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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. 

Axios:

New GOP brand: Trump Light

GOP strategists tell us Youngkin has shown five ways to navigate this squeeze:

1. 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.”
2. 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.

CPR:

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”

As evidence mounts in this trial, it’s impossible not to register how profoundly central antisemitism is to White Supremacy. Aligns with the famous @BulldogShadow argument in the now classic “Skin in the Game: How Antisemitism Animates White Nationalism”https://t.co/r51Baclusl

— James Loeffler (@Jbloeffler) November 2, 2021

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 ”.

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In the news today: While anti-vaccination shouters are getting all the press attention, vaccination requirements continue to be wildly successful. Yet more polling emphasizes the willingness of the pro-Trump Republican base to engage even in violence, rather than abide non-Republicans continuing to win elections. Another Trump-supported Republican candidate turns out to have a pattern of grotesque past behavior, keeping alive Trump’s streak of finding and supporting only the worst possible people to ally himself with. How does he do it?

Here’s some of what you may have missed:

• Vaccine mandates work: 99.9% of New York City police comply with vaccine requirement

• New polling shows how Trump’s 2020 election lies radicalized GOP base, stoking support for violence

• During custody trial, Trump’s pick for Senate accused of brutalizing and abusing estranged wife

• Democrats settle on approach to Manchin, force him to vote yea or nay on Biden’s agenda

• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, unscrupulous anti-vaxxer, hit with $48K in fines over mask rules

Community Spotlight:

• The Language of the Night: The Plentiful House of Piranesi

• A run down of Japan’s 2021 general elections

• Draft glossary of redistricting terminology

Also trending from the community:

• Ron DeSantis gets brutally owned by one of Florida’s largest papers: “What a fraud. What a phony.”

• Hidden History: The Bisbee Deportation of 1917

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In a way, it’s good to have this finally stated. Over the past 30-odd years, we’ve been treated again and again to more than obvious attempts by the Republican Party to channel racism from their base of support. In the past these efforts were characterized by the media—often correctly—as racist “dog whistles,” in which the Republican candidate would, I guess “cleverly,” resort to “coded” terminology in order to inflame the resentments and grievances of white Americans toward their fellow citizens of a darker shade of skin.

Thanks to Donald Trump, the GOP has finally dispensed with such niceties. As Paul Waldman writing for The Washington Post points out, out-and-out racism is no longer something to be disguised in the Republican Party. In fact, it’s something to broadcast loudly and clearly, just so there’s no mistake.

With Republican Glenn Youngkin successfully turning the Virginia gubernatorial campaign into a referendum on whether White students are being cruelly forced to think about racism, Democrat Terry McAuliffe is charging that Youngkin is deploying that most underhanded of rhetorical techniques, the “dog whistle.”

He’s ending his campaign on a racist dog whistle,” McAuliffe said on “Meet the Press” this Sunday, just one of many times he and his surrogates have made that allegation.

But here’s the reality: There are no more dog whistles in American politics. And this race shows why.

The GOP of years gone by wouldn’t dare stick its hateful, racist nose out for all to see. That was the time of Ronald Reagan, with his clever allusions to “welfare queens” and government as the “enemy.” Republicans knew exactly what he was talking about, but God forbid anyone in the media could acknowledge it. There was always some sort of rhetorical escape hatch, a back door of plausible deniability: Oh no, we weren’t talking about race, how dare you accuse us of that!

That convention—always one of convenience—has now been summarily tossed out the window by the modern Republican Party. Waldman explains the transformation as an acknowledgement that Republicans really want to be racist, and not only that, they want to fly their racist flags as high as they can imagine.

As Waldman observes, the internet has played a large part in this pathway to acknowledgment by the GOP of its inherently racist underpinnings. Since it’s become “impossible to send a hidden message to anyone that will not be immediately noticed, dissected, and decoded,” Republican thinking has finally come around to the realization that hiding it is simply a waste of time.

The final catalyst in this epiphany was the presidency of Donald Trump, which effectively taught Republicans that they could afford to be blatant racists without worrying about the consequences. As Waldman notes, “They wanted to be loud and unapologetic, especially when saying things that are unpopular or simply offensive.” Trump taught them that this was all A-OK. And, as Waldman points out, they’re “not going back.”

That’s because, deep down, (as Waldman implies) Republicans enjoy their racism. They like it, they feed on it, they revel in it, and they’ve felt so constrained for years about letting it all out. Waldman notes: “They think it’s clever and funny, but they aren’t trying to fool anyone.”

So it’s really just a matter of time before Republicans actually begin to act out on their beliefs. There are myriad historical consequences to racism, and we should expect Republicans will openly embrace these as well. Oppression? Lynching? Genocide? It’s all an accepted part of the platform.  And when they get tired of maligning and demonizing all the people of color, they’ll move to Jews, LGBTQ people, and others (in fact, they already are). Because that’s the way it always works.

But please. Now that it’s out in the open, spare us the smoke and mirrors routine. It’s just embarrassing. Honestly, it’s probably a good thing that we’ve dispensed with the coyness, with all the dissembling, all the mealymouthed excuses you’ve offered over the years.

Now, at least, the rest of the American people can see you for what you really are.

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It’s election night 2021! Numerous important races are on the ballot across the country, and we’re liveblogging the top contests below.

Results: FL | GA | MA | ME | MI | MN | NH | NJ | NM | NY | OH | PA | VA | WA

Resources: Election preview | VA county benchmarks | Live cheat-sheet |Special legislative elections tracker | VA House tracker

Follow: Daily Kos Elections on Twitter

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Asylum-seekers and advocacy groups that filed legal action against the previous administration over its traumatic, inhumane, and unlawful family separation policy may be getting close to reaching financial settlements under the Biden administration, CNN and The Wall Street Journal report. The latter report said officials are in talks for possible settlements of $450,000 per person subjected to the policy, which Physicians for Human Rights in a 2020 report said constituted torture. However, that number may vary for others.”

“Negotiations are ongoing, and it’s unknown what the final figure will be, the source familiar with the matter said, noting that different numbers have been discussed at various times,” CNN reported. “Financial compensation would likely vary, and not all would get the maximum agreed-upon amount.” While the CNN report said that it’s unclear how many would be eligible for a settlement, The Wall Street Journal noted roughly 940 families had filed claims.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), among those to file a lawsuit against the previous administration, said in court documents in 2019 that nearly 5,500 children overall were stolen from their families at the border by administration beginning in 2017. Due partly to the previous administration’s sloppy record-keeping (which that administration also outright lied about), the Biden administration has struggled to quickly locate and reunite families. The Associated Press reported in September that the Biden administration had reunited roughly 50 families as of that date.

“The Biden administration is correct to provide relief to the children and families affected by the government’s horrific practice of family separation,” ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt told CNN. “Their suffering is something they will always live with, and it is a deep moral stain on our country.”

In addition to saying the family separation policy rose “to the level of torture,” Physicians for Human Rights said in its 2020 report that U.S. officials in some cases “intentionally carried out actions causing severe pain and suffering, in order to punish, coerce, and intimidate Central American asylum seekers to give up their asylum claims, in a discriminatory manner.” The physicians concluded that the policy was a form of enforced disappearance, “which is prohibited under international law in all circumstances.”

Congressional Republicans and their allies reacted to The Wall Street Journal’s report with plenty of outrage—not over the inhumane family separation policy itself, but the possible settlements proposed by the federal government.

Presidential wannabe Tom Cotton falsely claimed that the Biden administration “wants you to give $1 million to illegal immigrant families who broke the law,” then shrieked something about “an assault on American sovereignty.” First of all, seeking asylum is legal immigration. Second, it seems like if Tom and his buddies wanted to avoid costly settlements, they should have supported allowing families to seek asylum and demanded the previous administration stop its actions. Instead, Tom vocally opposed legislation that would have blocked family separations. Ted Cruz also slammed the proposed settlements in a tweet. But he initially supported the previous administration’s separation policy.

“We need to make it right, and this includes not simply any monetary support, but also a path to remain here,” Gelernt continued to CNN. “This is what is right and fair.”

But while Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro reintroduced legislation in April that would put these families on a path to citizenship, it has yet to gain significant traction. “While we know we can never fully do right by the children who will be forever traumatized by this political decision, the Families Belong Together Act is the bare minimum our nation owes the families who separated as an apology and a promise to do right by them,” Castro said.

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When it comes to addressing the problems facing the state of Kansas, Republicans seem to have found the answer: allow one side to speak and prevent the other side from talking at all. Kansas Republicans formed a new committee, the Government Overreach Committee, designed to look at issues where they believe the state or federal government has overreached their authority and decide what guidance from President Biden or Governor Laura Kelly they are prepared to fight in court rather than follow.

The committee has begun by taking on mask mandates and pro-vaccination programs, but there isn’t a guarantee that is where it stops. In a story posted to Kansas Reflector, it is made clear that one of the expected good-faith norms—the ability for a resident to provide testimony—is certainly on the table for removal.

A hundred individuals spoke at the Special Committee on Government Overreach and the Impact of COVID-19 Mandates, including a man named Justin Spiehs. When Spiehs appeared at the microphone in the statehouse, the anti-mask advocate used his 28 seconds of fame to say that he was made to feel like a second-class citizen because he refused to wear a mask.

Spiehs had appeared in a daily protest for the last four months in front of Douglas County’s public schools, demanding that mask mandates be lifted. In a profanity-laced tirade, Spiehs made specious claims against online coverage of the COVID-19 crisis.

While his tirade, linked above at the 5:30 marker, could be heard in the statehouse, when viewers hunted for it later, the testimony was unavailable, as it was either edited or muted from the public feed. 

The muting of fairly vile, f-bomb commentary from an anti-vaxxer seems a clear violation of the statehouse process, noted Representative John Carmichael (D-Wichita), who added that the comments should be part of the public record, as they were issued inside the statehouse. 

Speaking to Daily Kos, Rep. Carmichael offered his thoughts: “The name of the committee, ‘Overreach,’ says it all. The Republicans decided there had been federal overreach before they even named the committee. They paraded in their candidates, Schmidt for Governor, and Warren for Attorney General, via WebEx, and refused to allow Democrats to ask questions, and then Zoomed them out of town,” Carmichael explained. “They allow one—and only one—supporter of vaccinations and public health to testify. And then spend hours listening to anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers spew disinformation and antisemitism. Nothing will come of this Special Committee but embarrassment for Kansas.”

In a standard hearing in the Kansas statehouse, advocates for both sides of an issue would provide testimony on the record. After 100 individuals testified in person against masks, the Republican-controlled committee did not allow pro-Biden, pro-mask, or pro-vaccine advocates to speak, and while testimony against the President and Governor has been made available, written testimony submitted in favor of the mandates has not been published or made available as of this writing online.

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Zillow, during an incredible competitive seller’s market, snapped up about 8,000 homes in the third quarter. Now, the company is hoping to bring in $2.8 billion by selling 7,000 of those homes. Unfortunately, the average homebuyer still may not be able to benefit from the sale.

To unload the bulk of these properties, the company is targeting investors after what Bloomberg described as a “fumble in its high-tech home-flipping business.” After speaking to sources with Zillow—who requested anonymity—Bloomberg reported that Zillow’s shares dropped 8.6% on Monday, and it wouldn’t be making new offers on home-flipping this year.

This is after Zillow’s purchasing algorithms led it to several winning offers just as homes started to appreciate at a slower rate. “I think they leaned into home-price appreciation at exactly the wrong moment,” Ed Yruma, a KeyBanc analyst, told Bloomberg.

But don’t think the takeaway here is, “Aw, poor Zillow.”

Dan Price—founder of the credit card processing company Gravity Payments who famously cut his CEO salary by millions to offer workers a minimum wage of $70,000—tweeted this response:

Zillow ended up in its current situation—still a quite profitable one—after applying a practice known as iBuying, in which homeowners looking to sell seek an offer from Zillow and the company uses algorithms to come up with a price. “If an owner accepts, Zillow buys the property, makes light repairs, and puts it back on the market,” Bloomberg journalists Patrick Clark, Sridhar Natarajan, and Heather Perlberg wrote. “The company bought more than 3,800 houses in the second quarter, making progress toward its stated goal of acquiring 5,000 homes a month by 2024.”

It didn’t, however, take into consideration a shortage of workers to renovate its newly-acquired properties. “Since around 2018, the United States has seen a shortage of tradespeople available to complete projects like kitchen remodels, bathroom remodels, flooring and electrical work,” editors Lexie Pelchen and Samantha Allen wrote for Forbes Advisor. “In addition to this, the supplies that they need to complete their jobs—including wood and metal—aren’t available due to a shortage of materials, created as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, so supply prices are skyrocketing.”

Pelchen and Allen added: “According to Adecco, the world’s second-largest human resources provider and temporary staffing firm, an estimated 31 million baby boomers who were working in the skilled trades were expected to retire by 2020 and not be replaced.”

Mitchell Clark, a writer with The Verge technology blog, wrote on Monday that it’s difficult to predict what will come of Zillow’s sale, but the company and other investors aren’t having quite the mark on real estate that many assume they are having. Investors comprised about 20% of the market in 2020, according to a Vox report. Both Zillow’s own and its competitors’ iBuying operations only accounted for about 1% percent of the housing market in the second quarter of 2021, Zillow reported. “In some ways, those numbers are both terrifying and reassuring—a fifth of the housing market is a massive and influential chunk, but it also means that it likely wasn’t a private equity firm (or Zillow) that outbid you on your dream home,” Clark wrote.

Unless it is, Twitter users actually seeking homes added to the conversation.

RELATED: One in five houses is bought by someone who never moves in, real estate firm says

RELATED: Turns out, fighting the temptation to strip property from Black families isn’t asking too much

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It’s election night 2021! Numerous important races are on the ballot across the country, and we’re liveblogging the top contests below.

Results: FL | GA | MA | ME | MI | MN | NH | NJ | NM | NY | OH | PA | VA | WA

Resources: Election preview | VA county benchmarks | Live cheat-sheet |Special legislative elections tracker | VA House tracker

Follow: Daily Kos Elections on Twitter