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Analysis: Democrats should be scared by 2022 for these reasons

2021-11-03T17:36:36.733Z


This Tuesday night was a disaster for Democrats nationwide. Chris Cillizza explains the reasons why they should be concerned for the 2022 midterm elections


Voting begins to elect New Jersey governor 2:51

(CNN) -

This Tuesday night was a disaster for Democrats nationwide.

Point.

Losing the Virginia gubernatorial race in a state that President Joe Biden had won by 10 percentage points just a year earlier is bad enough.

But the surprising closeness of the New Jersey gubernatorial race, coupled with the rejection of a ballot measure to replace the police department in Minneapolis, suggests that there is widespread dissatisfaction across the country with how Democrats have handled their power. awarded in 2020.

Here are five reasons why Democrats should start to panic about the 2022 midterm election right now:

1. Donald Trump is no longer the scary man he once was.

For the entirety of Trump's presidency, Democrats had a simple formula to speed up their base: remind people who was in the White House. Trump was so disgusting to Democratic voters, and many undecided voters as well, that any candidate with an "R" after their name was in danger of being swamped by the mere mention that they were in the same party as the president.

Tuesday night's results suggest that Trump no longer evokes that same passionate reaction.

Which is not to say that it is very dear.

It is not.

Only 42% of Virginia voters said they had a favorable opinion of the former president, while 54% had an unfavorable opinion.

(For what it's worth, Biden's numbers were similar - 45% approved of the work he's doing, while 54% disapproved.)

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  • 8 conclusions of the 2021 elections in the United States

But their dislike of Trump was not the problem with the vote on Tuesday as it had been in previous years.

Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe spent the entirety of the Virginia campaign trying to link Republican Glenn Youngkin to Trump.

But with Trump out of the White House, and with his profile significantly reduced due to his ban on Twitter and Facebook, that argument was irrelevant.

Hatred for Trump did not drive the Democratic base to the polls the way it did in 2020. And for undecided voters, they weren't convinced that choosing Youngkin, a businessman who made a name for himself on the election campaign wearing sport vests. fleece, he was a Trump clone.

2. The suburbs are back in play.

Both Virginia and New Jersey are full of suburbs.

(Northern Virginia is dominated by people who work in Washington. New Jersey has the metropolises of New York City and Philadelphia bordering it.)

Which was very good news for Republicans on Tuesday.

A significant majority of voters (61%) in Virginia lived in the suburbs and Youngkin won that group from 53% to 47% over McAulliffe, a surprising change from Biden's 8-point margin over Trump in suburban Virginia in 2020. Some (a lot?) Of the Republican gains in the suburbs can be attributed to Trump not being on the ballot or in office.

(Trump was especially unattractive to suburban voters, especially women.)

But, at least in the Virginia case, Youngkin's emphasis on education, from "awakened" administrators to covid-19 restrictions and critical race theory, resonated with suburbanites in ways that Republicans have struggled to make up lately.

Youngkin ended up winning among white women by 14 points a year after Trump lost them by 1 point.

3. The "awakening" is a major problem.

For Youngkin to run and win on education should be a wake-up call for each and every Democratic elected official and party strategists in the country.

Education has long been a Democratic issue, but Youngkin was able to turn it around by focusing on the idea that teachers and administrators "woke up" by pressuring children, from transgender issues to race, that are simply inappropriate.

Among 1 in 4 Virginia voters who said education was the biggest issue facing voters, Youngkin won by 11 points.

"People want downtown, not the waking-up nonsense or Trump's stupidity," tweeted Anthony Scaramucci, a Republican and former Trump ally.

CNN's Van Jones largely agreed, noting that his party is viewed as "annoying and offensive and seems out of touch in ways that I don't think show up in our feeds when we look at our echo chamber."

It's hard not to see the success of Youngkin's messages on education as a reaction to the liberal echo chamber, most prominent on Twitter, which seeks to tell people what they can and cannot say.

  • Republican Youngkin wins Virginia gubernatorial race, CNN projections

That rejection of political correctness was at the core of Trump's appeal to voters and appears to have continued even after he left office.

4. People know who is in charge and they don't like what they see.

In the musical "Hamilton", the character of George Washington tells Hamilton that "winning was easy, young man, governing is more difficult."

That's the lesson Democrats have learned during the first 10 months of this year as they have struggled to find ways to pass the main pieces of Biden's agenda, even as they control all the major levers of the executive and legislative branch in Washington. .

The last six weeks have been disastrous for the party's chances, with its disagreements between liberals and moderates over the so-called "hard" infrastructure bill and the costliest social safety net bill on the horizon every day. When voters hand him full control of Washington, they expect things to get done. And voters, especially Democratic grassroots voters, don't see the kind of gains they hoped for at the beginning of the year. And that leads to unhappiness and apathy, neither of which is a strong motivator to vote.

5. The Republican base is on fire.

In Virginia's pre-race polls, there seemed to be a huge passion gap between the rank and file of the two parties, with Republicans extremely excited to vote and Democrats, well, less.

That was born in the exit polls on Tuesday.

Nearly half of Virginia voters, 46%, said they "strongly disapprove" of the way Biden was handling the presidency.

That number was double the 23% who said they "strongly" approved of how Biden is doing the job.

That kind of disparity is absolute electoral poison for Democrats.

  • Democrat Phil Murphy locked in New Jersey gubernatorial race

"The lesson over and over in recent American politics is that you can form a larger and more energetic coalition in * opposing * something rather than * supporting it *," tweeted reporter Alex Roarty.

"The public has a much better idea of ​​what they don't want than what they want."

From "Let's Go Brandon" to opposition to Biden's vaccination orders, it's clear that the Republican base, to borrow a phrase, is on fire and ready to go.

And the Democratic base, well, no.

Elections in the United States

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2021-11-03

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