Politics is always local. Your children are your best friends.
If the Democrats were smart, they’d be waking up this morning and figuring that out. Virginia is in Washington D.C.’s backyard and national politics are not sufficient for Democrats to retain a state which they won by 10 votes one year ago.
To be absolutely fair, Terry McAuliffe’s race did feature non-Trump issues, and there are plenty of reporters out there who can verify that. However, these same reporters are employed by outlets that focus almost entirely on Trump. Their nuanced analyses of the race simply don’t break through the screeching about the former president, a man who apparently had no effect on last night’s races.
Last night, the Democrats sought a lot. Their goal was to demonstrate that Donald Trump’s voter suppression and racist claims would get their voters to the polls on January 6. They hoped they would win the race, even though Trump was not in office. They hoped that division and othering the opposition while not admitting to very real problems with their governance wouldn’t be an issue.
Instead…
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It would only be the Virginia governor’s race that matters. And as much as the media’s reaction makes it seem like that was the only race that really mattered, the truth is that the Democratic Party has lost touch with voters, and the result was a nearly completely flipped Virginia, a near-loss of New Jersey, gains in Pennsylvania, and a flipped Congressional seat in Texas.
The collapse of the demographic advantage Democrats once enjoyed was evident last night as exit polling shows a majority – not a plurality, but an actual majority – of Hispanic voters sided with Glenn Youngkin. Republicans are also taking note. flipped a minority seat in Virginia I don’t think was even expected to be in play.
The voters resonated more with the GOP than they did the Democrats last night, and it’s all because all politics are local.
A lot of Democrats, activists and journalists will tell you that education is an issue they don’t like. Many people claim that Virginia’s last night was about white supremacy. Strangely though, networks that make such claims ignore WInsome Sears (a black Jamaican immigrant) who won the Lt. Last night, Governor of the Commonwealth. But that doesn’t explain the turnout. Republicans gained in minorities and retook the suburbs. Simple racism doesn’t explain that, but you know what does? Those voters’ kids.
We’ve long suspected education was the way to woo black voters to vote more for Republicans, and the public education system has certainly given Republicans the ammo to do so over the last two years. School shutdowns, mask mandates, and even Critical Race Theory have had a major impact on the public’s perception on state-run education. Children were away from home during the COVID-19 epidemic, but parents could see what their children were learning at school. Many parents also witnessed their children struggling with isolation and social issues. This was because of the collusion between the unions with the government in order to promote school closings.
McAuliffe invited Randi Weingarten along to deliver the final message. This is the leader of one the largest teachers unions in America!
Couple that with COVID-19, and the leader of the Democratic Party promisng during his campaign to “shutdown the virus.” Couple it with the economy, which is causing a lot of pain at the gas pumps, in the grocery stores, and on employment. Combine it with the rising crime rates in this country.
Which are the most important things people will care more about? McAuliffe is concerned about infrastructure and public education. Youngkin, on the other hand, wants people to return to work so that you can have an influence over how your kids are raised.
Politics are all local. The Democrats have completely ignored that because their data suggests people care about the January 6 “insurrection.” And while that may be true, they clearly don’t care about it nearly as much as they care about the stuff happening in their own neighborhoods and schools.
This brings me to the point of what Democrats really want from it.
This is a quote by a Dem strategist that rings more true right now.
Republican can “feed their base misinformation directly via their news outlets.”
“The Dem Party needs to figure out ways to more actively court its base voters on a regular basis.”https://t.co/dh0mYAagvH
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) November 3, 2021
If a Democratic strategist is telling you the problem is Republican misinformation, they’re one of the ones who misread the room in the first place in the weeks leading up to yesterday. These were the Democratic strategists that doubled or tripled their focus on the issues Democrats ran. The Democratic strategists stayed in their impenetrable bubbles, and did not see any reason to fight the Republicans for the issues they would win. Unless a Democratic strategist is out there saying “Man, we really messed up here,” then they are not a strategist who can be successful going forward.
If last night is the bellwether for 2022, it’s an absolute nightmare scenario. And if the best some of these Democratic strategists can do is “The Republicans lied better than we told the truth!”, then they are doomed to seeing that nightmare become reality.
Tonight’s results indicate that Republicans will comfortably regain both the House of Representatives and the Senate in 2022, as is evident from their consistent voting record.
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 3, 2021
Political action is always local. This is the reason Democrats lost last night. If they don’t change their tactics (and there is zero indication right now that they will), then 2022 is going to be absolutely brutal.
