THE VIRGINIA ELECTIONS PART I: DEMISE OF THE DEMOCRATS? NOT SO FAST!

                                                             

A Republican victory in Virginia’s off-year elections (and a closer than expected win by incumbent Democrat Phil Murphy in New Jersey’s governor’s race) prompted a spate of media stories about the Democratic Party’s supposedly dismal

electoral prospects. Coupled with President Biden’s falling poll numbers, the loss by former Governor Terry McAuliffe to Glenn Youngkin and GOP gains in the Virginia legislature generated rampant speculation about Democratic prospects in the 2022 midterms and through 2024.  Some

pundits suggested it’s a foregone conclusion we’ll have a Republican Congress in 2023 and a Republican in the White House in January 2025.   We don’t subscribe to the hype, but we recognize the Virginia outcome merits discussion of where Democrats stand and what they must do so they can keep a sufficient numerical advantage.

The question takes on so much importance because

of our fractured political landscape. Republicans seem bent on destroying Democracy. Only the Democratic Party obstructs the way. It’s essential, therefore, to evaluate where Democrats stand with the electorate

and understand how the country maintains this precarious equilibrium and doesn’t buy into the Republican zero-sum game.

 

The Narrative

Virginia has trended increasingly Democratic in

recent years. Biden won the state 54-44 in 2020. George W. Bush, with a 53-45 victory over John Kerry in 2004, was the last Republican presidential candidate who won the state.  Both Virginia’s Democratic senators, 2016 vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine and Mark

Warner, easily won reelection the last time they ran (Kaine, 57-41 in 2018 and Warner, 56-44 in 2020). In 2017, in addition to the 53-45 gubernatorial victory of Ralph Northam, Democrats won majorities in both houses

of the Virginia legislature. A year later, they flipped control of the state’s congressional delegation. Because of these outcomes, the view of Virginia as a swing state eroded. Before the 2021 elections, many observers saw it as safe Democratic territory.

                                              

That prognosis, however, masked another truth

about Virginia. In its quirky odd-year races that follow election of a new president, the candidate of the party that lost the presidency usually wins the Virginia governor’s chair the next year. That happened when Northam won in 2017 following Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential victory. After Barack Obama won the White House in 2008, the next year Republican Bob McDonald took the Virginia governor’s race. In 2001, after George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential triumph, Warner captured the Virginia governorship. Republican George Allen won in Virginia in 1993 after Bill Clinton took the White House in 1992. Democrat Doug Wilder, the state’s first black governor, won in 1989 after George H.W. Bush captured the 1988 presidential election.

Virginia’s voters apparently like this arrangement, since they’ve engineered it so often. Perhaps analysts need not look beyond the history books for an understanding of the 2021 outcome.    

 

The Other Explanations             

Despite the history, however, political observers offered other explanations for Youngkin’s win and McAuliffe’s defeat:

·    The fact House Democrats didn’t pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill before the election. They approved it a few days later, but Warner asserted McAuliffe might have won if he could have campaigned on the roads, bridges, and other improvements the state would receive under the bill.

·    The Critical Race Theory boogey man. Despite no evidence any Virginia school district teaches Critical Race Theory or anything like it, Youngkin capitalized on the concerns of white parents about what’s being taught about race in public schools. McAuliffe made things worse with a tone-deaf comment that he didn’t “believe parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

·    Biden’s performance as president. This explanation begins with the messy Afghanistan exit. McAuliffe tied himself closely to Biden. Some conservative commentators argued that as Biden’s poll numbers fell in the wake of the bad Afghanistan optics, McAuliffe suffered some of the fallout.

·    Economic anxiety. Even if the economy is doing reasonably well in bouncing back from the pandemic, fears about inflation have ramped up. Some thought that hurt McAuliffe as well.  

 

Virginia and Malcom Gladwell

We’ve taken note before of the work of social commentator Malcom Gladwell who observed in

his 2008 book Outliers: The Story of Success, that one thing seldom causes an airplane crash. Instead, most air disasters result from a cascading series of events piled on top of each other. We think that also applies to political outcomes. Races one candidate should win but doesn’t – as happened with McAuliffe – usually have many explanations, not one.

Our list of what may have created the Virginia result probably isn’t all inclusive. Other things could have played a role.  But the cause is important in light of the question we began with: What does the Virginia outcome say about where the Democratic Party stands with the electorate as the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential cycle approach?

We adhere to Gladwell’s basic principle – one thing seldom causes a disaster. We point to the things we’ve listed and raise the possibility that winning

in 2022 and 2024 requires that Democrats look at the question in an entirely different way. While not ignoring the list of  possible reasons for the 2021 Virginia loss, perhaps Democrats should focus on the broader question of what policies they must offer that will insure their

standing with the electorate in the upcoming elections. Just on the politics, the Virginia outcome suggests Democrats are not now in a good place with voters. In our next post, we’ll offer suggestions about how they might rectify that situation. 

                                      

AMERICA AT A CROSSROADS: DEMOCRACY, THE N-WORD, AND THE NEED FOR ALLIES

 

We see a new iteration of the n-word at the forefront of our current political discourse.  For

anyone who leans progressive, as each of us does to varying degrees, the last few weeks haven’t been pleasant. We’ve seen plenty worthy of being unhappy about recently:

·    An unending campaign in some states that would take us backward on electoral fairness
through voter suppression laws and redistricting plans that threaten (perhaps assure) permanent Republican rule despite demographic change that should swing legislative representation toward Democrats.

·  The dwindling stature of the Biden presidency, burdened as it is by falling poll numbers and bickering among Congressional Democrats that imperils his domestic agenda and the party’s prospects in the 2022 midterms.

·    Relative public indifference to Republican obstruction of a full-fledged investigation into
the January 6 attack on the Capitol, amid hints the Biden Justice Department may go easy on some insurrectionists out of a misguided fear of further radicalizing them; and

·    Misogyny, racism, and homophobia at high levels of the nation’s most popular professional sport.

Given this list, we almost find ourselves asking, “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the theater?”

Historical Parallels

We acknowledge the nation has found itself in such a dark place before. About the tumult of 1968, journalist David Halberstam wrote that he  saw thecountry on the “verge of a national nervous breakdown” because of Vietnam and racial turmoil. Perhaps we’re not there now, but disarray abounds. Many supporters of former President Donald Trump appear willing to abandon democratic norms and institutions so he can wield power again.  

After Barack Obama’s 2008 victor some saw the ugliest of our racial conflict as behind us, a feeling that was clearly premature. Even six years ago, before Trump’s rise, many wouldn’t have believed the acquiescence of mainstream Republicans to this abandonment of democracy. 

We don’t know where this is going. The 1960s

precedents may or may not apply. After the civil rights marches Congress passed laws that improved the legal, social, and economic lives

of people of color. Yet, we have today’s political polarization, much of it rooted in racial division.

We moved in a different direction in foreign policy,

or appeared to for a while. Still, despite our Vietnam experience, we fought a 20-year war in Afghanistan from which we’ve only now extricated ourselves, complete with messy consequences for the current administration. We can’t say this will all come out right.

The Race Thing

We find nothing so disconcerting as the direction in which we seem headed on race. Barack Obama got

elected president. Kamala Harris got elected vice president. Those are positives, but look at what’s happening on the other side of the ledger.

Across the nation angry white parents attack school boards and teachers in seeking assurance their children will never learn, at least in school, the country’s terrible racial history. They’ve

found a convenient whipping boy by distorting an obscure old academic approach to race discrimination called Critical Race Theory and made it a boogey man that has become the basis for whitewashing America’s past. Meanwhile, in some states Republican legislators demand that their black and brown colleagues (and white ones so inclined) never refer to racism in legislative debates, even if a third grader could see the racist intent in voter suppression proposals and gerrymandered redistricting plans.

These Republican legislators and their right wing media comrades squeal long and loud if anyone calls out their behavior. Me, a racist? How dare you! We suggest they read Robin DiAngelo’s bestselling book White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to talk about Racism. She could have subtitled the book Why So Many White People Refuse to Talk About Racism.

                                

We’ve wondered what difference really exists

between these modern deniers of racism and their Jim Crow predecessors. It’s true, they don’t regularly use the n-word in public. At least we knew where old time segregationists stood, men like Jim Eastland and Ross Barnett, many of whom used the n-word in public. Former Las Vegas Raiders coach Jon Gruden didn’t in his now famous

e-mails, but the message was the same. Wouldn’t we live in a more honest, transparent society if descendants of the segregationists—the Grudens, the Greg Abbots, the Brian Kemps – discarded the fake civility and talked like they feel and act?

Not Devoid of Hope

Woodson tells of a white friend who told him the story of a young man of color – a fifth or sixth grader – with whom at school he developed a close friendship as a youngster. One day, no one could find the young black man.  His friend discovered him crying in a restroom because someone called him by the n-word. He’d been taught that if he lived righteously and played by the rules people would accept him.

The incident demonstrated that wasn’t always the case, seemingly yet another reason for despair. The

white student, now an adult, said 

that was when he first realized his black friend’s life experiences differed radically from his own. Now, as an adult, this white man attends a multi-ethnic church and has committed himself to racial justice. 

The story illustrates that bad people inhabit the world and we must face them individually and

collectively. It also shows we can find hope when we find allies. Fellow travelers abound. Kindred spirits of all colors inhabit the world. They don’t hide behind false civility and will engage in good faith discussion and debate. Henry reminds us that in the past we’ve always had enough people who believed in this vision that we could keep it alive. Do we have enough now? We shall see. 

TRUMP AS FORMER PRESIDENT: A DISCORDANT OUTLIER

Over the 245 years of the American republic, the people of the United States have come to expect certain behavior from former presidents. As with every other aspect of his association with the presidency, Donald Trump now flaunts those expectations. His conduct looks especially egregious when compared with his real peers, other one-term presidents. No matter how long his predecessors served, however, Trump looks like an aberration. 

During our lifetimes, the United States has had three one-term presidents, chief executives who got elected, served one four-year term, stood for re-election, and lost. This definition, therefore, does

not include John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Gerald Ford. Kennedy won one-term and was assassinated. Johnson finished Kennedy’s term, won one of his own, but didn’t seek re-election. Ford succeeded Richard Nixon after his resignation, but lost the 1976 election. 

The presidents who fit our definition come from both parties – Democrat Jimmy Carter (1977-81) and Republicans George H. W. Bush (1989-93) and Trump (2017-21). The similarity in conduct between Carter and Bush, as one-term former presidents, when juxtaposed with that of Trump, provides more evidence of 45’s decadence.

The Former President Model

Our constitution says nothing about the “role” of a

former president. We established the  conventions and traditions by example. The nation’s first president, George Washington, served two terms and didn’t run again mainly because he worried about doing anything that resembled a monarchy.

 

The colonists fought a bitter war for independence from a tyrannical king. Washington wanted nothing that suggested the new country was installing something similar. 

The two-term maximum continued as an informal limit on presidential tenure until Franklin Roosevelt won four terms, prompting the 22nd amendment that made the two-term limit law.  The country has

had 13 two-term presidents, along with some who got reelected but couldn’t finish their terms for reasons like assassination or scandal (Abraham Lincoln, Nixon). We’ve had eight one-term presidents under our definition.  There’s also the strange case of Grover Cleveland who was elected in 1884, lost in 1888, then regained the office in 1892 and served out that four-year term.

By and large former presidents, whether they served one term or two, have assumed a senior statesman role. Generally, they’ve left themselves out of the country’s day-to-day political machinations.

 

James Earl Carter, Jr. and George H.W. Bush

Jimmy Carter and the first Bush weren’t much alike as presidents. In truth, they weren’t all that alike as former presidents except in ways that speak volumes about how they conceive of the

presidency. Carter devoted himself to good  works – helping Habitat for Humanity, promoting election reform in the third world, fighting poverty, etc.  The first President Bush spent more time doing things people do when they’re retired, though he took on humanitarian relief projects at the behest of his son, President George W. Bush. These included joining in 2005 with the man who defeated him, Bill Clinton, in raising money for tsunami victims.   

If Carter and Bush did some things differently in their post-presidential lives, they also did some important things alike. Neither injected himself into politics much beyond benign activities like speaking at his party’s convention and receiving the party’s nominee during the fall campaign. Both honored the office they held by quietly counseling their successors when asked and behaving as if their election hadn’t anointed them with a divine right to influence and manage the political process though they no longer occupied the oval office.

Trump’s Mischief

Since landing at Mara Largo on January 20 this year, Trump has remained a loud political  presence. Though social  media companies banned

him for distorted, untrue statements on their platforms, at rallies, through press releases, and in interviews on friendly outlets like Fox News, Trump infects our politics on a daily basis. He retains the loyalty of millions. He keeps raising money for future campaigns and, no doubt, his own use, including his mounting legal bills. He blesses favored candidates and meddles in Republican politics nationwide.

In some states, winning a Republican primary requires Trump’s endorsement. Even established GOP leaders will bow to his wishes because they so fear being out of favor with his voters. Recently, he pressured Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Trump sycophant now faced with dropping poll numbers in his state, into ordering an “audit” of Democratic-leaning counties, even though Trump carried Texas in 2020 by 630,000 votes. No one could imagine Carter or H.W. Bush doing such a thing.

Trump, of course, keeps hinting he’ll run again in 2024. Some people who know him think he can’t resist, while others believe he won’t because he can’t stand the prospect of another defeat. He did, however, recently hold a rally in Iowa, a key early state on the 2024 primary calendar.

We know Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, both two-term presidents who can’t run again

themselves, have campaigned for Democratic nominees who wanted to follow them into the oval office. Obama, particularly, helps Democrats raise money,

partly through direct mail solicitation of small donors.  But neither has muddied the water like Trump (nor has Trump’s fellow Republican, two-termer  George W. Bush). Neither has thumbed his nose at the expectation former presidents will maintain a sense of decorum and behave as protectors of the instruments and traditions of democracy.

The American presidency was never intended as a repository for unfettered political ambition or as a mere vessel for accumulating power its holder could dispense in service of those ambitions. By tradition and experience, the nation established norms for former holders of the job that honor the limits we put on the office itself. Trump has disregarded those, just as he flaunted so many norms while he was president.  The country should call out his behavior.  We just did our part.