Tuesday's Election
And the discoveries to follow.
With state elections bearing down on them, Democratic Party leaders of the General Assembly brought everyone to Richmond last week, all in the cause of a constitutional amendment to allow, in mid-decade, a reconfiguration of Virginia’s congressional districts.
Virginia Senate elections lie two years off, but Tuesday will reset the entire 100-member House, one way or another. Should the Democrats retain their majority in the House, Speaker Don Scott may become the first Speaker in a decade to succeed himself. That tells you something about present legislative stability in historically stable Virginia.
So, was this work in Richmond last week the best use of everyone’s time?
If you say no, you might conclude that the Democrats have collectively lost their minds.
But is the answer no? If everything, everywhere, touching upon everyone, is polarized and all politics is now national politics, then perhaps the Democrats were doing precisely what they needed to do. They were reminding Virginia that they, as a party, oppose President Trump and whatever Trump represents.
In short, the Democrats were sticking an exclamation point to the end of a long election, saying that Trump stinks and we have to stop him. Enough is enough.
It may work for the Democrats. For more than six months, it’s been a working assumption that Abigail Spanberger would take office in January as the next governor of Virginia.
Even further back than that – even into last year, when Trump dramatically won a second term in the White House -- it was near impossible to find a seasoned, experienced Virginia Republican pol who believed that Winsome Earle-Sears could pull off the governor’s contest. She lacked the capacity to overcome near certain Virgina backlash to Trump’s return.
It’s been a politically curious year in Virginia, but maybe we try too hard to explain things. Perhaps it’s simple.
No like Trump: Abigail.
Think Trump wonderful: Winsome.
The Democrats in the House races may benefit from such clarity. There’s a lot of money flowing into some of these contests and it largely gets spent on broadcast or on-line advertising. YouTube gets inundated.
Watch these commercials and you might conclude that few of these House candidates really understand what a state legislator does. The points of emphasis – the issues selected by the candidates to define themselves – often involve national topics well beyond Virginia’s legislative reach. You don’t go to Richmond to improve the results of state and local government in Virginia; you go to fulfil a national, even global agenda.
Forty years ago, three successive Virginia Democratic Party administrations and legislative majorities overlapped with the 12-year Reagan/Bush Republican hold on the White House. That was not a traumatic arrangement. Little screaming – nothing like the present bellowing -- emerged as a result.
That was partly due to President Reagan’s affable style, partly because the push out of Washington, while ideologically shaped, was seldom accompanied by political antagonism. Domestic policy got framed, right off the bat, by what Reagan called, “New Federalism.” The national government would have its defined role; and, so would the states. Everyone would not do everything. Accountability would be enhanced; efficiency would ascend.
That was the theory. The signature legislative action was the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981, which consolidated dozens of categorical grants into nine block grants and reduced overall federal aid to states by more than 10 percent.
The reception to all this was mixed. The pull to the center – meaning Washington, D.C. and the federal government – had long been strong. Even so, while controversy resulted, the public discussion remained decorous and mutually respectful.
Once upon a time, yes?
Democrats and left-leaning American citizens (but I repeat myself) live in a bubble of their own making. This is said often. It is also often said that they, to stand any chance of success, must escape the bubble.
There’s a new Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll out today and it shows broad disapproval for Trump and his policies. He’s under water, as the say. Which must mean that the Democrats are sitting pretty on the beach.
Not so. Voters remain evenly split on the two parties. No matter how stinky Trump becomes, the Democrats gain little, if at all. That says something.
Do Virginia Democrats take heed? Hardly. Consider, for instance, the business of reconstituting Virginia’s congressional districts: It’s actually not in Virginia’s interest to do that.
Virginia has a massive stake in federal funding. That’s a known-known and it’s largely due to defense-related appropriations. In a perfect world, someone in the Virginia congressional delegation would chair the House Armed Services Committee.
Virginia does not have that, but it does have a candidate in the current vice chairman, 1st District Republican Rep. Rob Wittman. He currently serves as chairman of the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee.
To lose Wittman’s seniority and the political influence that accompanies it – which is ultimately what the Democrats had in mind last week – would be an heroic act of stupidity.
Virginia cannot afford to lose Wittman, any more than it would benefit from the loss of 17-term Rep. Bobby Scott, the 3rd District Democrat. That kind of seniority is gold. Literally. You can apply the same analysis to Virginia’s two members of the U.S. Senate, Democrats Mark Warner and Tim Kaine. Virginia needs those guys right where they are.
Right now, of the 11 members of Virginia’s congressional delegation, six have been in office less than two years. These seats keep turning over and it’s not helping Virginia.
All I’m saying is that we ought to have a firmer grasp of Virginia’s interests, not as we would prefer those interests to be, but as they factually are.
The Virginia business community could help in that respect, to get some cold, dispassionate light on what helps Virginia and what does not. That used to happen regularly in elections past, but not lately. Business leadership in Virginia, like the fox weary of forest dangers, has gone to ground. It’s AWOL. A non-participant.
Yes, that’s an editorial.
There’s another story out today in The New Yorker about Spanberger’s soon-to-be successful bid for governor. The former editor-in-chief of The Daily Princetonian, Gabriel Debenedetti, writes:
“… at her public events Spanberger usually eschews wholesale condemnations of Trump’s assault on the rule of law—the kind of stance some Democrats in D.C. have been eager to take, and the heart of one major tactical split in the Party. Issue polling, and Spanberger’s durable lead, suggests that her approach is working, at least in a state with many Republican voters—Trump got within six points of winning Virginia last November—but it’s not always energizing for her supporters, many of whom plainly crave a full-throated response to Trump and all that he represents.”
So, something of a Spanberger dance and we’ll know what that translates into in relatively short order. If House Democrats grow in number on Tuesday, the party will take that to be voter validation and that may limit Spanberger’s opportunity to say “no.”
But we’ll see. Virginia will soon have a new governor and, while she’s not exactly a cypher, we are about to discover what Abigail’s leadership constitutes. She may be discovering it herself.