Virginia Loss Actually a Gift for Democrats

[WyattEarp]

These off-cycle elections are a great chance for the losing party to recalibrate their message and actions in advance of the mid-terms. It gives the moderates in the Democratic Party the opportunity to push back on the progressives. Bill Clinton was the master at recalibrating. So often though, the party in power Republican or Democrat wants to double down on the same message in the mid-terms.

McAuliffe ran as a moderate eight years ago, but this time his advisors had him get bogged down in Trump bashing, racial issues and worst of all embracing the teacher's union. McAuliffe shouldn't have nationalized the Virginia election, but it might not have mattered.

 

[y2kmark]

It will cause them to focus...

 

[K Douglas]

There aren't many moderates left in the Democrat party. The Sinema's and Manchin's are outliers.

 

[mandrill]

There aren't many moderates left in the Democrat party. The Sinema's and Manchin's are outliers.

Not my impression, Kirk. So let's do this:

Post 3 or 4 Dem Senators and their voting records. I'm guessing that there is no real difference between the Dem senators now and those 10 years ago in the Obama admin.

 

[mandrill]

These off-cycle elections are a great chance for the losing party to recalibrate their message and actions in advance of the mid-terms. It gives the moderates in the Democratic Party the opportunity to push back on the progressives. Bill Clinton was the master at recalibrating. So often though, the party in power Republican or Democrat wants to double down on the same message in the mid-terms.

McAuliffe ran as a moderate eight years ago, but this time his advisors had him get bogged down in Trump bashing, racial issues and worst of all embracing the teacher's union. McAuliffe shouldn't have nationalized the Virginia election, but it might not have mattered.

IIRC, McAuliffe was an incumbent who lost by 1.5%. Given that narrow margin, I would look at VA specific or maybe candidate specific reasons.

Or maybe popular anger at inflation and targeting the administration in power as a release.

 

[WyattEarp]

IIRC, McAuliffe was an incumbent who lost by 1.5%. Given that narrow margin, I would look at VA specific or maybe candidate specific reasons.

Or maybe popular anger at inflation and targeting the administration in power as a release.

State races especially in an off-cycle election are more candidate specific. However, the narrow Gubernatorial victory in Blue New Jersey reaffirms that the mood of the electorate was anti-Democrats (as opposed to being pro-Republican). History also says the 2022 mid-terms will be very difficult for Democrats.

Things should improve for Democrats once COVID is mostly behind us. There's too much bitching about this and that related to restrictions and vaccines. Inflation should subside if the U.S. doesn't launch an over the top major spending initiative on top of the recently passed large infrastructure package.

The 2022 Democrats really need to stay away from bear hugs with the teachers' unions and liberal school boards. They need to run away from Critical Race Theory. Now some people are going to say CRT is not real or the Republicans are over-dramatizing it. That's politics. However, some really bad shit happened during McAuliffe's campaign. Some of the shit was his self-inflicted error stating "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach". Regardless of how one feels about that last statement, it was a really dumb statement especially from an American perspective.