The real lesson Democrats should take from this election

Opinion: The real lesson Democrats should take from this election

By Paul Waldman

Columnist

November 3, 2021 at 1:08 p.m. EDT

Jeff Wasden, supporter of Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), monitors returns during an election night event at the Hilton McLean Tysons Corner on Nov. 02. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

One of the most pervasive biases among the political media is the bias toward dramatization, interpreting every event as startling, extraordinary, and signaling a reshaped political landscape.

That is how many are interpreting the results of Tuesday’s elections, especially Glenn Youngkin’s win in the Virginia gubernatorial race. The truth is more mundane — but its implications for how Democrats should think about their future are no less profound.

Let’s begin with the context in which these elections took place. First and most important, there’s a Democrat in the White House. It is impossible to overstate how that one simple fact puts Democrats in a position to lose and lose big, not just in this election but in next year’s midterms as well.

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Here’s what happens when a president gets elected: He tries to do a bunch of things, some of them work out and some of them don’t, but nobody’s life is really transformed, at least in the short term. Meanwhile, the opposition party’s voters are utterly enraged by the mere fact that someone they hate is now running the country.

So at the first opportunity (and probably the second and the third), those opposition voters rush to the polls, while voters from the president’s party are not nearly so motivated.

Now add in the fact that we’re still in a pandemic, the delta variant has slowed the recovery, supply chain problems are producing inflation, and President Biden’s approval ratings are in the low 40s.

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Given all that, it would have been absolutely stunning if Democrats hadn’t gotten their clocks cleaned in these elections, just as Republicans did in 2017 after Donald Trump’s election and Democrats did in 2009 after Barack Obama’s election. The president’s party lost both the Virginia and New Jersey governor’s races in those years as well. Yes, the particulars of a campaign can make a difference at the margins — Republicans certainly waged a skillful if repugnant campaign in Virginia — but the basic pattern will hold.

Republican Glenn Youngkin was elected Virginia’s governor on Nov. 2, defeating his Democratic opponent, former governor Terry McAuliffe. (The Washington Post)

Plenty of people will now tell you that a different strategy or a clever bit of rhetorical jujitsu could have changed the outcome in these races, and the fact that both were so close makes it at least possible, if unlikely. But here’s the reality for 2022: Only something truly earthshaking will prevent the almost inevitable outcome of Democrats losing the House and probably the Senate as well.

There were only two times in recent decades that the president’s party didn’t suffer significant losses in the midterms. The first was 1998, a year dominated by the Republican impeachment of Bill Clinton, which led to its own backlash against Republicans. Approval of the GOP plunged to depths only matched when they shut down the government five years later.

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The second was 2002. Amid the aftermath of Sept. 11 the atmosphere of fear and panic reigned; President Bush’s approval ratings were in the 60s, and Republicans successfully argued that Democrats were terrorist-loving traitors who wanted Americans to die.

Could something that momentous happen in the next twelve months to turn the situation in Democrats’ favor, either defusing Republican anger or elevating Democratic anger to the point where more Democrats turn out than Republicans? It’s always possible.

But ordinary good news — the passage of important bills, the fading of the pandemic, a strong economic rebound — probably won’t be enough. All that would produce a situation in which Democratic voters say, “Things are going pretty well,” and Republican voters say, “I am enraged!”, if only because a Democrat is still president and Democrats still control Congress.

So when Democrats are told that they must pass the Build Back Better bill or some other piece of legislation to have any chance of holding the House and Senate, it isn’t exactly right. If they don’t pass worthwhile bills they’ll certainly lose, since their own supporters will see them as weak and ineffectual. But even if they do pass the bills, it won’t be enough.

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So they have to widen their view beyond 2022. Accept that they have one more year to legislate, and ask: What can we accomplish in that time? How many people can we help? How much can we improve the basic conditions in which Americans lead their lives? How much progress can we make on our agenda, not because we think there will be short-term political dividends but because it’s the reason we got into politics in the first place. Or at least it should have been.

It’s not that there will be no political ramifications to what they do and don’t accomplish now. But many of them will take years to play out. For example, passing the Affordable Care Act only exacerbated the struggles they had in the 2010 midterms, since it became a focus of Republican anger and mobilization. But eventually it became a political advantage; eight years later, voters punished Republicans for trying to repeal it.

More importantly, imperfect though it was, the ACA helped enormous numbers of people. It eliminated the nightmare of being denied health coverage because of preexisting conditions, and gave millions of Americans insurance for the first time. It was an extraordinary achievement.

So Democrats should ask themselves: What can we do now that we’ll proudly tell our grandchildren about years from now? If we really only have a year to make a difference, what are we going to do with that time?