By Charles C. W. Cooke
Wednesday, November 03, 2021
The Republican Party — which seemed to all observers
to be spitting up blood in the state of Virginia — has just won every statewide
race and has tied the House of Delegates, taking control of the chamber away
from the Democrats. The sweep comes exactly a year after the Democrat, Joe
Biden, won the presidential race there by ten points. In New Jersey, meanwhile,
a gubernatorial contest that was supposed to come to a dull, foregone
conclusion has gone right down to the wire.
These developments raise some important questions. Such
as: Why on earth would Senators Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema,
Maggie Hassan, and Catherine Cortez Masto continue to acquiesce with their
party’s extraordinarily foolish attempt to shove a set of FDR-sized spending
programs through a 50–50 Senate? Such as: Why on earth would a
swathe of moderate House Democrats agree to go along with it, when, by all
appearances, they are already going to have their work cut out for them next
year? Such as: What, exactly, does the Democratic Party think it is playing at?
As is appropriate, the Virginia gubernatorial election
was primarily about local issues — in particular, education. But this did not
happen in a vacuum. According to the exit polls, President Biden’s job approval in the state
is 45–54; 52 percent of Virginia voters consider the Democratic Party to be
“too liberal,” as opposed to 13 percent who consider it “not liberal enough”;
and 77 percent described themselves as either “conservative” (37 percent) or
moderate (40 percent), compared with 23 percent who described themselves as
“liberal.” This, evidently, is not an electorate that spends its days
retweeting Bernie Sanders.
And if Virginia’s electorate isn’t, then Arizona’s, West Virginia’s,
Nevada’s, and New Hampshire’s sure as hell aren’t. As ABC reported over the weekend, Americans just aren’t that
into the idea of spending trillions upon trillions of dollars in order to
satisfy Representative Jayapal. Overall, only 25 percent of Americans think the
gargantuan packages would help them, with only 47 percent of Democrats agreeing.
Asked whether the bill would help the economy, just 29 percent of independents
said that it would. In a separate poll, Gallup picked up this trend, noting that, 52 to 43 percent,
Americans believe that “the government is doing too many things that should be
left to individuals and businesses.”
Joe Manchin, without whose vote the most ambitious
elements of the Democrats’ agenda cannot pass, says that he remains opposed to
“additional handouts or transfer payments,” new programs that “will never go
away,” and “shell games” — which, in practice, means that he should be
against pretty much everything that is on offer. In a statement recently,
Manchin proposed that “great nations throughout history have been weakened by
careless spending,” confirmed that he was aware of “the brutal fiscal reality
our nation faces,” and asked, “How much is enough?” The result from Virginia
should present him with his answer.
And if, for some reason it does not, it should inspire the
mother of all revolts in the House. It is comprehensible that Nancy
Pelosi would wish to end her career by shoveling as much money out of the door
as is possible. But it is not at all clear why scores of House Democrats — many
of whom prevailed in 2020 in precisely the sort of districts that Glenn
Youngkin won today — would elect to follow her off the cliff. It cannot be
repeated enough that there is no good reason for the United States, which
remains intractably mired in debt, to follow up an unexpected $6 trillion,
COVID-19-inspired spending spree with another unsolicited feast that, per White
House chief of staff Ron Klain, is “twice as big, in real dollars, as the New
Deal was.”
Before tonight, the Democrats’ big plans were already
faltering. Tonight, per Ryan Matsumoto of Inside Elections,
Virginia “swung 10-15 points to the right since last November” — a “type of
swing” that “would be devastating for them in the House and Senate in 2022.” If
that’s not enough to kill the bill, well, then the party really is lost to the
swamps.
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