Politics Archives

Friday

November 5, 2021

Josh Mandel, true conservative?

A veteran, some career politicians, and a venture capitalist-turned-author meet on a debate stage. No, this isn’t the start to a joke. These are the Republican candidates vying to replace Ohio’s moderate GOP senator, Rob Portman, who announced his retirement in January. Since then, a flurry of contenders have thrown their hats into the ring. Josh Mandel is the former treasurer of Ohio who's run a mostly spectacle-laden campaign, sucking up to Trump and lighting masks on fire. J.D. Vance is the author of Hillbilly Elegy and is popular among nationalist and postliberal thinkers in Washington and on Twitter. The race so far has been a circus. Yet the differences between the two headliners couldn't be more stark.

Melissa Chen

The Trump talisman doesn’t work anymore

Glenn Youngkin’s victory over Terry McAuliffe is a loud wake-up call for the Democrats, who attempted to fuse the GOP candidate for Virginia governor to Donald Trump’s hip and failed miserably. Joe Biden won the commonwealth by ten points a year ago — yet Youngkin beat his Democratic opponent by two points. A slew of other Republican victories in key states have led to frantic analyses on cable news and soul-searching postmortems about why the Democrats proved so unpopular. Sure, anti-incumbent sentiment and Biden’s historic disapproval ratings haven’t helped, but one clear takeaway has emerged: the Trump boogeyman no longer works.

Thursday

November 4, 2021

Matt Purple

I’m a racist, you’re a racist, we are racists all

What news network did you watch on election night? Thankfully we all had plenty of options. There was CNN, where John King's magic wall grows ever more granular: "we're moving the Kelleher household into the leans-Republican column, Wolf, though their dog remains undecided. Now next door to the Smiths..." There was Fox News, where loud people shout at each other until Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum finally pull over the car and tell everyone to knock it off. And then there was MSNBC. Oh, Lord, was there MSNBC. There did we find Nicolle Wallace, one of the network's fastidiously objective anchors, declaring that Virginia governor-elect Glenn Youngkin "worshipped at the altar of Donald Trump.

Roger Kimball

Actually Youngkin’s victory shows Trump is still strong

Eventually, November 2 will be seen as a key date in American history. I am not thinking of November 2, 2021, however, the day of Glenn Youngkin’s stunning, delicious, gratifying victory in the Virginia gubernatorial race. Important though Youngkin’s victory was and is, it was prepared for and defined by a preceding triumph. The date I am thinking of is November 2, 2020. That was the date on which Donald Trump signed the executive order establishing the 1776 Commission, the purpose of which was to “encourage our educators to teach our children about the miracle of American history and make plans to honor the 250th anniversary of our founding.” 1776, mind you, not 1619.

Stephen L. Miller

Manchin and Sinema: Cassandras of the Senate

Tuesday was a very bad night for the Democratic Party. They lost the Virginia governorship and House of Delegates, almost lost the New Jersey governorship, and lost several local school board seats in crucial electoral states such as Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Colorado. Blue states that kept schools closed or mostly shuttered for the duration of the pandemic now play host to legions of angry, fed-up parents. Nationally, Joe Biden’s approval ratings are crashing harder than Hunter Biden after a stint at the Chateau Marmont, and his domestic agenda is stalled in Congress, thanks to two Democratic senators who clearly saw the writing on the wall and the red wave coming: Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

Cockburn

No sex, please, we’re national conservatives

Orlando, Florida Cockburn just got back from the second annual National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Florida. The ballroom of the Orlando Hilton can hold more than a thousand people. A little snowbird tells Cockburn that Yoram Hazony, the event's organizer, was in panic mode in the days before the summit. Not enough people had paid for the $315 ticket or $2,500 VIP pass. It seems even DC politicos had better things to do on Halloween than listen to Josh Hawley scream about porn. Cockburn hears that every right-wing organization in attendance received emails from Hazony begging them to help ship out more people. In the end, the official turnout was 700 attendees — though a hundred of them were the ladies and gentlemen of the press, and most of them were on a freebie.

John Fund

Let’s hear it for Winsome Sears

Of all the improbable outcomes in this week's elections, a couple struck me as worthy of a Hollywood movie script. Ed Durr, the truck driver who toppled the New Jersey State Senate president after spending just $153 was one. But an even more inspirational, and almost as implausible, script could be fashioned from the story of Winsome Earle Sears, a 57-year-old Virginia mother of three, who by being elected Virginia’s lieutenant governor became the first female minority and naturalized citizen ever elected statewide. CNN and MSNBC ignored her memorable Election Night victory statement, but Fox didn't: https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1455761251737509898 Her "Winsome vs Goliath" story will no doubt now make her a fixture on the lecture circuit.

Cockburn

Maryland gubernatorial candidates push child vax mandates

There were plenty of lessons for Democrats to learn from the shock victory of Republican Glenn Youngkin in Tuesday night's gubernatorial election in Virginia. Perhaps the most important is that Terry McAuliffe should have focused more on local issues instead of nationalizing the race. Youngkin was able to tap into the ire of local parents protesting their school boards on a litany issues, including critical race theory and transgender bathroom policies. An often overlooked point in debates about critical race theory (and whether or not it is being taught in Virginia schools) is that the parent movement started in response to pandemic-related school closures and the shifting standards of teacher's unions and school boards for reopening.

Oliver Wiseman

Democrats shed more Latino voters

Biden’s normalcy problem The problem with promising a return to normalcy is that you can only do it once. That’s one of the lessons from the Virginia governor’s race, where Terry McAuliffe’s emphasis on the dangers of Donald Trump fell flat. In other words, what worked in 2020 hasn’t worked in 2021 and looks unlikely to work in 2022. That’s all true, but it’s also worth remembering that the strategy pursued by McAuliffe didn’t even work especially well last year. Yes, Joe Biden capitalized on dislike of the former president. Trump fatigue delivered Democrats the White House. But the strategy didn’t work further down the ballot. Biden outperformed other Democratic candidates on the ballot. The party lost seats in the House.

Wednesday

November 3, 2021

Bethany Mandel

Just say no to vaccine mandates for kids

I live in Montgomery County, Maryland. It’s one of those places where you see lawn signs proclaiming “In this house, we believe in science.” Naturally, our Democratic leaders have consistently ignored science over the last year, at least when it comes to COVID mitigation. Here in Montgomery County, our return to normalcy is currently being held hostage in exchange for near-universal vaccination of our least at-risk residents. If you believe that local governments are in a hurry to surrender “emergency” powers, I have a bridge over the Potomac to sell you. Maryland’s governor, Larry Hogan, has dropped our indoor mask mandate. But we still have a locally mandated one in place. Our county leaders reckon that they know better.

Kevin Mooney

New Jersey’s nothingburger governor underperforms

By removing Donald Trump from social media and New York governor Andrew Cuomo from office, progressives unwittingly gave an opening to a largely unheralded candidate in New Jersey. That’s why the newspaper headlines on the Wednesday morning after the election all declared the governor’s race in the Garden State “too close to call,” which in itself is a victory for beleaguered Republicans from the northeast. And even if Democratic governor Phil Murphy does pull it off, as now looks likely, this election portends serious headaches for Democrats.

Oliver Wiseman

New York’s next party animal mayor

The first post-Trump Republican When Glenn Youngkin clinched the Republican primary in Virginia’s gubernatorial race, he was a blast from the past: a throwback to the sort of establishment GOP types that predominated before 2016. By defeating Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe and painting the state red, he has offered a vision of the future, a blueprint for GOP success in the Biden era. It also makes him the first post-Trump Republican. Contrary to the core message of the McAuliffe campaign, Youngkin is not “Trumpkin.” And Virginia’s voters could see that for themselves. The governor-elect’s early-hours victory speech last night was a far cry from the tenor of the MAGA Republicans who have set the running in recent years. But nor was he anti-Trump.

Matt Purple

The McAuliffe clown car crashes

Of all the clowns to come prancing out of the Terry McAuliffe campaign car in recent weeks, it was the Muppets that finally got me. McAuliffe recently ran a get-out-the-vote commercial that featured several Sesame Street-style puppets singing about how much they love the people in their neighborhood. "Except for Larry who doesn't vote," they finish, upon which some poor schlub comes bumbling in and they all stare at him judgmentally. Next up: Snuffleupagus on why he's passionately in favor of rolling back voter ID laws. Or something. The ad technically wasn't cooked up by Team McAuliffe; it appears to have been created in 2018 by the left-leaning PAC Priorities USA. But the fact that they decided to dust it off despite it being so creepy and coercive speaks volumes.

Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin (Getty Images)

Amber Duke

Youngkin wins Virginia governorship in wild upset

Republican Glenn Youngkin won the Virginia governor's race against Democrat Terry McAuliffe on Tuesday night, shattering Democratic hopes of turning the commonwealth permanently blue. CNN and the New York Times projected Youngkin would win Virginia just after 12:30 am on Wednesday. The Times had Youngkin leading with 50.9 percent of the vote to McAuliffe's 48.4 percent with more than 95 percent of the total votes tallied. McAuliffe won Loudoun County by 10.5 percentage points, indicating that he would not rake in the massive votes he needed in the highly populated blue and blue-leaning counties. Biden, comparatively, won Loudoun County by 25 points during the 2020 election.

Tuesday

November 2, 2021

Oliver Wiseman

The decline and fall of the NYC GOP

The decline and fall of the New York City GOP It’s a good idea to steer clear of predictions, especially on Election Day. But I’m going to throw caution to the wind and make a bold call: the Democratic candidate will win New York’s mayoral contest. OK, that's not too brave a prediction. When the votes are counted, Eric Adams, the ex-cop who clinched the Democratic nomination with a moderate, tough-on-crime, pro-business message, will triumph by a massive margin. Curtis Sliwa seems like a nice enough chap. With his red beret, history of crime-fighting entrepreneurialism and tiny apartment full of cats, he evokes a more colorful, grittier time in his city’s past.

Monday

November 1, 2021

Teresa Mull

‘Let’s go Brandon’ is a rallying cry for freedom

“Let’s go Brandon” started in the most apropos way imaginable: NASCAR driver Brandon Brown was euphorically thanking Larry’s Lemonade and other sponsors for his win at the Talladega Superspeedway when the crowd erupted into a sing-songy “F*ck Joe Biden!” chant (because, why not?). The reporter — either purposefully or by mistake, we don’t know — did what the media does best and warped reality. “You can hear the chants from the crowd — ‘Let’s go Brandon,’” the reporter said. And so launched the meme that sank a thousand bipartisanships. “Let’s go Brandon” is now commonplace code for conservatives everywhere. It’s emblazoned on T-shirts, hats, banners, and billboards, and is plastered all over the internet.

Jacob Heilbrunn

Sleep is Joe Biden’s superpower

As usual, P.G. Wodehouse put it best. “What is it Shakespeare calls sleep, Jeeves?,” Bertie Wooster inquires of his faithful manservant. “Tired Nature’s sweet restorer sir.” "Exactly. Well there you are, then,” Bertie complacently concurs. Perhaps it was this exchange that President Biden was pondering during the opening speeches at the COP26 when he apparently dozed off. A variety of interpretations of Biden’s behavior are possible. A charitable one is that he was behaving like any rational human being listening to a bunch of self-important gasbags would and simply tuned out. Another one, assiduously touted by his detractors, is that the old duffer simply can’t hack it any longer. Take him out in public for a few hours and it isn’t sleepy but somnolent Joe.

Amber Duke

The Youngkin blueprint

As much as former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe would like voters to believe it, Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin is not Donald Trump. Yet Youngkin has inspired the same level of desperation and hysteria as the former president from his opponents and the media. The Lincoln Project celebrated Halloween a few days early this year by sending young Democratic activists to a Glenn Youngkin rally dressed as white nationalists. They came clad in the Charlottesville special: white button downs, khaki pants, camo hats and carrying tiki torches. Images of the trick initially spread on social media with the allegation that the individuals were Youngkin supporters.

Oliver Wiseman

The hidden cost of Biden’s border complacency

The hidden cost of Biden’s border complacency Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. That phrase, a truism of negotiations which became a cliché in Britain politics during the UK-EU wrangling over Brexit, should be borne in mind by Democrats confident that Build Back Better is a done deal. Yes, Biden’s flagship legislation will almost certainly pass, but many details remain unresolved. And the tight legislative arithmetic means there is plenty of scope for last-minute trouble. Politically inconvenient turbulence lies ahead for Democrats. Perhaps the most flammable issue still under discussion is immigration.

Peter Wood

Michelle Goldberg and the art of the Big Lie

Lies come in all shapes and sizes, colors, odors, textures and tastes. Some are only little white lies, but more often the accompanying adjective suggests something unpleasant. Damnable lies used to be the most condemned, but today the foulest of all perfidious, incarnadine, silken and sulfurous lies are Big Lies. Thus when New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wants to reassure progressive voters that they can ignore the story about a ninth-grade girl who was raped (i.e. forcibly sodomized) in a girl’s restroom in a Loudoun County, Virginia school, she serves up her diversion under the title “The Right’s Big Lie About a Sexual Assault in Virginia.