Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: in case you didn't hear, there was an election in Virginia
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It’s too soon to post all the good takes. And Lord knows we have had plenty of bad ones. Glenn Youngkin (R) will be the next governor of Virginia. And a lot of people voted, so it wasn’t a turnout issue. It was democracy in action.
Phil Murphy (D) is in a very tight race in New Jersey, which was unexpected. Looks like mail ballots will pull it out for him but it is uncalled as of now.
Good luck to us all.
New GOP brand: Trump Light
GOP strategists tell us Youngkin has shown five ways to navigate this squeeze:
- Embrace Trump tactics: Youngkin and his team were ruthless in torturing Democrat Terry McAuliffe with the words he most regrets: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” That sentence, part of an answer about removing books from schools, is less controversial when you watch the whole clip, including McAuliffe’s declaration: “I love teachers!” But top Democrats tell Axios McAuliffe was too slow to clean it up. Even this Sunday, McAuliffe told Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press”: “[E]verybody clapped when I said it.”
- Softly embrace Trump himself: Steer clear of criticizing him, but also steer clear of standing next to him or running as a knock-off. As Peggy Noonan put it in a Wall Street Journal column: “Don’t insult Donald Trump but do everything to keep him away.” Youngkin nailed this. He shunned the T-word, pro or con.
The economy and COVID were the main issues, but schools will be weaponized just like COVID was.
John Stoehr/editorial board:
‘Parents’ rights’ are not for moms
Just men — and their women.
First, remember what I said Monday. There’s always someone willing to make the goals of the authoritarian collective, which is what the GOP has become, seem respectable. In Virginia, that’s gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin. He’s very good at respectability politics. Right now, he’s riding an anti-Black backlash, but he’s casting himself as a kind of warrior for “suburban white moms” and their kids.
He’s not. What he’s doing is rationalizing the thing “suburban white moms” need to fear, which is this: a long effort to restore America to its original, Godly and “constitutional” order by which white Christian men stand atop, ruling over everyone else, including their women. Indeed, the first goal of authoritarians is putting women back in their place in the natural orders of power, which means making them, once again, dependent on a man for their health, safety and good fortune.
Democrats have to figure out how to reach non college whites. So far, we haven’t.
She believed the election system was full of fraud. Her clerk set out to win her trust
As you walk into the vote center in Canon City, Kay Hunsaker is hard to miss. The 68-year-old sits at a table wearing a bright American flag sweater, with purple streaks in her short white hair, and purple-framed glasses.
She smiles warmly as a voter walks through the door.
Hunsaker is the Republican half of the bipartisan election judge team volunteering at this site.
“People consider this an honor. I considered it an honor to be chosen to be an election judge and a great responsibility,” she said.
But Hunsaker didn’t always feel that way. She grew up in Wheat Ridge and spent about a decade living in Los Angeles, where her husband was a police officer. That’s when Hunsaker said she started getting involved in politics, and became increasingly concerned about voter fraud. She worried that people who’d managed to cross the border illegally might be finding ways to vote illegally too.
“I’ve trusted the elections whichever way they went. It never crossed my mind that we had real problems until the last decade,” she recalled.
It’s an interesting story, and a thank you to the locals who work the polls.
James Loeffler/Twitter:
Day 7 of Charlottesville Trial begins w/ judge rebuke of defense for excessive cross-exams:“You’ve … a right to show these plaintiffs have a different view from you” but not to try “to convince the other.. they are right & the other side is wrong.”
Then on to devastating testimony from former Alt-Rightist Sam. Froelich on codewords:“Another word they use for the Jewish people is “globalist.” Globalist means Jewish person. Communist means Jewish person. These are dog whistles that you would use in everyday conversation”
Then on “Zionist”
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
Why did Florida ban state professors from challenging Ron DeSantis’s voting law?
Now this story has taken another ugly turn: The University of Florida has barred three professors from serving as expert witnesses in a lawsuit against the voter suppression measure.
This story is about to get worse for the university: The Democratic members of Congress from Florida are set to come out sharply against the decision, I’m told, and depending on how things go, this could result in congressional hearings.
This will ratchet up the stakes in this battle and draw more national scrutiny to a move that experts have denounced as a startling and inexplicable attack on academic freedom.
Claire Cain Miller/NY Times:
What the Democrats’ Plan Would Do for Parents
Paid family leave was dropped. Public pre-K and subsidized child care remain, and could substantially lower the cost of raising children.
The policy framework that President Biden released Thursday would not create the robust safety net he envisioned to support Americans from “cradle to grave.” But it would weave a much stronger one than American families have now, especially for parents of young children.
The proposal for child care and universal pre-K would significantly lower the cost of raising children. Now, most parents have little government support for care until their children are old enough to enter public school at age 5. The new proposal would make support near universal, starting in infancy.
Jonathan Bernstein/Bloomberg:
How Progressives Are Playing Their Poker Cards
The most liberal House Democrats seem to have abruptly changed their strategy for passing infrastructure, climate and social spending bills. Here are some reasons why.
The starting point is that Jayapal and the rest of the House Progressive Caucus are ideological outliers, but they’re also pragmatists. We should assume that their goal is to get the best policy outcome possible from their point of view. We should also assume that they know their leverage is limited. Yes, the two-bill strategy has been a good way to get both bills passed. But the progressives surely knew from the start that while Manchin wanted the infrastructure bill, he preferred the status quo (that is, no climate and social spending bill at all) to outcomes that incorporated too much of even the mainstream liberal agenda, let alone the progressives’ preferences.
So while the version rolled out last week was far short of Jayapal’s ideal bill, it was probably pretty close to the best she could hope for. However, Manchin and Sinema refused to fully endorse it, and so the progressive caucus once again spiked a vote on the infrastructure bill.
And now? What Jayapal and others are saying is that the White House is promising that the partisan bill will get the votes in the Senate, and they trust President Joe Biden. I doubt it’s that simple, but those who have been involved in the negotiations may believe they have received sufficient assurances — from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, from the White House, perhaps from the swing senators themselves — that the votes will be there. This is where negotiations within the party have some advantages; these folks have worked together over time, and they may have earned a measure of trust that they are negotiating in good faith. Even if some of their public statements don’t always reflect that.
Bonus from NY Post: Here’s how many NYPD cops are on unpaid leave over vax mandate
10,000 as advertised?
5,000?
Well, actually… “34 cops and 40 civilian members of the force — which account for fewer than .15 percent of NYPD employees ”.