Virginia did not go as planned for the Democrats this week when Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe in a state that Joe Biden won last year by 10 points.
Youngkin made the sort of promises that traditional Republicans love — low taxes, better public safety, more jobs and good government. He also appealed to conservatives by promising to ban Critical Race Theory in schools and saying he’d support Donald Trump in 2024. But crucially, he never campaigned with the former president and rarely even spoke his name.
McAuliffe, on the other hand. spent lots of time talking about the former president and tried to paint Youngkin as a Trump stooge, telling his crowds he would “put an end to Donald Trump’s future plans, right here in Virginia.”
In New Jersey, Democratic governor Phil Murphy eked out a win by less than one percent of the vote, where Biden prevailed by 15 percent.
Like McAullife, Murphy leaned heavily on portraying his opponent as a Trump puppet, even though he was well known as a moderate in the New Jersey Legislature.
Both Murphy and McAuliffe got clobbered in the same suburbs that Biden ran away with in 2020.
Georgia had its own elections on Tuesday. And even though they were nonpartisan municipal races, Republican-affiliated candidates defeated outspoken progressives in suburban areas where Biden roundly defeated Donald Trump in 2020.
Sandy Springs mayor Rusty Paul, a former state GOP chair, beat progressive candidate Dontae Carter by nearly 40 points. Paul had campaigned on fighting crime and improving transportation, while Carter promised to make the city more affordable and inclusive, especially for Black residents.
Since Biden won the city with 61% of the vote, I wrote this fall that Sandy Springs would hold clues for 2022 — and it does.
One lesson is that incumbents, even Republican incumbents in Biden territory, still have a big advantage. The other lesson is that, at least in Sandy Springs, the progressive message that Carter and other Democrats put front and center didn’t win the day. In many cases, it didn’t even come close.
In the City of Tucker in Dekalb County, where Jon Ossoff won the city with 70% of the vote 10 months ago, the incumbent mayor, Frank Auman, beat Obama field organizer Robin Brio with 56% of the vote.
Biro focused heavily in his campaign on an anti-discrimination ordinance passed by the Tucker City Council that included perceived sex and gender identity. The mayor had supported the ordinance, but Biro said it was not strong enough.
Along with Tucker and Sandy Springs, Republican-supported candidates won in Johns Creek and Marietta, in the same counties where Democrats made huge gains in 2018 and 2020.
The AJC’s Zachary Hansen and Matt Bruce covered those races and included this telling quote from John Jackson, chairman of DeKalb County Democrats.
“It was a real rough night to be a Democrat. We have to look at this and see what we can do to not repeat this in the midterms.”
One way to not repeat Tuesday in the midterms would be for the Democrats in Washington to pass their $1 trillion infrastructure bill, which has the support of 56% of voters and has already easily passed the Senate.
But Democrats in D.C. seem to be their own worst enemies. Even as McAuliffe said he needed the bill to pass to show Virginia voters what Democrats can do when they’re in charge, progressive House Democrats held that bill up as leverage to also pass a separate $1 trillion social services and climate change bill.
It’s like watching someone try to pack an elephant into a carry-on bag. It’s so incredibly hard. Why would they do it that way? Why not just take the win?
Democrats’ struggles this week don’t necessarily mean they’ll lose next November. One Republican I spoke with recently said he wouldn’t underestimate his own party’s ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. While Trump stayed away from the Virginia governor’s race, he won’t stay away from Georgia.
It’s also important to acknowledge that Georgia isn’t Virginia and Stacey Abrams, as they say, is no Terry McAuliffe. She isn’t the face of the old Democratic Party — she’s the face of its future.
But without Donald Trump on the ticket to run against, Democrats right now don’t seem to know who they are as a party anymore.
Are they returning the country to decency and normalcy, as Biden promised to do? Or are they progressive champions, fighting for transgender rights and anti-racist policies? Maybe they’re New Dealers, with big-ticket ideas for problems like child care and paid family leave? Or all of the above. Nobody knows, including voters, and that’s a problem.
COVID is not over. The economy is in a state of wild upheaval. Prices for everything from gas to housing and food are going up.
While the drama of Trump’s Washington may be over, the underlying problems in the country, especially the ones exacerbated by COVID, still haven’t been solved.
If Democrats can’t figure that out, voters will look for alternatives sooner rather than later.
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