Let's get a couple of things out of the way up top here. If you voted for Democrat Joe Biden for president in 2020 and then voted for Republican Glenn Youngkin for governor in 2021, you're a fucking idiot who has no core beliefs other than what your social media is shoveling into your stupid face. And you're almost definitely white and you don't mind racism; you just don't like when someone is so open about it, like Donald Trump. Someone should have stepped in and said, "The fuck is wrong with you, Stacy? You don't cast opposing votes a year apart. You just fucking undid part of your first vote. You just fucked us on abortion rights and pandemic response. What the fuck, Stacy?"
Also, don't talk to me about how Terry McAuliffe was a bad candidate. He was a bland, regular middle-of-the-road Democrat, and still tens of thousands of people who had voted Democrat chose the candidate of the party of Trump, of insurrection, of racists, of anti-voting regulations. Or they didn't vote at all. All those Democrats just staying the fuck home, which is almost as vile. The connection to Trump should have been enough. Being Republican should have been enough. It wasn't, which leads us back to the fucking brain damage of the white Virginia voter.
All that said, there are a few lessons Democrats can take from last night's reaming in Virginia and near-reaming in New Jersey.
1. Watching Democrats, who came into office in 2021 filled with bravado about the wide range of shit they were going to get done, bumblefuck around about the reconciliation bill because no one can fucking control Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema had an effect. Joe Biden's approval rating starting to go underwater around the time of two events: the withdrawal from Afghanistan and Manchin's reconciliation fuckery. After voting for the framework for the domestic spending bill on August 11, the Chin of Man quickly started hemming and hawing, joined in it by Sinema, who also had just voted for the framework. Prior to that, Biden and the Democrats were riding high on economic issues. Manchin's newly-found inflation concern gave credence to Republicans' spouting the same ludicrous, overwrought bullshit, and that narrative took over, along with the fecklessness of Democrats who, all of a sudden, couldn't pass anything.
That's not on the progressives, even if many commentators and Democrats want to blame them. That's on the moderates. The progressive shit that's in the reconciliation bill has huge support. You fucking tell suburban moms that there's gonna be universal pre-k and paid family leave, and they're gonna fucking vote for you. Yeah, it was a state race in Virginia, but this shit matters. The identity of the party matters. Being a goddamn winner matters. That gets the base out. Some of that can overcome the stupid. Some of it might even overcome the racism.
2. And that racism is something that can't be ignored. Youngkin based much of his campaign on lies, setting himself up as the great defender of precious white children in the evil public school system. Critical race theory is not being taught in Virginia's schools. And why would it be? It's got nothing to do with what Virginia's education standards are. School districts would have to spend extra money on lessons and materials and training in order to include it. It's just not true.
But that reality doesn't matter. All that mattered is that some white parents think that their white children feel bad after they learn that slavery and Jim Crow and the denial of civil rights for non-whites occurred, all done whites. Most of the examples are anecdotal at best and insidious at worst, coming from Republican activists in on the fucking game. But let's be honest here: "I don't like critical race theory" is just a palatable way to say, "I'm racist" or "I'm afraid of white people losing power." CRT is the new "urban," it's the new "high-crime," and if you can say it's coming to your white neighborhoods, invading and lowering the value of education, then that just fits a fucking pattern, doesn't it. Democrats have to come up with a way to squelch this bullshit. You can't ignore it. You ignore fucked up shit, and it's gonna grow teeth and bite you in the ass. History teaches that every goddamn time. Without a real response, it's gonna be nonstop CRT and cancel culture through 2024.
3. What that means is that Democrats have to come up with a way to counter the weird-ass anti-Democratic media spin, including the antagonism to the Afghanistan withdrawal and the discussion of CRT in schools that leaves out the fact that it's not fucking real. I'll have more to say on that later, but I've been saying for fucking years that Democrats have to own the narrative, not get owned by the GOP's version of it.
4. Local shit matters, too. In New Jersey, the biggest issue was property taxes, not critical race theory.
5. Don't be an asshole. Lots of good outcomes happened, too. Look at the Boston mayoral race. Biden's presidency isn't a failure. Democrats can recover from this. But that's going to take a fuck-ton of work, and it means passing something where Americans can see the benefits.
6. Finally, for fuck's sake, blame Republicans, blame Republicans, blame Republicans for being unwilling to even negotiate about the things that Americans want. It's not just Trump. It's the entire depraved, vile, anti-American party. Fuck them up they way they fuck us up. Don't say that you wish they would work with you. Fucking destroy them. They are murderers. They want the elderly to suffer. They don't give a fuck about child care. They want to cut benefits. They don't care if you can't afford drugs or health care. They want more hurricanes and fires and floods.
This isn't that difficult. Say they're killing Americans and don't back down from that. Stop acting like they can be rehabilitated and start acting like they're the enemies they are.
