Category Archives: Democrat

One bit from the great satirical newspaper-turned-website The Onion that has stayed with me more than any other is searingly funny, of course, but also the best-ever summary of the ugly turn that American politics has taken over the last 40 years. In its 1999 send-up of 100 years of mock front pages called Our Dumb Century, a 1980 election shtick involved an infographic comparing the Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan campaigns. Carters large-type campaign slogan: Lets Talk Better Mileage. Reagans: Kill The Bastards.

In 2021, Biden-era Democrats like Terry McAuliffe, the partys tired retread for governor in Virginia, literally tried to talk better mileage with the voters as their climate change and fix-road-and-bridges promises slowly ground through the sausage maker on Capitol Hill. Over the western mountains and at the edge of suburban sprawl in the Old Dominion State, angry voters searching for their pitchforks after imbibing days of propaganda about what their kids are taught about racism didnt want to hear about fuel efficiency. They were out for blood.

Just like Reagan in 1980, Republican Glenn Youngkins Kill the Bastards message carried the day in a state that had seemed to be trending Democratic blue for much of the 2010s. Once again, the Democrats showed up to a culture war gunfight brandishing a 2,000-page piece of legislation.

Ironically, the Democrats subpar showing on Tuesday not just in Virginia but in a Pennsylvania Supreme Court seat, local races in suburbs like Long Island, and a scare for New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy came on what otherwise should have been a celebratory week for President Joe Bidens ambitious agenda. With COVID-19 cases falling, vaccinations rising, and a highly positive jobs report, Team Biden then claimed a bipartisan victory in passing that $1 trillion-ish infrastructure plan, with hopes that a wider middle-class bailout and climate action will still pass this year.

But if the green tree of universal pre-kindergarten and extended child tax credits falls in a rural community like isolated Bath County, Va., will it even make a sound? The New York Times in the 367th installment of its long-running series Trump Diners, Trump Drive-ins and Trump Dives sent two reporters up into the Allegheny Mountains. There, Bidenomics like the $1,400 check most voters got this spring or the historic drop in child poverty was on the minds of absolutely no one in a county that voted harder for Youngkin than for Donald Trump in 2020, and where off-year voter turnout was high.

Hardware store owner Elaine Neff, 61 whose place of business is adorned with posters depicting Trump as Rambo and the Terminator, and who was in D.C. during the Jan. 6 insurrection hailed Youngkins win because the coronavirus vaccine is a poison and because she believed Democrats had planned extermination camps for Trump supporters. Charles Hamilton, a 74-year-old Vietnam veteran, said his Youngkin vote was really to show support for Trump and his desire to get Biden and that woman out of the White House boasting, Were a county of old country folk who want to do what they want. Somehow, I dont think Neff or Hamilton were waiting to see if Democrats passed paid family leave before voting on Tuesday.

Look, heres the thing about the election. Arguably, it wasnt the bloodbath for Democrats that the Beltway media portrayed it as. Sure, Murphys race was close, but historically the GOP had always won New Jersey when theres a new Democrat in the White House. And a slew of new progressive mayors in cities like Boston and Pittsburgh or even little Beaver Falls, Pa., remind us that America in the 2020s is a complicated place. But its also true that the historical trends angry passion from voters whose party just lost the presidency, apathy from the party in power are in play headed into 2022s midterms. That trend line coupled with the GOPs gerrymandering edge suggests a big Republican House majority in 2023.

Im not sure the wider electorate has fully wrapped its arms around this. A Republican wave election next fall will surely mean the impeachment of President Biden the grounds, frankly, are irrelevant that will plunge the nation into chaos. It will likely translate to wins for state lawmakers and secretaries of state whod be willing to declare victory for a losing Trump in 2024. It means the end of any constructive governing and depending on the Senate outcomes could extend the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court.

The Republicans culture war strategy is winning. That doesnt mean Democrats shouldnt pass bills like the transformational yet horribly named and marketed $175 billion-a-year Build Back Better. They should. Actual, mature governing is a key part of a strategic message for Democrats, and it excites some voting blocs just not the one that the party has been unsuccessfully trying to woo back since that Reagan win in 1980, the white working class.

READ MORE: These women are white, with no college degrees and in the drivers seat of American politics | Will Bunch

The Democrats will lose the culture war if theyre too aloof to even bother to fight it, and if they lose the culture war, they will lose the elections in 2022 and 2024, and it will take a long time to recover. The party that should be dominating in a nation that broadly supports its center-left policies needs to acknowledge that there is a liberal culture, that its baked into the soul of what makes America America, and they are in the fight of a lifetime to save it.

The Democrats need to fight a culture war more than anything else over voting rights, to make the argument that the red state wave of Republican voter suppression laws is a profoundly unAmerican activity, and that Democrats are the spiritual heirs to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Selma-to-Montgomery march, and thus the protectors of an expansive vision for democracy that works for all citizens. To do that, Team Biden needs to make clear starting with an Oval Office address that voting rights is his No. 1 priority, and that he will use every tool in his White House bag of tricks to force at least a carve-out of the wretched filibuster to clear the way for game-changing bills like the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

The Democrats need to fight a culture war over book banning to stop playing rope-a-dope on the bogus critical race theory issue and fight for academic freedom and open expression. They need to put Republicans from Virginia where Youngkin won with an attack ad on Toni Morrisons Beloved to Texas, where American jihadists have targeted some 850 titles in school libraries on the defensive for the book burning mindset that our antifascist grandfathers fought on the shores of Normandy and in the Battle of the Bulge.

The Democrats need to fight a culture war over science to make their voters as passionate about defending the core values of inquiry and knowledge that led to the COVID-19 vaccine and our understanding of what will be needed to roll back climate change in the same way that the far right and its Facebook-fried (excuse me, Meta-fried) misinformation have fired up the right over pandemic denial and fossil fuel addiction.

The Democrats need to fight a culture war over education to remind parents that the real fight for the future of our children is not whether we can keep denying critical parts of American history but whether were providing any civics education at all to our kids, and whether we can offer our young people access to the kinds of higher education thats out of reach for far too many. There needs to be a new push to revive free community college, and Biden needs to remember his campaign promise to address student debt in a big way.

I know its Political Punditry 101 to decry the tribalism in modern American politics, but that feels ridiculous when the Republican tribe has made it clear it will never disarm. Its much better for the Democrats to proclaim that they, too, are a tribe and that its tribal values of expanding democracy and citizenship rights, valuing objective learning and knowledge, and addressing problems with actual governing are the truest American values.

This will probably not gain the Democrats more than one or two votes in Bath County, Va., because those votes are simply not there for the getting. Nor should they be, if the countys voters are wedded to such antithetical values. But the Democrats lost an incalculable number of votes last Tuesday and theyre on track to do so in 2022 by failing to convince their core constituencies theyre fighting for their culture. What are Black and brown voters supposed to think when they see a party fight harder over property taxes in Silicon Valley or the Upper West Side than against voter suppression? What are 18- to 29-year-old voters supposed to think when West Virginia coal millionaire Joe Manchin is making climate policy?

These voters will turn out to fight for their culture if they are called upon because weve seen it happen before. Young folks and Black and brown voters turned out for Biden in 2020 less because his platform called for expanding child care and more because he pledged to fight for the soul of America against Trumpism. Democrats can bring these voters back next year by reminding decent, democracy-loving Americans that their party is the thin blue line between them and book burning, a culture of ignorance, and the end of free and fair elections. That would mean an end to watching the culture war from the sidelines. It means actually fighting to win and to kill all the bastardization of real American values.

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Democrats cant keep ignoring the culture war. They should fight it and win. | Will Bunch - The Philadelphia Inquirer

NEW HOPE, Pa. The Democrats of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, felt the red wave building over the summer when frustrated parents filled school board meetings to complain about masking requirements and an academic theory on systemic racism that wasnt even taught in local schools.

They realized the wave was growing when such concerns, fueled by misleading reports on conservative media, began showing up in unrelated elections for judges, sheriff and even the county recorder of deeds. And so they were not surprised but devastated all the same when Democrats all across this key county northeast of Philadelphia were wiped out in Tuesdays municipal elections.

This is a bell we need to pay attention to. This is something going on across the country, said attorney Patrice Tisdale, a Democrat who lost her bid to become a magisterial district judge against a Republican candidate with no formal legal training. The Democrats cant keep doing politics as usual.

Shes among the down-ballot Democrats sending an urgent message to the national party: Its worse than you think.

This suburban region northeast of Philadelphia is a critical political battleground in one of the nations premier swing states. Its the type of place where moderate and college-educated voters, repelled by former President Donald Trumps divisive behavior, helped Democrats retake control of Congress in 2018 and win back the White House in 2020. Thats what makes the setbacks here so alarming to many Democrats.

Some in the party privately suspected they were in trouble in Virginias high-profile governors race, which they ultimately lost. But Democrats also suffered embarrassing outcomes in Democratic-leaning suburban New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where they nearly lost the governors office and the state Senate president was unseated by a furniture company truck driver who spent $2,300 on his entire campaign.

The focus now shifts to the even more consequential midterm election season next year, when control of Congress and dozens more governorships will be decided. Already, high-profile Senate races are taking shape in states like Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and here in Pennsylvania, where there is reason to believe the political dynamics could be different in November 2022.

Namely, Trump, who Republicans intentionally avoided in this weeks elections, will almost certainly be a much more significant presence next year. The early slate of Republican candidates, in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, have embraced Trump, his tone and his divisive policies much more than the Republicans on this weeks ballots. At the same time, Democratic strategists believe their party on Capitol Hill will eventually pass popular infrastructure and health care packages that voters will appreciate.

Theres just not a correlation there in terms of what the issues are going to be a year from now and the kind of personalities and the kind of candidates that are running here in Pennsylvania, said Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a leading Democratic candidate in the states high-profile election to replace Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, whose retirement gives Democrats one of their best pickup opportunities in the nation.

The head of the Senate Democrats campaign arm, Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, predicted the party would have a strong record to sell voters next year as the pandemic ends and the economy recovers.

It will be a major contrast with Republicans who are focused on fighting with each other in nasty primaries, wooing Donald Trump for his endorsement and pushing the agenda of the ultra-wealthy, Peters said.

Indeed, while Virginias Republican Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin successfully avoided Trump throughout his race, the former president has already endorsed Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate Sean Parnell, whos in the midst of a messy public divorce that includes allegations of domestic abuse. Parnell, a former Army Ranger and a regular on Fox News, is scheduled to testify next week in divorce court.

Trump is also taking an active interest in Georgia, where his endorsed Senate candidate, former NFL star Herschel Walker, is facing allegations of domestic violence of his own. And in Arizona, the candidates are embracing his election fraud conspiracy theories. One of the leading Republican candidates, state Attorney General Mark Brnovich, recently bowed to pressure from Trump in announcing a new investigation into the 2020 election.

Still, historical headwinds against the party that occupies the White House backed by a new Republican focus on education that seemed to unite Trumps base and anti-Trump Republicans this week could make the 2022 midterms the worst election for Democrats since 2010. That year, they lost 63 seats in the House and another six in the Senate.

Bucks County offers a sobering tale for Democrats everywhere.

President Joe Biden won this overwhelmingly white county of nearly 630,000 people northeast of Philadelphia by more than 4 points just last fall, a significant jump from Hillary Clintons victory of less than 1% four years earlier. The county serves as a microcosm of Pennsylvania, and perhaps the country, with a blend of working-class neighborhoods, rural areas and affluent suburbs.

Trumps name was largely absent from this weeks municipal elections, but a new Republican focus on education helped unify the Republican electorate, which was badly fractured during the Trump presidency.

For us, it was really last summer when it all kind of hit, said Liz Sheehan, the Democratic president of the New Hope-Solebury School Board.

People began to raise concerns at local school board meetings about an alleged sexual assault involving a student in northern Virginia. Others seized on controversial books and critical race theory, an academic framework that centers on the idea that racism is systemic in the nations institutions and that they function to maintain the dominance of white people. The approach isnt taught in public schools, but has become a catch-all political buzzword in recent months for any teaching about race and American history.

While the alleged sexual assault and debates over critical race theory were hot topics in national conservative media, they had little to do with Bucks County.

We sort of naively thought that, Alright, I guess were a little bit more rational in our area. And all of the sudden, we had meetings where people were showing up in Trump hats, Sheehan said.

A lot of it now is about this notion of parent control in public school, and that is the mask debate and the critical race theory debate coming together under one heading, the school board president continued. And that, I think is what has really motivated people locally, and why we saw a lot of school board members lose seats, a lot of far-right people gain seats.

Sheehan won her race, but many other Democrats were not so lucky.

Robin Robinson, the Bucks County recorder of deeds, says she earned more votes in her bid for a second term than any other Democratic candidate for that office in history. She lost anyway.

Shes scared about what that means for the 2022 midterms.

I was the largest vote getter for a Democrat in the history of this county and I couldnt win a crumby little reporter of deeds? Robinson said. The problem is bigger than Bucks County.

Several Democratic Senate candidates were active in Bucks County in the days and weeks leading up to the election to try to energize voters behind their lower-profile candidates. Overall turnout ultimately exceeded 40% of registered voters in the county, a staggering figure for an off-year election.

Bucks County Republican Party Chair Pat Poprik is optimistic about her partys future, especially after watching a surge of first-time volunteers in recent months. The GOPs success had little to do with Trump, she said.

Some people listen to him, absolutely, but its diminishing constantly, Poprik said. If he comes back in 2024, well see, I dont know, some people say he will, some people say he wont. I gotta tell you, that was the last thing on my mind.

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Local Democrats warn party: Growing Republican wave is real - PBS NewsHour

Latinos are not a monolithic group; they are as diverse as the country itself. And, increasingly, Latinos are swing voters. Democratsmust understandthis or they will risk continuing to lose voter share from the largest and fast-growing ethnic minority in the country.

Much has been said about the Latino vote in last Tuesdays gubernatorial election in Virginia. Pollsters and analysts are immersed in a precinct-by-precinct analysis to better understand how Latinos voted there, but two competing exit polls demonstrate just how much more we need to learn about Latino voters.

A Fox News/AP exit poll found that Republican Glenn YoungkinGlenn YoungkinTrump hits Christie after former NJ governor calls on GOP to move past 2020 election claims Ex-Clinton strategist: Va. results show Democrats 'have gone too far to the left on key issues for educated suburban voters' Murphy campaign calls on Ciattarelli to concede NJ governor election MORE won Latino voters 55 percent to 43 percent, which would be a tectonic shift from where Latinos were just one year ago, when Joe Biden beat Donald Trump among Latino voters 61 percent to 36 percent. But these numbers are based only on exit polling conducted on Election Day, which represented only around one-third of the votes cast in the 2021 election.

Exit polling from Edison Research seems to be a much better match. It shows Democrat Terry McAullife winning 66 percent of Latino voters, versus 32 percent for Youngkin. These numbers include those who voted early and by absentee ballot.

In 2020, Latinos were a big part of President BidenJoe BidenNicaragua's Ortega set to win election amid international criticism Rep. Gosar posts anime video showing him striking Biden, Ocasio-Cortez Overnight Energy & Environment Presented by ExxonMobil Activists cry foul over COP26 draft MOREs wins in Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and Virginia. Latinos also came out for both the Democratic candidates in Senate runoff elections in Georgia earlier this year, giving Democrats control of the Senate.

But Latinos also provided former President TrumpDonald TrumpMeat industry groups pledge to meet Paris Agreement emissions targets by 2030 Judge tosses part of DC AG's suit against Trump inaugural committee Rep. Gosar posts anime video showing him striking Biden, Ocasio-Cortez MORE with his margins of victory in Florida and Texas. According to one analysis, Trump also shaved off some Latino support across the country in places where the Democratic advantage was more robust. In the Rio Grande valley of Texas and in Miami-Dade County in Florida, normally Democratic strongholds, Latinos swung towards Trump.

Whatever the exact numbers, the trendline is clear: The Democratic Party is losing Latino voters and needs to speak directly to the issues they care about most. Latinos were devastated by the pandemic. Latinos were three times as likely to be infected and hospitalized and twice as likely to die from the COVID-19 as the rest of the population.

At the same time, they were concerned about what shutdowns would do to their already pulverized businesses. They want leaders to show them how they will get the economy back on track, how they will keep their communities safe, how their kids can have a top-notch education, including college, without the burden of crushing student debt. They want a hopeful, aspirational idea of what their lives can be like in America. They want nothing less than the American Dream.

Immigration reforms remainsa priorityto them as well. But Trump was able to win over some Latinos, especially Latino men, despite taking a hardline stance on immigration. Trump stressed economic opportunities, religious freedom, the right to life and the rule of law. Democrats can counter with better ideas about the economy and jobs, prosperity and education for all Americans.

The lesson that Democrats must take from Virginia is that they cannot assume Latinos will support Democratic candidates moving forward. Democrats will have to earn the Latino vote, and looking towards 2022, Hispanics must be wooed or, in political parlance, persuaded, if they are to be part of the Democratic coalition.

We saw in Virginia a lot of white suburban and independent voters swing back towards the Republican Party. If this holds, Democrats will have to diversify their voter pool to win.

Politics is about addition, and there are many Latino voters Democrats can add to their ranks who will help the party keep and expand its majorities. That is, if the party can swing it.

Maria Cardona is a longtime Democratic strategist, aprincipal at Dewey Square Group, a Washington-based political consulting agency, and a CNN/CNN Espaol political commentator.Follow her on Twitter@MariaTCardona.

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Latinos are the new swing voters: What are Democrats going to do about it? | TheHill - The Hill

Nov 6th 2021

TWO OF THE better books on the job invented for George Washington share a title: The Impossible Presidency. Even the most capable presidents are doomed to fail, writes Jeremi Suri in the more recent of them: Limiting the failure and achieving some good along the waythat is the best we can expect.

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Even by these gloomy standards, Joe Biden is foundering. Having received more votes than any candidate in history, he has seen his approval ratings collapse. At this point in a first term only Donald Trump was more unpopular. The Democrats have just lost the three top statewide offices in Virginia, which Mr Biden won by ten percentage points a year ago. This augurs poorly for next years mid-terms: his party will probably lose its congressional majorities.

Democrats in Congress are riven by factional bickering. Earlier this year they passed a big stimulus, but the rest of Mr Bidens agendaa $1trn bipartisan infrastructure package and a social-spending bill worth about $1.7trn over ten yearshas stalled. If passed, the legislation will almost certainly include more money for infrastructure, a poverty-cutting child tax credit, funding for pre-school, a reduction in the cost of prescription drugs and a clean-energy tax credit which will encourage private investment in new generating capacity. This spending is likely to be funded by harmful tax changes, but voters may not care.

Indeed, their spirits may lift next year. Covid-19 cases have fallen by half since September. If unemployment drops further, supply-chain blockages ease and inflation ebbs, life will get easier for those who feel that the odds are against them. Yet, for Mr Biden, that is where the good news ends.

Some of his problems are inbuilt. American politics is subject to patterns more like the laws of physics than the chances of horse-racing. One is that the presidents party loses seats in the mid-terms. Democrats have only a four-seat cushion in the House of Representatives, so their majority is probably doomed. Whatever Mr Biden does, the legislative phase of his presidency is therefore likely to give way to the regulatory phase. Yet, with a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, he will find his room to remake the country with his pen and phone curtailed.

Beyond next year, the Democrats prospects are even bleaker. Their unpopularity with non-college-educated whites costs them large tracts of the country outside cities and suburbs. To win the electoral college, the House of Representatives and the Senate they need a greater share of the raw vote than any party in history. Winning under these conditions, while simultaneously repairing national institutions and making progress on Americas problems, from public health to climate to social mobility, is a task for a politician of superhuman talents.

Mr Biden is not that guy. He has dealt admirably with personal misfortune and by most accounts is kind and decent. However, there is a reason why winning the presidency took him more than 30 years of trying. Democratic primary voters picked him not for inspiration, but largely as a defensive measure to block the progressives champion, Bernie Sanders.

Mr Biden campaigned on his competence, centrism, experience in foreign policy and a rejection of nerve-jangling Trumpism. But the withdrawal from Afghanistan was a debacle, he has governed to the left and the culture wars rage as fiercely as ever. The fact that no voters seem to have a clue what is in the infrastructure and social-spending bills is partly his fault. Child poverty has fallen by a quarter, thanks to legislation passed by Congress on his watch. This would be news even to most Democrats.

The problem is not just Mr Biden, though. His partys left-wing, college-educated activist class consistently assumes that the electorate holds the same attitudes on race and on the role of the government as they do. Virginia is the latest example of this folly. America is a young, diverse country. The median age is under 40 and just 60% of the country identifies as white. The electorate is different. Taking an average of the 2018 and 2014 mid-terms as a guide, 75% of voters will be white and their median age next year will be 53. Democrats have a huge lead among the college-educated. But only 36% of Americans completed four-year degrees. That is far too small a base, especially as Republicans make inroads with non-white voters.

When Richard Nixon won in 1972 the new-left Democrats were painted as the party of acid, amnesty and abortion. The new, new left is just as easily caricatured as the party of white guilt and cancel culture, of people who say birthing person instead of mother and want to set the FBI on parents who have the gall to criticise teachers.

These noisy activists, and the small number of radicals they elect from safe Democratic seats, make it hard for the party to win in more moderate areas, even though they do not represent the majority of the partys voters. Immigration activists are camped outside the vice-presidents residence complaining that Mr Biden has not changed Mr Trumps border policies. By contrast, Democratic voters in Minneapolis, where George Floyd was murdered, have just voted against replacing the police department with a department of public safety.

Countering the Republican message that he carries out the wishes of the radical left will require Mr Biden to be much tougher on his partys fringe. That may mean doing things they hate. He could campaign to hire more police officers in cities where the murder rate has spiked (refund the police, perhaps), or pick fights with the school board in San Francisco, which thinks that Abraham Lincoln is a symbol of white supremacy.

If Democrats believe that grubby attempts to win power are beneath them, then they should look at what is happening in the Republican Party. Glenn Youngkins election as governor of Virginia suggests that Republicans can win in swing states, even with Mr Trump as head of the party, by being cheerful, Reaganesque culture warriors who know how to throw red meat to the base. In a two-candidate race for the presidency, both nearly always have a real chance of winning. Mr Biden and his party need to think hard about what they are prepared to do to limit the risk of another four years of Mr Trump. Because that is where a failed Biden presidency could well lead.

For more coverage of Joe Bidens presidency, visit our dedicated hub

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This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "One year on"

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The calamity facing Joe Biden and the Democrats - The Economist

MCLEAN COUNTY, Ill. (WMBD) Democratic candidate Karla Bailey-Smith wants to represent Bloomington-Normal in the new Illinois House 91st District.

The announcement came at an event at McLean County Democrats Headquarters at 6 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 5. The newly-drawn 91st District currently has no incumbents.

In addition to Bloomington-Normal, the district would include areas like Carlock, Goodfield, East Peoria, and Washington.

Bailey-Smith is no newcomer to politics. In 2020, Bailey-Smith lost the 88th House District seat with 35.4% of the vote to Republican incumbent Keith Sommer.

Bailey-Smith owns a small business in Bloomington and is a Democratic Precinct Committee person. In 1990, she earned an undergraduate degree at Illinois Wesleyan University and three years later, she earned a graduate degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Bailey-Smith also worked as a union scenic artist in the New York area. After spending 10 years living in London, England, she came back to Bloomington in 2010 to raise her son.

She previously worked on the initiative to end cash bail in Illinois and has advocated for legislation sponsored by Planned Parenthood, Equality Illinois, the Sierra Club, Everytown for Gun Safety, and the AFL-CIO.

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Democrat Karla Bailey-Smith will run for Illinois House of Representatives in new 91st District - CIProud.com

To explain the Democrats poor performance in state and local elections Tuesday, various commentators have made very specific claims: It was mostly about critical race theory, or mostly about Terry McAuliffes flaws as a candidate for Virginia governor, or mostly about suburban white women voting like its 2012 again.

But none of these explanations is fully satisfying. The turn against Democrats wasnt limited to parents, or Virginia, or white women. Compared with the 2020 election, support for Democrats decayed across states, genders, ethnicities, and counties. Democrats lost because of something bigger than any demographic or issue. They lost a vibes war. Despite many positive economic trends, Americans are feeling rotten about the state of thingsand, understandably, theyre blaming the party in power.

How are vibes any different from what weve historically called economic fundamentals? Can President Joe Biden mount a comeback after losing the first decisive battle of the vibes war? And why do we always have to name stuff?

The U.S. economy is booming. Kind of. Consumer demand is on a rocket ship upward, and Americans collectively are spending more money than ever on hard goods. The unemployment rate is lower today than it was for most of the 2010s. Having banked stimulus checks, unemployment insurance, student-loan-interest forgiveness, and other savings, Americans say that their finances are in excellent shape.

Annie Lowrey: America failed at COVID-19, but the economy is okay. Why?

Yet supply-chain snarls have made shopping harder, and incipient inflation has made what we can buy more expensive. Independents say theyre as despondent about the economy as they were during several months of the Great Recession. One measure of consumer confidencebuying conditions for household durableshas fallen to its lowest rate in about 40 years. Gas prices are salient, not only because people buy a lot of it, but also because theyre the only prices printed in 3,000-point type across the countryand theyve gone way up under Biden. Meanwhile, the Delta variant obliterated promises of a hot vax summer, and the presidents approval rating has tanked.

These days its good to be a savings account, or a nominal-gross-domestic-income graph. But bank accounts dont vote, and nominal-GDI graphs currently lack Senate representation. Consumers vote, and hiring managers vote, and overworked service-economy employees dealing with rude customers vote, and right now it stinks to be any of those people. An economist can tell you that, technically, things are looking up. But vibes eat technicalities for breakfast. The vibes are bad, and Democrats are suffering for it.

For now! But we may have reached a vibe inflection point.

The U.S. economy added 531,000 jobs in October. This is a good sign that Delta fears (like Delta cases) are waning, and the service economy is going back to normal. As pandemic savings are drawn down, more people will likely join the labor force, which will ease the worker shortage and help companies fill out their staff. The supply-chain meshugas is not going to end before Christmas, but nobody Ive spoken with expects it to last a full year.

Derek Thompson: America is running out of everything

Vaccine approval for kids should allay the fears of parents and help schools go back to normal, if schools and parents choose to do so. Young people are at much lower risk of severe illness than the elderly, but the mass vaccination of kids will help the U.S. avoid a repeat of whats happening in the U.K., where cases are surging among unvaccinated children. New antiviral drugs from Pfizer and Merck will bring even more artillery into the fight against COVID in 2022.

Meanwhile, Bidens new de facto vaccination mandate is a quiet economic-stimulus policy that, despite the controversy around it, really will make life feel more normal for millions of Americans. This week, the White House announced that companies with 100 or more employees have to fully vaccinate their workforce or test unvaccinated employees for COVID on a weekly basis. The Department of Health and Human Services also requires health-care facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid to make sure all their employees get shots. Despite threats of mass resignations in response to these mandates, the reality hasnt matched the headlines. In fact, vaccination requirements could result in more hirings, rather than more quits, as Americans fearful of infection feel more comfortable returning to fully vaccinated workplaces.

Wagners music, as the saying goes, was better than it sounds. Todays economy is better than it feels. If 2021 was the year of negative shocksDelta, labor shortages, supply-chain madness, and general shopping woes2022 could be the year of pleasant surprises, when the economys statistical recovery becomes a bona fide vibes recovery.

Joe Biden promised normality, Americans got abnormality, and Democrats got punished at the polls for it. The path toward a more successful midterm election for Democrats in 2022 flows through the converse of this strategy. First, make things feel better. Then talk about it.

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Democrats Are Losing the Vibe War - The Atlantic

But Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, was not second-guessing it.

Glenn Youngkin got away with being all things to all people, and we cant let them do that, Mr. Maloney said, adding: The House Republicans have cast their lot with the toxic Trump agenda of lying about the election, of minimizing the pandemic, of ignoring the attack on the Capitol.

While more unexpected, the Democratic defeats on Tuesday were not as overwhelming as the last time the party controlled the presidency and Congress, in 2009, when Republicans won the Virginia governorship by 17 percentage points and the New Jersey governorship as well. Deepening polarization has entrenched Democrats in some suburban jurisdictions, such as Virginias Fairfax County, which Mr. McAuliffe carried by 30 percentage points in his comeback bid.

These suburban voters, who remain disdainful of Mr. Trump, may not be reachable for Republicans next year. There are, however, two sides to the countrys growing polarization, and the sweeping losses that Democrats suffered in rural Virginia and in New Jersey demonstrated that they were at grave risk of losing even more states and districts next year with sparse populations.

What gives Democrats some optimism is the idea that, while their candidates this year were running against an unsightly backdrop of intraparty legislative wrangling, there will be major accomplishments to trumpet next year.

When were talking process, were losing, but once the process is done, were going to have lots to say about what were doing for real people, John Anzalone, Mr. Bidens pollster, said.

Of course, by the 2010 midterms, Democrats had the opportunity to promote the Affordable Care Act and still suffered sweeping losses in part because they were not seen as sufficiently focused on reviving the post-recession economy.

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Reeling From Surprise Losses, Democrats Sound the Alarm for 2022 - The New York Times

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Last November, the often-fractious Democrats of New York papered over their sharp differences to celebrate Donald Trumps defeat, a development that briefly united the partys relatively moderate leader, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, with the states ascendant left wing.

One year later, New York Democrats are in a vastly different place. Mr. Cuomo has resigned in disgrace and faces the prospect of a criminal trial. President Biden is in the White House, and the center-left politics that propelled his campaign have been embraced by the new governor, Kathy Hochul, and the likely next mayor of New York City, Eric Adams.

And all across the state, a series of Election Day contests are setting up fresh tests and tensions over the direction and identity of the Democratic Party.

In New York City, Mr. Adams, who is heavily favored to win Tuesdays election, has already declared himself the face of the Democratic Party, and many national Democrats have elevated him.

Mr. Adams, a former police captain who fought for reforms from within the system, has described himself as both a pragmatic moderate and the original progressive. But he is also a sharp critic of the defund the police movement; he makes explicit overtures to the big-business community; and he defeated several more liberal rivals in the primary.

A very different face of the Democratic Party may be emerging in Buffalo: India B. Walton, a democratic socialist, who defeated the incumbent Democratic mayor, Byron W. Brown, in the June primary. Mr. Brown, a former state Democratic Party chairman, is now running as a write-in candidate in a closely watched rematch that has become a proxy battle between left-wing leaders and more moderate Democrats.

Then there are the Democrats, from Long Island district attorney candidates to the occasional New York City Council hopeful, who face serious opponents in races that will offer early tests of Republican Party energy in the Biden era.

After an extraordinary summer of political upheaval, power dynamics are now being renegotiated at every level of government, shaped by matters of race, age, ideology and region. The influx of new leadership has implications for issues of public safety and public health, for debates over education and economic development and for national questions surrounding the direction of the party.

Theres a battle of narratives in New York, said State Senator Jabari Brisport, a Brooklyn socialist. You do have Eric Adams getting elected in New York City, then you have a socialist like India Walton getting elected in Buffalo, right in Gov. Hochuls backyard. New York is in the midst of finding itself.

The most consequential New York election this year is the race for mayor of the nations largest city, which will be decided on Tuesday as Mr. Adams competes against Curtis Sliwa, the Republican founder of the Guardian Angels.

Backlash to New York Citys vaccine mandates in more conservative corners of the city, and the prospect of a relatively low-turnout election, inject a measure of unpredictability into the final hours of the race and could affect the result margin, some Democrats warn but in a city where Republicans are vastly outnumbered, Mr. Sliwa is considered a long shot.

The more revealing contest regarding the direction of the Democratic Party is taking place about 300 miles away in Buffalo.

That mayoral race is unfolding in raw and divisive terms: Ms. Walton has referred to Mr. Brown as a Trump puppet who has become complacent about Buffalo, while his campaign questions her character and paints her sweeping proposals as too risky for the city, a message she has cast as fearmongering.

In a sign of just how high tensions are running, Jay Jacobs, the state party chairman, sparked outrage when he used a hypothetical candidacy of the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke to argue that the party was not obligated to support every nominee, including Ms. Walton. He later said he should have used a different example and for that, I apologize, but stood by his decision not to endorse her.

The contest has drawn attention from statewide and national figures as well as a number of Democrats considering runs for higher office.

Jumaane D. Williams, the New York City public advocate who formed an exploratory committee for governor, has campaigned for Ms. Walton and urged other Democrats to endorse her, as New Yorks U.S. senators have, even as other party leaders have stayed out.

What to Know About the 2021 New York Election

Ms. Walton is one of many local candidates who amplified ideas popular with the partys left on issues from reallocating funds from the police budget to how best to protect tenants and won primaries this summer, continuing a trend that began three years ago with the primary victory of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another Walton endorser.

Theres a lot of appetite for these kinds of policies, Mr. Williams said.

The Democratic Party has unquestionably moved to the left in recent years on issues like criminal justice reform and combating climate change and Mr. Williams argued that internal divisions are often more a matter of tactics than of substance.

The policies that are being pushed are not really whats at issue, he said. Whats at issue sometimes is how far into political risk, how far past the establishment leaders, how far past, when the executive or leader of the House calls and says no, how far would you push past?

But plainly, there are policy differences among Democrats, too, and in New York those distinctions are especially vivid around matters of public safety.

Do you want to defund the police? demanded Representative Thomas Suozzi of Long Island, when he campaigned for Mr. Brown in Buffalo.

No! the crowd replied.

Do you want to let criminals out of jail no matter what they did? he continued, as the crowd shouted their objection.

We will lose if we let them win, he said, referencing those who he declared were seeking to push Democrats in an extreme direction. We will lose the American people, we will lose New Yorkers, we will lose Buffalonians if we adopt that type of extremist agenda.

Jesse Myerson, a spokesman for Ms. Walton, rejected the notion that her ideas were extremist, while suggesting that left-wing contenders have been especially successful at energizing voters.

Democratic panic is rising. Less than a year after taking power in Washington, the party faces a grim immediate futureas it struggles to energize voters and continues to lose messaging wars to Republicans.

The politicians who are driving new voter registration, the ones driving small-dollar donations, the ones driving more volunteers to knock doors and make calls, youll find that they are Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Cori Bush, he said. And other politicians whose vision closely aligns with India Waltons, and not the pro-corporate Democrats.

But Mr. Suozzi, a potential candidate for governor next year, argued in an interview that if Ms. Walton wins, thats a national story that is bad for Democrats.

Major 2022 races in New York will also help shape the narrative about the direction of the party. Ms. Hochul, who succeeded Mr. Cuomo after his resignation this summer, is running for a full term. Letitia James, the state attorney general who has closer ties to New Yorks institutional left, is challenging her, and others including Bill de Blasio, the New York City mayor, may jump in, too. And a young, diverse class of incoming New York City Council members is preparing to reshape City Hall, with machinations around the council speakers race in full bloom.

But one of the biggest national stories coming out of New York has involved Mr. Adams, who would be the citys second Black mayor. He won the primary on the strength of support from working- and middle-class voters of color and declared that America does not want fancy candidates, despite his own close ties to major donors.

Some national Democrats have embraced him, believing that he offers a template for how to promote both police reform and public safety though whether that lasts will hinge on how Mr. Adams, who has faced scrutiny over issues of transparency, finances and past inflammatory remarks, governs if he wins.

Still, Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, who chairs the House Democratic campaign arm, has described Mr. Adams as a rock on which I can build a church.

What Eric Adamss victory showed me is that the Democratic Party, at its best, is a diverse blue-collar coalition that doesnt fall victim to elite or academic notions about what makes sense in the real world, he said.

Mr. Adams and Ms. Hochul a former Buffalo-area congresswoman have both likened themselves to Mr. Biden.

The comparison, allies say, is as much about tone, faith in relationship-building and a sense of pragmatism as it is about a particular policy agenda.

But if the two Democrats presumed to be the most powerful leaders in New York are considered relative moderates, that hardly reflects the entirety of New Yorks incoming leadership.

In New York City, there are signs that the likely next comptroller, some presumptive City Council members, the public advocate and possibly the likely new Manhattan district attorney will be to the left of Mr. Adams on key issues, setting up potential battles over how to create a more equitable education system, the power of the real estate industry and big business, and the role of the police in promoting public safety.

Ms. Hochul, for her part, came to office with a reputation as a centrist, but she has pursued a number of policies that have pleased left-wing lawmakers.

Rana Abdelhamid, who is challenging Representative Carolyn Maloney, noted that Ms. Hochul has embraced proposals like extending the eviction moratorium a sign, Ms. Abdelhamid suggested, of the power of the left: Because of this progressive movement and because of the organizing and because of progressive electeds really gaining momentum.

The race for governor, already underway, will accelerate as soon as Wednesday as the political class heads to a conclave in Puerto Rico. That election will become the next major battle over the Democratic direction, in a midterm year that is historically difficult for the presidents party. But many political leaders say the question is emphatically not whether New York remains a Democratic stronghold it is about what kind of Democrats win.

Its going to be either blue or dark blue, said former Representative Steve Israel of New York. If you have more Hochuls and Adamses being elected, its a lighter shade of blue; if progressives and The Squad surge across the state, obviously its a deeper blue. The fact is, it remains blue.

Julianne McShane and Arielle Dollinger contributed reporting.

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How New York Elections Will Shape the Future of the Democratic Party - The New York Times

The results also put the Donald Trump phenomenon in a new perspective. Trump was necessary to smash the old G.O.P. and to turn the party into a vanguard of anti-elite resistance. But by 2020, with his moral degradation and all the rest, he was also holding back Republicans. If Republicans can find candidates who oppose the blue oligarchy but without too much Trumpian baggage, they can win over some former Biden voters in places like Virginia and New Jersey.

Democrats would be wise to accept the fact that they have immense social and cultural power, and accept the responsibilities that entails by adopting what Id call a Whole Nation Progressivism.

America is ferociously divided on economic, regional, racial and creedal lines. The job of leaders is to stand above these divides and seek to heal them. The job of leaders is not to impose their values on everyone else; it is to defend a pluralistic order in which different communities can work out their own values.

From F.D.R. and L.B.J. on down, Democrats have been good at healing economic divides. The watered-down spending bill struggling its way through Congress would be an important step to redistribute resources to people and places that have been left behind.

But Democrats are not good at thinking about culture, even though cultural issues drive our politics. You cant win a culture war by raising the minimum wage. In fact, if politics are going to be all culture war as Republicans have tried to make them I suspect Democrats cant win it at all.

Democrats need a positive moral vision that would start by rejecting the idea that we are locked into incessant conflict along class, cultural, racial and ideological lines. It would reject all the appurtenances of the culture warrior pose the us/them thinking, exaggerating the malevolence of the other half of the country, relying on crude essentialist stereotypes to categorize yourself and others.

It would instead offer a vision of unity, unity, unity. That unity is based on a recognition of the complex humanity of each person that each person is in the act of creating a meaningful life. It would reject racism, the ultimate dehumanizing force, but also reject any act that seeks to control the marketplace of ideas or intimidate those with opposing views. It would reject ideas and movements that seek to reduce complex humans to their group identities. It would stand for racial, economic and ideological integration, and against separatism, criticizing, for example, the way conservatives are often shut out from elite cultural institutions.

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Opinion | Democrats Need to Confront Their Privilege - The New York Times

Activists have held rallies near the White House to put pressure on President Biden to do more to protect voting rights. Alex Wong/Getty Images hide caption

Activists have held rallies near the White House to put pressure on President Biden to do more to protect voting rights.

As voters trickled into a community center to cast ballots near West Manor Park in Atlanta, singer Gabe Lustman performed as a part of a "Party at the Polls."

Lustman, dressed in a royal purple shirt, played as a DJ pumped music through two portable speakers.

"We're just getting started," he said. "Shout out to the New Georgia Project."

The New Georgia Project, an organization aimed at registering and mobilizing people of color and young people, holds events like this one Tuesday to keep voters' spirits high while they wait to cast a ballot.

But the organization has also marshalled its voter protection program in a vigorous push against Georgia's controversial voting law. That law is one of a wave of new measures restricting ballot access in Republican-led states.

Organizers in Georgia and across the country say they're doing all they can to fight back against these laws and turn out voters. But they also say what they haven't gotten at least not yet is much help from Washington, D.C.

"What we need is for people to do their jobs," Ns Ufot, CEO of the New Georgia Project, said in an interview from her Atlanta office. "I'm doing mine."

With Democrats' slim majority in Congress, they've been unable to pass federal legislation to push back against restrictive voting laws at the state level. Republicans say the laws are meant to ensure "election integrity," but Democrats and activists say they intentionally make it harder for some people, particularly people of color, to vote.

In Georgia, the new law, SB 202, restricts ballot access in a number of ways, including adding more hurdles for absentee voting. Among its provisions, it also limits who can pass out food and water to voters waiting in line, and where that can occur.

Ufot says Republicans seem to have a clear, unified strategy to sharply limit ballot access. Democrats, she countered, are not as unified around the cause of voting rights.

"Why do we not have that clarity and that consensus and that urgency among Democrats?" she asked. "That urgency, that clarity exists among activists. And so we are looking forward to having our Democratic leaders join us."

Vice President Harris speaks to reporters after Republican senators voted to block debate on another major voting rights bill pushed by congressional Democrats. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images hide caption

Vice President Harris speaks to reporters after Republican senators voted to block debate on another major voting rights bill pushed by congressional Democrats.

President Biden has described these GOP state laws as a once-in-a-lifetime assault on the right to vote.

And Vice President Harris, who is spearheading the White House's efforts on the issue an assignment she personally requested told civil rights activists this week that the nation is at an "alarming" and "consequential" moment.

"This is a moment for action," Harris said Monday in a speech to the National Action Network. "And whether we take an oath of office or we take to the streets, we all have an important role to play. "

Harris, who has been convening regular discussions on the issue, urged civil rights activists to keep fighting.

"Yeah, the time is to fight, we've taken enough defensive blows," the group's leader, the Rev. Al Sharpton, said Wednesday after Senate Republicans again blocked debate on a piece of major voting rights legislation. This time, it was the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which is named for the late Georgia Congressman John Lewis, who died last year.

"Today Black America was stabbed in the back. The president needs to use his bully pulpit and say that this is intolerable," Sharpton said.

Sharpton is among those calling for Democrats to change Senate filibuster rules to allow voting rights bills to pass with just their votes. But it's unclear whether Democrats have a path to do that, with not even all of their members on board.

For his part, Biden has said he would be open to a move to "fundamentally alter" the filibuster, but not until his spending bills passed in Congress.

The White House says the administration is pursuing a multipronged approach to protecting voting rights that includes calling on Congress to pass legislation and executive actions, but also organizing and other tools.

The White House points to the executive order that Biden signed in March to promote voting rights. And Harris announced a $25 million expansion of the Democratic National Committee's "I Will Vote" program, which focuses on voter protection, education and registration.

DNC Chair Jaime Harrison described this as a "break the glass" moment in which the party must be more "proactive" about protecting the right to vote.

He pointed to one way Democrats are using technology to combat what they label voter suppression efforts.

"Somebody could have voted in the last few elections, but because they miss one election, they get a postcard sent in by the Republican Election Commission in some state. and if they don't turn that postcard in, then they are purged from the voter rolls," Harrison said by way of example.

"We're able to get their contact information to have our canvassers and our organizers get in contact with them," he continued. "We are even able to match them up to social media data so that we can get in contact with them and say, 'Hey, listen, you have just been purged from the Georgia voter rolls. Do you want to register to vote again?' "

But when it comes to federal legislation, Harrison also said he believes Congress must move as quickly as possible.

"It's important that we accelerate the pace here in order to really have an impact, particularly on the 2022 election cycle, to make sure that not one American is prohibited from exercising the right to vote," he said.

The Justice Department has also doubled its voting rights enforcement staff, and sued Georgia and, just Thursday, Texas over voting restrictions.

Frustration among activists isn't limited to states where ballot access has been restricted. There are also fears of what could come in the future.

In Virginia, ballot access has been expanded under Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam. But some activists worry that the state could veer back to its long-held restrictions on voting rights.

"The way that I voted when I first moved here is not the same way that I can vote now. It is so much easier. There is a 45-day early voting period. People no longer need their photo ID to vote," said Maya Castillo, the political director of New Virginia Majority. "I don't want to lose all that."

Castillo was helping to organize a group of canvassers in her Fairfax, Va., neighborhood a little more than a week before Republican Glenn Youngkin won that state's governor's race, though the party does not control the state General Assembly.

Now, many activists warn that if Democrats in Washington can't do more to protect the right to vote, losses could be on the horizon in 2022 and beyond.

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Voting rights activists say Democrats in Washington need to do their job - NPR