Democrats had a rough election Nov. 2, as Republicans using the Trump playbook while playing down Trump’s name narrowly turned Virginia pink and nearly upset the Democratic majority in New Jersey. But Dems can turn it around next year if they get the word out about what they already have done for working people and what they could do if they get a few more progressive Democrats in the House and Senate.
Commentators largely blamed the Democratic losses on congressional Democrats who delayed passage of a bipartisan infrastructure bill before the election. Less attention was paid to the poor campaign run by moderate Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe. The former governor tried to tie Republican Glenn Youngkin to Trump, but Youngkin deftly avoided appearing with Trump while appealing to his cultists, while McAuliffe failed to offer Virginians a reason to vote for him and other Virginia Democrats. Youngkin, a former executive of the Carlyle Group hedge fund, showed deft use of racism hidden behind code phrases still has potent appeal.
In Virginia, Republicans won the top three statewide elected positions with less than 51% of the vote. Republicans narrowly won a 51-48 majority of the House of Delegates, with one seat undecided at press time as a Republican led by 147 votes pending a recount. Democrats still have a working 21-19 majority in the state Senate, where members are not up until 2023, so that should minimize the damage Republicans can do for the next year.
In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy was the first Democratic governor to win re-election since 1977, but he had a close call with Republican rival Jack Ciattarelli. Murphy’s re-election victory wasn’t declared until the day after the election, with Murphy up by about 65,000 votes, or 2.6 percentage points over Ciattarelli. And Democrats also will still control both the New Jersey General Assembly (46-34, losing six seats) and the State Senate (24-16, losing one seat).
In Virginia, when Youngkin retired as an executive at the Carlyle Group in September 2020, he said Virginia’s economy was “in the ditch,” when the unemployment rate was 6.6%, and he marketed himself as a jobs creator, touting his history in business as a reason voters should trust him to rehabilitate the Virginia economy, though critics at Carlyle Group told Bloomberg News Youngkin had a mixed record, shepherding several bets and strategies that chalked up losses, and some of them are still being unwound.
Youngkin quickly became a star in conservative politics, railing against abortion, whipping up a backlash to mask and/or vaccine mandates in public schools, as well as the supposed teaching of “critical race theory” that explores how racism is embedded in the legal structure, which is, in actuality, a course usually limited to law schools.
As of September 2021, Virginia’s economy had improved from the Trump recession, with a 3.8% unemployment rate. But you’d never know that from the right-wing propaganda channels, such as Fox “News,” Sinclair, NewsMax, OAN and Breitbart, as well as the “mainstream” corporate channels that have minimized the accomplishments of Joe Biden and the Democratic Congress in the past year. Then there’s the 53% of Americans who get their “news” from social media …
Former Republican strategist Stuart Stevens, who quit the party in disgust with its turn to Trumpism, tweeted Nov. 5, “Dow is over 36,000, unemployment has dropped from 6.3% in Jan. to 4.8% [in September]. Over 5 million jobs added, a record. 220m vaccines in 10 months. And only 30% of country think US is on right track. The Democratic Party has a huge messaging problem.”
Indeed. And these economic gains have occurred despite Republican governors trying to block businesses, local governments and school districts from requiring public safety measures, such as masks or requiring proof of vaccinations, and all 26 Republican state attorneys general have said they would fight an OSHA mandate announced Nov. 4 that businesses with over 100 employees require either vaccination or regular testing to maintain safe workplaces. The Fifth Circuit US Court of Appeals put a temporary stop to that.
By sabotaging COVID control efforts, Trumpublicans hope the economy will falter again and allow the Grand Oligarch Party to regain control of the federal government. And they have put measures in place to prevent the popular vote from rejecting them next time.
With Youngkin’s win, and the close call in New Jersey, expect anti-mask, anti-vaccine and anti-CRT rhetoric to dominate the mid-term congressional races, with every Democratic achievement slurred as “communism,” because Republicans don’t have much else to run on.
Three days after the election, the US House finally passed the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure jobs bill, 228-206, with 13 Republicans voting for the bill to provide the margin of victory, while six progressive Democrats (“The Squad”) voted against.
The bill provides $550 billion for new federal investments, including $110 million for roads and bridges; $39 billion for public transit; $66 billion for rail service, mainly in the Northeast Corridor; $25 billion for airports; $55 billion for water and wastewater systems, and $65 billion to expand broadband Internet, particularly in underserved rural areas and low-income neighborhoods; $6.5 billion to modernize the nation’s electric grid; $21 billion for environmental remediation; $7.5 billion to expand charging stations for electric vehicles; $5 billion for electric and hybrid school buses; and $1 billion to “reconnect” communities of color that were separated during past roadbuilding projects. The money is sorely needed to catch up after years of neglect of public infrastructure and should help in resolving supply chain problems. The rest continues projects.
The five-year spending package would be paid for with $210 billion in unspent COVID-19 relief aid and $53 billion in unemployment aid Republican states halted in an attempt to force workers back into minimum-wage jobs, along with an array of smaller pots of money, like petroleum reserve sales and spectrum auctions for 5G services.
The infrastructure bill is good, but it still needs the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better budget bill as a followup.
Progressives hoped to delay passage until the Senate passed the Build Back Better bill. Biden is confident Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema will end up joining the 48 other Senate Democrats to pass the bill, which is now set at $1.75 trillion, but progressives don’t think Manchin and Sinema have earned that trust.
The Build Back Better bill would, among other things, extend the Child Care Tax Credit that pays families up to $300 a month for each child under 18 years of age, which was originally appropriated as part of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that was passed in March to facilitate the US recovery from the devastating economic and health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The American Rescue Plan in March included direct stimulus payments of $1,400 to couples making less than $150,000; extended unemployment compensation, continued eviction and foreclosure moratoriums, and increased the Child Tax Credit through 2021. It provided funds for state and local governments to help compensate for lost tax revenues, money for schools from kindergarten through eighth grade to safely reopen amid the pandemic, and subsidized COVID-19 testing and vaccination programs that have gotten at least one dose of vaccine into 220 million American arms. But most voters forgot that by Nov. 2. Democrats must do a better job of claiming credit for what they’ve done for working people, because the corporate media won’t volunteer the information. — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2021
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