A year after Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in the Presidential election, and nearly ten months after a Trump-led mob laid siege to the nations Capitol, a new round of elections yielded mixed results for the Democratic Party, which lost the Virginia governors race and came close to losing New Jerseys. An unrepentant and insurgent Republican Party has motivated its base with the so-called culture war over public-school curriculum, opposition to mask and vaccine mandates, and relentless attacks on the entirety of Bidens political program. Meanwhile, months after Democrats passed the most expensive domestic spending bill since the War on Poverty, they remain mired in internal conflict over the purpose and possibility of their congressional majority. Political observers have pointed to Republicans spirited turnout on November 2nd as evidence that their culture war tactics are working. But that doesnt explain the enthusiasm gap that threatens the political fortunes of the Democratic Party. Unfulfilled expectations, not the often invoked wokeness, are what clouds Democrats horizons.
The gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey offer only a snapshot of contemporary politics, but both contests have been portrayed as referenda on the Biden Administration. And in both states Biden and his surrogates, including former President Barack Obama, rallied voters in person, indicating the importance of the elections. Afterward, what set off alarm bells among Democrats was Republicans enormous voter participation. In Virginia, the former Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe captured almost two hundred thousand more votes than the winning ticket in 2017. And yet he still lost to the former corporate executive Glenn Youngkin, who captured more than four hundred thousand more votes than the 2017 Republican challenger. Republican voters overperformed in every Republican county, indicating their excitement and motivation. Not only did Youngkin win, but his big turnout helped Republicans win down the entire ballot, allowing the G.O.P. to wrest control of the Virginia statehouse from the Democrats.
Although Phil Murphy became the first Democratic governor to win relection in New Jersey since 1977, historically high turnout among Republicans across the state made the race much closer than anyone imagined. His Republican opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, a former state representative and a featured speaker at a November, 2020, Stop the Steal rally, trailed by double digits throughout most of the campaign, only to lose by three points. Ciattarelli, who did not concede until more than a week after the race was called, gained almost three hundred and seventy thousand more votes than the Republican who lost to Murphy in the 2017 governors race. Even more significant was the dramatic loss of the powerful Democratic president of the New Jersey state senate, Steve Sweeney, to a Republican truck driver, Edward Durr, who had no backing from the state G.O.P. and spent just over twenty-three hundred dollars on his campaign.
What is driving this surge of Republicans to the polls? The Party has found new political traction on invented issues like critical race theory in public-school curricula, while still being fuelled by the notion that Trump was robbed of the election last fall. In Virginia, Youngkin deployed an ad featuring a white woman who led a campaign against teaching Toni Morrisons Beloved in Virginia public schools. Youngkin vowed to ban critical race theory in his states public schools on Day One. But there are also real issues on which the G.O.P. offers positions distinct from those of the Democrats, including the economy, immigration, crime, and federal vaccine mandates. In some areas, Republicans tend to want heightened government action, supporting the police and a tightening of the U.S. border, but they are simultaneously expressing suspicion of the state, opposing Bidens spending proposals and bolstering claims of government overreach on vaccine mandates. These differing positions, including a fierce opposition to a perceived effort to defund the police, allow Republican officials to portray themselves as battling on behalf of an aggrieved voting constituency. Republicans feel as if they are in a struggle for the direction of the country, and they have been able to clearly identify the issues around which they are fighting.
The new momentum for Republican candidates provoked anxiety and finger-pointing among Democrats. Republican gains in presumed Democratic Party strongholds have unleashed dire predictions about the 2022 midterms and assessments that the Democratic Party has been captured by the left, alienating voters with big spending and a politically correct agenda. In some ways, this is a repeat of the intra-party rancor that ensued as the Party assessed its loss of thirteen House seats in the 2020 election. There has to be a reckoning within our ranks about this because a lot of Justice Democratsa progressive groupdont give a damn about the Democratic Party, one unnamed critic told the Washington Post last year. Theyre all about purity and orthodoxy, and it is damaging our opportunities. This time around, moderates have pointed to the size of Bidens Build Back Better bill as a culprit in the electoral losses. In dispensing electoral advice to the Democrats, the New York Times editorial board looked to last years election and concluded, Mr. Biden did not win the Democratic primary because he promised a progressive revolution. There were plenty of other candidates doing that. He captured the nominationand the presidencybecause he promised an exhausted nation a return to sanity, decency and competence. Representative Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat from Virginia, said, Nobody elected him to be F.D.R., they elected him to be normal and stop the chaos.
The script of the left mucking up the Partys chances with wokeness also still holds strong. The Democratic strategist James Carville left little doubt where blame lay for the Election Night losses. Dont just look at Virginia and New Jersey, he said. 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 Lincolns name off of schools. People see that, and it really has a suppressive effect all across the country. Carville was pointing, among other things, to the Buffalo mayors race, in which India Walton, an activist and democratic socialist, defeated Mayor Byron Brown in the Democratic primary, only to lose the general election to Brown, who launched a write-in campaign. Recently, Walton told a national online audience of progressive organizers that her opponent and his wing of the party actively colluded with the G.O.P. After his win, Brown told the Washington Post that mainstream Democrats need to stand up and fight back against the left, because its making it more difficult to get things done at the national level and its not good for the country.
These critiques share an assessment that the Party is dominated by its left wing and pursuing a political agenda at odds with the wishes of the broader American public. A review of the events of 2020 reveals a different state of affairs. For most of his long career as a Democrat, Biden was a small-government deficit hawk, but the onset of the pandemic and the eruption of powerful protests pushed him and his party to embrace an agenda of political change. The pandemic had exposed two realities: that the government, on every level, was ill prepared to handle a national disaster, and that the threadbare safety net exposed poor workers of color to the worst of a public-health crisis. In the middle of protests, the Democratic Party pledged a new social and economic contract, including an increase in the minimum wage, Section 8 housing vouchers for every eligible family, and affordable child care.
Nearly two months after he was inaugurated as President, Biden signed into law the nearly two-trillion-dollar American Rescue Plan Act, one of the largest domestic spending bills in American history. The gigantic bill included expanded unemployment benefits, rental assistance, direct stimulus payments, billions for public schools and beyond. Democrats also led successful efforts to expand the child tax credit and the earned-income-tax-credit programs to allow for more benefits and to broaden eligibility. The Biden Administration oversaw a twenty-five-per-cent increase in food-stamp benefitsthe largest in the history of the program. In the face of mounting food insecurity, Bidens U.S.D.A. also extended free school lunch programs into next year. By early April, just weeks after the bill was signed into law, Biden enjoyed the highest combined approval ratings of his Presidency, at fifty-five per cent.
The infrastructure bill that has been the source of angst within the Democratic Party pitted Biden against centrists within the Party looking to scale back spending and rein in the creation of new programs. The bill was finally signed into law by Biden, but vastly diminished in size and scope after stonewalling by Democratic Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, with a fraction of the money needed to fully address the infrastructure crises that abound in the country. For example, fifteen billion dollars is dedicated to removing lead pipes in water systems, but experts have estimated that sixty billion is necessary to do the job. A hundred billion dollars to fix the deplorable condition of American public schools was dropped entirely from the final bill.
Visit link:
Wokeness Is Not the Democrats Problem - The New Yorker
- David Ditch: Uncle Sam is picking your pocket with high taxes Democrats want to raise them even higher - Fox News [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- 2020 Democrats are naming their fundraising 'bundlers' - Columbian.com - The Columbian [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- Democrats Sparred Over a Wine Cave Fund-Raiser. Its Billionaire Owner Isnt Pleased. - The New York Times [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- Education Spending: What Democratic Candidates Want vs. Reality, in Charts - Education Week [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- Democratic leadership should be afraid of McKayla Wilkes - The Week [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- Editorial: Democrats are pushing the right fix to a Trump tax law - San Francisco Chronicle [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- The biggest state feels the most excluded in the Democratic race - CNN [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- Illinois provides the Democrats with a Midwestern base: The Flyover - cleveland.com [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- Mike Bloomberg is trying to convince big-money Democratic donors that he can win in 2020, even though he isn't taking their money - CNBC [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- Wine Caves and Purity Tests in Democratic Politics - The New York Times [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- House GOP vows to use impeachment to cut into Democratic majority | TheHill - The Hill [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- Democrats Who Flipped Seats in 2018 Have a 2020 Playbook: Focus on Drug Costs - The New York Times [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- A decade of Obamacare: How health care went from wrecking to boosting Democrats - CNBC [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- Democrats need to accept these 3 truths to beat Trump in 2020 - CNBC [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- What if Democrats Tried Real Outreach? - The New York Times [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- Impeachment moved nobody but threatens trouble for Democrats | TheHill - The Hill [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- Top Democrats Say They Support the Iran DealBut Here's How They've Undermined It - In These Times [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- Democrats Future Is Moving Beyond the Rust Belt - The Atlantic [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- Why The Most Coveted Democratic Endorser In Iowa Isn't Picking Sides - NPR [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- He Was Cruising in a G.O.P. Primary. Then Trump Endorsed an Ex-Democrat. - The New York Times [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- The Odd Couples of the Democratic Party - The New York Times [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- Prominent House Republican Doug Collins walks back his insistence that Democrats are in love with terrorists - MarketWatch [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- The Weekly | Vetting the 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidates - The New York Times [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- 'Deeply disturbing': 'Gang of Eight' Democrats shocked by report on Russians hacking Burisma - Washington Examiner [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- Like, Ill Tune In When Theres Two Weeks Left: Why Trump Has a Huge Advantage Over Dems With Low-Information Voters - Vanity Fair [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- The Coalition of the Ascendant Rejects Candidates of Color - National Review [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- Whats on TV Tuesday: Leslie Jones and the Democratic Debate - The New York Times [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- Who will win New Hampshire? 5 top state Democrats dish on the state of play - POLITICO [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- Democrat Klobuchar on diversity and taking on Trump in the 2020 presidential race - Reuters [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- Democratic Party Leaders Are Mostly Sitting Out The Endorsement Race So Far - FiveThirtyEight [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- Twelve Democrats, three Republicans in U.S. presidential race - Reuters [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- 'It's a sad day': As Booker exits Democratic primary, a once-historic field gets less diverse - USA TODAY [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- Live Updates And Analysis: January Democratic Debate In Iowa - NPR [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Biden is the Democrats' 'only hope' to defeat Trump | TheHill - The Hill [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Why Andrew Yang Has Endured While Traditional Democratic Candidates Have Not - National Review [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Opinion | Winners and Losers of the Democratic Debate - The New York Times [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Tucker Carlson: Democrats want US to be more like California -- the state that's driving residents away - Fox News [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Meet the Democrats prosecuting Trump's impeachment - POLITICO [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Liberals make up the largest share of Democratic voters, but their growth has slowed in recent years - Pew Research Center [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Who Won The January Democratic Debate? - FiveThirtyEight [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- The War For The Democratic Party Will Destroy Lives, Change The US - The Federalist [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Hillary Clinton on whom she thinks 2020 Democratic voters should nominate - ABC News [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Democrats Take a Walk on the Mild Side - POLITICO [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Democrats should put an end to caucuses - Boston Herald [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Kimberley Strassel: Why is the 2020 Democratic primary field littered with the failed bids of woke candidates? - Fox News [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- DCCC: Democrats tout fundraising advantage in 2020 congressional elections - CBS News [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Oregon Democrats, Republican bristle over possibility of another GOP shutdown - OregonLive [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Democrats Should Be Worried About the Latino Vote - The Atlantic [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Woke doesnt win and other big surprises of Democrats 2020 race so far - New York Post [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Democratic lawmaker dismisses GOP lawsuit threat: 'Take your letter and shove it' | TheHill - The Hill [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Cotton: Democrats are 'upset that their witnesses haven't said what they want them to say' | TheHill - The Hill [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- WATCH: Pistol Grips A 'Weapons Of War' Feature? Virginia Democrat Trying To Ban Guns Gives 6-Minute Speech, Gets EVERYTHING Wrong About Guns - The... [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- Tom Cotton: Democrats haven't proven impeachment case, don't need to 'prolong' things - Washington Times [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- What Chicagos Mayor Really Thinks About the Democratic Field - The Atlantic [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- Impeachment: Democrats reject witness swap in Trump trial - BBC News [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- Democrat House impeachment manager inadvertently admits what impeachment is actually about - TheBlaze [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- Poll Results Put Andrew Yang Back On The Democratic Debate Stage - NPR [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- 12 States Where Democrats Could Flip the Senate - The Nation [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- Facebook is worried about Democrats winning the presidential election - Axios [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- Democrats, Republicans tussle over witnesses as vote approaches | TheHill - The Hill [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- Democrats cry foul over Schiff backlash | TheHill - The Hill [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- 5 Things We Learned Interviewing 2020 Democrats (Again) - The New York Times [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- 'Didn't answer the second part of my question': Buttigieg grilled by anti-abortion Democrat - Washington Examiner [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- A Major Fear for Democrats: Will the Party Come Together by November? - The New York Times [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- Who Will Win the Democratic Primary? Our New Prediction Model Says - OZY [Last Updated On: February 3rd, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 3rd, 2020]
- Democrats' History Of Intimidating SCOTUS Justices Carries Over Into Impeachment - The Federalist [Last Updated On: February 3rd, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 3rd, 2020]
- Impeachment has proved the Democrats are no longer democrats - The Spectator USA [Last Updated On: February 3rd, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 3rd, 2020]
- As Other Democrats Feud, Bloomberg Hammers Trump on Health Care - The New York Times [Last Updated On: February 3rd, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 3rd, 2020]
- The Humbling of Democrats in Texas - The Atlantic [Last Updated On: February 3rd, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 3rd, 2020]
- 2020 Democrats Are Already Giving Up on Congress - The Atlantic [Last Updated On: February 3rd, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 3rd, 2020]
- Iowa Democrats fear losing first-in-the-nation status - POLITICO [Last Updated On: February 3rd, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 3rd, 2020]
- Chris Matthews expresses worries: Democrats 'need to find' candidate who can beat Trump | TheHill - The Hill [Last Updated On: February 3rd, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 3rd, 2020]
- Are the Democrats Completely Screwing This Up? - Rolling Stone [Last Updated On: February 3rd, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 3rd, 2020]
- House Democrat to bring Khashoggi's fiance to State of the Union | TheHill - The Hill [Last Updated On: February 3rd, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 3rd, 2020]
- Democrats Had a 2020 Vision. This Isnt Quite What They Expected. - The New York Times [Last Updated On: February 3rd, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 3rd, 2020]
- Democrats Counter Trump on Health Care and Condemn His Conduct - The New York Times [Last Updated On: February 10th, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 10th, 2020]
- Democratic senators press Amazon over injury rates | TheHill - The Hill [Last Updated On: February 10th, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 10th, 2020]
- James Carville Rages Over State of Dem Party: 'I'm Scared to Death!' - The Daily Beast [Last Updated On: February 10th, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 10th, 2020]
- As Democrats Try to Move On From the Caucus Chaos - The New York Times [Last Updated On: February 10th, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 10th, 2020]
- The Harrowing Chaos of the Democratic Primary - The New York Times [Last Updated On: February 10th, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 10th, 2020]