I’ve made some progress on the Road to Normieville. There were no elections in our neck of the woods, so we watched the World Series last night like regular sportsball fans and didn’t see a single nanosecond of election coverage. Well, now I have seen it, and sweet tap-dancing Jeebus, I’m not sure what to make of it.
Looks like Murphy will win in a squeaker in New Jersey, and thank dog for that, but it wasn’t supposed to be this close. Did anyone see the upset in Buffalo coming? (Gov. Kathy Hochul, probably!) It’s not a loss for the party because the incumbent who looks like he’ll win via a write-in campaign was (and still is, I guess?) a Democrat before he lost the primary, but wowzers!
I am truly sorry for our Virginians who are now stuck with Gov. Trumpkin. Welcome to the club no one wants to join: Democrats governed by terrible Republicans. Also, keep an eye on your schools. Last night was a beta test for the strategy of running against imaginary white people problems in K-12 public education, but the GOP has already rolled it out everywhere. I think they’re following the Orbán playbook.
After imposing an ideological curriculum on elementary and secondary schools to support his nationalist agenda, Orbán subverted higher ed next. I don’t know what GOP governors are doing on that score in other red states, but DeSantis is following the script to the letter and has successfully cowed and co-opted my alma mater, the University of Florida, to its everlasting shame. Worse news dropped yesterday:
An effort by the University of Florida to deny professors the ability to testify in litigation against the state extends beyond the previously known political-science faculty members, whose restrictions were revealed in a court filing on Friday. Administrators denied requests from a fourth professor who had asked to participate in litigation supporting mask mandates against Florida in August, too, The Chronicle first reported Tuesday. He said he would not have been compensated for this participation.
The professor, the pediatrician Jeffrey L. Goldhagen, was asked to testify and serve as a declarant in litigation that followed Gov. Ron DeSantis’s executive order that forbade mask mandates in schools as the Delta variant of Covid-19 tore through the state. Goldhagen is chief of the division of community and societal pediatrics at the University of Florida‘s College of Medicine, in Jacksonville, and a professor in pediatric palliative care. Goldhagen said he would have spoken about why masks work and why children need protection from the virus…
“It’s not just me being denied the ability to testify,” [Goldhagen] said. “It’s about the role and responsibility of the university, it’s about truth, it’s about ethics, it’s about morality, it’s about the capacity of a single person or a small group of people to basically discount and dismantle the mission of a university.”
Like Trump when he was in power and Orbán now, DeSantis sees himself rather than citizens as “the state” and therefore feels entitled to personally control state resources, including experts at state universities. If this outrageous power play isn’t stopped, it won’t end well, not for the university and certainly not for Floridians. Watch for Governor Trumpkin to attempt the same in Virginia.
I won’t sugar coat it, friends: these are discouraging and scary times, especially for those of us in red states. I think it’s possible the national mood will brighten before next fall — so much that’s out of the government’s control is weighing us down, including the lingering pandemic, supply chain issues, etc. I hope the Democrats in Congress can pass some legislation that will help, plus hold the coup plotters accountable. If we can do that, and if we are prepared and vigilant, I think we can turn it around.
Open thread!
Anonymous At Work
Accrediting agencies are all over the issue, however. If denied accreditation, a UF degree will be 1) worthless, 2) not supported by key federal grants, and 3) not recognized for post-graduate educational programs including law, medicine, etc. Which means that a UF education will become more expensive while being worth far less.
U of Louisville went through this prior to Beshears and it shut up all the Republican appointees very quickly.
Baud
I’m still not normie enough. It’s hard work
Matt McIrvin
Michelle Wu, the progressive candidate who was a former Warren staffer, got elected mayor of Boston.
RSA
@Anonymous At Work: Interesting! Thanks for the story.
ArchTeryx
A good measure of just how Republican these off-year elections are is what happened with New York State last night, lost, of course, in all the news out of VA.
They had five propositions on the ballot:
1: Change redistricting in some important ways, especially removing supermajority requirements for maps to be accepted by the legislature. It was confusing though, covered several topics and was easy to propagandize against.
2: Put a Right to Clean Air and Water in the state constitution.
3: Same-day registration on election day.
4: No-excuse absentee voting.
5: Increased access to civil court for people, rising from $25K to $50K damages before it is taken out of the civil court system. Would let a lot more of the hoi polloi stay in civil court, which is far cheaper.
The Republicans came out HARD against 1, 3, and 5. Even they wouldn’t take on 4, and 2 they ignored.
ALL the election-related props failed. Even no-excuse absentee voting in a still raging pandemic! Only 2 and 5 managed to pass, both non-election related.
The republicans were out IN FORCE yesterday in New York and the Ds apparently stayed home. And as a result, our backward election system remains just as backward. They won this round going away.
piratedan
I would much rather not see a campaign run on fear, but it seems to me that if HS level white women can be coerced into voting for fascists because of fear-mongering about CRT that the Dems could counter that by…
The GOP is coming to regulate your uterus
You’re voting for Fascism if you’re voting GOP
Did you watch the 1/6/2021 attacks, who do you think those people were?
I would much rather not see elections turned into bloodsport, but in THIS media environment where the media says “both sides” are the same, then we need to see more effective messaging on our positives and/or more truth-telling when it comes to our opponents.
for fuck’s sake, hit back and defend yourselves….
Almost Retired
One statistic that caught my eye this morning: Dumbkin won 75% of the non-college educated (I think White) vote. He, too, loves the poorly-educated. Also, I am completely over Steve Kornacki. His schtick has grown old with me, and by the time I finally turned the channel, I was ready to throttle him with his own khakis.
No more politics for me today.
Gin & Tonic
Gotta say I wasn’t expecting the Orbán reference, but it’s apposite and I, for one, appreciate it.
In other news, it is a gorgeous late fall day here, crisp and clear, so I’m going in the woods with the dog.
Nelle
How much do you think Manchin and Sinema’s antics have hurt the Dems nationally? Between them and the media slamming Dems and never even asking R’s hard questions (why don’t you support voting rights? What is wrong with lead-free water for children? Why can’t we get failing bridges fixed before they collapse and kill people? Why are the wealthiest people and corporations not being taxed on the infrastructure that allows them to thrive? Ad infinitum), isn’t the general picture that Dems can’t govern the main picture out there now
I don’t think the media are both siding anymore. Thimb is firmly down on Biden now.
JPL
My town had non partisan races and every incumbent lost. The mood appears to be vote the bums out. Democrats have to show they can govern, and tout their policy victories proudly. Their fights have to be behind closed doors, and someone should tell Manchin that it’s not necessary to comment everyday. His words are causing bitterness.
just my two cents.
SpaceUnit
I’m taking a break from the news today. All these MSM ‘Dems are doomed” hot-takes are giving me the pip.
Betty Cracker
@piratedan: NC Steve has a great Twitter thread on that theme that starts here:
Tom Levenson
Thanks for this post, Betty. I think I agree; on my good days (or good moments, considering how brittle my emotions are right now) I definitely agree.
I also remember how Senator Scott Brown signaled the end of Obama’s presidency in its first year.
Except not so much. Sometimes a shot across the bow helps rally the good guys. May it be so this time.
gene108
I don’t think anything other than voting rights legislation will matter that can help Democrats in 2022.
The difference between success and failure is often just what your expectations are going in. Even a $175 bn/year BBB bill won’t placate many Dem voters. More was expected to be done.
Courts /justice system won’t or can’t move fast enough for this to matter for the 2022 election.
How the fuck would we know how close the NJ election should’ve been? Everyone seems to have forgotten about NJ’s election and very little polling was done.
One interesting tactic Murphy’s opponent, Jack Citeralli, used in recent campaign ads was to link Murphy with Biden. The ad started with “Biden’s a failed President, Murphy’s a failed governor…”.
Interesting that a Republican candidate in NJ feels Biden’s beaten up enough that he’d be a drag on his Democratic opponent.
Kay
I admit I don’t know what to do about it. The rural margins that keep going up will kill Dems, and not just in red or swing states. You can only juice turnout so much to counteract that. Eventually you’ll reach a point where you need consistently huge turnout in urban areas just to be competitive.
The discussion has to go past turnout. It just isn’t going to work. It would be fine if the rural margins weren’t growing – and was fine for 30 years – but they are.
dr. bloor
@ArchTeryx:
It’s increasingly difficult to argue against the old canard that we are a Center Right nation when our electorate repeatedly drives the point home in elections. We are who we elect.
Matt McIrvin
@ArchTeryx: The minority-supported election-related propositions in my town (Haverhill, MA) won by large margins. To be fair they are easy to understand, and highly sub-ideal in their own right: basically, advocating going to district-based City Council and School Committee elections, from having everyone be elected at large (which tends to produce an all-white Council in a city that is anything but).
I suspect the changes might benefit some Republicans as much as they increase black and Latino representation, and we could see them getting abused through gerrymandering games. I might have preferred an alternative voting system to allow for minority-bloc candidates that is less geographic. But there are some Republicans on the City Council now anyway. The thing I like about it is just that it would mean we don’t have a vote for 9 City Council members and 3 School Committee seats every couple of years–the sheer cognitive load of researching the many candidates in a situation where local media are kind of anemic is, I think, an effective vote suppressor. You’d vote for your district rep and a small number of at-large seats. One thing to watch out for will be that it’ll involve expanding the School Committee and I could see astroturf-supported wingnuts taking that as an opportunity.
The questions are non-binding so it might not actually result in a change. But there’s clearly a consensus for a change.
gene108
@Betty Cracker:
Very good thread.
gene108
@JPL:
I think Manchin wants to be in the minority, so he doesn’t have to take many votes and can focus on fixing up his houseboat.
oatler
Little shits wanted it it to get bloody, it’ll get bloody. Remember who won the Civil War.
ArchTeryx
@Matt McIrvin: The local elections here in Clifton Park (Albany suburb) were hardly nail biters. We didn’t have any local props and pretty much every local official is Republican, something that never changes even in D wave years. I did my usual of voting straight ticket D and just leaving all the uncontested Republican spots blank. It was the only protest I had, and as always, it did no good.
DTTM
I am echoing Steve Benen and others by stating that the Dems in the House and Senate have simply got to finish their current work ASAP–enough fucking around. Compromise, finish the sausage making and move on to the next thing.
New Deal democrat
Well, I told you so the other day, but a bunch of people wanted to shoot the messenger. There were a few main factors, uniquely local, overlaid with a typical off-year electoral trend.
There were two national factors:
1. People are motivated much more strongly to vote by anger over something that they feel has been taken away from them, than gratitude for something they feel has been given to them. This is basic human behavioral wiring. That’s why the out-party typically does well in off year elections. And courtesy of Fox and Facebook, RWers were thoroughly wound up. Which is why NJ is also so close. (Regrettably, Dems will have the same incandescent rage one year from now after the Supreme Court overrules Roe v. Wade.)
2. Manchin and Sinema have done some real damage to national Dems. Here Biden is, going on one year in office, and he still can’t get his main agenda out of Congress. This is similar to 2009-10 and Obamacare. It is also similar to what happened to the GOP four years ago, when Trump failed to get a repeal of Obamacare through the Congress. Trump had among his worst ratings ever right after McCain’s thumbs-down.
But there were several decisive factors unique to VA:
1. McAuliffe’s gaffe at the last debate saying parents shouldn’t have any control over their childrens’ education. Even if you think that statement is true, it was a disaster to say it. A million parents heard “F*** you, we’re going to control your children.” Up until that statement, all the polls showed McAuliffe ahead (despite the background national issues above). As soon as that statement got publicized, his polls all tanked, and continued that way.
2. McAuliffe ran Hillary’s 2016 anti-Trump campaign, and got Hillary’s 2016 result. This is in contrast to the last two off-year elections, where Democrats ran against the votes cast by GOP legislators in the Statehouse. And none of the candidates touted the good things Statewide Dems had done for people in the last 2 years.
In short, take away the gaffe, and run a campaign focused on the State, and VA Dems might have overcome the adverse national trends.
VOR
A unified slate of anti-mask, anti-CRT candidates ran for my local school board. All 4 of the anti-CRT candidates live in the white-est, most Republican part of the school district. All claim to be active in their church. A friend reports a similar group in her school board race, all seemingly affiliated with or backed by the local megachurch. My school board got lucky as sane incumbents kept 3 of 4 open seats but one anti-CRT candidate did get a seat.
CRT was the 2021 version of the 2018 Caravans. There will be something else for 2022 and they are laying the ground-work right now. Youngkin has shown that the entire Republican brand was not tainted by January 6th and that association w/Trump is not a deal-breaker, as least as long as Fox News is doing GOTV with CRT hysteria.
RinaX
@Kay:
It’s hard to know what to do because there’s no one answer. The rural gains by republicans are something they’ve been working on diligently, even after losing the presidency. The thing is, that work is done outside of their congressional reps. It seems that we keep asking our Senators and congressman to pull double-duty in that regard because so many states have such weak Dem organizations. Stacy Adams had the time to focus on that work because she didn’t win.
It could be that other states are following this model, but I never hear about it. It still seems to be a mess here in FL, which is why I think DeSantis will cruise to re-election. From what I can see, it’s hard to believe we can reverse what’s happening if we don’t start at the local and state level and grind away for the next few years.
guachi
@dr. bloor: Yup. There are huge numbers of people who vote Republican driven by fear. There will always be something new to fear. CRT shows that even when nothing exists a fake controversy will be created. Especially when it’s something new it’s really easy to demonize it because most people know nothing about it.
It’s all very depressing.
jonas
@Anonymous At Work: Oh, I’m sure they’re searching for creative ways to get the accreditation commissions, too.
gene108
@Nelle:
A lot.
The difference between success and failure is the expectations someone has going in.
I expected a ‘C’ on my Algebra test, but got a ‘B’. I succeeded beyond my wildest expectations!!!
I expected an ‘A’ on my Algebra test, but got a ‘B’. Where did I screw up? How could I fail so badly?
Biden and Dems got elected promising a lot, have delivered on little, and only brought non-stop coverage of internal bickering.
Easily seems like failure to me.
Czar Chasm
@Nelle: Current Virginia resident here, fo 80% of my life. I mentioned this in the comments of Cole’s last post: I think it would have gone better if McAuliffe stayed out. A combination of resentful Democratics staying home & even more resentful Republicans turning up produced the result.
As an administrator of a locality’s state-funded legislation for kids, I’m very nervous about this result, & the fact that House of Delegates will have a Republican majority again.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker:
AND, the twitterer neglects to note, they have the entire MSM ready and willing to spread this message. We don’t. It doesn’t matter what we say.
Brant
@Gin & Tonic: Did you mean appropriate?
kindness
While I won’t blame Manchin and Sinema directly to the losses Democrats suffered yesterday, they did the yoeman’s work of making the Democratic Party look like they can’t govern and really did assist the MSM (and Republicans) portray Democrats as a screwed up party. They of course won’t accept an iota of responsibility but that is par for the course for Republians in Democratic clothing, which is really what those two are at this point. If every Democratic Senator doesn’t have multiple private words with both of them identifying them as the problem we are going to be so screwed come next November.
Those two need their feelings to be bent out of shape. Screw them.
Woodrow/asim
@Betty Cracker: I’d add to what NC Steve rightly says, esp. this:
By re-iterating that the GOP is building on literal centuries of bad-faith, emotionally-laden demagoguery. Demagoguery that they insist is just logical, sane, and rational, and that the people who buy into it, think similar. Demagoguery that’s embedded in a lot of people — even otherwise-“good” people — from childhood, on.
We Democrats don’t have that background. The various movements — Abolition, Labor, Suffragette, Civil Rights, Gay Rights, and so on — that tend to animate Progressive sides, tend to also ebb and flow.
Add to that all the efforts from various iterations of “the elite” to destroy those movements, and it makes it damned hard to build a stable, working coalition similar to the modern wealth/evangelical/etc. one that continually empowers waves of action and work on the Right. And it’s even harder to align said coalition to the kinds of emotionally-driven core arguments that empower the various groups that make up the coalition.
Just look at the debates around BLM, for one painful example of that disconnect.
That’s part of why we lose these so-called off-cycles, in my opinion — the 20th Century creation of the Progressive/Democratic coalition is built like a waveform, hopefully cresting every 4 years, but struggling for power and relevance, otherwise. Without an animating concept like the Right’s search for “Power Over,” oft-reshaped as everything from “states rights” to anti-abortion to “low taxes” (that benefit, in truth, a subset of Americans)., it’s tough to shape an argument that embeds itself in the voting public over decades of effort.
How to overcome that deficit? I would start with trying to build out real and deep political networks. The Democratic pols that are kind of detached from all that, need to let the many, many activists on the ground know they have a real friend, and real backing — not just when the cycle pitches up, or an Abrams pulls off a miracle.
There’s real downsides to that approach, yet I think it’s crucial to building consensus on how we move forward, together.
Nicole
@ArchTeryx: I voted against the first proposition, as it also included capping the number of Representatives in the Legislature. I am not a fan of capping our number of elected Representatives (including nationally, but fat chance getting THAT lifted and applied to a set number of people, rather than geographic distribution. The GOP would freak).
Anonymous At Work
@jonas: Accreditation committees aren’t government agencies but independent collections of academics (i.e. herding cats to agree on anything other than “Don’t mess with our academic freedoms!”) that would be hard-to-impossible for Republicans to “work” the same way. A lot of the people doing this work are private college/university and do their evaluation using tools largely immune to shenanigans.
Cameron
@DTTM: I don’t believe there’s any compromise on BBB that Manchin will accept. He doesn’t want it at all.
Sure Lurkalot
Here in Colorado, turnout was bleh, less than 40% and the Republicans showed up way more than Dems here too. The dropoff in turnout corresponds with age…the youngs, especially <35, appear not to be bothered enough about anything to vote. It could not be easier to vote in Colorado and yet.
And yet, the Republicans lost ALL of their party backed initiatives and bond issues funding the arts, homeless shelters, transportation improvements and parks and recreation all passed.
Everything I voted for or against prevailed. I did not see that one coming.
Geminid
@New Deal democrat: Yes, I think Virginia was a winnable race. Youngkin knew he had to bring out Republicans and flip enough Biden-voting Independents, and that’s what he did. He ran a shrewd campaign with disciplined messaging, and McAuliffe did not.
Ksmiami
@Woodrow/asim: we need to be the true freedom party- as in freedom to take a risk without worrying about healthcare, freedom for women to make private health decisions, freedom from fear (FDR) that your skin color will lead to brutality and freedom to succeed as far as you can… Change the paradigm
Betty Cracker
@zhena gogolia: He alludes to it (“media filter”), but even if he hadn’t, we’ve been complaining about the media for decades. We’re right to complain; the Beltway press is horrid, but there’s not a hell of a lot we can do about it.
I think it’s possible that a message that is less “pocketbook issues” crap and more along the lines Steve suggests would get better media coverage. When we do focus on Republican awfulness — 1/6, for example — they do tend to cover that.
JPL
OT This could create a problem imo
Wonder which one Kemp will attend. If I were a black player I would skip the white part of the parade.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: So…. negative partisanship?
@Nelle:
My take: not as much as gas prices, food prices, supply chain disruption, and other knock-on effects of a pandemic a lot of us thought would be at least brought down to manageable levels by vaccines, all of which lead to the general malaise which makes people say the economy is bad when the stock markets are breaking new records and the unemployment rate is back to pre-pandemic levels, which Republicans told us was teh greatest economy in history.
No question the delays and fits and starts have hurt the brand, as we say now, of Biden and the national party, but I don’t think that hurts as much as the dislocations of the pandemic people are feeling every day, from upper middle class people who can’t buy a new car for six months, to the working class people who are really hurt by the cost of a gallon of gas.
IMHO
ArchTeryx
@Nicole: Yeah, Prop 1 was a hot mess. The capping measure was to prevent Republicans from creating rotten boroughs, but it probably had many undesirable knock-on effects. It did not surprise me to see it go down.
That Props 3 and 4 went down, both extremely simple, commonsense voting reforms present in quite a few other blue states, made me outright despair. The Republicans weren’t even campaigning against 4 and it STILL failed! THAT really was a total failure of messaging.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I agree. We had hoped that more people on our side would respond with anger at the side that is extending the misery, but we apparently don’t roll that way.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I’m not sure how credible numbers are this soon after the election, but I read that McAuliffe won a slim majority of college-educated whites but Youngkin absolutely killed it with non-college whites, which dovetails roughly with the rural-urban divide.
We don’t need a majority of NCW, but we have to reduce the margins by which we’re losing them. I think it can be done — people like Sherrod Brown and John Tester have found ways to win. What works will probably be different for every state.
Suzanne
@JPL:
Yes this. Everything sucks right now, still. I know everyone thinks that the media is responsible, and I think they do bear some responsibility. But everything still sucks right now. That’s hard.
Kent
Pretty decent election her in my small corner of the world (Camas, WA which is a purplish suburb on the outskirts of Portland, OR).
All the MAGAt school board challengers went down hard and incumbents were all re-elected by large margins Our school district has been very supportive of diversity and mask/vaccine mandates which stirred up the usual nest of local MAGAts who came out and performed for the cameras at school board meetings with their rabid craziness. But they all lost.
Our other local city council elections went OK. They are non-partisan on paper but the most hard-core Republicans mostly lost while the veteran good government types mostly won. Up in Seattle it seems that the centrist candidates mostly won against the hard left “abolish the police” dipshits.
I don’t know what happened in VA. I haven’t followed that election. But I gotta think McAuliffe was something of a tired retread and VA needs to start finding a new generation of candidates who are more inspiring. He seems kind of like a male Martha Coakley who thought he was going to win simply on demographics.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
that’s a genuine question, by the way. I’m always a little slow to grok what these phrases exactly mean. But it fits with the old saw campaign-operatives-cum-talking-heads have been spouting for years on cable TV: Voters say they hate negative ads, but negative ads work.
Amanda in the South Bay
@ArchTeryx:
Off year elections (well, anything that lowers Democratic turnout
@New Deal democrat:
I think this was yet another data point in my belief that candidates don’t perform well when they’ve been out of office for any length of time (Biden notably excepted). Clinton, Feingold, TMac, Romney in 2012 and Jeb! 2016 are all people who should’ve stayed retired.
Gin & Tonic
@Brant: No.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I thought the beef against Terry Mac was that his ads focused on the negative.
Baud
@Kent:
Glad you had a good day.
Cacti
The problem for Dems at present is as Josh Marshall described. They look weak and ineffectual at the national level, after winning all of the political branches of government in 2020.
The average low to moderate info voter doesn’t see that it’s two Senators mostly gumming things up, or that the Senate is evenly divided. They don’t care that the GOP is completely intransigent. Just that Dems can’t seem to get anything meaningful done after the debacle of the Trump years.
10 months in, and Biden’s economic agenda is stalled, because you can always count on multiple Dems in Congress to try and fuck things up for a Dem POTUS. Republicans almost never have this problem when it comes to big party priorities.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: A good explaination of the dynamic of “negative partisanship” can be found in political scientist Rachel Bitecofer’s preview of the 2020 Presidential race, titled “Hate is on the Ballot,” The New Republic February, 2020.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: my impression– of the critique, not the ads I didn’t see– was he was trying to tie Youngkin to trump and it didn’t take. In fairness, it’s hard to campaign against a cipher. A lot of people compare Youngkin to Romney, but from what I saw, Youngkin was much better at pretending to be a regular guy, and had no public record. Romney was like if you called central casting and requested an awkward toff, and he had a political record of flip-flopping and opportunism. “I can’t have illegals cutting my
grasslawn! I’m running for office, for Pete’s sake!”ETA: as a good toff, Romney would, and did IIRC, say lawn, not grass
Starfish
@JPL: The way that the press spins stuff makes us all stupid. Manchin had sent a memo that he would not begin negotiating until October. We went through months of optics stories about how negotiating was happening when Manchin said he would not start until October. Why?
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That makes sense. I think one thing I’ve learned is that a Republican candidate is almost always treated as an individual and assessed on those terms, while Dems are more likely to be “tainted” with a group identity.
ColoradoGuy
From the perspective of a low to moderate-info voter, they must think that Joe Manchin is the President, and Cinema the VP (based on how often they appear on TV and are talked about). Both are very unattractive people and definitely not the persons the low-info voter picked last time around. For a voter who is a little better informed, it’s significant that Mitch McConnell has 100% control over his caucus while Dems are played for fools by two performance artists who are operating in obvious bad faith, if not actually working directly with The Gravedigger.
Short of J. Edgar Hoover style blackmail, I’m not sure what can be done about the two performance artists who have become the image of our party.
dww44
@piratedan: Agree with everything you said. Would like to add though it’s not just high school white women who fall for the fascist memes that the GOP puts out there. It includes the college educated ones as well. At least here in this red state turning purple. I honestly think our Democratic messaging has got to be more forceful, more succinct and clearer if we want to save our Democracy.We have to be able to effectively counter stuff like the below in the NYT and the Washington Post and everywhere elsewhere. If the MSM are not gonna recognize the true threat to our Democracy then we HAVE to do it ourselves.
In today’s NYT Opinion newsletter I receive (even though the articles are behind a paywal)l are this op-ed by Brett Stephens: Why Democrats are in Trouble .. “the election loss in Virginia is more than a reflection of Biden’s Failures”As well as this slightly less strident one by Ross Douthat titled “Republicans Schooled the Left in Virginia” Democrats probably need a new way to talk about race and education.
I do think we are totally flatfooted about our messaging on race and education. We need to hire the Lincoln Project folks if we cannot find a more effective messaging system.I’d like know how the comments fall on those 2 op-eds. Also, no one can ever again say in my presence that the NYT is a liberal newspaper. It most definitely is not.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I’m afraid it’s solidifying. It’s really hard to change younger R voters into older D voters. In a way were were riding on a kind of D legacy (labor) vote. They’re literally dying off.
I worked the polls last night with a younger D – a woman with small children- and I was ridiculously friendly to her. She’s probably like “WTF? Is she always this desperate for friends?” so stalking might not work.
Baud
The one thing that never gets asked in these post mortems is “what am I willing to give up to strengthen the coalition”? Because it doesn’t seem possible to attract or keep voters without losing another set of voters, the way things are going.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@dww44:
I admire Rick Wilson’s flair for an insult, sympathize with Steve Schmidt’s righteous anger at what he helped create, and appreciate Stuart Steven’s lonely recognition and admission that it was all a lie underscored by racism, but the Lincoln Project proved pretty ineffectual in 2020, and staged the most rank amateur stunt of the VA campaign by sending a bunch of interns to a Youngkin rally dressed as tiki-torch wielding Charlottesville protesters.
I recently read one of Wilson’s “let me help you!” tweets addressed to Democrats, and went back and watched the “parasite” ad Wilson personally created against Lindsey Graham and that he took great pride in at the time, to see if it was as lame and self-indulgent as I remembered it. It was.
Burnspbesq
@JPL:
There was never a scintilla of doubt as to why the Braves moved to a corner of Cobb County with no MARTA stations nearby.
Mike in NC
I moved to Virginia in 1990 to work, and retired and moved out in 2007. It is by no means a ‘blue’ or even ‘purple’ state politically. Rural Virginia is still very much the Confederacy and may always be that way. We took a road trip through central VA around 2005, hitting Richmond, Lynchburg, Appomattox and a bunch of other places. Holy crap was it a redneck stronghold!
Kent
I don’t actually think it’s that. The Democratic platform is largely popular across the board. The problem is that Democrats allow themselves to be “framed” by the GOP and don’t seem to know how to counter that. Apparently the whole election in VA was about CRT nonsense which isn’t actually a thing in public schools.
Of course Manchin and Sinema are a big part of the problem because they allow the media to frame everything as being about feckless ineffective “divided” Democrats.
Burnspbesq
Charlie Pierce finds a ray of light in suburban Milwaukee, where a school board recall campaign based on the current hot buttons and funded by white Republican dark money failed abjectly.
The lesson: do the hard work of retail politics and good things can happen.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a38146112/2021-election-night-wisconsin-school-board-recall/
AWOL
@oatler: If they don’t even vote, they’re not going to fucking fight.
Kent
It wasn’t just race. Cobb County opened up the coffers and gave them the sweetheart deal to beat all sweetheart deals on the new stadium and the Cobb County taxpayers will be paying for it for a generation. So I think greed was the bigger factor.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mike in NC: I always say “The South”, politically and maybe culturally speaking, starts about thirty miles outside of any major metropolitan area. And even then, you got your Staten Islands, your Bungalow Belts, your (I’m told) San Bernardino counties…. (don’t know if that last one still holds)
Baud
@Kent:
We keep telling ourselves this, and maybe it’s true, but our policies are not that popular when you consider what issues voters base their vote on rather than what they would like to have. Our “issues” often win in referenda in deep red states, but our candidates do not, even when GOP officeholders try to overturn referenda through legislation.
Baud
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud:
Nicolle Wallace, who I became a fan of for her pure and unyielding hatred of trump but who is becoming a do-something Green Lanternist under Biden, said something last week about Democrats’ not using these “popular and powerful” issues against Republicans. Our ideas are popular, but not powerful. The best and longest-standing example of this is gun safety, which polls in the stratosphere but doesn’t seem to move many elections.
Yesterday she plaintively asked Michael Steele (!) why Democrats “let Republicans get away with it” when Dems have facts on their side, which I thought was pretty rich coming from the comms director of the White House that used the fear, emotion and resentments around 9/11 to sell a war against someone who had shit-all to do with it. Democrats don’t “let Republicans get away with it”, voters do.
Joe Falco
I was eating at The Varsity for lunch and Fox News was on the TV pushing the narrative the liberal media failed to notice the Republican BLACK WOMAN that won the lieutenant gubernatorial race in a lame effort to counter claims that Virginia Republican voters were motivated by race. Color me unsurprised that the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor won where the Republican candidate for governor won as well. Fox News is pulling out all the stops to wink and nudge their viewers that no, y’all can’t be racist POS’s! The incoming lt. governor is black! And a woman! And she’s Republican! No way none of this was motivated by race!
Kay
Ah. CRT inspired curricula now. Like how the story that was about trans kids in bathrooms seamlessly became a much different story as the facts came out. But the same! Different, but also exactly the same! In a broader sense. One broad enough encompass whatever happens.
Imagine being a 6th grade public school teacher and trying to figure out if your lesson plan could be construed by these frauds as “CRT-inspired”.
eclare
@JPL: I thought I read the Braves only have one Black player?
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I have a gut feeling (based on nothing) that a lot of normies voters shy away from or deprioritize issues that are spearheaded by a strong advocacy group. Like the issue becomes a top-down affair rather than a bottom-up one.
eclare
@Burnspbesq: I lived in Atlanta for fifteen years. Absolutely no doubt for the reason the Braves moved.
Joe Falco
@Kay:
I’m sure the local chapters of the Daughters and Sons of the Confederacy will be more than glad to help make the distinction.
Elie
@Nelle:
I have to say that somehow Biden needed to get at least the infrastructure bill passed. He had that. I understand, the progressives wanted to go to the mat but Biden has been wounded and our cause to get something done — esp with economic impacts — has lost a critical timing. Believe me, I get the frustration of why we can’t have nice things in this country. But we have so much to lose, we can’t afford to give these creatures anything. We have got to get something done…
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: That is always the question. If, as I suspect, the answer is that we aren’t throwing anyone in the coalition under the bus (and we shouldn’t), then it becomes a marketing and presentation issue.
Immanentize
@Baud: My hot take is that all the CW hot takes are wrong.
I think yesterday was a classic “change” election — throw the bums out. Things suck, let’s try something different. I don’t think that CRW or any of that crap had much effect at all. Crazy winger people running for school boards mostly lost, even/especially in most suburbs.
Terry Mac lost because he is an old white dude whose campaign was, “I didn’t crap in the punchbowl a few years ago, so invite me back to the party!” But meanwhile, blackface and sexual harassment charges took their toll on VA Dem. executive candidates. And the state party pushed T Mac as the most “electable” to the detriment of a real primary vetting process.
As much as I do love Obama and H. Clinton, I think it’s time to recognize that the centrist Dems still moldering about who are associated with that brand — especially the mid-60s-plus white fellows — are not a popular breed in these tumultuous times.
Contrary to CW hot takes.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Aren’t we though? We’re always having to (truthfully) tell coalition members we can’t give them everything them want when they want it. Most understand the political reality, but oftentimes some feel like we are throwing them under the bus, and there may be enough of them to have an effect on an election.
The Moar You Know
@Cameron: There’s one lever: kamikaze the infrastructure bill, which Manchin wants desperately.
I don’t see – politically – how having both bills fail would put us in any worse of a place than just having the one fail.
Eolirin
@Baud: Candidates are driven more by tribalism than policy is. I’m not sure this is fixable.
We need to get people to identify with the party and then to turn out. That’s going to be very hard as Kay points out. Turn out is easier to fix, though still really hard. That’s where messaging can make a difference. Identification is a huge problem regionally though.
Soprano2
This is my take as well. I bet if I asked 50 people I work with who Manchin and Sinema are, fewer than 10 will know, but every one of them knows that last year it cost $40 to fill up their tank and today it costs $60; same thing at the grocery store, so even if they got a raise their perception is that it’s all gone anyway. They’re extremely distressed to see that 1 1/2 years after Covid started there are still things they cannot find in stores, and they keep hearing about how messed up the supply chain is but doesn’t feel like anyone is doing anything about it. I’ve got a co-worker who has been waiting months for a bed he ordered for his daughter. And so on. Plus, most of us thought the worst of the pandemic would be behind us by now, with life returning mostly to normal, but it hasn’t, not by a long shot. Pandemic exhaustion is real, almost as many people have died from Covid this year as died last year, and I think it’s a factor. Most people don’t care why Covid isn’t over yet, they just have a general sense that it should be but isn’t. Biden even promised it was going to get a lot better before Delta hit, which I think has hurt him. Shoot, I thought Covid would be mostly over by now because I never imagined that 25% of the country had a death wish! It certainly doesn’t help that there’s a brand of Democrat who scolds people who complain about this by saying if you’re unhappy you just don’t care about people’s lives at all, and you should be happy to wear face masks forever and never go to a restaurant or a concert again if that’s what it takes (went through some of that here myself). Being lectured to and scolded for wanting your life to go back to normal isn’t a positive thing for anyone.
schrodingers_cat
@Elie: That should have been passed a long time ago. All or nothing thinking usually yields nothing.
ProfDamatu
@Mike in NC: Eh, VA absolutely is a purple state. (Did your average red state vote decisively for Biden in 2020? Seriously!) I’ve lived here since 2006, and although the areas outside of the cities are indeed full of conservatives, that’s also the case in other purple states, and even most blue ones. Are the rural areas basically still the Confederacy, sure, but the urban areas continue to grow, and are largely trending in the right direction.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Never-Trumper Charlie Sykes was concern trolling that on Twitter earlier today:
Also:
The Moar You Know
@Kay: I read Fox every day because it helps to know what’s going to be coming down the puke funnel in a few days, and that is the new marching orders, since they could not find any place in the US where it was actually being taught.
It’s now “well this is how teachers are being trained”, and I’m sure you know what comes next. Firing every teacher they can.
ProfDamatu
@Immanentize: I really doubt the effect of the blackface and sexual harassment (actually, if Fairfax did what he was accused of…it would be sexual assault). It was a huge deal at the time, but I’m not really buying that as a major driver of yesterday’s results. I think we got unlucky in the Rs not holding a normal primary (so their candidate ended up not being an obviously crazy Trumper), but also in that McAuliffe ran a lackluster campaign. The CRT fake-scandal didn’t help either.
The Thin Black Duke
Until White America is willing to have a honest conversation with itself about race, this country will never be able to Do The Right Thing. White people want to stay ignorant about racism because being aware leads to being obligated to do something about it, and that’s too much work.
Sister Golden Bear
Excellent thread.
If you’re having a feeling about the election & everything that’s been happening in this country over the last *waves hands* ….
different-church-lady
@Betty Cracker: Steve’s missing something in that thread: the problem isn’t that Dems are always talking about policy. It’s much worse than that: they think the benefits of their policy making are self-evident and don’t even need supporting.
I realized this with the ACA. The ACA was scary to me, and I’m on the team. They just left me in the dark about how much it was going to help, ceded the field to the people telling boogie-man stories. I had to find out how good it was the hard way.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: I guess the issue is to make sure that each part of the coalition gets enough meaningful action to not feel under used and that they more action coming down the pike. But what I was thinking about is not allowing anything to move backwards. Right now women’s right are in the crosshairs and these are things for which we should go to the mats. It is the right thing and I suspect that it is good politics.
different-church-lady
@New Deal democrat: Comforting to think this one was more about the match-up than trends. Hope you’re right.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I just keep thinking about the 6th grade public school teacher. Not in some well-resourced fancy public school in Virginia with hyper-educated parents but in one of the 14,000 other districts. What about the majority-minority districts? Can we talk about race to black kids?
“Diversity”, “equity” and “inclusion” are banned. Wow. Those are big ideas. Why, one could argue that’s the entire mission of public schools. I wonder if the public intellectuals should….. think about this or just keep doubling down and expanding it out to infinity.
Our public intellectuals are low quality. This is poorly thought out. For that I don’t blame public schools- I blame the private schools they all attended. They lack rigor.
The Moar You Know
@different-church-lady: our messaging is horrible. No two ways about it. We need help in that area badly.
Just by way of example, Mcauliffe’s “gaffe” about parents not getting a say in their kids education (and as the spouse of a teachers, I get what he was trying to say there and it’s not wrong) should NEVER HAVE HAPPENED. NEVER. We are now at a point in history where we cannot afford one more mistake, but most of the party doesn’t even understand that we are making mistakes at all.
Eolirin
@different-church-lady: Unfortunately I think it’s about both. VA is turning pretty blue. It took this perfect storm to flip the gov seat, and it was only by a small margin. Better candidates and a slightly better environment likely would’ve lead to a win.
But the trends in voter participation were mirrored across multiple states. They’re not sufficient to overwhelm state demographics when they’re really lopsided in our favor like the NYC mayoral race, but they’re consistent and national. Right now dems are not turning out in the numbers they need to, rural whites are turning out more, and suburban whites are coming home to the Republicans. In places that are more closely divided, this is reversing progress we made in the last two cycles.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: One advantage Youngkin got out of pushing the Critical Race Theory nonsense was that he could use it to rally the conservative base without hollering about babies being killed or guns getting grabbed.
Cacti
Also helping Youngkin was the “trans kids are raping girls in school bathrooms” story that turned out to be, well, a huge fucking lie.
Geminid
@Immanentize: Mark Warner is an old white dude who could be accused of being a centrist and he won by 15 points last year. Tim Kaine and Ralph Northam are not as old, but they are pretty white and fairly moderate men, and they also won easily in 2018 and 2017. There may be good reasons to favor “progressive” candidates, but electability is not one of them, at least not in Virginia.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: Actually, there was a large backlash against the anti-vax shitstains, and it was being reported on. I honestly don’t remember how or know why it subsided.
UncleEbeneezer
@Kay: If it mentions racism or any other systemic oppression in any way, or makes white parents upset, it is “CRT-inspired.” This has NEVER been about the actual meaning of CRT and always about creating bogeyman umbrella term to label any attempt to create a safe and equal educational environment for marginalized students, to scare white voters.
Kent
@Eolirin: It’s not a “perfect storm” if it keeps fucking happening across the country like clockwork.
In any event, elections are human-controlled and the Dems got beat. To me it sort of feels like the 2016 Hillary Clinton election where the party bosses more or less cleared the field for their favorite candidate and thought that was all they needed to do.
Audrey
@Kent: “To me it sort of feels like the 2016 Hillary Clinton election where the party bosses more or less cleared the field for their favorite candidate and thought that was all they needed to do.”
WTAF with this bullshit again??
Elie
@schrodingers_cat:
I’m just surprised how dug in things got. I have some blame for Biden’s advisers and staff – like didn’t they see what was happening and that their boss was looking less and less in command and had already been through some rough stuff with Afghanistan and the purposeful resistance of the GQP to masks and vaccinations? I just don’t get how they let him take these body blows….
Woodrow/asim
I 100% expect he chose to take these on, and own the issues directly.
Really, honestly? I think Biden feels…responsible (not same as guilt) for a lot of where things are, today. I’m really mindful that he cites Charletsville as the primer for him to make his run. That he chose to ally during the primary, very explicitly, with the African-American community, as well as Progressives.
And he’s willing to sink his rep if it moves the needle on many good things. He “feels” (FWIW) willing to be the face of sometimes tough choices, in the hopes that it improves things and takes heat off others. It may not be the “right call,” yet I’m pretty damn sure it’s a call he made.
That’s not a set of decisions that flow thru staffing, in what I’m seeing out of this White House.
Mike in NC
The reality is that most people in this country don’t vote in non-presidential elections. We went to vote for mayor and city council yesterday and there was a 30 minute wait, which never happened before. We need universal voting by mail.
topclimber
@Elie: We could probably pass a tax cut for billionaires, if we really MUST do something.
Yes I am snarking, but the BIF does little to address climate change, nothing to make corporations pay ANYTHING in taxes and nothing to address prescription drug prices. Not to mention child care and the expanded EITC.
If the BIF passes by itself, yay we are being bipartisan but you know the GOP will obfuscate about who actually got the bill passed (hint, 4 Dems for every 1 Republican). Plus, if the road crews I see in my area are any indication, hard infrastructure is going to benefit a whole ton of white guys who will never vote Democratic again.
Something tells me the BBB goodies will have a much more diversified benefit.
I still wait for the day Joe B informs Joe M that he will veto the BIF if it is not paired with OUR bill. Let’s see the bipartisan whiz can muster a 2/3s vote to override him.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Zachary Carter at The Atlantic thinks Youngkin won because parents are freaked out about VA schools, but he theorizes that it’s not solely or even mostly because of the CRT fearmongering. He cites drops in enrollment in growing and diverse wealthy suburbs as an alarm bell.
Could be something to that. Last year was a nightmare for a lot of parents with kids in public school. They struggled to balance work and remote schooling. Schools struggled to teach effectively. Kids fell behind. I’m sure there’s a ton of free-floating anger and anxiety about it. The CRT dogwhistle motivated the GOP base, and parent anger about the whole situation did the rest. Sounds plausible to me.
sab
@Kay: I want to frame this and hang it on my wall. The role of public schools is to teach you how to get along in the world. The role of private schools is to teach you how to get into an elite college.
JKC
Hey! We’re practically neighbors!
People who don’t live here don’t appreciate how red the more rural parts of New York can be.@ArchTeryx:
Juju
I think most of the loss lays at McCauliffe’s feet. He barely won the first time he ran, and I think he expected to win easily this time. I don’t think he was as blunt as he should have been. He should have tied Youngkin to anti choice republicans in the present and past, I’m thinking required transvaginal ultrasounds, and the stupid Texas law. He also blew it on the CRT issue, especially at that debate, he could have answered that question a whole lot better rather than dissing the parents. Something along the line of we always appreciate parental concern and involvement in educational issues. We all want an excellent education for the children of Virginia. I hoped he could pull off a win, but I wasn’t holding my breath. McCauliffe didn’t run a very good campaign.
For those who pointed out the similarities to the Hillary campaign, I’d like to point out she had more votes.
Geminid
@Juju: Youngkin softpeddled his anti-choice agenda. The same with his desire to roll back gun safety measures. In retrospect, I think the McAuliffe campaign should have made these major issues. They could have run ads pounding Youngkin for wanting to institute Texas-style abortion laws, and for wanting to unleash a flood of firearms to the unvetted and the unhinged. Youngkin should have been made to either disavow the positions he was keeping quiet, or else own them.
Juju
@Geminid: I agree.
VFX Lurker
@Audrey: I just added Kent to the pie filter for that one.
LongHairedWeirdo
By the way: the idea that the head of state *was* the state is *the* reason why the crime of treason is defined in the Constitution – to explicitly forbid that sort of thinking.Trump, and DeSantis, are engaged in. Just because the head of state doesn’t agree with you, doesn’t mean you’re an enemy of the state.
So now, the Republican Party has definitely moved to the Grumpy Oligarchical Patriarchy, and has forsworn the Constitution (Republicans consider risible the notion that the president must see that the laws are faithfully executed); and the Declaration of Independence. They’ve rejected textualism – the Voting Rights Act explicitly forbids actions that are facially neutral, but harm minorities more, and the SCOTUS gleefully tossed that out. They’ve rejected “responsible gun owners” for “if I threaten you with a gun, and you try to take it away because I threatened you, I’m allowed to kill you because I’m afraid you’ll shoot me with my own gun” (see: Rittenhouse, Kyle).
They’ve rejected the very idea that they care about that Jesus fellow – see all the concerns about wealth, rather than saving lives, during the pandemic. Jesus said you can’t worship God and money, because the correct “Godly” choice is often less profitable.
(Hey, if you’re not a Christian, I get some of your complaints about “Godly”. But within Christianity, God is axiomatically good and loving, so a “Godly” choice in this context means “good/loving/compassionate/kindly”. You may feel (with *fine* reason) that “Godly” isn’t very good – there’s a lot of people who claim God’s will is to do all kinds of horrible stuff. But when discussing “you can’t love God and Mammon” the inference is clear: sometimes doing the right thing is going to be a poor money move.)
I’m not sure if there’s anything good about the Republican Party any more. And yeah, I saw you, getting grumpy faced because you are a “decent” Republican (and know some others). Well, Trump tried to steal the election. Every Republican at the federal level should have been screaming that Trump lost a free and fair election, and must accept that.
Instead, almost every Republican stayed quiet. Why? There’s really only one answer that makes sense: they were hoping Trump would pull it off, and didn’t want to be left out in the cold if he did.
And now, every reasonable Republican should be demanding a full investigation of January 6th, with fire and brimstone speech about what will happen to any federal official who aided and abetted. Why aren’t they? (I’ll assume you know that “not all Republicans” isn’t a defense here – you need to show a huge plurality, at least, want heads to roll, if anyone was stupid enough to aid and abet insurrection.)
Every reasonable Republican should be telling you “there are a lot of lies about the vaccines – I’ve had my people go over the research, and they’re safe and effective. Please get vaccinated!”
Every reasonable Republican should be telling you “masks work, and they’re safe. Please mask up if you can’t distance – vaccines, natural immunity, and both combined, are good, but not perfect, protection against infection.”
I might be engaging in tunnel vision (i.e., I might be missing some good, ethical activity on the part of elected and appointed officials), but my question about whether there’s anything good about the Republican Party, as an overall entity, is well founded. They are taking actions that oppose democracy, and that kill Americans, and they get away with it because enough Republicans are willing to see democracy shrivel, and Americans die, if it helps Republicans win, or retain, power.