Virginia election result

November 5, 2021 2:56 PM

New York Times: Youngkin Wins Virginia Governor’s Race, Dealing Blow to Democrats on Telling Election Day. Politico: The Surprising Strategy Behind Youngkin’s Stunner - an interview with two of Youngkin's strategists.

Vox: What Glenn Youngkin’s Virginia win means for Democrats.

Jacobin: The Virginia Governor Race Shows That Dems Can’t Count on Running Against Trump.

Huffington Post on election results elsewhere: Democratic Voters Reject Police Funding Cuts, But Embrace More Modest Reforms.

Bonus: Dune explainer, with some comments on the implications of Virginia for the midterms.

posted by russilwvong (62 comments total)

Here’s a weird little Virginia election story that has me scratching my head: Youngkin’s Son Tried Twice to Vote Illegally on Election Day.

Nothing nefarious seems to be going on, it’s just weird.
posted by Kattullus at 3:03 PM on November 5, 2021 [13 favorites]

Here's what it means: nothing much. Virginia is still very much a purple state, with a nearly evenly split electorate. In an off-year election with an unpopular Democratic president, it's no great surprise that the GOP candidates did a few percentage points better than they did the last few elections. As with every election where a Democrat loses it will be spun as "The death of the Democratic Party" by pundits, "Evidence that progressive policies are widely unpopular" by the centrist Democrats and "Evidence that blocking progressive policies have deflated the Democratic electorate" by progressive Democrats. It's not strong evidence of any of that. The Democrats just lost a close election in an evenly-split state. It happens. Move on.
posted by srt19170 at 3:08 PM on November 5, 2021 [51 favorites]

He’s a super rich investment banker who used a mountain to cash to flood the airwaves with inflammatory lies about schools and school boards and win the election.
posted by interogative mood at 3:10 PM on November 5, 2021 [15 favorites]

As pointed out elsewhere, every single President since Carter has seen the opposition party win the Virginia Governorship in the first year of their Presidency. This year was actually the smallest margin of victory of any of those eight races.
posted by chrisulonic at 3:27 PM on November 5, 2021 [41 favorites]

The fact that Murphy is the first Democratic incumbent to win a second term as New Jersey's governor in more than 40 years gets left out of these takes.
posted by mollweide at 3:39 PM on November 5, 2021 [41 favorites]

Kattullus, considering how much the GOP pushes for disenfranchisement based on mythical voter fraud, I think it IS nefarious. The Republican Party is a criminal enterprise and the greatest threat to democracy our generation has ever seen.
posted by rikschell at 3:59 PM on November 5, 2021 [16 favorites]

That Politico interview with Youngkin's campaign advisors is worth reading.
posted by notyou at 4:11 PM on November 5, 2021 [2 favorites]

Yup. One of Youngkin's strategists, on McAuliffe:

I mean, I just don't think he ever gave anybody a reason to vote for him. I don't think it really dragged him down. I just don't think he ever gave anybody a positive vision — literally, he never answered the question of why he was running for governor. The only reason he would ever give was because he wanted to stop us.

Last year, "I am running as Not Donald Trump" was enough in and of itself to drive Joe Biden to 81 million votes for the Presidency, because Trump was such a freakin' cartoon villain that little more was required. Trump, or Not Trump; pick one.

This had different stakes; the smell of threat wasn't on Youngkin in the same way. And while "Trumpers or Not Trumpers will have control of Congress" rings at least a little similarly, the villain himself won't be on those ballots, so those concerned had best work out a different messaging and campaigning strategy for then.
posted by delfin at 4:24 PM on November 5, 2021 [8 favorites]

Very nice Politico interview. My impression of the piece is:

* Youngkin didn't really run as a Republican. He could have flown flag of anybody except the democrats. What he did was being a LOCAL candidate, and found issues that can unite different segments, and focused on those issues.

* The opponent was inept, and the sole strategy was "that's a Republican and I'm not that", and never really had a counter to Youngkin's strategies.

I wouldn't really say the democrats "lost", but rather McAullife lost because he wasn't "local" enough.

I would not draw any MORE conclusions than that. And anyone who's doing so is probably trolling. IMHO, of course.
posted by kschang at 4:33 PM on November 5, 2021 [7 favorites]

Also relevant, an earlier post on the blue today on the racist backlash against educators.
posted by spamandkimchi at 4:53 PM on November 5, 2021 [8 favorites]

Youngkin won by a slim majority, which the Democrats could easily change if they bothered to actually, you know, fight.

Holy shit, we're doomed.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:55 PM on November 5, 2021 [11 favorites]

@Brandon Blatcher

Lots and lots and lots of Democrats textbanked, phonebanked and knocked on doors. I find comments like this really unhelpful.
posted by pelvicsorcery at 6:16 PM on November 5, 2021 [37 favorites]

I was completely lukewarm on Phil Murphy as another corporate Democratic candidate four years ago, but I have to say he's been more progressive than I could have imagined a New Jersey governor being in my lifetime.
posted by mollweide at 6:24 PM on November 5, 2021 [4 favorites]

I guess I'm a little surprised at the way it went, but not jaw-on-floor surprised or anything.

McAuliffe was a boring, political-machine candidate. You can draw some parallels to Biden, if you want to: they're both experienced politicians, not especially famous for anything in particular, and old white dudes. Safe choices.

A year ago, I think McAuliffe would have won in a heartbeat. But in the past year the fear of Trumpism seems to have receded, and Youngkin was able to walk the razor's edge between being pro-Trump and never-Trump and put together the votes.

It probably didn't help that the election was on a miserable, cold, rainy day—never great for turnout, and probably exacerbated in more-urban areas where people are more likely to have to wait in line.

That said, just to head off the inevitable claim that McAuliffe lost by not tacking far enough left, I think there is currently no path for a politician left of McAuliffe at the statewide level. Dem turnout would not have been increased very much, at least in my community (northern VA) by having a further-left candidate. The people who would welcome someone further left were the people who went out and voted (giving you an idea of how many of us there are). I don't think there's some silent lurking voter bloc to the political left in my community, and this is about as blue as it gets in Virginia right now. The people who didn't come out this time around were the political "casuals" who only vote when something about the election gets far enough into pop culture to ping their radar (and getting rid of Trump really did). This election didn't really do it.

Anyway... my analysis is that this election should give the strategy people a fairly good idea of how many reliable, can-be-counted-on D voters there are in Virginia. The delta between this election's turnout and the last one are the targetable voters if you're a candidate on the left.
posted by Kadin2048 at 6:35 PM on November 5, 2021 [12 favorites]

Living in Virginia, we were bombarded with ads from both parties, including a stack of print mailers.

McAuliffe's single major theme was "I'm not Trump who is Youngkin."

Youngkin focused on schools, while also touching on crime and abortion.

Interestingly, the Dems didn't seem to even try painting Youngkin as an out of touch elite snob. A financier, even. That might have helped them.
posted by doctornemo at 6:36 PM on November 5, 2021 [10 favorites]

The governor's race in New Jersey was scary bc there was so much at stake. There were problems with the electronic voting books on election day, long lines, and low turnout. Murphy has been very progressive and very strict about COVID mandates and Citarelli ran a fear campaign that was also about high taxation, vaccine mandates and taking state funding from poor schools to reallocate to the suburbs.

Personally, I knew I had to go out to vote because at my job, in Essex county, which went more than 70% to Murphy, my coworkers who are at one of those poor schools that would lose funding expressed doubts about Murphy because they said the vaccine mandates in NYC had been a disaster and they didn't want a simar mandate in NJ, which they were convinced Murphy would do. they said after the NYC mandates all the police and firefighters had quit, which as far as I know is not true, and for reasons of personal choice they are against a vaccine mandate. But we don't have a mandate yet: it's vaccination OR weekly testing for staff in schools. Murphy won but it shouldn't have been that close.

People on the shore came out to vote for Citarelli, the shore is a tourist economy and the COVID restrictions hurt them more than other places. Dems in the cities did NOT come out to vote for Murphy at the same rates even though they would have been impacted the most by the funding changes and more lax masking and vaccination laws in schools. I think the advance polls that said Murphy would win comfortably are a real problem. And the republican messaging that's been helpful in convincing their people to go out to vote, and democrats and independents to stay home.
posted by subdee at 7:00 PM on November 5, 2021 [6 favorites]

I received probably 10 phone calls in the run up to the NJ election, one from the NJEA and 9 from Our Revolution, Bernie's group, to join their weekly strategy meetings. I don't know how it is for others but they definitely tried to turn out MY vote.
posted by subdee at 7:09 PM on November 5, 2021 [1 favorite]

The terrible part for me is that the VA Dem trifecta actually did deliver on a progressive agenda, functioning as a trifecta should, and voters gave them no credit for it.
posted by ichomp at 7:09 PM on November 5, 2021 [15 favorites]

Lots and lots and lots of Democrats textbanked, phonebanked and knocked on doors.

Forgive me, I was referring more to Democratic leadership, and not the hardworking peeps who went the extra mile. They deserve better candidates.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:10 PM on November 5, 2021 [22 favorites]

Murphy has been a phenomenal progressive governor in NJ. He's raised the minimum wage to $15, funded the teachers pensions, spent a lot of money to improve the ventilation systems in the schools and rehaul them, and overseen some of the toughest COVID restrictions in the whole country. Citarelli ran on a platform of taking his "if you don't like the high taxes, this isn't your state" comment out of context and hammering away at culture war issues including schools, masks, and vaccines. I really think this "better candidates" thing is a red herring.
posted by subdee at 7:15 PM on November 5, 2021 [9 favorites]

Nothing nefarious seems to be going on, it’s just weird.
true, it's as though the kid was flashing his I.D. in an ego something but how smart is that.
It starts out young, if nefarious things occur, well in Michigan democrats might steal a yard sign, but a republican prints one with their name on it. It's a narrow win, I suspect Michigan's will be. Weird, well the republicans ajourned to Mackinaw Island, population, 492. like let's meet on the island Stolen from indigenous people turn fur trade post turned British post turned American post turned tourist attraction post, for the thing.
posted by clavdivs at 7:46 PM on November 5, 2021 [1 favorite]

people do call it a thing rather then republicans brokering for control of the party mad dirge at the grand hotel thus no intentional comparison to the althing.
posted by clavdivs at 7:51 PM on November 5, 2021 [1 favorite]

subdee, that's really interesting. In Mercer County, I got absolutely zero phone calls regarding the election. I agree the advance polls were part of the problem. I think it's even more astonishing in light of them that Murphy won. We should probably abolish polling.
posted by mollweide at 8:08 PM on November 5, 2021 [2 favorites]

I was referring more to Democratic leadership

Democratic leaders in many places are also doing a great job. In Virginia, they most certainly did not, but in places like Georgia, you have high-ranking Democratic leaders like Stacey Abrams working their asses off, and getting results.

The Virginia election was a frustrating, slow motion trainwreck. Over the past few years, the Democrats used their trifecta to great effect, enacting good, popular policies across the board. They deftly knew where they could and couldn’t push the envelope, and basically managed to pass some of the most progressive legislation in the country with virtually zero controversy. (Heck, if you discount the handful of swing seats we lost on Youngkin’s coatttails, we actually did okay in the House of Delegates).

So, like…. what the actual hell happened? The VA Democrats clearly understand local issues, and yet Terry appeared to be outright terrified of campaigning on them. Youngkin exploited this, and started racking up supporters. Once Terry made his staggeringly dumb unforced gaffe about “parental control” of education (and failed to walk it back), the race was over.

Terry was right…. but, oof, that soundbite was a doozy.

Like srt19170, don’t think there’s much to read into this result that isn’t already well-worn, decades-old political wisdom. Local races are won on local issues, and Terry just wasn’t a great candidate. He’s a Democrat from a bygone era (when Democrats routinely got shellacked in state elections), and seems to have learned nothing from the past decade.

If there’s any big-picture takeaway, it’s that the VA Dems don’t have a bench, and the party wasn’t able to come together to assemble a coherent campaign once their snooze of a candidate won the primary.

Youngkin is an interesting enigma. He seems to have very few actual policy positions, but successfully walked the tightrope of avoiding ties to Trump during the election, while holding onto the members of his cult. Post-election, he has conspicuously not gone full-fash, which is…. interesting. TBH he feels a bit like Romney. His election will almost certainly be catastrophic to progressive goals in Virginia, but he also kind of feels like an outlier among recently-elected GOP candidates, in that he might not be an absolute lunatic.
posted by schmod at 9:01 PM on November 5, 2021 [9 favorites]

Re: Youngkin’s son. Is it possible he will be 18 when Youngkin is sworn in? I don’t think this is true but I have some vague idea that laws have been floated to allow 17 year olds to vote if they would be 18 by swearing in time. Could be he heard the same thing and was excited to vote for his dad. Still arrogant to come back and argue…
posted by CMcG at 1:19 AM on November 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

This is what I’m thinking of, which is what the official offered him.
posted by CMcG at 1:21 AM on November 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

This is all being over thought. Both the Virginia defeat and the small margin in NJ were simply about how Covid has been handled in the schools. Rightly or wrongly a big slug of the population who were dem voters a year ago are really really pissed about it, and voting for the Republican was the protest vote. There is literally no lesson here at a strategic level other than " in the burbs don't mess with schools"
posted by JPD at 3:35 AM on November 6, 2021 [3 favorites]

Bill Saletan at Slate begs to differ.
posted by PhineasGage at 4:21 AM on November 6, 2021 [3 favorites]

Roe: I'll just add on top: We had 12 different language coalitions. We had bumper stickers in 12 different languages — I've got one here… I still don't know which one this one is.

Davison: It's either Korean or Taiwanese… maybe Taiwanese?

Roe: But anyway, there's 12 of those.

Not a good look. I mean, it's the look I would expect from these people, but it's still not a good look.
posted by emelenjr at 4:32 AM on November 6, 2021 [2 favorites]

Cannot say enough about how bad T-Mac’s ads were. Late in the cycle, it was all about Youngkin. Early on, there were a few “hey, sometimes we’ve made jobs happen,” but that’s all. Same model with the AG race. Elections are the time to step up and say what you’ve done, and state-level Democrats did not do that in Virginia by and large. I was disappointed by the results, but I was not surprised.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:04 AM on November 6, 2021 [5 favorites]

Interestingly, the Dems didn't seem to even try painting Youngkin as an out of touch elite snob. A financier, even. That might have helped them.

Possibly true, if McAuliffe himself were also not a one percenter.
posted by BWA at 5:31 AM on November 6, 2021 [7 favorites]

I can't get over the privileged white kid trying twice to vote illegally, said his 17-year-old friend did it, and all of that is treated as a joke.

If he were black, he would have gone to jail. Which would have been stupid. Still, he should have been taken to court and maybe given a month of community service. And his friend who successfully voted?
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:53 AM on November 6, 2021 [13 favorites]

We should probably abolish polling

Absolutely, or media orgs need to establish some internal rules for how they report on them. It's been 6 years, by this point the journalists should realize that there's a certain group of voters who do not answer the polls, and it's a big enough group to change the outcome.
posted by subdee at 8:32 AM on November 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

And his friend who successfully voted?

He might have just lied about that.
posted by Selena777 at 9:49 AM on November 6, 2021 [2 favorites]

It would have been more surprising if MCauliffe won and bucked the historical trend. The race is as closer than it was 09, the last time it coincided with the first term of a Democratic president. The Democrats also didn’t lose in New Jersey this time either, unlike when Christie got elected.
posted by eagles123 at 12:16 PM on November 6, 2021 [7 favorites]

If he were black, he would have gone to jail.

If he were black, he would have become a reason to impeach Biden.
posted by rhizome at 12:36 PM on November 6, 2021 [5 favorites]

Looking back 12 years in Virginia for comps, and citing New Jersey, where the Democratic governor was reelected by a razor thin margin and ran much worse than Biden did a year ago, does not make the point you think it does. Fact: the Democrats - and particularly progressive candidates and ballot proposals - did poorly Tuesday. Pretending otherwise is the kind of misguided thinking that will cause us to lose again next year, and the year after that, and the year after that...
posted by PhineasGage at 4:09 PM on November 6, 2021 [3 favorites]

My point is that within the long term trend of the President’s party losing ground in the midterms it either seems like those losses are decreasing or our electorate is becoming geographically polarized such that the effect is becoming less pronounced in reliably “red” and “blue” areas. A similar trend occurred in 2018 with the rural “red wave” that mitigated Republican losses in some races.

And I referenced the 09 elections because that was the last time gubernatorial elections occurred during the first term of a new Democratic administration.

Voters did seem to reject the more extreme police reform proposals. That much seems true - though I would hesitate to generalize across hundreds of elections in countless areas. Larry Krasner is still Philly DA, for example, having just won re-election. Still, I’m not super surprised considering gun crimes jumped with the onset of the pandemic, and property destruction is never popular with voters. Hopefully as pandemic related disruptions ease violent crime will start to come down again, which hopefully will make criminal justice reform more politically palatable.
posted by eagles123 at 4:43 PM on November 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

I'm a little puzzled as to how a skin of his teeth win by a Republican in a traditional Republican state is being painted as a massive defeat for the Democrats?

Especially since they ran the ultimate boring awful candidate.

I'm not normally one to try and spun a loss as a win, but this election is hardly a resounding defeat
posted by sotonohito at 5:33 PM on November 6, 2021 [6 favorites]

Murphy's win is now at 50.9% vs 48.3%. Is that razor thin? When no other Democratic governor in NJ has won reelection in 44 years? And he's been more progressive than would have seemed possible coming off the Christie years? During a pandemic?
posted by mollweide at 5:51 PM on November 6, 2021 [4 favorites]

My my, the MeFilter Bubble is strong here. Just read the coverage in ANY national media outlet. VA is NOT a reliable R state any more, and Murphy's margin was far less than Biden's a year ago. The socialist Mayoral candidate in Buffalo lost to a WRITE-IN campaign. Anyone taking the lesson that things are fine for Democratic progressives isn't paying attention.
posted by PhineasGage at 6:38 PM on November 6, 2021 [3 favorites]

I agree with what you say about Virginia and NJ but would also point out that Murphy and McAuliffe were hardly on the AOC train. From what I saw from New Jersey that wasn't even much of what the repubs attacked with.

It was mostly schools/masks and an incredibly dumb ( but decontextualized) quote from Murphy about NJ being a high tax state.
posted by JPD at 7:06 PM on November 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

I mean, I wouldn’t say things are “fine” for progressives or Democrats. I fully expect Democrats to lose the House next year. I think it’s highly likely they’ll lose the Presidency either in 2024 or 2028. I think it’s almost certain Republicans will get complete control of all three branches sometime in the decade. Obviously, that’s extremely bad. And through all that, I fully expect voices across the media and the Democratic Party to blame progressives of all types. I’d also note that that establishment Democrats seem to have discovered a strategy of allying with Republicans to beat back progressives in certain primaries … Again, not good.

Given all that, I guess my reaction to Tuesday is that it could have been worse? Murphy could have lost. Krasner could have lost. I

I mean, what of it all? It’s going to be a dark decade. I guess I’m just at a different stage of the grief process.
posted by eagles123 at 7:51 PM on November 6, 2021 [4 favorites]

What Metafilter bubble? I'm not saying anything is fine. I'm just saying that perhaps we can learn something from a progressive Democratic governor getting reelected despite the weight of history against him.
posted by mollweide at 8:22 PM on November 6, 2021 [2 favorites]

Jeff Roe: "Terry, three-fourths of his ads were negative. Three fourths of our ads were positive." (Politico interview.)

The interesting thing about this, is the one thing the negative ads do, is drive down voter participation. People say "pox on both candidates" and just stay home.

So this is a pretty good strategy if you are an underdog type candidate. Maybe your opponent's voters (the majority) will stay home in larger percentages than yours.

But going negative seems a terrible strategy in an environment where voters are +10% on your side. And doubly so when we know that a lot of the voters in between -5% and +10% are fair weather type voters who are easily discouraged.

They hear a lot of negative stuff, decide "both candidates are just jerks" and stay home. And there goes your 10% lead.

Meanwhile your attack ads focus on the opponent being a hard-core Trumper, which only encourages and engages the Trump voters.

So now they are a minority of the population but they are far more engaged and motivated than your voters are.

Just seems like a bad strategy.

On a related note, I've talked a bit about Jeff Roe before. He is from our neck of the woods (western Missouri - he's from the rural part of it) and he is a very smart, very data driven, and very very hard-knuckled, sharp-elbowed operator.

He's also running a huge national operation now, engaged in many dozens of races in every election.

Here is a bit about him on Wikipedia and here is a deep dive from Andy Kroll of Rolling Stone into the most egregious incident involving Roe in Missouri, where campaign ads Roe designed and ran that were specifically designed to get under another candidate's skin ended up with that candidate committing suicide.

You can't pin a suicide on any one particular factor, but you can pin a very definite change in the tone of political campaigns here very much on Roe and just a few others - very much the type of campaigns that drive people out of politics and sometimes to worse things.

After Schweich's death, former Senator from Missouri John Danforth (Republican, and a major player in Missouri's Republican Party even now) gave an impassioned speech saying exactly that.

Of course that led to exactly zero changes in anything and Roe's firm is now bigger and engaged in more campaigns nationwide than ever.
posted by flug at 1:30 AM on November 7, 2021 [4 favorites]

Except that for an off year election both sides got a strong turnout. This was year where turnout didn't help the Dems.
posted by JPD at 2:21 AM on November 7, 2021

The Democrats just lost a close election in an evenly-split state. It happens. Move on. I agree with this mostly. I live in SW Virginia (one of my neighbors has a 'let's go brandon' sign prominently displayed on his lawn) and I saw a tremendous enthusiasm from Republicans at the polls (I was a poll worker at a Democratic table outside the polling place) that seemed to be fueled by anger. If I meet you over a beer I tell you about the ignorance, arrogance and anger of the current GOP in rural Virginia. But Virginia (mostly Northern Virginia) nominated a milquetoast candidate, a very nice man who believes in what he is doing, but not someone a marginally engaged voter could get behind with great enthusiasm. He also never once mentioned what the state has done in the past two years which has been downright remarkable. It was a state where Democrats actually yielded their power and made huge policy changes. There were some amazing candidates on the ballot - Jennifer McClellan was the one I voted for - but the state went for safe just the like country went for safe with Biden. I think without Trump, safe doesn't matter. But I tell you, Republicans are fired up in this state and they would've voted for a cheese sandwich. I am legit terrified for my state and for my country.
posted by bluesky43 at 6:36 AM on November 7, 2021 [6 favorites]

I'm not claiming everything is fine or this was a win, but I'm having a hard time seeing the wailing and gnashing of teeth as anything but yet another iteration of "Democrats in disarray".

They won a narrow election in NJ, and lost a narrow election in VA. From this we're to conclude that the Democrats are doomed?

Sheesh, I thought us on the left were supposed to be the doom and gloom crowd.

If the Democrats had nominated a candidate who wasn't as dog puke terrible as Terry Mcauliffe there's a good chance they could have won in VA. Perhaps nominating, again and again and again, the same triangulating Clintonista crowd of boring anti-charismatic boring people with no selling points except 'we aren't as bad as the Republicans' isn't really the winning strategy that the Democratic movers and shakers think it is?
posted by sotonohito at 7:19 AM on November 7, 2021 [5 favorites]

As for doom, I do think the Democrats will lose at least the Senate in 2022 and likely the House as well. That's what happens when a political party has total control of the government for two years and does nothing at all with it. The voters ask themselves "why did we waste our time and money getting these clowns elected" and stay home.

You and I can blame Sinema and Manchin all we want, but the average low information voters doesn't care. They see a simple fact: they gave the Democrats total control and they got jack shit out of it.

And... they're not wrong. Sure, the excuse of Manchin being a dick is valid, but it's still an excuse. Sure, we got a few Federal court nominations but other than that what happened after busting ass to give the Democrats the senate was more or less we would have gotten if the Republicans had kept control: a whole bunch of nothing due to endless filibustering.

Voters want shit to get done. When shit doesn't get done they aren't going to reward the party that failed to take action.
posted by sotonohito at 7:24 AM on November 7, 2021 [2 favorites]

So they're not going to care about the infrastructure bill being passed, or did voters want something else entirely?
posted by Selena777 at 7:56 AM on November 7, 2021 [3 favorites]

"Vote Democratic! You gave us total control of the government for two years and all we did was pass a single infrastructure bill!"

Yeah, not really seeing that as a big get out the vote slogan.

And it's a bill that won't pay off for the average voter for years, if ever.

With voters the question is always "what have you done for me lately?" Always. And a single (not very good) infrastructure bill isn't going to give the Democrats victory in 2022.

The way to win is to do popular things. Or hell, just to do things at all.

The Democrats did a single not that great infrastructure bill. No one can reasonably expect the average voter to see that as a compelling reason to go to the trouble of voting.

If they'd done more between 2020 and now I think they could have won Virginia even with Captain Boring as their candidate. Voters reward action.

Instead, as always, the pundits and Democratic leadership claim the problem is that the Democrats talked occasionally about bigger things and that voters love it when the government does nothing
posted by sotonohito at 8:30 AM on November 7, 2021 [1 favorite]

What do you think would've worked to get people excited?
posted by Selena777 at 9:04 AM on November 7, 2021 [1 favorite]

Honestly? I think just about anything except for an endless tale of Sinema/Manchin stopping the Democrats from getting shit done.

I'd **LIKE** to have seen some progressive stuff pushed, but I think more than anything else just being seen doing stuff, whatever stuff, would be sufficient. It really is an example of "don't just stand there, do something."

Your average low information Democratic voter is going to be energized by action, regardless of what action, and enervated by inaction.

Ideally the Democrats would have passed HB1, because Republican vote suppression bills are an existential threat to the Democratic Party and it boggles me that the elected Democrats seem so sanguine about it, followed by some social spending programs with immediate, highly visible, results. A "prosperity refund" perhaps talking about how the post-COVID economy is booming so here's your share! Or whatever gets cash in hand. Or stuff that has other immediate effects such as a minimum wage increase that at least starts to kick in a month after it's passed. Or a new WPA style program to get out of work Americans employed in making us carbon free and living better.

But that's my wish list, I genuinely think the content of the bills wouldn't matter so much as their existence and news of them passing along with speeches and so on by the Democrats about how this week's bill will help X number of Americans by doing Y.

I am thoroughly convinced that action is all that really matters to the average voter. They want to know the Democrats are doing something useful with the power they were given, they want a reassurance that their effort in voting wasn't just an exercise in futility.

People like us? We'll vote blue no matter who because we're interested in politics. No so much your average Democrat, they need a reason to vote.
posted by sotonohito at 10:40 AM on November 7, 2021 [2 favorites]

The thing is part of what they were doing is trying to preside over the previously bungled vaccine rollout and stem the covid catastrophe in a way that would allow the economy to recover. That happened and people are like "who cares?" should have that been a predictable outcome?
posted by Selena777 at 10:45 AM on November 7, 2021 [1 favorite]

Voters reward action.

They literally don’t. Historically, they reward obstruction. Virginia Democrats did a ton of action in their two years and voters just took control from them.
posted by ichomp at 12:45 PM on November 7, 2021 [9 favorites]

Selena777 Yes, it was entirely predictable.

Stabilizing a largely invisible, complex, confusing, situation? Totally going to go right past the average voter and be shrugged aside as nothing major or significant if they consider it at all.

You can argue, and for all my disagreements with Biden I'd say correctly, that Biden did a great job in righting the wrongs of Trump's pro-COVID pro-death policy. But merely maintaining the status quo isn't perceived as action simply because it's the status quo. People expect it to be maintained.

Making things happen the way they're supposed to happen isn't really a massive accomplishment in the eyes of most people, even on those occasions when it really is. That's not fair, but it's been the pattern since forever. People expect the world to just work, the hard work that goes into making it just work is never rewarded or seen as valuable or even as work.

I work in IT, I see that every day. All the work that goes into making things work right is totally ignored because people expect they can just show up, turn it in, and it'll work.
posted by sotonohito at 2:03 PM on November 7, 2021 [4 favorites]

Hard to feel badly for Virginia Dems, they could have had Lee Carter for governor, the spark behind the improved performance these past years, but nooooo, had to have mister corporate moneybags!
posted by nofundy at 3:47 PM on November 7, 2021 [1 favorite]

could have had Lee Carter

Not to relitigate the primaries, but....... him? The guy who gave his constituents the finger after losing a (winnable) House of Delegates race because he ran a (profoundly unwinnable) vanity campaign for Governor?

I'll gladly buy the argument that somebody to the left of Terry could have won (also that someone to the right could have won, but I digress...).

But Carter ain't it. The guy has a long, looooong reputation for being a nightmare person, creating messy internet drama, and being impossible to work with. The guy is the walking embodiment of a 2,000-comment MetaTalk thread.

His initial election was a fantastic political feast. Unfortunately, he never demonstrated the same level of political acumen again, and spent his tenure burning bridges instead of building them.
posted by schmod at 5:46 PM on November 7, 2021 [4 favorites]

could have had Lee Carter

His wild twitter tantrums were great!
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:36 AM on November 8, 2021

Re: getting shit done. The actual work-work of legislation is too boring for a nation of Veruca Salts to bother understanding. This is not a new aspect of human nature, of course, but the ubiquitousness of news and interaction in real time keeps accelerating such that representing "what voters want" keeps getting more farcical. Reminds me of every incompetent micromanaging supervisor who constantly peppers his staff with "is [task] done yet?!" missives.
posted by desuetude at 8:37 AM on November 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

I'm a little puzzled as to how a skin of his teeth win by a Republican in a traditional Republican state is being painted as a massive defeat for the Democrats?

Simple: Because the media is not liberal, to the point that -- whether because fear of criticism, because they're big corporations, or some combination -- they're in the tank for the Republicans.

Consider also as the media has run with its lazy "Dems in disarray" narrative that in many cases, the media is simply not mentioning lockstep Republican opposition at all, making the story entirely about squabbling on the Democratic side. But Manchin and Sinema only have power because it's a given that no Republican senator will vote for the reconciliation package.
posted by Gelatin at 7:16 AM on November 9, 2021 [3 favorites]

These are the same media that go talk to rural white Trump supporters 239841093284012384 times. The same ones that interview someone they call "a local store owner" or "a local voter who describes herself as liberal" but casual googling reveals that they're talking to the head of a local Republican organization.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 9:14 AM on November 9, 2021 [7 favorites]