The exact anniversary of last year’s presidential election when Joe Biden entered the White House and the Democrats seized control, albeit meager, of both houses of Congress could not have been more bitter for the ruling party. The president and his formation woke up this Wednesday trying to digest the disaster lived the Tuesday at the polls where they were disputed state and local races, especially in the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey, two states that to different degrees were consolidated in the Democratic field. Because the victory in Virginia of Republican Glenn Youngkin and the very close fight that Democrat Phil Murphy has been forced to fight in New Jersey to stay in office launch countless worrisome signs and has exhibited numerous Democrats ‘weaknesses and Republicans’ strengths ahead of the following big events: the legislative 2022 and presidential 2024.
One of the most obvious conclusions is that the coalition that brought Democrats to power in Washington in 2020 has collapsed. Its base has been eroded, there is a absolute lack of enthusiasm among progressive voters and have also encountered a conservative energized base. The polls on Tuesday, in what was inevitably interpreted as a plebiscite on the presidency, have confirmed the weakness of a president who has had his approval ratings in free fall since August, when the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan kicked off a Bleeding to which has been added discontent over the persistent impact of the pandemic and over inflationary pressures or the supply crisis, but also over the inability to carry out your schedule recovery not only because of the persistent Republican obstructionism but because of the internal wars between moderates and progressives.
The republicansinstead, they have found a thousand reasons for optimism. In both Virginia and New Jersey they have improved with double digits the results obtained by Donald Trump in 2020. Not only have reinforced in rural and white areas, Rather, in what is most worrying for Democrats heading into 2022, they have minimized and even in some cases reversed the advantage of progressives in those areas of large metropolitan areas known as the “suburbs& rdquor ;, more densely populated and diverse.
If the dynamics is maintained in the next electoral appointments, especially in states “purple & rdquor; , the Democratic prospects for maintaining control are derisory. Of the 36 states that are at stake in 2022, eight that are in Democratic hands, including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, voted for Biden by less of a margin than Youngkin and Jack Ciattarelli have managed to advance. And if the Republicans repeated in the legislature those margins would get 38 seats in the House of Representatives in Washington. Turning one over in the Senate would be enough.
The post-Trump formula and the culture wars
The case of the victory of Youngkin in Virginia in front of Terry McAuliffe, a prominent figure in the Democratic apparatus, he explains better than anyone else the reasons for the panic in the Democratic field and the enthusiasm in the Republican and also gives many indications of where the political future of the country may go.
Youngkin, a wealthy financial entrepreneur with no political experience, has found the formula for what looks like the squaring the circle in the unusual post-Trump era, in which the former president continues to be an undeniable force. At the same time he has kept a public distance from Trump (although he has had conversations with him in private) and has thus managed to attract moderate and independent, has managed to maintain the support of bases more loyal to the former president. And Republican strategists border on ecstasy at a formula that repackages Trump’s policies without the burden of his polarizing personality, crippling Democratic efforts to keep campaigning on him (McAuliffe ran more than 10,000 anti-Trump ads).
What Youngkin has also done is exploit what is not difficult to see as the new lode of culture wars for conservatives in the US: the education. The terrain traditionally posed no problems for Democrats but now what they call “parental rights & rdquor; they have turned school district meetings into battlefields with parents’ associations raised almost literally in arms. They are coming together from the accumulated rage due to problems caused by pandemic o la opposition to vaccination and mask mandates with issues like rights of the LGTBQ community o la teaching racism in the US.
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Youngkin has taken advantage of a McAuliffe gaffe (“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what to teach,” he said) and exploited that sense of ‘white wrong’ that he so exploited with his overt and veiled Trump racism. manipulating speech and creating alarm over the teaching of the Critical Theory of Race (When in reality that academic framework on structural racism is not in your state’s public schools). “This is no longer a campaign, it is a parent-led movement from Virginia & rdquor ;, he said. And Democrats must prepare to find that movement across the country.
Police will still be in Minneapolis
The blow for Democrats, and especially for the party’s more progressive wing, came in other election results on Tuesday. In Minneapolis, the city where the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer sparked the largest protests against America’s racial injustice in decades, voters broadly rejected dismantling the Police Department and replacing it with a new one of “public safety & rdquor ; with a greater focus on social and mental health services.
In New York a centrist like Eric Adams has come to the mayor’s office and in Buffalo, the second city of the state, the candidate of the apparatus, who was defeated in primaries but also mounted a campaign, has apparently frustrated the possibility of India Walton becoming in the first socialist governor in a large US city since 1960.
Boston was one of the few rays of light. Michelle Wu, a progressive candidate, is the first woman and non-white person to reach the mayor’s office through the ballot box.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com