News out of Washington today is that Democrats are “close” to a deal on a stripped-down reconciliation spending binge that will be only perhaps $2.2 trillion instead of $3.5 trillion (though both figures are lies, as the real cost will be much higher). The most important aspect of this story, if accurate, is that Democrats hope to be able to close the deal by this weekend, and pass both the reconciliation package and the “bi-partisan” infrastructure bill that the Senate passed back in the paleolithic era.
Democrats think they need to get it done by this weekend because they are in a panic about the Virginia governor’s election now just eight days away. Recent polls show Terry McAwful tied or well within the margin of error with Republican Glenn Youngkin. Virginia has in the last decade or more flipped purple if not totally blue, electing Democrats to statewide and national office by double-digit margins. That the race is this close shows how unpopular Democrats have become.
Recall that back in 1993 and again in 2009 Republicans swept the off-year gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, and if it happens again this year it will demonstrate that, once again, the new Democratic president has lurched too far to the left. (Incidentally, while the Virginia race is getting all the Beltway media attention precisely because it is adjacent to the Beltway, the New Jersey governor’s race, where Democrat Phil Murphy is running for re-election, is within single-digit margins according to most polls, so a GOP victory there is not out of the question. But it is drawing little media attention.) If McAuliffe loses next week, it will be a huge warning shot to Democrats.
It is a sign of Democratic desperation that they had to roll out President Obama over the weekend to campaign for McAuliffe. And to try to deflect from the Democrats’ biggest electoral weakness—their wokeness. That’s why Obama was desperate to change the subject. This fits with the desperation to pass a huge spending bill this week so as to change the headlines. Especially headlines like this that are an in-kind gift to the Youngkin campaign:
Seldom has the Progressive left been more open about their contempt for self-government than McAuliffe’s “parents have no right to tell schools what to teach” or this Post headline. We, “the experts,” know better. Your job as a parent is to shut up. Makes you wonder why we still have elected school boards at all. (Though with the teachers union domination of so many of them, I wonder. . . Mark Twain’s famous line about school boards—”In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made School Boards”—should be amended: “Then He made teachers unions.)
There’s a poll out today showing that Virginia voters with K-12 age children are breaking for Youngkin by about a 60-40 margin.
PAUL ADDS: I’m probably missing something, but I don’t understand how passing massive spending measures is going to help McAuliffe win in Virginia. I’ve no seen evidence that infrastructure spending and the “build back better” package are issues of significance in the Youngkin-McAuliffe race for governor.
I can see why the spending measures might be relevant in next year’s congressional races. But keep in mind that Congress passed a huge stimulus bill early in Barack Obama’s presidency and still suffered what Obama described as a “shellacking” in 2010.
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