Post-election analysis is bad enough following a presidential election or a mid-term when there is a ton of data to analyze. It’s much worse after an off year election when there are just a few races but the same number of hours of television coverage to fill, the same number of stories to file.
Instant analysis is usually wrong to begin with. And media imperatives lead to the search for dramatic conclusions which in turn usually means oversimplifications. Which in the case of off-year elections tend to be based (see paragraph 1 above) on very limited data points.
So, here in the third sub-basement we are advising caution. The Virginia results were not a “referendum” on Biden. They were not because the Virginia gubernatorial results almost always go against the sitting president. (In fact, they have only gone for the candidate of his party once in the past few decades.) If an election always produces the same result, it reveals precisely as much as the sun does by rising every morning.
Next, they are not a referendum because there were plenty of other results that undermine the “conclusive” narrative. A progressive won the election to be Boston’s mayor, the first time a woman or person of color has ever been elected to that job. The NYC mayoral race went to a Bidenite centrist candidate strongly supported by the White House.
One pundit (who typically serves the interests of centrists) said the race in Virginia was a repudiation of progressives. How? There was no progressive on the ballot. McAuliffe was a dyed-in-the-wool Clintonite centrist who was reading from a 1990s playbook. This pundit suggested it was because the Biden Agenda did not resonate—and implied it was a progressive agenda. First, Biden’s agenda is widely popular with most elements supported by two-thirds of all voters or more. Next, if anything voters were frustrated that agenda had been stalled. Which was not the doing of progressives (who have supported the president down the line) but that of rogue centrists like Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema.
Another pundit (who typically serves the interests of centrists) said the race was an indictment of “wokism.” “Wokism” is, itself, a coded term. Condemning the “woke” is the way racists say “leave us to our racism.” Many suggested Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin rode an anti-critical race theory message to victory. While he embraced plenty of such dog whistle tactics, the implication that Dems should step away from defending tolerance, diversity and teaching history as it actually happened is both repulsive and wrong.
My time in Washington has taught me one big lesson. Democrats win when we play offense. We lose when we play defense. (Well, it has taught me two big lessons. The second is we usually forget the first big lesson.) In other words, the answer on CRT is not to “try understand the parents aggrieved by the teaching of CRT” because a.) it’s not actually being taught and b.) what they’re really selling is old fashioned racism and that is something Dems must stand up against. We just need to do a better job of standing up against it.
We also need better messengers. McAuliffe was a weak candidate, a retread whose very presence underscored the idea that Democrats had no new ideas. Candidates matter. Connecting with voters matters. Pre-election data on how GOP voters were more energized by Youngkin than Dems were by McAuliffe foretold the outcome.
Having said all this, the idea that somehow you can project the 2022 landscape from what happened this week is ludicrous. What if Biden’s two big bills pass? What if the pandemic recedes far further? What if the economy rebounds? What if inflationary pressures that the Fed chair thinks are temporary really turn out to be temporary? What if Trump is indicted? What if the 1/6 plotters are held accountable? What if the Supreme Court throws women under the bus by overturning Roe v. Wade? What if GOP efforts to suppress the vote become more egregious and obvious…or Dems take steps to counteract the GOP desire to silence voters of color and others they fear? The mood could be very different come next November.
Even if just a few of those developments take place, a year is an eternity. And the dynamics of each local race are different.
Which means that reading too much into last night’s results is a mistake. Having said that, taking away its lessons—Trumpism can come dressed in a fleece and look more suburban, COVID has scarred our society in ways we don’t understand, Dems need stronger candidates, Dems need to push for results, Dems need stronger leaders pushing stronger messages (playing offense, see above)—is definitely worthwhile. Democrats, even those with more perspective than TV pundits, can’t afford to be complacent.
After all, as one political website reported, yesterday’s elections marked the beginning of the 2022 election cycle. And should the GOP retake the House or Senate (as often happens in midyear elections) it is not only going to be a political victory that will set commentator tongues wagging. It could be the beginning of the end of democracy in America.
