Perry Bacon Jr. of The Washington Post says that the voters in the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey treated Tuesday night’s elections as normal even as the Republican Party is increasingly abnormal.
Steve Phillips writes for The Nation that Democratic leaders ignore the politics of race at their own peril.
Frida Ghitis of CNN writes that the way in which Republicans won and/or lost unexpectedly tight races Tuesday night should not bode well for the undisputed leader of the Republican Party.
Rod Watson of The Buffalo News writes about some of the reasons that the winner of the Democratic primary for mayor of Buffalo, India Walton, lost the general election.
Emily Cochrane reports for The New York Times that paid family and medical leave has returned to the Build Back Better bill.
Ian Millhiser of Vox sounds an alarm on upcoming U.S. Supreme Court cases that could strike down many environmental regulations … and a few other things.
Anna Maria Barry-Jester of Kaiser Health News reports that “brain drain” has seeped into public health laboratories.
Finally today, Karl Paul of the Guardian reports on a study showing that climate misinformation is increasingly rampant on Facebook.
Both states followed the historic pattern of the president’s party in off-year elections. In heavily Democratic Fairfax County, Va., Biden won about 420,000 votes in 2020, while Trump won about 168,000. In the gubernatorial election this year, Democrat Terry McAuliffe won about 282,000 votes and Republican Glenn Youngkin about 152,000, meaning Youngkin won 90 percent of Trump’s total and McAuliffe won just 67 percent of Biden’s.
Some voters may have switched from Biden to Youngkin, but it’s unlikely the huge McAuliffe shortfall in Fairfax was just about switching. Instead, it’s clear that lots of the people who voted for Biden did not participate in this election, while a smaller percentage of Trump voters sat out. Exit polls suggest that of those who participated, 47 percent voted for Biden and 45 percent voted for Trump. This was not the same electorate that Biden won 54-44.
Similarly, in New Jersey, 2.6 million people voted for Biden, but Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy is likely to finish several hundred thousand votes behind that.
There is evidence of switching, too. Exit polls in Virginia suggested that 5 percent of 2020 Biden votes backed Youngkin, while just 2 percent of 2020 Trump voters supported McAuliffe. That only accounts for a few points, but McAuliffe will end up losing by 1-to-3 percentage points, so those small shifts matter.
Steve Phillips writes for The Nation that Democratic leaders ignore the politics of race at their own peril.
For more than 400 years, many white Virginians have shown that they are willing to fight, so the notion that Democrats could succeed by ignoring the battle was always fanciful and a reflection of the lack of cultural competence that continues to plague Democratic leaders and strategists. It turns out that ignoring the racism of your opponent is actually the worst possible strategy. In her 2001 book The Race Card, Princeton political scientist Tali Mendelberg revealed how Republicans’ use of coded racial messages were less effective in swaying voters when the implicit was made explicit, finding that “when campaign discourse is clearly about race—when it is explicitly racial—it has the fewest racial consequences for white opinion.”
The problem is obviously not limited to Virginia. The people who believe that this is and should remain primarily a white nation never stopped fighting after the Civil War and have continued to fiercely resist any tentative steps toward making this nation a multiracial democracy, up to and including attacking the United States Capitol (while carrying Confederate flags) and seeking to overthrow the democratic process itself earlier this year. Since January, the white right wing has engaged in a paroxysm of democracy-destruction in states across the country, passing draconian voter suppression legislation, seeking to undermine any accountability for the January 6 insurrection, and, of course, passing laws banning the modern-day bogeyman of CRT.
For the most part, Democrats have done what McAuliffe did—ignore the attacks and hope to change the subject. Little effort and no political capital has been expended on the critical challenges of immigration reform, protecting democratic participation, and police reform. Prominent progressive strategists and writers such as David Schor and Ezra Klein have devoted copious amounts of attention to advocating for what has come to be called “popularism.” As Klein wrote in a 6000 word New York Times manifesto last month,“Democrats should do a lot of polling to figure out which of their views are popular and which are not popular, and then they should talk about the popular stuff and shut up about the unpopular stuff.”
Frida Ghitis of CNN writes that the way in which Republicans won and/or lost unexpectedly tight races Tuesday night should not bode well for the undisputed leader of the Republican Party.
Republicans have shown they can win important elections, but only if they keep the defeated former President Donald Trump at arms' length. But how long can they do that?
The fact is, Republicans would have a good chance of winning the White House in 2024 -- if they get someone other than Trump to win the nomination.
In this last election, with Trump mostly out of sight, voters were able to focus on their frustrations with President Joe Biden, and on other issues. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, Republicans seemed to be saying. It worked, but the curtain is rustling; the man behind it is restless. He won't stay hidden for long.
For now, and the foreseeable future, however, the party is wholly subservient to the man who started his term in office with his party in control of the presidency and both houses of Congress, and then led Republicans in a reverse trifecta, losing the White House, the House and the Senate.
Rod Watson of The Buffalo News writes about some of the reasons that the winner of the Democratic primary for mayor of Buffalo, India Walton, lost the general election.
One definition of “conserve” is to keep what you have and avoid risk, whether it’s really working for you or not. In that sense, Buffalo is the quintessentially American city in a nation in which a truly progressive agenda can’t even make it out of a Democratic Congress even though voters love the individual parts of the package.
Against that backdrop, it’s not surprising that Walton couldn’t reproduce in the wider electorate her Democratic Primary upset, despite a platform that seemingly should have appealed to voters in a city typically ranked among the nation’s poorest. [...]
During the general election campaign, Brown successfully changed Walton’s first name to “radical” and her middle name to “socialist.” While she talked about what she would do, he talked about what he had done and painted a frightening – often distorted – picture of the change she would usher in.
Emily Cochrane reports for The New York Times that paid family and medical leave has returned to the Build Back Better bill.
The announcement, which came as Democrats scrambled to iron out differences over the package, is unlikely to result in enactment of the leave program. Mr. Manchin, a crucial Democratic holdout, reiterated on Wednesday that he would not support it as part of the sprawling social policy, climate and tax legislation. But the inclusion of paid leave promised to give House Democrats a chance to register their support for a program that has bipartisan backing.
It also all but guaranteed that the legislation would have to be modified by the Senate and approved a second time by the House before it becomes law, breaking with Ms. Pelosi’s promise to moderate lawmakers that she would not force them to vote on a plan that could not clear the evenly divided Senate.
The speaker’s move amounted to the most direct challenge yet of Mr. Manchin, a centrist who has repeatedly voiced concern that the social safety net bill is overly generous, and whose objections have effectively compelled Democratic leaders to either curtail or remove a number of provisions.
Ian Millhiser of Vox sounds an alarm on upcoming U.S. Supreme Court cases that could strike down many environmental regulations … and a few other things.
The Supreme Court announced late last week that it will hear four very similar cases — all likely to be consolidated under the name West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency — which could prove to be some of the most consequential court decisions in recent US history. [...]
The cases are the latest chapter in the seemingly never-ending litigation over the Clean Power Plan, arguably former President Barack Obama’s boldest effort to fight climate change. Though the plan was never implemented, it still exists in a zombie-like state. A federal appeals court decision revived the plan last January, but the Biden administration said in February that it would not reinstate Obama’s policy. [...]
At least some of the parties in the West Virginia litigation claim that it is unconstitutional for the EPA to take the sort of aggressive strides against climate change that the Obama administration took in its Clean Power Plan. This theory wouldn’t just strip the EPA of much of its power to fight climate change, it could potentially disable Congress’s ability to effectively protect the environment.
And even this description of the West Virginia litigation doesn’t fully capture the stakes. The most aggressive arguments against the Clean Power Plan wouldn’t just apply to environmental regulations — they could also fundamentally alter the structure of the US government, stripping away the government’s power on issues as diverse as workplace safety, environmental protection, access to birth control, overtime pay, and vaccination.
Anna Maria Barry-Jester of Kaiser Health News reports that “brain drain” has seeped into public health laboratories.
“The biggest threat to [public health labs] right now is not the next emerging pathogen,” said Donna Ferguson, director of the public health lab in Monterey County, “but labs closing due to lack of staffing.”
Across California, public health departments are losing experienced staffers to retirement, exhaustion, partisan politics and higher-paying jobs. Even before the coronavirus pandemic throttled departments, staffing numbers had shrunk with county budgets. But the decline has accelerated over the past year and a half, even as millions of dollars in federal money has poured in. Public health nurses, microbiologists, epidemiologists, health officers and other staff members who fend off infectious diseases like tuberculosis and HIV, inspect restaurants and work to keep communities healthy are abandoning the field. It’s a problem that temporary boosts in funding can’t fix.
The brain drain is sapping community health oversight in ways big and small. The people who staff public health labs, for example, run complex tests for deadly diseases that require specialized training most commercial labs lack. While their work is largely unseen by the public, they touch almost every aspect of society. Public health labs sample shellfish to make sure it is safe for eating. They monitor drinking water and develop tests for emerging health threats such as antibiotic-resistant viruses. They also test for serious diseases, such as measles and covid. And they typically do it at a fraction of the cost of commercial labs — and faster.
Finally today, Karl Paul of the Guardian reports on a study showing that climate misinformation is increasingly rampant on Facebook.
The study analyzed 195 pages known to distribute misinformation about the climate crisis using Facebook’s analytics tool, CrowdTangle. Of those, 41 were considered “single issue” groups. With names like “Climate Change is Natural,” “Climate Change is Crap,” and “Climate Realism”, these groups primarily shared memes denying climate change exists and deriding politicians attempting to address it through legislation.
Those that were not “single issue” groups included pages from figures like the rightwing politician Marjorie Taylor Greene, which posted misleading articles and disinformation about the climate crisis.
This “rampant” spread of climate misinformation is getting substantially worse, said Sean Buchan, the researcher and partnerships manager for Stop Funding Heat, with the report finding interactions per post in its dataset have increased 76.7% in the past year.
“If it continues to increase at this rate, this can cause significant harm in the real world,” he said.