What Happened in NJ and Virginia?
Last night, Democrats learned the painful lesson that it's very difficult to outrun history and an incumbent president with lousy poll numbers.
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Last night, Republican Glenn Youngkin won the Virginia Governor’s race, and incumbent New Jersey governor Phil Murphy appears to be narrowly holding off his Republican opponent. In all, it was a dreadful night for Democrats and a great one for Republicans. Here’s a brief explanation as to why.
Joe Biden is very unpopular. In fact, he has some of the worst favorability ratings, at this stage of his presidency, as any other president in modern history. That unpopularity is a drag for any Democratic candidate because it leaves Democrat voters depressed and Republicans energized. There is no simpler or more efficient explanation for what happened last night than this.
History was not on the Democrats’ side. In retrospect, McAuliffe winning this election would have been an unusual outcome from a historical and structural standpoint.
Biden is now the eighth consecutive new president to see opposition party win the VA governorship in his first year (following Carter, Reagan, GHWBush, Clinton, GWBush, Obama, Trump)Political fundamentals are not determinative, but they are awfully difficult to outrun.
In Virginia, Republican Glenn Youngkin ran an excellent campaign. He is independently wealthy, so he could afford to spend millions running positive campaign ads burnishing his image as a reasonable Republican, who is very different from Donald Trump. Those efforts bore fruit. Based on preliminary exit polls, his favorability was 53-43, while McAuliffe’s was in the red at 45/52. Indeed, for all of McAuliffe’s efforts to tie Youngkin to Trump, that strategy clearly failed.
Give Youngkin credit. He figured out how, as a Republican, to run a campaign that maintained an arm’s distance between himself and the former president. Youngkin also had one other significant advantage. He didn’t run in a contested primary, which meant he didn’t need to pay allegiance to Trump and be attacked by Trumpist candidates. He won the nomination at a party convention. Other Republican candidates will not have the same luxury.
I did not follow the New Jersey election as closely as Virginia, but as of this writing, governor Phill Murphy maintains an exceptionally narrow lead in a race that most polls suggested he’d win comfortably. See point #1 again. An unpopular incumbent president has a trickle-down effect on members of the incumbent’s party.
Social media was replete last night with exceptionally hot pundit takes on what happened in Virginia that, oddly, coincided with the pundit’s ideological or political priors. Beware of this analysis and, in particular, the argument that Youngkin won because he ran on critical race theory and white Virginia voters are racist. Did race play a role in yesterday’s outcome? Absolutely. Did Youngkin run a vaguely racist campaign by focusing on critical race theory? No doubt. Is this why he won? Sorry to be a broken record, but see points #1 and #2.
Racial dog-whistling has been a feature of Republican politics for decades. Critical race theory is merely the latest iteration. Indeed, in 2017, Republican candidate Ed Gillespie ran ads trying to tie his opponent Democrat Ralph Northam to the Mexican drug gang, MS-13. This strategy didn’t work, and I doubt it explains why Youngkin prevailed. At the very least, there is little evidence so far that bolsters this view. Critical race theory is a nebulous concept: parental concerns about education, which heightened during the pandemic, are not. Many schools in Virginia were closed throughout 2020 and 2021. That is going to have a residual effect. Parents were frustrated and angry and it’s not hard to imagine that Youngkin’s focus on the issue, tapped in to those worries, some of which are oriented around race and some of which were not. We will need to see more data, but I’d venture to guess that the ultimate explanation for what happened in Virginia is less complicated or insidious than the hot take merchants would have us believe.
Having said that, considering the prominence of critical race theory in the analyses of Youngkin’s victory will likely have a significant impact on the 2022 midterms. In other words, I’d expect Republicans to try and replicate Youngkin’s success. But for the reasons stated above, I’m not sure that effort will be successful.
Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema probably didn’t cost McAuliffe the governor’s mansion, but they certainly didn’t help. Part of the reason for Biden’s lousy poll numbers is that, quite simply, he has no good story to tell. COVID is still an issue; people don’t have a very positive view of the economy; Americans overwhelmingly believe the country is on the wrong track, and the only news out of Washington has been partisan bickering and Democrat’s fighting among themselves. Had Congress reached a deal a month or two ago and passed a major infrastructure bill and budget package. I’d imagine that Biden’s poll numbers would be better than they are now. Though it’s far from clear, they’d have been good enough to help MacAuliffe win (see points #2 and #3 above).
Ultimately, the impact of Congress passing Biden’s agenda will be less about the legislation itself and more about how it paints Biden in a more positive light for voters. Waiting this long to pass the president’s agenda was a silly, unforced error that likely took a political toll on Democratic candidates. Whether it was decisive is far from clear.
Democrats are in political trouble. Midterm elections are a year away, and a lot can happen between now and then. Still, it’s getting harder to see how the party maintains its narrow House majority (the Senate is a little different because the map tends to favor Democrats). Yesterday’s outcome may lead more Democratic members of Congress not to seek reelection. It might make recruitment of new candidates more difficult, and it will almost certainly energize Republicans. But also, yesterday shows that as much as politics change, it often stays the same. Even in an era of intense polarization, countercyclical trends are hard to overrun. So too are political fundamentals. Candidate strength still matters — the same goes for campaigns. Historically, incumbent parties lose seats in midterm elections. It’s going to be very hard for Democrats to outrun that history.
I don’t think the coupon for 20% off is working.
Maybe considering any dissent on CRT as being a racist dog whistle is, part, of the reason why Democrats are losing voters