Tuesday’s Elections: More Than a Wake-up Call, Less Than a Death Knell, For Democrats

Tuesday’s scattered elections unleashed a tsunami of punditry on a scale usually reserved for presidential elections or, on occasion, mid-term Congressional elections. No one was more alarmed than the editors of the New York Times:

Tuesday’s election result trend lines were a political nightmare for the Democratic Party, and no Democrat who cares about winning elections in 2022 and the presidential race in 2024 should see them as anything less.

Familiar takeaways like “wake-up call” and “warning shot” don’t do justice here because the danger of ignoring those trends is too great.

The attention lavished on Tuesday’s results is probably attributable to several factors. The daunting conditions facing the country, and the up and down record of the Biden administration so far, would make the prospects of Democrats in 2022 and 2024 uncertain at best, even in normal times. And our times are far from normal. Looming over all is the malign presence of Donald Trump who has managed to persuade a majority of Republicans of the Big Lie—that Joe Biden was not lawfully elected President.

Media reports indicate that Republicans are openly buoyed by their successes this week. In particular, they see the election of Youngkin as a roadmap for success in 2022. On the other side, Democratic reactions range from serious concern to deep gloom. Democrats’ feelings of dread are not irrational. If Republicans regain control of both Houses of Congress in 2022, it will not only end further pursuit of the Biden agenda, but result in a rollback of the portions of the agenda Democrats have managed to pass. (One conspicuous casualty, among many, would be measures to address climate change).

Moreover, if Trump should remain unindicted, the possibility of his re-election in 2024 cannot be discounted. Despite all his baggage, Trump would appear to be a formidable candidate against Biden, Kamala Harris or any other Democrat. And a Trump returned for a second term, in control of the Department of Justice, intent on revenge, and unrestrained by concerns for re-election, might well lead the country down some very dark corridors.

At the same time, all is far from lost for Biden and Democrats. Much of the media focus was on the defeat of Democrat Terry McAuliffe by Republican Glenn Youngkin in Virginia and the surprisingly narrow victory of Democrat Phil Murphy in New Jersey. Yet there are grounds to argue that the alarm over those results is exaggerated. In fact, both results were consistent with past history in both states. Virginia has consistently elected a governor of the opposite party to the most recently elected president. For example, in 2009, during President Barack Obama’s first term in office, Democrats lost the races for governor of New Jersey and Virginia, but those results aroused relatively little consternation.

Nevertheless, Democrats legitimately have much to be quite worried about. There can be little doubt that Biden’s sagging approval rating contributed significantly to Democratic losses. Similar ratings would be a serious problem in 2022, let alone 2024.The decline in Biden’s ratings can be attributed to several factors, some of which are his fault and some of which are not. One of the former is the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. Much more fundamental was Biden’s determination to be a “transformational” president notwithstanding a razor thin majority in both the House and Senate (as well as an opposition party that does not accept the legitimacy of his presidency). Matters not his fault include the surge of the Delta variant and the supply chain problems.

So far as being transformational is concerned, Virginia’s Democratic Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger pointed out that, for many voters, Biden’s mandate was quite limited: to remove former President Donald J. Trump from their television screens and to make American life ordinary again: “Nobody elected him to be F.D.R., they elected him to be normal and stop the chaos.” Nevertheless, Biden’s Build Back Better Act (BBBA) sought to combine in a single bill numerous expensive, complex and unrelated elements, none of which had the benefit of public scrutiny in committee hearings. Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, at their most ambitious and with far stronger majorities in Congress, never attempted anything remotely comparable. In addition, Biden may have made a strategic blunder in tying passage of the BBBA to passing the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill (BIF). (If the latter bill had been allowed to pass, it could have been of significant help to McAuliffe in Virginia.)

As this is written, a finally decoupled BIF has now passed and a scaled-down version of the BBBA appears to be limping toward the finish line. Even if it crosses that line, it will remain to be seen whether that massive bill, cobbled together behind closed doors, will produce what it promises—and at what real cost. (Analysis by the invaluable bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has pointed out that both the BIF and the BBBA are “riddled with gimmicks.”)

Another problem for Democrats is the attempt of many progressives in the party to make it the Party of Wokeness, in which redress of racial injustice becomes a defining element of virtually every issue. This is particularly true in the sensitive area of education, where Republicans across the country have attacked alleged teaching of the controversial Critical Race Theory (CRT). Republican legislatures have passed bills to keep not only CRT, but much other teaching about race out of the classroom. In Virginia, Glenn Youngkin appeared to gain considerable momentum from his attacks on CRT.

While Youngkin’s critics pointed out—correctly—that CRT was not being taught in Virginia’s public schools, that was not a complete answer. There is evidence that some elements of CRT have found their way into Virginia education. As one example, Ross Douthat noted that works by CRT advocates (“White Fragility” and “Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education”) appeared on a reading list recommended in 2019 by the Virginia Superintendent of Education.

Racial injustice, past and present, is real and it must not be ignored. Progress, however, is not likely to be made through rhetoric or instruction seeming to make White children (or their parents) accept personal guilt for events or conditions over which most feel they have no responsibility. That approach will not only be ineffective, but risks being counterproductive in arousing resentment and pushback. Democrats will ignore that risk at their peril. They might well note the comments on Tuesday’s election from long-time Democratic strategist, James Carville. He put it in characteristically pungent fashion:

What went wrong is just stupid wokeness. Don’t just look at Virginia and New Jersey. Look at Long Island, look at Buffalo, look at Minneapolis, even look at Seattle, Washington. I mean, this ‘defund the police’ lunacy, this take Abraham Lincoln’s name off of schools. I mean that — people see that,

It’s just really — has a suppressive effect all across the country on Democrats. Some of these people need to go to a ‘woke’ detox center or something. They’re expressing a language that people just don’t use, and there’s backlash and a frustration at that.

Despite the problems, miscues and setbacks, Democrats do have reasons for hope. Both the pandemic and the economy are showing significant signs of improvement, inflation may abate and supply chain problems may be gradually resolved. Perhaps BIF and BBBA will show at least some of the results that have been promised. If such happy developments occur, Biden and Democrats should receive considerable credit from voters.

If Democrats do regain their footing, Republicans across the country, and particularly in key states, are likely to double down on their legislation, schemes and maneuvers designed to circumvent the vote of the electorate in 2024. They have long since adopted the philosophy attributed to the late Vince Lombardi, “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.”

As previously urged here, preservation of democracy needs to be a central theme for Democrats, and it will take much more than Terry McAuliffe’s vague and ineffectual attempts to tie Glenn Youngkin to Trump. The problem is larger than Trump and requires a response that is both broader and more incisive.