Dems take it on the chin
Democrats across the nation have reason to be alarmed in the wake of the drubbing they suffered in Virginia and in New Jersey.
Does this mean the end of the line for the party that now controls both houses of Congress and the White House? Not at all. It does, though, suggest to me that the party has work to do if it is going to minimize the losses it now appears set to suffer during the 2022 midterm election.
Republican Glenn Youngkin has been elected governor of Virginia. His margin wasn’t huge, but it was enough to declare victory. Moreover, the GOP scored wins in the races for lieutenant governor and attorney general in a state that Democrat Joe Biden carried in 2020 by 10 percentage points.
There’s more. Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy defeated his GOP foe by a whisker in a state that Biden won in 2020 by 16 percentage points.
I won’t call this a victory necessarily for Donald J. Trump, the former POTUS who just won’t disappear. Gov.-elect Youngkin campaigned without ever mentioning Trump’s name or appearing with him along the way.
What is most troubling if Democrats get pounded into the dirt next year is what happens if the current crop of Republicans take control of Congress. We already have seen the GOP rename itself the Grumpy Obstructionist Party. If the House gets a Republican speaker and the Senate falls into the grimy hands (once again) of Mitch McConnell, we well might expect to see everything grind to a halt as the GOP throws up roadblock after roadblock to every single legislative notion that comes from the Joe Biden-led White House.
There once was a time when the “loyal opposition” actually demonstrated loyalty to the nation they co-govern. Not this bunch. They instead have transformed themselves into a cult of personality that bows at the feet of the former POTUS, the idiot who won’t concede that he lost the 2020 election and who professes to believe in The Big Lie that the election was stolen from him.
Is any of this inevitable? I won’t go there just yet. Democrats have time to figure out how they can reverse what looks to be the usual midterm drubbing they can expect to suffer next year.
Perhaps, too, we can see if President Biden can perform some form of magic by turning his Republican antagonists into working partners. I wish him well in that effort.