the German conservatives in the 1930s?Report
I’m not defending the fishers, I’m simply observing them. Given that defying Trump means, at best, losses and minority status for quite some time and more likely loss of their individual respective sinecures and positions it’s not hard to see the appeal of “Use Trump” to them.Report
Much of the “Use Trump” wing of the GOP is retiring before the midterms.Report
If only. The GOP would be far less dangerous and effective if all the “Use Trump” folks bolted.Report
If Trump demands that the Virginia secretary of state find some votes, and surrounds the state capitol with a howling mob, what does Youngkin do?
If the answer anything other than salute and snap to, you haven’t been paying attention.Report
Brad Roffensburger didn’t salute and snap to, and his office has been neutered of its power to actually administer elections in Georgia.
But that would never happen in Virginia . . .Report
The 2024 Big Lie begins here.Report
I am subscribed to the NYT’s “The Morning” email and it’s not bad for the whole “I need to wake up” morning reading.
Not because it’s accurate, necessarily, but because of the whole “wait, I need to focus and re-read that again” thing that helps kick the brainstarter from grinding to okay maybe first gear maybe.
Here’s from today’s:
The main thing that I notice about the above is how little agency voters have. It’s Republicans focusing on things. It’s Democrats being *SOMETIMES* out of step. Sometimes.
Voters?Report
Well, we are the proles being told what to do by our political betters. We have no agency, our votes are strictly swayed by the power/intensity/frequency of a given message of how to vote.Report
You have to understand, the mores are still changing which is why they poll so poorly. Why I bet by tomorrow we’ll be up to 7% of Hispanics saying they prefer to be referred to as LatinX. Progress, baby!Report
If I were to give advice to the Democrats for the near future they would consist of:
1. Okay, let’s debate this so-called “CRT” thing. Okay, maybe it’s not merely an obscure legal theory from the 1970’s. Maybe it *DOES* exist. So let’s talk about it.
2. Okay, the guns thing. Man, we just can’t keep putting our hand on that hot stove. Seriously, we’re not going to touch it for at least a decade.
3. Okay. “Defund the Police” was stupid. Not the whole idea, necessarily, but the slogan. I can only assume that we got infiltrated by COINTELPRO there. So, instead, we’re going to focus on getting rid of Qualified Immunity. The problem is the bad apples. We’re going to stop protecting bad apples. We trust the system to keep the good apples.
That’s off the top of my head.Report
1. The links between CRT and public education are at best correlations – which means there’s no evidence one caused the other. That aside its a trap as CRT is really all about white people having to share economic and political power, which a LOT of white people don’t want to do. Pointing that out gets you called reverse racist so its a no win for Democrats.
2. “The Gun Thing” is another example where Republican politicians use over the top emotional language to obscure what’s actually going on policy wise. Democrats can’t thusly deal with guns in suicides for instance because the real need/issue gets hidden.
3. The systems are designed to recruit and retain bad apples. Fixing Qualified Immunity doesn’t address that. Plus, discussing the actual issue requires the same level of intellectual engagement – emotion free – that CRT requires. Quick emotion laden stories short cut that.Report
1. Just say “reverse racism isn’t real”.
2. My thoughts on the gun thing are more in line with stuff like what Beto argued and the whole “assault weapons” thing where guns have shoulder things that go up rather than discussions of curbing suicide. I do think that a pivot to suicide might work. “Ban handguns!” might be a good argument. Better than the assault weapons thing, anyway.
3. Au contraire: Fixing Qualified Immunity is an attempt to change the system that recruits and retains the bad apples. Specifically, the “retain” part. Specifically the “oh, they won’t even get tried after engaging in illegal acts” part. It’s not a complete solution, true. But getting started on changing the part of the system that retains bad apples strikes me as superior to trying to get rid of police without regard to apple status in the middle of a regression to the mean in violent crime.Report
Remind me again who killed the supposedly bipartisan police reform bill over qualified immunity and who was willing to vote for it.Report
Oh, CJ. My advice wasn’t on “here’s how you should vote once you get into office”.
It was on how to campaign.
Lie, if you will.Report
Nice to get that out in the open. I’ve wondered why, after huffing and puffing so long and hard about qualified immunity reform, you were utterly silent when it was killed. Couldn’t have been because of the identity of the killers.Report
I argued (and will continue to argue) for ending Qualified Immunity.
As it is, I have two people who disagree with me on it.
1. People who think that police should have it.
2. People who think that “Defund The Police” is a better argument.
I don’t know that we have any #1s here. We appear to have #2s here.
We certainly have at least one person who wants to argue that getting rid of QI won’t accomplish anything.
Those are the minds that the Good Lord has seen fit to give me to change. I will work with what I have been given.
(Out of curiosity, would you have changed your mind if I wrote a “Those darn Republicans didn’t vote for ending QI!” essay? If so, I’ll see if I can get to writing one.)Report
I argued (and will continue to argue) for ending Qualified Immunity.
And yet you took a hiatus when something definitive and bad happened precisely when you couldn’t blame your preferred targets.Report
I’ve gotta admit. The bill, whatever it is, flew under my radar. Quick googling only shows me bills that have been introduced to Congress, none that made it through the House only to die in the Senate.
The George Floyd Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act of 2020 is still in committee.
I can’t find anything with my quick googling about the bill that was “killed”.
Could you point me to something?Report
We had a long go-round some time back over whether you would vote for the then-pending bill that was stalled in the Senate because Republicans were balking about QI reform if it were stripped out. That bill. It eventually died. Because Democrats wanted QI reform and the Republicans didn’t. Must have missed it.Report
So you don’t have a link to it? Because all I could find are bills that are still in committee.
I haven’t found any that have died. (It might be why I haven’t heard of any of them dying.)Report
I can’t post the link, but there’s a Guardian story from 9/22 that, even with my pitiful Googling skills I found in 11 seconds. There was more, but it was widely reported at the time.Report
So you don’t have a link? Do you have what I should google and *I* can post the link?Report
We’ve wandered away from what is true about the state of the world to the limits of my tech skills, about which nobody can say anything that I haven’t already insisted upon myself.
What is true about the state of the world is that in mid-September, the allegedly bipartisan police reform bill died in the Senate, mainly because of Republican unwillingness to reform QI. This was widely reported at the time. It was a story, admittedly a one-day story, in the papers, which I read. Senators Booker and Scott, the chief negotiators, were on television intoning the funeral orations, which I saw. This happened. You haven’t said it didn’t and you haven’t even said you didn’t know about it at the time — and if you were to say it now, I’m not sure I’d believe you. Despite my pathetic Google skills, I found several stories reporting the fact in 11 seconds. The 9/22 Guardian article I cited was one of many, though particularly clear, succint, and factual rather than pundity. If I could find confirmation that fast, you can surely do better, especially now that you have a specific lead.
It is, I suppose, possible that I knew about it and you just missed it, being a one-day story, after all. Since it is directly relevant to my working life, maybe I was paying more attention. But then, I’m not the one who says he is arguing, and will continue to argue, against qualified immunity. And it’s not my job to do your homeworkReport
CJ, if you’re asking me about a story that I can’t find and you can’t point me to, I am going to shift into “yeah, I think it’s fairly understandable why I didn’t comment on it at the time” mode.
I am sorry that I didn’t comment on it at the time, for what it’s worth.
I suppose I have good news in that The George Floyd Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act of 2020 is still in committee and is *NOT* yet dead. I’m not a fan of laws that have names in them but, hey.
In any case, my advice for democrats running for office is to pivot from “DEFUND THE POLICE!” to “Abolish QI”. Like, and give examples of excesses of QI as well.
I mean, I might go so far as to suggest “make it a clean bill”. Don’t argue for a bill that does 1,200 things and one of the 1,200 things is limit qualified immunity somewhat. Just come out and say “If cops break the law, their crimes go to a grand jury. No more Qualified Immunity.”
Make Republicans defend cops breaking the law.
Or, I suppose, make lawyers write paragraphs explaining how this won’t change anything.Report
Oh, and try to stay on message with it. “I’m not talking about defunding! I’m not talking about abolishing! I’m talking about how cops who break the law should be prosecuted!”
AND GIVE EXAMPLES. Point to all of the (RECENT!) excesses of QI. Make the other guy defend this cop not being put in front of a jury. Make the other guy defend this cop’s action not so much as going before a grand jury.
Make him say “you don’t understand how much leeway we give police officers in this country” or some such.Report
Any Republican strategist would love the Democrats following that advice. Democrats run on a low-salience issue most voters don’t know about or understand but the Republicans paint it as anti-cop or anti law-and-order. With predictable results. Out in the real world, cops are popular and the Republicans know that. Just look at prime-time television: the Dick Wolf universe, where cops and prosecutors are heroes, internal affairs investigators are contemptible, and defense lawyers are sleazy. Eventually, we’ll have an NCIS series set in every city near the ocean. Hell, we might have NCIS Omaha. Chicago PD, Bluebloods, it goes on. Last election, a NYC Democratic congressman was beaten. The most effective attack ad was a bunch of Staten Island cops straight out of central casting painting him as soft on crime and anti-cop.
Your check from the RNC for consulting services should arrive any day now.Report
I think that running on that low salience issue that Republicans will try to paint as anti-cop would be a better move than “DEFUND THE POLICE”.
Which, let me point out, was actually and for real being argued.
I think that “Get rid of QI!” would have a better chance of forcing Republicans to defend atrocities than “DEFUND THE POLICE”, if your goal is to avoid “predictable results”.Report
We can all agree that DEFUND THE POLICE was very bad messaging. Doesn’t mean that anything that might be less bad is a good idea.Report
I do think that the cops need to be reformed and the choices seem to be “pivot to something that’ll work” or “stop going for it”.
I think that “abolish QI” will have dividends. You disagree. Fine.
I certainly think it’s less dumb than “DEFUND THE POLICE” which was the messaging recently enough to wonder if it is still the goal.
Maybe not, given Minneapolis.
But I think that it’s good that Derek Chauvin went on trial. More cops should go on trial. Make Republicans defend not putting cops who break the law on trial.Report
I am going to push back against the idea that the GOP has a strong night. Jaybird, Koz, Pinky, and Berg, your trolls are noted in advance. Please don’t be your usual middle school miscreant selves.
Youngkin did win but it was not a blow out victory. The Virginia governorship stayed in the hands of the party controlling the White House was 2013. This was a freak and bare victory by McAuliffe. Yesterday, McAuliffe received more votes than Northam won in 2017. It was a high turnout election and it looks like the Virginia legislature will remain Democratic.
New Jersey is close but likely that Murphy retained his governorship. Democrats won a supermajority of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
The hot takes are that Youngkin’s victory means the GOP will have a 50 seat majority in the House in 2020 and a supermajority in the Senate. I don’t think that is true. I am not stating the Democrats will retain their majority but that I am not seeing a return of 1994 or 2010 either.
Tfe US has a thermostatic electorate that treats the President as a kind of bronze age Emperor King. Twitter lets people see how the sausage too much. Right now, the big issues are the Supply Chain Crisis and the continued jerkitude of Manchin and Sinema.Report
Saul, I am not arguing that the GOP had a strong night. I don’t think I’ve mentioned the GOP at all.
Did the Dems have a bad night?
Well… they didn’t have a *GOOD* one.
My focus would be on stuff like “here’s how the Democrats might be less offensive”.Report
Does Saul get his own comments policy?Report
The GOP had a strong night. To say otherwise is detached from reality.
To the extent that it was.just a bad night or a disastrous one for Democrats depends entirely on how they course correct over the next 12 months. Less preaching and more listening might be a good start.Report
Democrats won the Virginia governorship in 1981, 1985, and 1989, 2002, and 2007. Were those strong showings for Democrats/bad for Republicans? Murphy looks like he will be the first Democrat reelected as governor in New Jersey since 1977.
I am not stating that Biden or the Democrats are in good shape for 2022. I conceded that they could very plausibly lose their Congressional majorities especially because they are small. But I am not seeing this as signs of a blowout for the GOP in 2022 either. The media and overly paid pundits like to see everything in big arcs.
The truth is that we have a thermostatic electorate and a very closely divided nation.Report
I think you understate the significance of the VA and NJ gubernatorial races – where one was driven by education and the other covid – but both relevant nationally. I currently live in NJ. Unlike VA where there were late warning signs, NO ONE expected it to be this close.
I also look to Nassau County on Long Island. A place I spent a a very long time living. It was traditionally GOP for decades, turned purple and then strongly blue in the last 15 years. The democrats were routed last night. The GOP hadn’t had a showing like that since the 1990s.
Personally I think the results in NY and NJ are indicative of peoples frustration of democrat controlled Covid policies. And I think that is a midterm issue for all blues heading into midterms should fear.
And just calling it now, if children 5 and up are required to get the vax to return to the classroom in September, you can expect the Dems to get wiped out in the midterms. If you think CRT is unpopular, just wait until you force little kids to get the shot.Report
So if Dems don’t mandate the shot for returning to school then Covid rolls on and on and Dems get wiped out because they didn’t get Covid under control. If Dems do mandate the shot for returning to school then angry voters will wipe them out for making them pollute their little angels purity of essence with evil vaccines? Sounds like if Dems get wiped out either way- they should probably go with the policy that saves a truckload of lives even if it annoys anti-vax moonbats.Report
Personal opinion on the risk/reward societal benefit is largely irrelevant, but reasonable people can disagree on the necessity of mandatory vaxing of kids at this point of the pandemic.
Regardless, I doin’t think it is a damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario for dems.
Compelling parents to have their children take a (EUA) shot that does not immunize them against a virus that is extremely low risk to them anyway – two plus years of mass exposure – that is a recipe for democratic disaster. Most parents of small children do not give a crap about ‘greater good’ arguments when it comes to their kids.
It’s the moderates and independents you need to not piss off. This is not currently the demographic that is going to BLAME democrats for not enforcing mandates. The only people who will be angry at democrats for not doing mandates are democrats who are never voting republican anyway.Report
I’m extremely dubious that your last paragraph is correct. Covid and Covid driven economic disruptions are likely the core of Bidens popularity problems right now. I think it’s a fantasy to suggest that swing voters will forgive economic disruptions and ongoing Covid so long as Bidens peeps can say “well we’re not forcing you to take the vaccine.”Report
For example, I’m tired of all the Covid disruptions, and quite frankly, I am utterly at an end with those who are refusing to get vaccinated just ’cause. I will not look kindly upon those who play footsie with the hold-outs.Report
Heck, so am I. Perhaps those priors are coloring my thinking but the actual numbers of people quitting public service jobs when forced to get vaccinated (or be fired) suggests that anti-vax sentiment, like libertarianism and CRT/DEI is predominantly a loud passionate internet phenomena rather than a strong vital issue in meat space.Report
Likko’s piece said it best: “Nurses are already working doubleshifts and overstressed.” Now you’re telling them that they have to bear with more work, because some of them have reservations about getting vaccinated.
These are nurses who have had “Opioid Parties” at their workplace, where they are bribed by Pharmaceutical companies with food and beverages.
Cops in Seattle? They can get jobs in any podunk suburb — and the suburbs don’t care if they get vaccinated. So, maybe, some of them who are hesitant about the vaccine start looking to see where there’s a less fussy workplace. Figure out they get paid more in the suburbs, too. Ask themselves why they show up to work and get spat on…Report
I am not a threat to you. I do not interact with anyone, at all. I don’t go to the grocery store. I don’t sit on a bus. I don’t talk with people. I have not left my property in months, except to go to the dentist, which is properly HEPA filtered.
And yet, you somehow think I deserve to be thrown out of my house? To lose my job?
I protect you best by staying the heck away from everyone. Forcing me to stay at a homeless shelter and beg for food on the streets makes you more endangered, not less.Report
Do you recognize that you are an outlier. The 20+% of people who are holding out are not self-quarantined. Some of them are cops, and firefighters, and health care workers who interact with tens, possibly hundreds of people a day.
They are a danger.Report
I disagree that they are a danger. Dr. Malone says that the vaccinated carry double the viral load that the unvaccinated do (there have been a number of studies, I’m citing him for convenience). And, because they aren’t Really Sick, they’re “walking viral spreaders.”
If the unvaccinated get sick, they Stay Home (or at least they should, and I’m all on board with more Sick leave).
If the objective wasn’t “Political purges of the noncompliant,” folks would be talking a good game about “we’re giving desk jobs (from home) to as many good cops as we can.”Report
You means this Dr. Malone? They one who is butt hurt he’s not getting credit for something he didn’t invent? Yeah, hard pass, but thanks for playing . . .
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/08/robert-malone-vaccine-inventor-vaccine-skeptic/619734/Report
That’s not was I was saying. My entire point was mandating kids to get vaxxed to go back to school will ensure a WIPEOUT. It’s a 3rd rail issue. Touch it if you dare. I never implied it was the only thing they needed to back off of to have a good midterm. That’s obviously not the case. Dems are going to bite it next year. the only questions now are how badly and are they willing to come back to the center to try and avoid a total disaster.
Unfortunately for the party, they are comprised of too many people who look at yesterday and think “we ‘didn’t go far left enough’ – Y’all should not listen to those people. They know not what they say.Report
How is this different form all the vaccines kids have to have already?Report
I don’t buy it, sorry. We require a laundry list of vaccinations for kids to go to public schools. The idea that one additional vaccination is going to cause some vast uprising just doesn’t pass the sniff test.Report
And frankly it will only be in red states IF it occurs. Which might not go for Democrats anyway. Its a great deflection though.Report
Yeah, we do. Those are immunizations against diseases that harm children. This is an emergency use authorization vaccine that doesn’t immunize a child from a virus that poses little risk to them.
You don’y have to buy that argument. That’s what parents think. So go ahead and mandate covid shots to go to kindergarten. Find out what happens. Be prepared to be incredulous about how stupid these parents are for not capitulating and perplexed at how the GOP wipes out your side a year from now..Report
COVID harms children. In different ways then adults and for different periods of time, but it harms them (https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-in-babies-and-children/art-20484405). Saying otherwise is lying.
And that’s the problem. A LOT of politicians want to hold power, so they are wiling to lie about this to do so. And parents are willing to listen for a lot of complex socio-cultural reasons, even when their trusted family physician tells them to get the shots. Because even though they know that doctor well, they want what the politician is selling more.
Still based on lies however. And i have little patience for people who endanger my children because they want to believe lies.Report
The idea that it is possible to assert that Covid doesn’t hurt children is absurd. We have no evidence of this, plenty of counter-evidence, and even more counter-evidence in the case of _adults_ who have had problems for, at this point, over a year.
News flash: If half the adults who get a disease have symptoms months later, then we should _probably_ actually consider the idea that kids are going to be impacted long-term, also.
We probably should consider the idea they’ll be impacted _when they become adults_, which is something I’ve not seen anyone consider, but there are diseases that work exactly that way, weak in kids, but then it can come back in adults and be horrible…just ask an adult with shingles. That virus stays in the body, and reoccurs…a lot of viruses work that way.
And thanks to long Covid, we know Covid is staying in the body
We just don’t know what it does. Maybe nothing. Or maybe long Covid is something that cycles, and everyone who ever got Covid is going to have occasionally have a resurgence for a year and get knocked down by long Covid, and then get better.
Maybe some, or even all, people don’t ‘recover’ from Covid at, they simply have cycles of flare-up and remission. Maybe it’s like herpes, but instead of cold sores, you get fun pneumonia.
So maybe we _shouldn’t_ think it’s fine for kids to get a disease we have no idea of the long term effects of in kids, but we know stays in the body _and_ often causes serious problems when it does so in adults? Because, ya know, kids become adults.
—
Incidentally, it’s amazing how utterly careless we are being with people’s health in general. Not death, handling death is easy, but we already have a large section of the population with disabilities from Covid. Like, right now.
We’re just…pretending that’s not happening. The after-effects of what is happening now will have to be dealth with for the next _seventy years_ or more, as people live with the impact of Covid on their body.Report
I don’t know why you expect me to have a particular strong opinion on the issue of whether Republicans had a good night. I’ve always been more interested in ideas and policy than in the horse-race aspects of politics. Insofar as I have an interest in who wins, it’s more about keeping Democrats and Republicans in balance so that neither side can do too much damage. I tweak you and Phil every once in a while because you’re so full of yourselves and very little else, but I don’t like Team Red nearly as much as you like Team Blue.
We’ve never really seen eye-to-eye on politics before, but you always seemed like a somewhat reasonable person. These past couple of years you’ve really been going off the rails. Despite not having a deep enough understanding of the issues to justify this level of certainty, you consistently attribute any disagreement to bad-faith trolling. I don’t know what’s going on, but you need to get it together. Maybe take a break from politics for a while or something. Nothing we do or say will have any effect on the outcome of any election.Report
First, I reject your priors and substitute my own: this was a big day for the American Solidarity Party, the voters clearly demonstrated…
As I noted pre-election, the Education ‘issue’ is a both/and sort of thing… Covid response (17%) combined with Education issues (14%) are intertwined… the McAuliffe Mega-Gaffe on Parents: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach” ties in to the Parent experience with the School systems during Covid. There was a lot of social capital consumed by School systems that left some voter tanks empty in areas that went for Biden. They still went for Dems, but with double digit defections.
As far as gaffes go, this ranks up there with ‘The 47%’, ‘Deplorables’ and probably is most analogous to ‘Putting lots of Coal Miners out of work’.
The other thing that struck me was how the Red areas voted even harder than last time… I’m sure Dems will want to say that it is ‘proof’ that Youngkin is just like Trump… a fact not in evidence anywhere but really weak McAuliffe ads very nearly comparing favorite colors of Trump and Youngkin as proof that Youngkin is the SAME AS TRUMP. (Seriously, the single most shown ad was a clip of Youngkin acknowledging that Global Warming is a thing, but not sure what exactly was causing it — compared to Trump saying a similar thing — Underpants Gnome Meme — Youngkin is Racist) Maybe Youngkin *is* just like Trump, I don’t know, I suspect he’s more like Romney and, well, the guys in the Lincoln Project, but if the campaign is going to be based on linking everything to Trump, you need things to link.
That said, I remain opposed to the Republican Party — electing a Carlyle CEO doesn’t impress me, I already know the traditional ways he’s going to sell out his voters — and while I’m pleased to see McAuliffe lose, I’m not excited to see Youngkin win.
[Full disclosure, I thought the Suburbs would flinch and McAuliffe would win a ‘close’ but not nail-biting race]Report
You want a take? Here’s a take: Clintonism has failed. (Not the Bill variant. The Delta variant.)
The “deplorables” and “coal miners” comparisons are apt. Primarily because of the inability to see them as mistakes. The immediate drive to explain why they weren’t mistakes. The drive to explain that the people who had a problem with them are bad people. The drive to explain that nothing needed to change.
Will Democrats pivot from “these things are not up for discussion!” to “okay… maybe these things can be up for discussion”?
If they do, I suspect that they’ll find themselves having better nights than last night.
I don’t think I’m going to hold my breath, though.Report
Yeah, there’s clearly tension out there between Clinton/Obama continuity and MSNBC stating that the solution is more aggressively Leftist candidates. Hard for me to see how that does better in VA… honestly McAuliffe and NOVA are a good fit — absent radical alienation.
I suppose it depends on what aspects we emphasize as Delta and what we emphasize as Alpha.Report
But no sooner can you start this discussion with ‘no, really, Hispanics do not like Latinx’ when the local wackadoodles take this as a signal to start throwing Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison out of the school library. The greater problem is having that discussion when the narrative is being run by activists with more money and free time than people to tell them ‘no’ and a mass media complex eager to stoke up said activists in the name of ratings and engagement.
In short, #banallprimaries.Report
I prefer my wackadoodles to the other guy’s wackadoodles. Who doesn’t?
But let’s say that I was opposed to books being thrown out of the school library. Is there work that I’d want to do beforehand to make arguments about the importance of books not being thrown out of the school library?
I say: Yes. Yes there is. Let’s say that I have not done this work. Perhaps even completely undermined this work.
Well… I suppose we could dress up some people like white supremacists and place them prominently at the other guy’s campaign events…Report
I don’t think you’re exactly wrong, but I’ll pull the local anecdote again. This was the first local school board election I can remember that was heavily contested. I don’t recall ever seeing the vast number of lawn signs that this one brought out. If the insurgent candidates had run on toning down the stupid woke stuff in schools while trumpeting a plan to erect new buildings that would appease the Republicans in Seven Hills, I honestly believe they would have had a good chance. The school board held their ground ideologically, and it was a pretty close vote. Instead the literature I saw was all “No CRT” and “Get Politics Out Of Our Schools” and the insurgency by and large fell flat.
I see what you’re saying and I don’t disagree, but its hard to find that middle ground when activists from all over are the ones driving the bus.Report
The game is iterated.
That’s the main thing that players seem to forget.Report
Game is an interesting choice.Report
Not particularly.Report
Well, this might be probably bad.
The LatinX news channel seems to be working against Biden? We need them to be a bit more transparent though. Perhaps we could mandate that they speak English?Report
Seeing this reminded me that part of the larger context in VA is an incumbent Democratic governor who was caught in a photograph either in black face or a KKK hood (not sure which is worse) then couldn’t be forced to resign because of a ‘credible allegation’ as they say of rape against the also Democratic Lt. Governor. Now I know that memories are like 5 seconds long but I have to wonder if that doesn’t create a credibility issue. Not necessarily ‘the Republicans aren’t racist’ but more of a ‘how am I supposed to take this crap seriously anymore?’
Maybe March or one of the other Virginians can comment. Does anyone even remember that incident or is it too far gone?Report
Didn’t really come up. Youngkin didn’t try to run against Northam… he had plenty to work with in McAuliffe.
McAuliffe spent so much money and airtime running against Trump that I think Trump will have a tough time if he tries to run for governor.Report
One black person stating Biden turned me a Democrat confirms all my biasesReport
Nothing to worry about.
No reason to change.
Nobody did anything wrong.
Even the people who won tonight should be disappointed.
I can calm my own disappointment with the thoughts of their disappointment.
Nothing to worry about.
No reason to change.Report
Troll troll troll away.Report
You think it’s trolling. I see it as an indicator that some of the reliable votes ain’t as reliable as they used to be.
And if we were in a situation where victories weren’t razor thin, hey. Maybe it wouldn’t matter.
How do you feel about your margins? Do they feel particularly padded? (I understand that LatinX peoples will be the largest minority group in the country soon!)Report
Yes I think it is trolling because you never do it to any right-leaning poster, you are clearly anti-Democratic because of whatvever happeend to you in high school, and good knows what else. No where did I say that this means Democrats are not in trouble for 2022. I conceded at multiple times that it is entirely plausible that Democrats lose their congressional majorities in 2022. I have also pushed back on people here who think Youngkin won by boogeymanning on CRT and pointed to where progressive policies on education are unpopular.
What I am stating is that this is a return to form for Virginia that has held since 1977, winning by 50.9 percent is not exactly a thunderbolt mandate, governor elections are often context specific and do not always portend for national changes (but I admitted they can). I also think it is really easy to find someone among the hundreds of millions of people in the U.S. who will say “X made me into Y” Another example. former Romney fangirl Jennifer Rubin is now a pretty solid Democrat because of Trump.
Nowhere did I say that Democrats need to stay the same course on all issues. You are putting those words in my mouth and writing because I am pushing back on your evidence and doing it with the juvenile rhyme of a middle-school miscreant.
That is why you are a bad-faith troll.Report
Saul, while I would *LOVE* to engage in some free psychoanalysis, I’m more interested in two main questions:
1. Are there things that the Democrats did that they shouldn’t have done?
2. Are there things that the Democrats should have done that they didn’t do?
And if either question has an answer of “yes”, then I’d think that exploring what those things are would *ADD VALUE*.
See it as an engineer writing “lessons learned” on a whiteboard and looking around the room.
The sysad in the back who says “Well, X, Y, and Z” is not a troll. Seriously.
Only salespeople would think otherwise.Report
Saul, I hope flinging accusations of troll all over the place is somehow therapeutic for you because it sure as heck doesn’t help anyone or anything else that you purport to support/believe in. If it helps your blood pressure or something then go nuts, I guess, but seriously, it doesn’t help and it really looks like a tic you resort to when pressed on a difficult argument.
As for Jay, you know and I know he argues against the people he talks to. We have all of, what, three-four halfway conservative people around here and maybe one honest to God(ess?) conservative who occasionally comments? That’s not a target rich environment for Jay to poke at. Also all us liberals do fine arguing with our small contingent of conservatives our own selves. That’s way more meta than I like to indulge in but there it is.
Also, has anyone had an odd comment nesting issue? I made this comment by replying to Jays 8:58 comment but all the ones below it at 9:35, 9:37 and 9:46 had no reply buttons on them. I’ve seen it a lot in the posts where the count gets high.
Not a big deal, just curious.Report
At this point its almost Pavlovian.
2016, Democrats lose: BAD NEWS FOR DEMOCRATS!
2018, Democrats win: DEMS STILL HAVEN”T LEARNED THEIR LESSON!
2020, Democrats win: DEMOCRATS REFUSE TO ADMIT ERROR!
2021, Democrats lose: BAD NEWS FOR DEMOCRATSReport
Chip, my point remains similar to the one that I made in this essay back in 2009 (when I gave unsolicited advice to the Republicans following their 2008 shelacking):
The pendulum swings. Sometimes Republicans win. Sometimes Democrats win.
That’s the way the pendulum swings, I guess.
But I think it’s more important to win elections because you, like, *WON* them rather than merely benefitted from being the other guy in the election where the population threw the bums out.
I thought that Biden would win in 2020, remember?
Because I knew that Biden would win Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania (and that’s all he needed).
But I don’t think it’s enough to merely be the beneficiary of not being the bum thrown out.
It’s important to be healthy.
And I don’t think the Democrats are healthy.Report
You’re also a guy who is hostile to the Democratic Party and its values, deeply and dispositionally conservative, so your advice is taken in that vein.Report
My advice, mind, is not “Be Less Like You, Be More Like Me”.
It is that you need to quit relying on the pendulum swinging to win elections and actually do stuff like establish values and then defend them.
Like, if we hammered out stuff like “what are the values of the Democratic Party?” and nailed down that they were X, Y, and Z… I would see questions like “why was there so much support for anti-X last year?” as indicators that X was *NOT*, in fact a value.
Hell, I might *AGREE* that X *OUGHT* to be a value.
But you saying that is is is belied by the party’s acts once it is in power.
And, seriously, you need to quit relying on the pendulum swinging to win elections and actually do stuff like establish values and then defend them.
And, yeah, that is deeply and dispositionally conservative advice.
It’s pretty good advice nevertheless.Report
You logic escapes me. I’m not seeing any evidence of the Dems relying on pendulums instead of values.Report
Fair enough. I’d ask that you play around with thoughts like “okay, what might evil Republican strategists use against me?” and see if you come up with anything.
If you think “I don’t see anything that Republicans would be able to attack”, then I suggest that your problem is that you’re not thinking about things correctly.Report
Have we met? Do you know who this is? This is Chip, the liberal guy who constantly talks about what effective tools race baiting and moral panics are. You could probably find a bunch of comments to that effect.
I suggest that if you disagree, well then, you’re just not seeing things correctly, buddy.Report
Also Bonilla is a right wing partisan. There are hispanic conservatives but pardon me for being skeptical that a conservative going on a fishing expedition is a big sign for danger.
You mantra is noted.Report
How is responding with a rhyme not trolling?Report
It wasn’t a rhyme. It was a mantra.
If I were to do a rhyme it would probably be a limerick.
After counting the votes from the throng
And seeing McAuliffe’s swan song
The democrats wondered
“Perhaps, have we blundered?
No, no. It’s the voters who’re wrong.”Report
If you think James Carville might have insight into what works for Democrats, then you can listen to him here and reassess how old and out of touch he has gotten since that time.
(Don’t say “Ew! Mediaite!”, say “Ew! PBS Newshour!”)Report
The only person who had their priors truly validated last night was OT’s EIC, as the quiet burying of the gubernatorial primary saw the Virginia R’s put an actual competent candidate in place instead of the base offering up another Larry Elder. We’ll see if lessons are learned as the midterms are played out.
Meanwhile, as a local anecdote, a barrage of anti-CRT school board candidates here in suburban Ohio mostly flamed out. On our own local school board in what I would consider a somewhat pro-Trump school district, only one of the slate of three will actually be joining the school board. And I’ll add the losing incumbent was the board president and figurehead of a failed tax levy increase to replace our ancient school buildings.Report
Yes, this is a good point. #banallprimariesReport
Yeah, I’m not actually sure what this says about Republican _politics_ for the future. Because…right now, Republican primary voters nominate crazies, and then the voters reject sometimes them…in fact, it’s especially the women voters who tend to have the most problems with the crazies. Like, that’s how it works. But the GOP managed to avoid a primary here, thanks to Covid. So a sane candidate gets in, and, what do you know, women voters _did_ vote for him. Massively.
In fact, I vaguely recall…didn’t Trump have a -20% downward pull on races precisely because of suburban women voters? Or 25%? I can’t remember exactly, but they were disgusted with him. And so this…is really just undoing that. The Republicans managed to pull it off, they managed to unTrump this election. I mean, props to them for that.
Now…can this be replicated anywhere? Do the Republicans have a way to keep their Trumpist crazies away from the nomination?
Um…probably not? Didn’t they not have a primary here because of Covid? They can’t really use that excuse again…I mean, not even if Covid _isn’t_ under control, because their own voters have now decided that any Covid restrictions are unjustified so the GOP leadership can’t really use Covid restrictions to justify things.
Under normal conditions, I don’t think they can stop crazies. They haven’t ever been able to do it before, in fact, the recent history of their party has been being hijacked by candidates who turn a bunch of voters off, and only gerrymandering keeps them in any position at all. So, I have feeling if they had any way to do this _outside_ of Covid, they already would. And the crazies have just gotten worse.
This doesn’t mean the Democrats shouldn’t learn from this. The major thing I think they should learn is that they need to be able to explain CRT and how schools aren’t teaching it to kids, and actually put forward the sort of things that certain people are pretending is covered by that to let the population judge whether or not trying to hide history is a good idea. Like, Dem need to figure this crap out, how to respond to it, the Republicans have decided on their clever ploy of just dumping anything they don’t like under CRT and there needs to be a coordinated response to that.Report
https://twitter.com/DKarol/status/1455708115693973512?s=20
“The President’s party lost the Virginia gubernatorial race. This has now happened 11 of the last 12 times. Clearly the result means that the political strategy you already believed in before tonight has been decisively vindicated.”Report
Well, I stand vindicated, that the election was close, by about 2%.
Which is to say, there wasn’t a strong message being delivered by the voters and any hot takes about CRT or other hot button issues are probably missing the mark. VIrginia is still a swing state, and can go either way next time.
And democracy in America remains in peril, with the authoritarians increasing their grip.Report
https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/status/1455700604521783305?s=20
If this is correct, Harry Enten believes that the economy helped Younkin more than gripes about CRT. The nation and the world are still coming out of the slowdown from the pandemic and the global supply-chain crisis is very real. China and Vietnam will shut down ports and factories for weeks on end if one COVID case is found and there is no control any U.S. politician has over that.
FWIW, Exit polling indicated that vaccine mandates were popular with a majority of the Virginia electorate.Report
It’s not _just_ the economy, it’s also literally Covid itself. People take frustrations out on the incumbent, and Covid is a pretty big frustration.
Talking heads tend to claim that to ‘People are frustrated with the mandate’ or ‘People are frustrated with the unvaxxed who keep dragging this out’, and at one level that’s true, but at another level it’s just sheer annoyance at the actual disease and the giant interruption to life, which causes just general unhappiness.
And people take general unhappiness out on the incumbent, even if they are not to blame, even if the other side will make their unhappiness worse, even if it’s literally an Act of God that caused the unhappiness.Report
I concur. There is a very weird tendency in American politics to treat the President as some kind of Bronze Age god-king who should be able to snap his or her fingers and make all the problems go away.Report
Biden received 2.4 million votes in Virginia in 2020 and TFG received 1.96 million. The vote counts for yesterday seem to be 1.68 for Youngkin and 1.6 million for MacAuliffe. The Democrats have traditionally had a problem getting their voters to turn out for off-year elections and this was not different yesterday.Report
Eh, the narrative cuts two ways.
Turn-out was high across the board… and McAuliffe got more votes than any previous Dem Governor, except Youngkin got more more votes.Report
While it’s technically true that Youngkin won the popular vote, I think that honesty demands that we say that McAuliffe won the moral victory.Report
If you look carefully at the exit polls, he akshually increased his vote among the sort of people he likes to have vote for him. The people who voted for Biden but not for him? Bad Voters.Report
We ought to have literacy tests before we let people vote.Report
Are we sure uterus havers are up to the task?Report
A lot of comments seem to be along the lines of “What did the Dems do wrong”, instead of “What did the Republicans do right?”
Which is to reinforce the point that the neither party really seems to have an Elevator Speech, a short summary of what they stand for, a brand of who they are that can be compelling to those who aren’t already a member of the club.
Reagan had one, Clinton had one, Bush and Obama had theirs.
This isn’t just about clever marketing or sales. I think it shows a lack of Big Ideas, of something that people can latch onto.Report
I recommend something like “Back To Normal”. I think that the first candidate to make people believe him or her when he or she says “Elect me and we’ll go back to normal” will win.Report
Some Democrats have Big Ideas. Manchin doesn’t like them so they are dying.Report
I think this is a fair point… it was never really clear to me that Youngkin had a 20-point plan for, well, anything in particular.
His victory speach put “school choice” front and center:
“We’re going to restore excellence in our schools,” Youngkin said. … “We’re going to introduce choice within our public school system. How about that? Choice within the public school system.”
But his website doesn’t really say what he means by choice… maybe more Charter schools?
But I’ve been informed that Political Parties have multi-laterally ended the 20-point plan for success during campaigns. We have to elect our politicians to find out what’s in our politicians.Report
I don’t think governors’ races are typically about Big Ideas. Maybe especially in Virginia, where the single-term limit means that everyone runs eventually. I don’t know if there really is a backlash against the presidency in the Virginia vote. I think that the Washingtonian presidential winners get government appointments, and the losers spend the next year campaigning in Virginia. As a sometimes Marylander, I’ve seen a bit of that. I’ve also seen the VA governorship turn on roads, taxes, car taxes, et cetera, to not be surprised that a local quality of life issue like education played such a key role.
Also, I’d argue that the elevator pitch was local versus expert control of education. It’s a central meeting place for CRT, trans rights, mask policy, and a bunch of other hot issues.Report
Cause there aren’t experts locally?
My mom got out of teaching in the Louisiana public schools after 25 years because – even with an EdD in curriculum and great test scores for her students – her administration stopped being willing to back her up against parents when they tried to drive what she was teaching and how she taught it. Probably good for her in the long run – she has has great relationships with my kids because of her retired and available status. But overall a bad trend for schools, since parents (much as we might be loathe to admit it) don’t often know how to teach kids beyond our own.Report
Good point… they tend to be about Big Little Ideas, like: Repeal the Car Tax! or Fish the Arlington NIMBY’s widen 66!
Or about nothing, like Excellence in Education! Restore Virginia! or Virginia is for vaccine lovers!Report
I’ve never seen a breakdown of state politics like the following:
X states with 0-1 major cities and no state politics
Y states with either (1 population center and a significant other population) or (2 population centers), leading to one-on-one fights
Z states with either (2 population centers and a significant other population) or (more than 2 population centers), leading to coalitions and standoffs
I think Massachusetts, Illinois, and Virginia function as Y states. I don’t think of those as well-governed states. Pennsylvania has enough non-Philadelphian non-Pittsburghers and Florida has enough non-Miamian non-rednecks that they don’t get pulled into that unhealthy mode.Report
Yeah, as someone who lives in a Y state, that would be interesting to see. I sometimes have problems trying to figure out how power struggles work in other states.Report
Not necessarily better – I mean, California has a lot of competing interest and population centers, and it’s not governed well at all.
I’m interested to see what happens with Montana, getting a second Congressional seat. They’re also supposedly getting overrun with Californians, although that could just be something they complain about.Report
Ok, in consolation and con-fraternity with Dems, we do have to point out that there’s an excellent chance that the Republican Party will *also* have all the wrong take-aways.
Report
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Eesh.Report
LOLReport
Apparently NYC elected a mayor last night as well.
They voted for a POC instead of the Guardian Angels guy.Report
To compare the NYC 2021 Mayoral Election to the film “Dumb & Dumber” would be an insult to the scriptwriters of that movie.
Eric Admas just needed to keep his mouth shut to win in a landslide – and he did. Curtis Sliwa is a poor man’s Donald Trump in a funny hat who thinks animal cruelty is the #1 issue facing NYers. Godspeed, NYC.Report
I think everyone understood that the primary was the real election.Report
Obviously. But I think a more serious GOP candidate could have made it an actual contest.
Unfortunately since the NYC GOP consists of about 25 guys on Staten Island, you get what you get.Report
I have come to the conclusion that I am completely out of touch with the electorate outside of the West, and should just keep my mouth closed about other regions of the country.Report
The silliest idea is that if I read a bunch of journalists and pollsters who are reading each other, I’ll have a better chance of predicting an election than those same journalists and pollsters. Actually, it’s even sillier when the results are within the statistical margin of error.Report
In this, you and I agree. Which is part of why I keep coming here.Report
15 point swing is not within any statistical margin of error I’ve heard of.Report
There was a huge shift over the course of the campaign, agreed. But the polls had Youngkin and McAuliffe within a few points by the end. I didn’t know what would happen.
Some people don’t answer polls, or don’t answer them honestly. Voter enthusiasm affects turnout. Early voting can diminish the impact of late campaign mistakes. A sudden cold front can decrease voter turnout among the elderly. And even locals, who know the area, don’t really know the mood of the entire state. There’s always guesswork.Report
I doubt the meat and potatoes issues that drive local and state elections are that different, even if there is variance in the particulars.Report
I hear you asking “Does Freddie have a take on CRT?”
Indeed he does!Report
Thom Hartmann delivers the most astute summary of the true perils and opportunities for Democrats I have seen today.
https://hartmannreport.com/p/america-is-standing-on-the-edge-ofReport
I think that that overstates 2016 by a hair but it is at least in the ballpark of what appears to have happened from my perspective.
I mean, let’s go back to 2008. Remember Obama getting elected? Remember what that *FELT* like? Remember when he won the Nobel Peace Prize?
Man, 8 years.
Anyway, the 2016 Democratic offering was Clinton II versus Bernie and, holy crap, Bernie did *WELL*. Like, way too well to just be a crank. But nobody noticed and there were shenanigans at the convention and everything and the people who said “I don’t think that this is going to work” were treated like concern trolls rather than people who actually noticed that something was terribly awry.
Well, 2016 happened and it blindsided everybody (remember our prediction thread? Good times).
And 2018 happened and the Democrats read it as a mandate instead of as throwing out the bums and 2020 happened and the Democrats read it as a mandate instead of as a plea to go “back to normal”.
We’re whipsawing.
My advice to either of the presidential candidates is to run on “redistributing the weight”.Report
My response is that this is just as much wish-thinking as the Republicans are doing but everyone likes to think an election validates their preconceived notions of who should do what when where and how. Blowhards abound.
McAuliffe won 62 percent of a five-way primary vote so you can’t say he was hoisted upon Democrats unwanted. The areas where progressives showed really policy flex are areas that are not popular among the electorate overall. I don’t mean CRT. I mean changes to admission standards to the Governor’s Schools which alienated Asian voters in NOVA as well has potential changes to AP/Honors curricula which alienated all parents. Youngkin received slim but real victories in minority dominated towns and communities over these issues.
There is a lot of room for progressive economic and social policies that receive a lot of support but it is not going to be a dream of turning everything into an employee cooperative like this is an old industrial economy.Report
[reply button seems hosed; So responding to the Jaybird/ North subthread at 6:38]
Jaybird asks about his three categories: If a non-Woke Dem were to carefully thread the needle by castigating CRT, but forcefully opposing the mom in that video, and the other parents demanding the banning of books, would it:
Fire up Category 1? Doubtful. Probably the opposite and cause a significant number to stay home.
Depress Category 2? Also doubtful, and again probably the opposite and get a few to turn out in rage.
Sway a Category 3? Doubtful. Evidence of such a voter is pretty slim. But even if they exist, do they exist in numbers to make up for the first two?
So all in all, it sounds like a lose-lose proposition. If someone wants empirical evidence, i point to the 2000 election, after Clinton successfully had his “Sista Soulja moment” where he forcefully rejected the loony race baiting woman.
Did his Democratic successor get any significant crossover voters? Enough to offset those who stated they “couldn’t see a dimes worth of difference”?
Look, I ‘m not against rejecting the loonies. But I don’t think the Youngkin voters would be satisfied with that.Report
Evidence of such a voter is pretty slim.
What was the swing of Virginia between this election and the last relevant one?Report
My hot take from IL: I don’t give a rat’s ass who the governor of VA is.Report
Biden tells the truth:
I see this as evidence for the “throw the bums out” theory. Or, at least, evidence that Biden sees it as a “throw the bums out” situation.Report
I think your last paragraph gets at why most of the *other* things I’ve read about this election sound like: Shocking news! The thing that happens every time a President gets elected happened this time too! What deeper meaning does it contain this time?!?Report
The LatinX vote went more for Youngkin than it did for Team Good. Pew is doing what it can to explain why:
Report
That actually tracks locally – I am surrounded by folks with clearly Spanish last names (Garcia, Cuevas). They are 7 or 8 generations into being Americans, if not more, and have long since ceased to identify as Hispanic. They are also almost uniformly very light skinned. so in the 1-3 dimensions shown above. They also all vote republican.Report
If LatinX males and LatinX females start identifying as WhitX, then the US will take a lot longer to cease to be a majority WhitX countrX.Report
potentially yes. My case, however has taken many generations. In other parts of the country my understanding is many multi-generational Latin families still identify as Latin, even if they are 5th to 7th generation American citizens.
YMMV.Report
From what I understand, it’s not about how you identify if that identification does not have additional follow-through in adopting a handful of values.Report