#Virginia goes right every time DC goes too far left

The unexpectedly tight race for governor of Virginia between Democratic grandee Terry McAuliffe and newcomer Republican Glenn Youngkin illustrates a political epicycle going back almost 30 years: A Democrat runs for president as a moderate, but then lurches sharply to the left immediately upon taking office, producing a backlash among swing voters that finds its initial expression in the off-year elections in Virginia and New Jersey but prefiguring deep trouble ahead for Democrats.

In 1993 it was Bill Clinton, who ran for office as a “new kind of Democrat,” promising to “end welfare as we know it” and pledging not to raise taxes on the middle class. Instead Clinton moved left, dumping his welfare reform promise in favor of an unpopular nationalized health care scheme that a Democratic Congress never even put to a vote, raising taxes on the middle class, and promoting the boutique liberal cause of gays in the military (though ultimately settling for the muddle of “don’t ask, don’t tell”).

Republicans swept the governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey in 1993 and made large gains in both state legislatures, previewing the GOP landslides in the House and Senate in 1994, when Republicans gained 54 seats in the House for their first House majority in 40 years, and eight seats in the Senate that also gave the GOP a majority. Clinton immediately tacked to the center and remained there for the rest of his presidency.

This pattern repeated in 2009, after Barack Obama won the presidency on a vague platform of “hope and change” that emphasized a unifying theme that “there are no red states or blue states — only the United States.” But Obama governed immediately as a solid blue-stater, pushing through a $1 trillion “stimulus” spending bill that was mostly a payoff to Democratic constituencies, along with his unpopular “Affordable Care Act.”

Republicans once again recaptured the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey in 2009, with Chris Christie winning the largest margin for a Republican challenger since 1969 in knocking off the incumbent Democrat, Jon Corzine. It was a harbinger for the 2010 midterm, where Democrats suffered their biggest defeat in the House in 72 years, losing 63 seats and control of the House, while limiting their loss in the Senate to “only” seven seats partially because of some dreadful Republican candidates in several winnable states.

To be sure, Republicans have often fared badly in Virginia and New Jersey when a Republican is in the White House, but seldom with the magnitude or intensity of the vote shift seen when a Democrat is in the White House. The shift is apparent again this year. Virginia has been trending solidly blue for more than a decade, with Biden winning the state by nearly 10 points last year. Yet most polls put the governor’s race as a tie or Youngkin ahead.

And don’t overlook New Jersey. While media attention has been focused on Virginia partly because it is in the shadow of the DC-centric media, polls show a tight, single-digit margin between incumbent Democrat Phil Murphy and unknown Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli.

It’s a sure sign Democrats know they are in trouble when they go to extreme lengths to change the subject. In a campaign appearance for McAuliffe last week, President Obama attacked “phony Republican culture war issues,” especially about education, even though polls show education is a top priority issue for Virginia voters. (By the way, how come no campaign appearance from the Democrats with whom McAuliffe was most closely associated in his rise in politics — Bill and Hillary Clinton?)

McAuliffe’s slip in his debate with Youngkin — ”I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach” — is revealing beyond the issue of education: It displays the innate contempt progressives have for self-government, especially local self-government. There is no more pure example of small-d democracy in America than school boards, but today’s progressives are heedless in their drive to impose their social dogmas.

Drawing back from Virginia, recent polls show Democrats losing support across the board, especially with independent voters. The latest NBC poll finds voters giving Republicans margins from 13 to 27 points over Democrats on issues ranging from “getting things done” (13 point GOP margin) to border security (27 points).

There are some perceptive progressive thinkers who have been trying to warn Democrats that they have been lurching too far left especially on social issues, such as Ruy Teixeira of the Center for American Progress and Democratic data analyst David Shor. But progressive Democrats don’t want to listen.

Democrats coalesced behind good ol’ Joe Biden last year when it looked like the unelectable Bernie Sanders might run away with the nomination. But the Biden administration is governing as though a Sanders-AOC ticket won, somehow thinking voters wouldn’t notice. Republicans still face one liability in Virginia and elsewhere, and it can be called “the Trump hangover.”

If voters focus on issues, Youngkin will win, and a Ciattarelli upset in New Jersey can’t be ruled out. If enough voters have Trump in their head, McAuliffe may squeak by, and Washington Democrats will resume their progressive parade. Until November of next year, when they will be crushed.

Steven F. Hayward is a resident scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley and author of seven books. He writes daily at powerlineblog.com