Perhaps the Democratic Party’s downhill slide can be arrested by President Joe Biden and his top congressional allies. But their job is daunting. If objective conditions don’t change — particularly inflation — and if the Republicans field able candidates, the Democrats could be in for a drubbing in the midterm congressional elections in 2022.
The presidential vote in 2024 could also be in danger. The surprisingly tight gubernatorial election in Democratic-leaning New Jersey on the same day that the Republicans eked out a victory in Virginia underscored the Democrats’ trouble. Whether or when the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bipartisan bill passed by the House near midnight on November 5 will be enacted can’t be known for a while.
Glenn Youngkin, a very wealthy former businessman (he funded his election effort) ran a highly effective campaign for Virginia’s governorship, especially for a neophyte. Youngkin was particularly deft in handling what’s become the Republicans’ problem of dealing with Donald Trump, whose support could work against them. Though Youngkin paid honour to Trump, particularly before he obtained the nomination, he stopped short of obeisance. He even managed to keep Trump physically out of the state without incurring the wrath of the easily irritated Trump.
As a result, Youngkin got the votes of both Trump supporters and of white suburban women who had switched to supporting Biden in 2020. Youngkin largely focused on issues of local interest: mainly, parental unhappiness with local school systems — making, most unusually, education the second-highest concern (the first, as usual, was the economy, with inflation key).
Instead of dealing with local issues, Terry McAuliffe, a successful former governor who was again the Democratic candidate, tried to make Youngkin the embodiment of Trump. But it didn’t work, because Youngkin had evaded Trump’s embrace. So, McAuliffe’s shots at Trump were largely wasted. Trump’s base came out and other Republicans who had rejected Trump returned to the fold. Unusually, the record turnout benefited the Republican candidate more than the Democrat.
Moreover, crucial as it is to find out all that can be about what happened before, during, and after the riot on the Capitol on January 6, most of the country appears to prefer to deal with the present and future. Trump doesn’t come across now as the danger he would likely be if he ran for president again in 2024, which he’s giving every sign of wanting to do, mostly to seek revenge against those who, as his paranoid fantasy has it, cheated him out of reelection.
Youngkin didn’t avoid Trumpism altogether: the subject of race ran subliminally through much of what he argued. This turned up in particular in what he maintained were issues about the education system, and which signalled that he sympathised with certain racist views. The main education argument was ostensibly about parents’ role in their children’s education, an issue enhanced by the pandemic’s closing of schools, with education taking place at home. McAuliffe handled the issue awkwardly, famously misspeaking during a debate, on which Youngkin pounced. The Virginia result might have been considered sui generis but for the close outcome in usually Democratic-leaning New Jersey. The incumbent Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, who polls had predicted would be an easy victor, didn’t get called the winner until after nearly two days of counting (technically, it’s not finished yet).
Copy right: Project Syndicate 2021
