Before the psephology, let me ask the most important question about November 2nd: Why did Brian Snitker pull Max Fried at the end of six innings? He had given up no runs, four hits, no walks, and had thrown only 74 pitches (50 strikes). The Braves were leading 6-0. Has the notion that pitching must be an ensemble enterprise become so deeply ingrained in contemporary managers that deviation is unthinkable? It would have been great to have the World Series topped off with a complete game, and the bullpen remained available if Fried faltered.
As for the election returns, present performance is no guarantee of future results. In November 2008, Democrats looked forward to endless domination of Congress, including a filibuster-proof Senate. In November 2010, Republicans were sure that Barack Obama would be a one-term President. Nonetheless, the swings to the Right in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere (Colorado, Long Island, Minneapolis!) are hopeful signs. Even here in Washington State, there were a few signs of sanity. Seattle elected a fairly conservative Republican as city attorney, the candidates for Port of Tacoma commissioner endorsed by the Progressive Voters Guide all lost, and an advisory vote on the newly enacted capital gains tax split nearly two-to-one in favor of repeal (not that the legislature will listen to the voters’ advice).
Matt Taibbi has a good description of the progressive Democratic reaction to the Virginia results:
McAuliffe’s collapse, and the corresponding underdog win by private equity titan Glenn Youngkin, is already being caricatured nationally using the language of 1980s politics. We’re meant to understand that the Loudoun County story – which is too complex to summarize easily but involves furious disputes between local parents and the school board over a variety of issues, including a pair of sexual assaults – was cooked up by Republicans as a cynical dog-whistle campaign.
“The GOP ran a master class on race-based identity politics,” wrote CNN’s Bakari Sellers. “The return of the Lee Atwater playbook. Pretty grim,” is how former Harry Reid chief of staff Adam Jentleson put it. “Hats off to the depraved cynicism and villainy and race baiting. It worked in Virginia,” seethed Wajahat Ali of The Daily Beast. Van Jones last night called Youngkin the “Delta variant of Trumpism.”
Just as McAuliffe had no message apart from trying to tie Youngkin to Trump, these commentators seem helpless to do anything but fall back on a cookie-cutter formula for responding to Republican electoral victories in the Trump era.
I can’t help but think that the Dems’ steady drumbeat of “Trump! Trump! Trump!” was a great boon to Republican candidates. Going into the campaign, many of them must have feared that they would face an irreconcilable dilemma: If they avoided vocal support of the former President, the blue collar voters whom he brought into the GOP, feeling abandoned, would stay home or revert to voting for Democrats. But if they didn’t keep a long distance from The Donald, they would have no hope of winning in Trump-phobic suburbs. Terry McAuliffe and his ilk rescued them by insisting relentlessly that Glenn Youngkin and his running mates were Trump’s favorite politicians. Trump voters believed them. Voters who cared little about Trump’s opinions formed their judgments on the basis of what the Republican office seekers actually said. What’s more, the effort that the Dems devoted to wooing the Trump-obsessed distracted them from delivering a coherent message to the Trump-indifferent.
Donald Trump will undoubtedly be an unsettling presence on the national scene for the next several years, but portraying him as the new Emmanuel Goldstein may not work as well as progressives expect.
Further Reading: Sean Trende, “Three Takeaways from Virginia and New Jersey”
Zaid Jilani, “Youngkin’s Formula for Success”
Paul Mirengoff, “One More Footnote to Last Night”