Tangle - Why Democrats lost.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, ad-free, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

First time reading? Sign up here. Would you rather listen? You can find our podcast here.

Today's read: 10 minutes.

The results from the Virginia election, why Democrats lost, and some of the other races. Plus, a reader question about how I would vote.

Glenn Youngkin during early voting in Fairfax. Photo: Glenn Youngkin

Quick hits

1. Democrat Phil Murphy looks poised to win New Jersey's race for governor, defeating Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli by less than one percentage point. (The prediction)
2. The CDC recommended the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 yesterday. (The ruling)
3. Minneapolis voters rejected an amendment to replace the police department with a Department of Public Safety by a 12-point margin. (The vote)
4. Ohio Democrat Shontel Brown won the 11th District, filling the seat left open by Marcia Fudge (The results). Republican Mike Carey won the state's 15th District (The results). In Florida, the Democratic primary for an open House seat is headed for a recount. (The count)
5. The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in a major gun rights case that could allow more Americans to carry firearms in public. (The case)

Today's topic.

Virginia. Last night, Glenn Youngkin (R) defeated Terry McAuliffe (D) in Virginia's highly-watched governor's race. With more than 95% of the vote tallied, Youngkin was leading McAuliffe by a full two percentage points. Jason Miyares, the Republican state delegate who ran on a tough-on-crime campaign, won the race for attorney general, becoming Virginia's first Cuban-American AG. Republican Winsome Sears won the race for Lt. Governor, becoming the first Black woman ever elected to a statewide post in Virginia. Sears's campaign focused on lowering taxes, supporting school choice and investing in Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

The sweeping wins for Virginian Republicans — paired with the nail-biter governor’s race in New Jersey — will likely have widespread implications for national politics. Democrats in Congress are already pointing the finger at members of their own party, with moderates warning that Americans are rejecting more progressive policy initiatives and progressives arguing that President Joe Biden needs to pass his infrastructure and reconciliation bills to win over voters. Meanwhile, Republicans are sensing newfound momentum heading into next year’s midterms, with education, Covid-19 regulations and policing as major wedge issues to run on.

“Candidates matter,” Glenn Youngkin's chief strategist Jeff Roe told the Associated Press. “We weren’t defined by Obama, we weren’t defined by Trump, we were defined by Glenn.”President Biden won Virginia in the 2020 presidential race by 10 points, but the Democratic party appears to have suffered a 12-point swing toward Youngkin over recent months. According to AP VoteCast, which polled over 2,600 voters for seven days and until the polls closed in Virginia, 35% of Virginia voters said the economy and jobs were the most important issues facing the state. 17% named Covid-19. 14% chose education.

The arguments.

In the wake of this election, pundits on the right and pundits on the left have already begun chiming in on how and why this election (and New Jersey's race) are playing out the way they are. This is normally where I'd summarize those arguments before giving you "my take," but they are largely the same arguments that were made a few days ago and that we covered in a previous newsletter. Roughly, the arguments amount to the right believing this was about education and disapproval for Biden while the left believes Youngkin is a closet-Trumper and can't fathom McAuliffe losing a state Biden won by 10 points just a year ago.

Rather than re-hashing those arguments, which haven't much changed in the days since (or after the results came in), I'm going to get straight to the point and tell you what I think.

My take.

If you want to see how easily politically-minded people attach themselves to narratives, you need look no further than Virginia.

The results from Virginia have barely marinated for 12 hours and everyone has their own stories to explain them — few of which I find particularly convincing.

Democrats are rightly horrified and now entering the circular firing squad phase of election post-mortems. If it wasn't clear before, it is crystal clear now: Their odds of holding onto majorities in the House are slim to none when they can barely eke out a victory in a New Jersey governor's race and they lose handily in Virginia. Progressives will blame the loss on a lack of action from moderates and the fact they haven’t yet passed any of Biden's agenda, nor did they "get help" to voters in Virginia who needed it. Moderates will blame the loss on progressives who focus too much on race and too little on issues, pushing Biden's presidency further to the left than many expected. Both will have valid points but neither will be totally right.

Meanwhile, Republicans seem hellbent on telling themselves this race was about education and "critical race theory." Trump supporters will say this race is a sign of the strength he'd have in 2024 even though Youngkin practically stiff-armed him to stay away from the race. Others on the right continue to tell stories out of Virginia that are often centered on furious parents at school board meetings purportedly outraged about what their kids are being taught about race in school. This, apparently, is something the right and left punditocracy agree on: White parents in Virginia are mad about what their kids are being taught. The right just thinks that anger is justified while the left believes it’s a product of white fragility (or a faux issue in the first place).

In reality, white parents saying "education" is a top issue are probably just as pissed off that their kids just spent a year at home in broken remote learning environments and are still jumping through Covid-19 protocols in school as they are angry that their kids are being taught race-centric lessons in school.

Here's what I think: These narratives are all tiny threads in a much broader political environment that was both predictable and obvious. Let's start at 30,000 feet and then focus in:

First, modern American elections are about change. In 2008 we got Barack Obama. In 2010 we got a huge backlash to Obama in the midterms. In 2012 we got backlash to the backlash and Obama won again easily. In 2014, we saw Democrats get creamed again. In 2016, after eight years of Obama, we got the ultimate change: Donald J. Trump. In 2018 we had a midterms backlash to Trump. In 2020 we got a second backlash to Trump with Joe Biden. And so in 2021 and 2022... what would you guess is going to happen?

Many Americans live in a perpetual state of grievance and it makes a lot more sense to blame the people running the country than the ones who aren't. In Virginia's case, the change element is on steroids. Historically speaking, the state hadn't re-elected a Democratic governor in 44 years. Last night just kept that streak alive. More specifically to this race and the theme of change, we had a political newcomer (Youngkin) vs. someone who had literally been governor of Virginia before (McAuliffe). It's no wonder one candidate had more baggage with voters than the other.

Second, the president is underwater in the polls. Any time the party in the White House is underwater, that party is going to struggle in statewide elections. Biden has one of the worst approval ratings of any president on record at this point in his presidency. Read that sentence again if you didn't absorb it the first time. The idea that Terry McAuliffe, who spent most of his campaign talking about Donald Trump, was going to waltz to victory in that environment was always bananas — even a few months ago when he had a 10-point lead in the polls.

Speaking of the polls, they are still off. Whatever skewing pollsters are doing to account for conservatives seems to once again be failing. In the final days it looked like the Virginia race came into focus (with RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight averages showing a 1-2% advantage for Youngkin), and the energy of his support on the ground compared to McAuliffe’s was obvious. But what about New Jersey? Phil Murphy was supposed to have a 5-10% gap, but at 9 a.m. this morning the race was separated by 69 votes. He won by a fraction of a percentage point.

Here's another fun fact: Youngkin's chief strategist was right when he said candidates matter. McAuliffe was pathological about making this race a referendum on Trump. Watch the debates, their campaign ads, their stump speeches, their social media accounts, whatever you want, and it was clear Youngkin spent more time talking about Virginia issues than McAuliffe did. You can't convince me that didn't matter. Youngkin focused on the economy, inflation, taxes, and on creating a less demanding environment around how people need to act during a pandemic. Newsflash: That's in line with the mood of the country as a whole. And yes, he took advantage of McAuliffe's mistakes on education, but that wasn't the game plan going in.

Just look at the numbers again: 35% of Virginia voters said the economy and jobs were the most important issues facing the state. 17% named Covid-19. 14% chose education.

All Youngkin had to do was make modest gains in the suburbs, among minority voters and among educated white voters to win. He did that. Meanwhile, Democrats have totally abandoned any attempt to appeal to or win over rural voters (besides expanding broadband internet), meaning they have no way to make up for those suburban and minority losses when they come.

If Democrats try to make the results of this race about white grievance they will lose again and they will keep on losing.

The greatest flaw of identity politics is that it obscures the true depth of candidates in favor of defining them broadly by race, gender or sexual orientation. Winsome Sears did become the first Black woman to win statewide office in Virginia last night. She's also a former U.S. Marine, pro-life, a Jamaican immigrant, and ran her own plumbing and electrical repair business. She ran on de-regulation, school choice and lowering taxes. Try to put that background in a box. If you think she won just because she had an R next to her name, or because white parents are upset about critical race theory, or any other number of these kinds of ideas out there — you're wrong. She won because she was a good candidate with a good story who was telling voters what they wanted to hear at the right time. And because she hitched herself to Youngkin, who had the momentum and the energy in this election.

All this leaves an elephant in the room for Biden and Democrats, who are about to eat each other alive with the blame game. What does this mean for Biden's agenda? More specifically, what does it mean for the more than $3 trillion in plans they are trying to get through Congress? Every Democrat is going to twist themselves into knots to try to explain why this loss means their path forward is the best, but from where I sit Biden still has the steering wheel.

Biden’s approval ratings aren't underwater because he has reshaped the country in his first year. His approval ratings are underwater because the country is basically the same as it was a year ago. Thousands of people are still dying from Covid-19 every day, we’re still masked up, still fighting over vaccines, still fighting over race, still bungling wars abroad, still struggling economically, still woefully divided, still talking about Trump, still seeing violent crime spike, still can't pass an infrastructure bill, still haven't improved the immigration system. We’re still without lower prescription drug prices, paid family leave or wages that outpace inflation, the most popular items on Biden’s agenda that somehow could now be missing from his agenda.

The biggest differences between now and then are that we’re navigating a rise in inflation, worker shortages are worse, we’re being rocked by a global supply chain freakout, and we all have to collectively endure hyperbolic outrage over “Critical Race Theory” punditry.

Biden ran on solving all of these things. That was never going to happen in a year, but Democrats’ best shot at regaining popularity won't be reneging on or abandoning his campaign promises — it'll be to better pursue them. Of course, it’s possible whatever they end up passing doesn’t appease American voters and maybe even makes the situation worse. But whatever they’ve got going on now clearly isn’t the answer — the best they can do is change things. Change the country. Move us from where we were a year ago. There's plenty to love and loathe about the twin infrastructure and reconciliation bills, but if Biden doesn't get them through (and then win the narrative on them) before the 2022 midterms his exceedingly slim odds of keeping power in Congress will drop to zero.

Don't forget.

Your questions, answered.

Q: If you were a Virginia resident, who would you vote for in the governor's race?

— An independent in Virginia

Tangle: At Tangle, we try to do a lot of things to distinguish ourselves from other news sources. One of those things is that we don't endorse candidates. We didn't do it in the 2020 presidential race (which many subscribers on both sides left us over) and we won't in 2022, 2024, or any race after that.

That's not to say I'm trying to obscure my own biases or dodge the question. In fact, one of my favorite things about Tangle is that I get space every day to tell you how I honestly feel. My hope with Tangle is that all my readers find things they agree with, disagree with, are challenged by and want to learn more about in every newsletter.

But I don't think newspapers or news outlets — even editorial boards — should be in the business of endorsing candidates. I think it erodes trust with readers. I also think that, because every politician is flawed, it hands a cudgel to readers who can then use it against me in the future anytime I write something they don't like. It allows them to dismiss my arguments because I once said I'd vote for Terry McAuliffe or Glenn Youngkin, candidates who, for whatever reason, they may loathe.Anyway, that's my stance. I'm not going to jump ship from it here. I think my coverage of the Virginia race and some of the issues at the heart of it give plenty of clues...

Want to ask a question? You can reply to this email and write in (it goes straight to my inbox) or fill out this form.

A story that matters.

Yesterday, one of the under-the-radar election results was a major victory for progressives in Tucson, Arizona, where voters overwhelmingly approved a $15/hour minimum wage hike by 2025. The proposition was approved by a 2-to-1 margin, according to the Associated Press. Some 85,000 residents of Tucson are expected to see a wage hike thanks to the amendment. On a night when progressive initiatives took some major hits, Tucson became one of the latest cities in America to vote for an increase in the minimum wage — a sign of the proposal's enduring popularity almost any time it appears on a ballot.

Numbers.

• 45-53. The margin Donald Trump lost by in the suburbs of Virginia in 2020.
• 53-47. The margin Glenn Youngkin won the suburbs of Virginia by this year.
• 47%. President Biden's approval rating among all Virginia voters, according to a recent AP News poll.
• 15.8%. Biden's margin of victory in New Jersey in 2020.
• 0.3%. Democrat Phil Murphy's current lead over Jack Ciattarelli, with 88% of the vote reported.
• 72%. The percentage of the Virginia electorate that is white, according to AP VoteCast.

Have a nice day.

More than 140,000 Amazon drivers are getting back close to $60 million in illegally withheld tips after the Federal Trade Commission reached a settlement with Amazon. According to the FTC, the average check for Amazon Flex drivers will be $422, but one driver will recoup more than $28,000 in lost tips. 19,980 drivers will receive checks for more than $600, according to Business Insider. The tips were illegally withheld by Amazon between 2016 and 2019. Amazon Flex drivers had been employed with the promise they'd earn $18 to $25 an hour and keep 100% of their tips, but the FTC alleged that Amazon started paying their drivers less and making up the difference in base pay with tip money, without ever notifying drivers. Amazon agreed to settle the case and pay out all the money it withheld from drivers.

❤️ Enjoy this newsletter?

📫 Forward this to a friend and let them know where they can subscribe (hint: it's here).

💵 Drop some love in our tip jar.

🎧 Rather listen? Check out our podcast here.

🛍 Love clothes, stickers and mugs? Go to our merch store!

🙏 Not subscribed? Take the next step and become a subscriber here.