Backlash 2021

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CBS News projects Glenn Youngkin wins Virginia governor's race

Saying parents should not be involved in their childrens education was a political blunder for the ages.


New Jersey Governor Election Results - NBC News
As of this writing with 84 percent of the vote in Ciattirelli 1,166,735. Murphy 1,166,170
OMG

Three ballot referendums on redistricting sought by Democrats were handedly rejected.

Meanwhile, Republicans were poised to be successful in their bid to get voters to reject three ballot propositions sought by Democrats that would have changed voting and the drawing of district lines.

Proposal 1 would have made changes to the state's redistricting process, while proposal 3 would have paved the way for same-day voter registration and proposal 4 would have allowed for "no-excuse" absentee voting.

They seemed destined toward defeat, while two others — one on environmental rights and other on increasing the jurisdiction of the New York City Civil Court — easily passed.

OTOH a socialist was elected mayor of Buffalo and the proposal to grant clean air and water as rights passed so that might be an indication that the dems should keep on pushing climate change legislation.

lPhil Murphy, a Democrat who has pushed New Jersey in a more progressive direction and overseen the state’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, won a second term as the Garden State’s governor Wednesday night, narrowly defeating Republican Jack Ciattarelli in a bitter and closer-than-expected race that was too close to call for nearly 24 hours.

The race was called by The Associated Press early Wednesday evening.

Murphy fended off a fierce challenge from Ciattarelli, a former member of the state Assembly, to become the first Democrat in 44 years to be re-elected New Jersey governor. Brendan Byrne last did it it, in 1977.

The race ended up being much closer than polls that predicted a single-digit but comfortable victory for Murphy, a 64-year-old former Wall Street executive and American diplomat.

As of just before 7 p.m. Wednesday, Murphy’s margin over Ciattarelli was less than a percentage point — 50% to 49.2%.

The Murphy campaign immediately announced it will hold a victory party at 10 p.m. in Asbury Park.

But the Ciattarelli campaign criticized the call by the AP.

“With the candidates separated by a fraction of a percent out of 2.4 million ballots cast, it’s irresponsible of the media to make this call when the New Jersey Secretary of State doesn’t even know how many ballots are left to be counted,” Ciattarelli spokeswoman Stami Williams said in a statement.

It’s possible the race could still be contested. Mail-in and provisional ballots may be counted through Monday, and Ciattarelli could petition the state courts for a recount.

The race was notable for the number of New Jersey residents who voted early and by mail. Counting those ballots and reporting totals led to confusion Tuesday night and early Wednesday as Ciattarelli seemed poised for a shocking victory. The election also was plagued by votes that were wrongly assigned or double counted in certain counties.

But Murphy — the state’s 56th governor — pulled ahead Wednesday as more votes were tabulated from Democratic-leaning areas.

It’s possible the race could still be contested. Mail-in and provisional ballots may be counted through Monday, and Ciattarelli could petition the state courts for a recount.

The 2021 elections are over, and Democrats lost. The party’s stalwarts are desperate to avoid a course correction, and they’re talking themselves into knots in the effort to avoid reconciling with the cold, hard reality that confronted them last night.

The results of the off-year elections weren’t about money. Democrats are rolling in campaign contributions and, with some exceptions, largely outspent their Republican opponents. It wasn’t about candidate quality. Many of the Democrats that voters turned out to vote against were disciplined, well-known, and backed by an enthusiastic base of support. It wasn’t about Trump. His absence from the ballot was as relevant to Republican voters who turned out in droves as was his looming presence in the minds of the voters who wish he’d go away. It wasn’t a reaction to Democratic legislative failures. The party cannot get its agenda passed because that agenda lacks broad public support.

Republicans did not win the governorship, lieutenant governorship, and attorney general’s races in Virginia, an increasingly blue state, because Democrats failed to “engage with young voters.” Democrats did not almost lose the governorship of New Jersey because they failed to “recruit a more diverse slate of candidates.” That state’s incredibly powerful and entrenched speaker of the Senate isn’t on the verge of losing his seat to a truck driver who spent $153 on his campaign because Democrats failed to mobilize “voters of color and women under 50.” Democrats did not lose the mayoral race in Buffalo to a write-in candidate, blow a Minneapolis referendum redefining police as “public safety,” and sacrifice seats on New York’s city council because of America’s enduring racism. Democrats weren’t routed on Long Island because they haven’t added hearing-aid coverage to Medicare, and they didn’t lose every judicial race in Pennsylvania because they’ve failed to impose clean-energy mandates on power providers.

Americans don’t like to be humiliated abroad, as we were in Afghanistan. They don’t like surrendering to terrorists, and they don’t want to reward an administration that freely admits its actions have made the threat of transnational Islamist terrorism more urgent. Voters don’t typically reward policies that make them feel both mortified and unsafe.

Americans don’t enjoy having to sit through lectures about how terrible the United States is. Americans actually like their country quite a bit. The constellation of vaguely academic notions that make up critical race theory are, we are told, exceedingly complex and nuanced. To average observers, they look like simple anti-egalitarian race essentialism. Voters don’t like racial conflict. They will do what they can to avoid or defuse it whenever possible. Democrats have not given voters that option.

Voters do not reward the party in power for presiding over rising rates of violent crime.
After a year spent demonizing law enforcement at almost every given opportunity—an impulse occasionally accompanied by legislative efforts to “reimagine” police out of existence—voters have noticed the disconnect, and they resent it.

Americans don’t want to spend trillions of dollars on nebulous progressive legislative priorities to the point that it inflates the currency, reduces their purchasing power, and destabilizes the economy. And voters are making that connection.

The voting public is going to reward they party in power, voters need to feel secure, respected, and satisfied that their prospects for success and prosperity are not artificially circumscribed by government. When they don’t feel that way, they will punish the party that’s responsible. That is the lesson of 2021. It’s not hard to comprehend. Whether Democrats will get the message, however, remains to be seen.

Political commentator Van Jones dragged Democrats for living in their own ‘echo chamber’ and said that they get in their own way of winning voters by coming across in ways that are ‘annoying and offensive and seem out of touch.’

Jones, a former Obama administration official, appeared on CNN on election night as Republican Glenn Youngkin was besting Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the polls for governor of Virginia and Republican Jack Ciattarelli was ahead of Incumbent Phil Murphy in New Jersey’s gubernatorial race.

Youngkin was announced the victor this morning, while Murphy climbed past Ciattarelli and was deemed the winner this evening in an extremely tight race.

Jones said last night, ‘I think that the Democrats are coming across in ways that we don’t recognize that are annoying and offensive and seem out of touch in ways that I don’t think show up in our feeds when we’re looking at our kind of echo chamber, and I think it’s a message here.’

[...]

Jones said that the country is not seeing an official left wing or right wing wave, but that it’s a ‘turbulent and volatile period’ and that ‘Democrats have to look in the mirror now.’

Jones pointed to the neck-and-neck New Jersey race as an example of where Democrats needlessly floundered by not appealing more to a wider range of voters. He noted that the state doesn’t have a contentious debate surrounding critical race theory or former President Trump, as was the case in Virginia.

‘There is an opportunity, I think, for the Democratic party to take this seriously,’ he said, noting that the party too often focuses on gaining the support of its ‘echo chamber’ instead of vying for a bigger coalition of suburban voters and a bigger outcome among urban voters on election night.

I don't really get it. I'm not in the US so don't have a great handle on this stuff.

Something doesn't make sense to me. I get the impression that people think the Democrats have swung too far to the left. But it's not like they put Bernie Sanders up there. Biden looks pretty centrist from where I'm sitting. I don't really understand why that translates to people voting Republican, which seem from this distance to be way the hell to the right these days.

Why does (what looks to me like) a relatively small shift to the left mean swing voters run into the arms of a very extreme rightwing ideology?

Why does extreme right look less risky than moderate left?

While Biden ran as a centrist that is not how he is governing.

It seems you've actually got to offer something better than your opponent in order to have a chance of beating them.

The man who is poised to topple one of New Jersey’s most feared political kingpins has never held public office, he has been a commercial truck driver for 25 years and he claims to have spent a whopping $153 during the primary portion of his campaign.

His name is Edward Durr, and he may be on the verge of one of the most unthinkable upsets in New Jersey political history.

With 98% of the vote counted, Durr, the Republican Senate candidate in the South Jersey-based 3rd legislative district, leads New Jersey Senate President Stephen Sweeney by roughly 2,000 votes — 32,134 to 30,125.

Sweeney, a Democrat, is the longest-tenured Senate president in New Jersey history, having held the post since 2010. He was expected to serve a seventh term in the position before launching a possible bid for governor in 2025.