Election Inspection

The Democrats look like they could go back to going full Whig.  After the election returns this past Tuesday, how could you not come to that conclusion?

Terry McAuliffe's nomination for a second nonconsecutive term to oppose Republican nominee Glenn Youngkin (above) was one of those classic bad ideas that was plausible enough that no one would challenge or question such a preposterous idea.  McAuliffe got the nod to run again not so much for his record as governor from 2014 to 2018 but because of his position in Democratic insider politics and his fundraising ability.  Also, he's a friend of the Clintons.  And he seemed to feel as entitled to the governor's mansion in Virginia as the Clintons did to the White House.   But he screwed up in saying that parents did not have a say in how children were educated - revealing his ignorance of elected school boards - giving Youngkin a perfect issue to run on.  And when Youngkin responded in kind by suggested with a campaign commercial that Toni Morrison's "Beloved" shouldn't be taught in AP literature (though the ad did not mention the book by title), McAuliffe couldn't even use it to his advantage.   President Biden was chastised by some pundits by deflecting blame for the Democrats' loss in Virginia from his inability to get his agenda passed; McAuliffe's foibles as a candidate suggest that Biden was right.  He was such a lousy candidate he took the Virginia Democratic Party down with him; it appears that the party lost control of the lower house of the state legislature.  Two of the new Republican members took part in the January 6 insurrection.

(By the way, if you go back to my post from this past Monday and make a sentence from the first word of each sentence in it, you'll see that I called Virginia right.)

Biden certainly didn't have anything to do with the surprise result in New Jersey, where Phil Murphy won re-election as governor by far less than expected.  Murphy ran on his progressive record and didn't shy away from his policies but he failed to enunciate his accomplishments as much as he should have and he completely ignored the issue his Republican opponent Jack Ciattarelli hammered away on repeatedly during the campaign - property taxes.  It turns out a lot of people still care about that!  Murphy, relatively speaking, was one of the big winners among the Democrats this past Tuesday.  He stays in office with most of his agenda in place and he's in a position to secure his legacy, and he is now the first Democrat to win a second term as governor of New Jersey since Brendan Byrne in 1977.  But he should have won by more.

The disappointing results Democrats had in Virginia and New Jersey were local, but nationally they still have a problem.  Republicans blame the Democrats' losses on the Democratic agenda.  Listening to them, you'd think nobody in America wants paid family leave, expanded Medicare coverage, or universal nursery school.  (Hey, I just called Joe Manchin a nobody!)  Well, it makes perfect sense that voters rebelled against the Democratic agenda - because a lot of voters thought the Democrats wanted to rename schools named for Founding Fathers in honor of black nationalists, teach "critical race theory" in those same schools, tear down statues of Jefferson and Washington, and, oh yes, defund the police.  Because even when they talk about paid family leave, Medicare dental coverage and all those other nice things, they still can't articulate their agenda in clear-cut language, and what they do say gets drowned out by so-called "woke" members of the Squad.  So it makes sense the the biggest winner among Democrats, New York Mayor-elect Eric Adams, is an ex-cop who would rather defend the police than defund them.  (Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, his Republican opponent, is a cat lover and has sixteen cats at home; that was the only thing I liked about him.)     

Oh yeah, it's so obvious that woke-ism is so out of place in These States - even in our major-league cities - that Buffalo mayor Byron Brown was re-elected as a write-in candidate after losing the Democratic nomination to a self-described socialist!  

But the muddled message wasn't the only issue - so was the fact that the Democratic Congress was supposed to deliver the goods and spent much of the past year arguing with each other.  In the end, they were the only people who were "woke" on Tuesday.

The Democrats still have a chance to cut their losses in the 2022 midterms, if they prove they can govern and pass legislation that will help the people.  Last night, they got off to a good but troubled start; the House finally passed President Biden's infrastructure bill, which now goes to the White House for the President's signature.  But distrust remains over the reconciliation bill, and there's a long way to go to get that settled.  Moderates, however, have committed themselves to voting on it ,later, so maybe we can still build back better.  And maybe get voting rights legislation passed.  Or, we could end up seeing a Republican Congress in 2023 passing a whole new round of tax cuts.  

And by the way, speaking of voting rights . . . voting rights were expanded in Virginia and New Jersey, and look what happened. 

Oh yeah, congratulations to Michelle Wu for becoming the first elected female mayor and mayor of color of Boston. 

Gubernatorial Unease

In Virginia, former Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe, running to get his job back, suddenly finds himself neck and neck with Republican opponent Glenn Youngkin despite the state trending more to the Democrats.  In New Jersey, incumbent Democratic governor Phil Murphy has seen his once-big lead over Republican opponent Jack Ciattarelli narrow to six percentage points in one poll.  Some pollsters say the gap could even be narrower.

Neither one of these revolting developments was supposed to happen.  Youngkin is a Trump straw man in a state Trump lost to Biden by ten points in the 2020 presidential election.  New Jersey should be even more of a gimme for the Democrats, yet Ciattarelli is in a position to keep the incumbency curse on New Jersey Democratic governors going - no Democratic New Jersey governor has won a second term since Brendan Byrne in 1977, while three Republican New Jersey governors have.

McAuliffe has been patiently waiting for President Biden to get his infrastructure legislation through Congress and give him an edge over Youngkin, but even if that legislation passes Congress tomorrow, McAuliffe has to answer for his big fumble in a gubernatorial debate in which he said that parents have no right to tell school boards how to educate their kids.  Really, Terry?  Okay, what McAuliffe meant was that parents have no right to threaten school board members who either advocate strict COVID measures or push history courses that include more people of color, but it didn't come out right.  Now that Youngkin has that McAuliffe gaffe on tape, the election may not come out right for McAuliffe no matter how much he tries to correct the record.  

Similarly, Governor Murphy in New Jersey opened a can of worms for himself when he said that New Jersey is "probably not your state" if taxes are your only issue.   Murphy said that back in 2019, but the context was not to dismiss taxes as an issue per se. 

"If your spectrum of inputs as you make decisions as a family or as a business is wide, we’ll compete with anybody. The wider that spectrum of consideration, the better it is for New Jersey," Murphy said at a Rowan University event two years ago.  "So if on that list is taxes, by the way, and I’m not shying away from that. Our job is to make sure whether it’s cracking the back of property taxes or making sure that we get to a good place on incentives and that we have that tool in the toolbox, that’s on that list. It’s on the list. I got it."

Ciattarelli has ignored all that, of course, and he's used the Murphy quote about taxes and New Jersey to pound the governor on the head.  And it's working - Murphy has steadily lost support in each successive poll, and there's still one week left before the election.  Murphy has countered with ads going after Ciattarelli's reactionary stands against abortion and vaccines - all vaccines, not just COVID - but the polls show that the biggest issue concerning New Jersey residents is neither.  The biggest issue? Taxes.

And the undecided voters appear to be breaking for Jack.

Personally, I think McAuliffe may be toast, but Murphy may still hold on.  But even if they both win, anyone who thinks the the Democrats can replicate the resounding victory Gavin Newsom pulled off in the California recall vote is sadly mistaken.  The difficulties Democrats are having in Virginia and New Jersey are likely to reflect the difficulties they'll have in next year's midterms.  

Terry Two

Well, this is interesting . . . 

Former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe won the Virginia gubernatorial primary to run for a second term. McAuliffe, whose last term expired in January 2018, could not run for a second consecutive term in the previous gubernatorial election because the Virginia state constitution bars incumbent governors from running for re-election.  McAuliffe defeated two female opponents, both named Jennifer.  He got more votes than both Jennifers combined.

Meanwhile, Grosvenor Phil Murphy of New Jersey was nominated to run  for a second consecutive term, promising that the state will move forward, not backward - something McAuliffe can't promise because he's been there and done that already.  Will Virginia voters want someone else?  Or will they vote for McAuliffe again, which probably would have happened in the 2017 gubernatorial election had he been able to run for re-election?  We'll find out this November.