Democrats Will Just Have To Run For The Midterms On The Strength Of Their Ideas
In other words, they are screwed, so they will double-down on bad ideas
Turns out that covering up your Nazi tattoo is not enough to get elected in Maine. A new poll by the National Republican Campaign Committee “shows Senator Susan Collins with a lead of 11 percent over progressive Democrat Graham Platner in the Senate race, though this study was conducted just before Governor Janet Mills announced she was ending her campaign.”
Turns out that flouting Virginia laws is not the way to redistrict Virginia. Justice D. Arthur Kelsey of the state supreme court, a Democrat, wrote the 4-3 majority opinion striking down the gerrymander referendum because it “violated Article XII, Section I of the Constitution of Virginia”, which “incurably taints the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy.” Democrats will continue to have just six blue districts in the 11-district state instead of ten.
Turns out that decades of racial gerrymandering that benefitted Democrats can be reversed in a matter of weeks if the United States Supreme Court just strikes down the relevant section of the Voting Rights Act. Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi are expected to change their maps. Texas had already redrawn their map, which will now go into effect after the Supreme Court overruled a district court that had blocked it.
Turns out that Democrats will not be able to gerrymander their way to a US House majority in November, after all, despite spending $66 million on the Virginia referendum, embracing the man with the Nazi tattoo, and calling everyone racist. The most likely effect of these changes will be the election of black Republicans to Congress, so of course Democrats are screeching about imaginary racism and the return of Jim Crow.
Turns out that Democrats will have to run on the strength of their ideas, many of which are noxious to majorities of voters. Instead of moderating as most of their voters want them to do, Democrats have doubled-down on open border policies, boys cheating at girls’ sports, kindness to criminals, climate alarmism, and radical ‘eat the rich’ schemes that destroy job creation. They have made their electoral bed, so now they must lie in it.
By happenstance, a glance across the pond tells us where this is all heading. The UK Labour Party just experienced an extinction-level event in local elections yesterday. Wards that the party held with over 80 percent of the vote in the previous election now belong to Reform.
Turns out that calling everyone racist, hiking everyone’s taxes, administering soft justice to foreign-born rapists and knife murderers, and arresting anyone who complains about it on Facebook is not the way to win over voters. Who could have guessed? Other than Reform, which ran on the opposite platform and picked up nearly 1,600 local council seats, who could have possibly seen it coming?
Labour has almost no popular support and little chance of winning the 2029 general election, but retains a massive Parliamentary majority in the meantime. Desperation is palpable in the commentary from Labour MPs.
Clive Lewis MP told a TV station that “we cannot pretend this is a bad night, a difficult cycle, or a messaging problem. It is a political crisis and unless we face it honestly, it risks becoming terminal.” A past critic of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Lewis said that he does not think recovery is possible under the current leader. Worse, “by staying on he does lasting damage to Labour’s ability to govern, rebuild trust and stop the advance of the right.”
This last point is the refrain of the growing chorus of Labour MPs calling for a change of leadership: the worst thing that could possibly happen is a Reform win in 2029. Connor Naismith MP wants “a broad coalition of voters to stop the Thatcherite politics of Reform UK.” Richard Burgon MP says “we risk opening the door to a Nigel Farage government” under Starmer. “No progressive party faced with that threat can simply carry on regardless until it is too late to stop it happening.”
Starmer does not seem inclined to leave office, though.
These are tough results for Labour. There’s no sugarcoating it. We’ve lost brilliant Labour representatives who’ve stood up for their communities.
People are still frustrated. Their lives aren’t changing fast enough. We haven’t offered enough hope or optimism for the future.
I was elected to change this country - tough days like this don’t weaken my determination to do that. They strengthen it.
Already, there are expectations that Labour will make proportional representation the new law of the land so they can govern through a majority alliance with the LibDems and the Green Party, which has become the domain of Islamists and leftist extremism, to lock Reform out of power. All the proposed solutions point to greater radicalism and a doubling-down on all the policies that make Reform UK so popular. Moderation is out of the question, since this would be a ‘win’ for the wrong team. Instead, the Labour government should “move faster” in the direction that Britain increasingly does not want to go, Deputy PM David Lammy says.
Democrats just spent precious resources and credibility on a Virginia gerrymander that only passed by a narrow margin. Abigail Spanberger, the newly-elected governor, has spent her political capital on an issue that her own team warned her would backfire. Barack Obama, who has resumed his place as national party leader to the Democrats, lost accordingly.
This leaves room for the rising stars of the party to double-down on extreme rhetoric. Hasan Piker declares “those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable”. Bluesky users demand that Democrats ignore the Virginia Supreme Court ruling. Pressure from the fringe increases as moderate voters flee a party that is increasingly out of touch with the mainstream. In this kind of environment, Graham Platner seems like a winner — until he loses. Platner has allegedly serious people seriously writing that he could run for president when he will probably not make it to the men’s room in November.
Historically, Democrats have to get beaten in three successive elections before they change their policy agenda. Thanks to the redistricting math, they are unlikely to win the House in November, but they will also blame it on the courts instead of themselves, or their radicals, or their radical agenda. Only a 2028 disaster on the scale of Walter Mondale in 1984 will deter the Democratic Party from its current course and persuade them back towards the middle.
Even then, it might not be enough, and they could be locked out of power for a long time. This is not actually something to celebrate. America needs two functional political parties. Right now, one of them is only driving ever-farther away from the middle and ever-deeper into dysfunction. The dynamic is discernible on both sides of the ocean.