Kill the Bill

T he Republican Party — which seemed to all observers to be spitting up blood in the state of Virginia — has just won every statewide race and has tied the House of Delegates, taking control of the chamber away from the Democrats. The sweep comes exactly a year after the Democrat, Joe Biden, won the presidential race there by ten points. In New Jersey, meanwhile, a gubernatorial contest that was supposed to come to a dull, foregone conclusion has gone right down to the wire.

These developments raise some important questions. Such as: Why on earth would Senators Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, Maggie Hassan, and Catherine Cortez Masto continue to acquiesce with their party’s extraordinarily foolish attempt to shove a set of FDR-sized spending programs through a 50–50 Senate? Such as: Why on earth would a swathe of moderate House Democrats agree to go along with it, when, by all appearances, they are already going to have their work cut out for them next year? Such as: What, exactly, does the Democratic Party think it is playing at?

As is appropriate, the Virginia gubernatorial election was primarily about local issues — in particular, education. But this did not happen in a vacuum. According to the exit polls, President Biden’s job approval in the state is 45–54; 52 percent of Virginia voters consider the Democratic Party to be “too liberal,” as opposed to 13 percent who consider it “not liberal enough”; and 77 percent described themselves as either “conservative” (37 percent) or moderate (40 percent), compared with 23 percent who described themselves as “liberal.” This, evidently, is not an electorate that spends its days retweeting Bernie Sanders.

And if Virginia’s electorate isn’t, then Arizona’s, West Virginia’s, Nevada’s, and New Hampshire’s sure as hell aren’t. As ABC reported over the weekend, Americans just aren’t that into the idea of spending trillions upon trillions of dollars in order to satisfy Representative Jayapal. Overall, only 25 percent of Americans think the gargantuan packages would help them, with only 47 percent of Democrats agreeing. Asked whether the bill would help the economy, just 29 percent of independents said that it would. In a separate poll, Gallup picked up this trend, noting that, 52 to 43 percent, Americans believe that “the government is doing too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses.”

Joe Manchin, without whose vote the most ambitious elements of the Democrats’ agenda cannot pass, says that he remains opposed to “additional handouts or transfer payments,” new programs that “will never go away,” and “shell games” — which, in practice, means that he should be against pretty much everything that is on offer. In a statement recently, Manchin proposed that “great nations throughout history have been weakened by careless spending,” confirmed that he was aware of “the brutal fiscal reality our nation faces,” and asked, “How much is enough?” The result from Virginia should present him with his answer.

And if, for some reason it does not, it should inspire the mother of all revolts in the House.  It is comprehensible that Nancy Pelosi would wish to end her career by shoveling as much money out of the door as is possible. But it is not at all clear why scores of House Democrats — many of whom prevailed in 2020 in precisely the sort of districts that Glenn Youngkin won today — would elect to follow her off the cliff. It cannot be repeated enough that there is no good reason for the United States, which remains intractably mired in debt, to follow up an unexpected $6 trillion, COVID-19-inspired spending spree with another unsolicited feast that, per White House chief of staff Ron Klain, is “twice as big, in real dollars, as the New Deal was.”

Before tonight, the Democrats’ big plans were already faltering. Tonight, per Ryan Matsumoto of Inside Elections, Virginia “swung 10-15 points to the right since last November” — a “type of swing” that “would be devastating for them in the House and Senate in 2022.” If that’s not enough to kill the bill, well, then the party really is lost to the swamps.