The debacle of the Democrats

These twin fears for Democrats have left most of them depressed and, justifiably, worried about their party's prospects for the 2022 midterm elections, in which the entire House and a third of the Senate are up for grabs. to be re-elected, even for the next election and the presidential election in 2024

Washington - Perhaps the Democratic Party's slide can be halted by President Joe Biden and his key congressional allies. But their work is terrible. If objective conditions don't change — especially inflation — and if Republicans come up with capable candidates, Democrats could be in jeopardy in the 2022 congressional midterms. The 2024 presidential vote could also be in jeopardy. A surprisingly close gubernatorial election in Democratic-leaning New Jersey on the same day Republicans clinched a victory in Virginia highlighted the Democrats' woes.

Glenn Youngkin, a very wealthy former businessman (he financed his election campaign) had a very effective campaign for governor of Virginia. Youngkin was particularly adept at dealing with what has become the Republicans' problem of dealing with Donald Trump, whose support could work against them. Although Youngkin honored Trump, especially before he received the nomination, he did not bow to him. He even managed to keep Trump physically out of the country without incurring the wrath of the easily irritated Trump.

Consequently, Youngkin drew votes from both Trump supporters and suburban white women who had defected to Biden in 2020. Youngkin focused primarily on local issues: primarily, parental dissatisfaction with local school systems - making, unusually, education the second biggest concern (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 avoided Trump's hug. So McAuliffe's attacks on Trump were mostly pointless. Trump's base turned out, and other Republicans who had rejected Trump returned to the fold. Quite unusually, the record turnout went to the Republican candidate more than the Democrat.

Moreover, as important as it turns out to be about what happened before, during and after the riots at the Capitol on January 6, most of the country seems to prefer to deal with the present and the future. Trump now sees no danger if he were to run for president again in 2024, which he is giving every indication he wants to do, mainly to seek revenge on those who, as his paranoid fantasy has it, cheated him. out of re-election.

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Youngkin did not avoid Trumpism entirely: the theme of race subliminally permeated much of what he argued. This was particularly evident in what he claimed were issues relating to the education system, and which signaled that he sympathized with certain racist views. The main educational argument was ostensibly about the role of parents in their children's education, an issue compounded by the pandemic's school closures, with education taking place at home. McAuliffe handled the issue in a difficult way, speaking badly during a debate. Democrats are chronically inept at fighting back attacks on social issues.

The Virginia result might have been considered sui generis, but not for the close result in typically Democratic-leaning New Jersey. Democratic incumbent Governor Phil Murphy, who polls had predicted would be an easy winner, wasn't declared the winner until nearly two days of counting (technically, it's not over yet). Like Trump, Jack Ciattarelli, the Republican candidate, refused to concede and suggested there had been voter fraud. Virginia Republicans were planning to do the same if Youngkin had lost.

These twin fears for Democrats have left most of them depressed and, justifiably, concerned about their party's prospects for the 2022 midterm elections, in which the entire House and a third of the Senate are up for grabs. for re-election, even for the next election and the presidential election in 2024. There were ominous signs in the relatively apathetic turnout of African-Americans, who usually overwhelmingly support Democrats, and the return of educated suburban white women from university to vote Republican. David Wasserman predicts that Democrats could lose over forty seats in the midterm elections and more than fifty in 2024 if conditions do not change.

McAuliffe made it clear during the election that he needed something to "sell" the Virginia electorate. He specifically referred to the $XNUMX trillion-plus infrastructure bill that was subsequently stalled in Congress because of internal Democratic disagreements: the "difficult" infrastructure bill with bipartisan support; and the much more controversial "human" infrastructure program, plus climate change. The Democrats may have won the congress (barely), but they still hadn't delivered.

Biden appeared to have accepted historians' advice at a White House meeting in early March that this was his time to step forward, even though he had run as a moderate. In what might be called the Mount Rushmore project, after the famous South Dakota mountain sculpture of four US presidents, historians told him he could be another Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson. Biden has only 50 votes in the Senate and only a margin of three votes in the House of Representatives.

McAuliffe's assumption that passing infrastructure programs would have elected him is debatable. While each "human infrastructure" program was positively received, combining them led to a price tag that moderate Democrats considered excessive. It also allowed a single senator to overwhelm them all by opposing one component, and split the Democratic factions.

Each side of the internal Democratic argument got what they wanted to see in the results in Virginia and New Jersey: Progressives and the president saw them as calls for quick passage of the two bills, while Joe Manchin, a moderate from West Virginia, saw them as sign that Congress should slow its rush to pass the two bills.

But as House Democrats pushed for a resolution over the weekend — impossible because the Senate was already in recess — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put back into the bill a popular provision for paid leave for new parents. which Manchin says he favors but opposes as part of social infrastructure. Manchin and others also argued that funding for some of these programs was questionable. Although the bipartisan "hard" infrastructure bill has now been passed by both Houses, issues related to the "soft" infrastructure program could take several more weeks to resolve.

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(The author is a journalist based in Washington. She is the author of several books, the newest of which is "Washington Journal: Reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon's Downfall".

The comment was written for the global journalism network, "Project Syndicate", of which "Koha Ditore" is also a part.)