Just a year back America’s Democrats were jubilant that they had pushed the then US President Donald Trump out of USA’s political space which was their main political-electoral agenda. But, barely a year later things have started changing for the Democrats at an alarming pace. Their Trump-centric agenda or Trump-bashing no longer seems to work the way it has, so far. They need to come out of that groove and deliver. Simply policy initiatives that they have taken in a big way do not seem to be enough. The smouldering anger of the voters – mainly the working people without jobs and parents greatly worried about their children still unable to find their way to classrooms because of the pandemic – has to be assuaged. Or else, the coming year could present insurmountable hurdles for the Democrats.
The Republicans this week pushed Democrats out of the Virginia governorship and came within striking distance of upstaging them in the heavily Democratic New Jersey, signaling trouble for President Biden’s party heading into next year’s Congressional elections.
In Virginia, Republican Glenn Youngkin, a former private equity executive, defeated former Governor Terry McAuliffe of the Democratic Party. The goof-up McAuliffe made by arrogantly dismissing the concerns of parents anxious for the resumption of proper school life for their children exacerbated the voters’ anger. In sharp contrast, Youngkin smartly did tightrope walking by adopting a tactical line of distancing himself from Trump, thereby not antagonising the moderate elements among Republican voters who had switched sides to help Biden go past Trump in the last Presidential election. In New Jersey, incumbent Democrat Phil Murphy somehow scraped through defeating the Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli, even though registered Democratic voters outnumber Republicans there by more than 1 million. It should have been smooth sailing for Murphy. Both Republican candidates saw strong gains in the suburbs from independent voters who had been annoyed with Trump’s style of politics.
The most jaw-dropping loss the Democrats suffered is the defeat in New Jersey of the influential and long-serving Democratic State Senate President Steve Sweeney, who lost to a first-timer, Edward Durr, a furniture company truck driver who spent less than $200 for electioneering. Sweeney paid the price of not caring enough for the toiling masses. Also, voters in Minneapolis rejected a measure to replace the city’s police department with a ‘Department of Public Safety,’ 17 months after George Floyd’s murder led to nationwide calls to abolish or defund the police. Their message to the Democrats is loud and clear. They want real action rather than empty rhetoric.
The results in these states that Biden won easily in 2020 suggest that Democrats’ wafer-thin majorities in Congress are highly vulnerable in the 2022 elections. If Republicans gain control of both, or even one, chamber of Congress, the party would be in a position to block Biden’s legislative agenda in the final two years of his term. This certainly does not augur well for the Democrats. A few factors are believed to have contributed to the Democrats’ poor performance. Chief among them is the wrangling within the Democrats – progressive Left and moderate pro-corporate – over Biden’s Congressional agenda. Because of this people are upset and uncertain about a lot of things, from COVID to school to jobs and the cost of gasoline. There was too much delay for the Biden administration’s ambitious Build Back Better initiative which aims at providing roads and other infrastructure that will take care of much of the pandemic-induced problems of job loss and low growth. The top Democrats in Congress vowed to push ahead on Biden’s legislative agenda, hoping to pass twin bills worth a combined $2.75 trillion to rebuild roads and bridges, bolster the social safety net and fight climate change. They have been held up due to months of infighting between progressive and moderate Democrats.
As US watchers correctly point out, the debate within the Democrats over tax cuts and corporate lobbying on the one hand and job creation, infrastructure building and growth on the other have cost them dearly in this election which left the people confused and angry in the absence of immediate tangible results. The progressives in the Democrats want the moderate pro-corporate lobby to accept taxation of the rich for providing jobs to the working class and the not much educated moderate white population. But, as the party dithered, unable to withstand pressure from the corporate world not to go ahead with greater taxation, people’s anger at lack of concrete results grew.
Policies are good up to a certain point. But, if they take time to bear fruits, the mood of the voters swings.
The problem seems to be that the Democrats have not done enough for the working people and the corporate Democrats are standing in the way of the popular policies. A lesson quickly learnt from the outcome of these recent elections of a much smaller scale, though fraught with far-reaching consequences, may enable the Biden Presidency to salvage its sagging popularity. Trump is waiting in the wings and he may run for yet another term in 2024. His attempt to claim credit for the Republicans’ victory points to a development in that direction.