Message Sent. What Will Be The Reaction?

Inconveniently, I have some things to get done early today before trying to digest the … Good News!

Two points about the VA election.

First, the Culture Wars are back, and this time it’s fracturing the Dems. That’s the message from McAuliffe under performing where he needed to max his votes.

Second—and this is a theme that Shipwreckedcrew has been stressing most of the week—the election will fracture the Congressional Dems even further. This has the potential for a sauve qui peut dynamic. Every man for himself as each Dem seeks electoral refuge from the feared Red Wave in 2022. And that means almost certainly the end of Zhou’s agenda.

If Manchin and Sinema were in the driver’s seat before last night, they are now in the position of being able to say, We told ya so!

If Ciattarelli pulls out a victory in NJ all of the above will be magnified. And it may even embolden the GOPers, especially those inclined toward Culture War. The 56/43 defeat of Abolish The Police in Minneapolis adds weight to all of the above.

Finally, to make matters much worse, the economic debacle is unlikely to get measurably better any time soon. In fact, the likelihood is that life is going to get even more unpleasant for ordinary Americans. And the polling data shows that Americans will be blaming the current regime. Time for GOPers to distance themselves definitively.