We keep hearing about how terrible things are for Democrats: how they've alienated working class whites, how President Joe Biden is destined to lose and how they can't do anything right. Yet in election after election, Democrats rack up victory after victory. If they keep winning, it might just get even the most fainthearted Democrats to finally trust the courage of their convictions. --Paul Waldman, Author and Commentator for the Washington Post, MSNBC, November 8, 2023
Here's the full article, Virginia Just Showed Democrats the Way to Win
All day Tuesday, I had to avoid the temptation to click on news sites just to see if anyone had any predictions, news, or insights as to how key elections were going in the states that got a lot of publicity. American politics is quite predictable, and in spite of polling data that is not very consistent, and reflects an "all over the place" kind of feeling, at least until election day, and accountability, draws close. After the weekend news about the poll results that came out, I was anxious about what might transpire in the elections that Democrats were pointing to as indicators of where things are headed in 2024, and not wanting to engage with Republicans who would be gloating over wins.
Jen Psaki and Nicole Wallace helped relieve a little of the tension I was feeling about the polls, by pointing out, among other things, similar polling data from a year prior to the mid-term elections during which, specifically, CNN and the New York Times polls used the phrase "red wave" that some Republican politicians were gloating about. Psaki also had some insights with regards as to how the White House would take the information, and what they would be doing with it, and was clear that it really had no bearing, at this point, on real election results. Wallace more or less said the same things, from her own experience in the Bush administration, noting that information about voter preferences goes far deeper than what any single poll that gets reported on television has to say.
But whatever anxiety I might have had, it was relieved very quickly by yesterday's election results.
A Great Night's Sleep
Long before bedtime, it became apparent that the news about the weekend polls would be covered up and largely discredited by some whopping Democratic party election wins. Pollsters, and the news media, had cast a shadow of doubt over this off-year election, at least as far as Democrats are concerned, and made an effort to associate what they are claiming is the Biden Administration's unpopularity with potential Republican victories in key elections.
In spite of their attempts, nothing resembling the gloom and doom they tried to spread over the weekend showed up in those election results. In Kentucky and Ohio, red states in the last several elections, Democrats won big. I was concerned, again mainly from news reporting, that Virginia might not deliver. And I wasn't expecting much from Mississippi, where we got better news than one might think in a Democratic candidate's loss.
It was all over well before Lawrence O'Donnell came on at nine. I slept soundly.
Even Mississippi, where the Democratic candidate for governor, Brandon Presley, lost to Tate Reeves, there was good news. Reeves barely won in a state Trump won by 12 points in 2020, and where hard line conservative, Evangelical whites are a dominant constituency. It turns out that it wasn't as much of a long shot as some people thought, and it shows that Democrats can activate their constituents and get them to the polls.
Everywhere else, it was just an overwhelming victory for Democrats and issues that the party and its candidates support, in mostly red territory. Coupled with the Democratic victory this past summer that elected Janet Protasiewicz to Wisconsin's Supreme Court, a host of other special elections, the mid-terms in 2022, and the Presidential election in 2020, election results in favor of Democrats are dominant. And that calls any polling data that doesn't match up with what's happening in the ballot box into question.
Controlling the Narrative and Getting the Message Out
Joe Biden's predecessor gets far more media attention than he does. He's the single most accomplished President in the White House going back to Lyndon Johnson, or at least to Barack Obama, but you'd never know it from news coverage. When there is coverage, it's critical, it involves the question of his age, or it is bad news in the polls about his job approval, and it rarely focuses on the benefits of his legislative achievements as President. After Tuesday, that almost looks deliberate.
Tuesday was great news for Biden and for his chances of being re-elected. Democrats won on the issues and they won with candidates who articulate their position strongly and clearly. There's not any other message that can come from those results, except that Ohio is definitely in play and its electoral votes on Biden's behalf is not wishful speculation, but a very real possibility. It's pretty clear that some media outlets were preparing to tie any Democratic failures directly to Biden. After the fact, there are few of them who are tying Tuesday's success to Biden. They don't like him and they're not cutting him any slack.
It appears what people do in the voting booth isn't what they're telling pollsters they're going to do. It also appears that when certain news media sources want to make a critical point about the President, they'll go looking for proof after they've drawn their conclusions. Most of the mainstream media, it appears, wants to see the Democrats nominate someone other than Biden. Public opinion can be manipulated, when news reporting becomes propaganda, and I have to wonder, out loud, whether that's not what's happening here.
The reports regarding the New York Times-Sienna College poll, CNN and CBS news that came out last weekend actually got a rather terse response from the Biden Administration, which pointed to several other polls, six or seven altogether, that showed Biden with a lead, in most cases outside the margin of error. There's an answer to a question in that response that I'd like to hear from the media: Why cherry pick polls that have Trump in the lead instead of reporting that this is very early, and for various reasons, polls are all over the place. Psaki and Wallace, from their experience inside Presidential administrations, were able to point out the flaws and inaccuracies in the details, so why couldn't other news sources do the same? That's why I think this is starting to look deliberate.
Democrats: Trust the Courage of Your Convictions!
Of all of the Democrats who ran for President in 2020, Joe Biden is the most representative of the party's values. He's had the experience of making, and learning from, mistakes, of having to adjust personal feelings and preferences to serve the constituency, and is still enough of the old-fashioned politician to believe that negotiation and compromise is essential to effective government. Anyone who thinks he's too old is not paying attention. I can't think of a better image of this President than the walk he took with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy from the government buildings through the streets of Kyiv, after a ten hour train ride in a war zone. Without hesitation, he flew to Israel for direct talks with Netanyahu after the Hamas attack. Age is not an issue with Joe Biden.
Even if it was, any worries about a transition have been dispelled by the competence of Vice President Harris. This country is in good hands.
I'd be willing to invest some cash on a bet that if the Presidential election had been held this past Tuesday, Joe Biden would have easily won a landslide on issues that are based on the convictions of the Democratic party. And that's my emphasis, in agreement with Waldman's opinion piece. If a Democrat can win re-election as governor of Kentucky, that tells me that a Democrat can carry the state and get its electoral votes. Since it's one of the first states to be called on election night, it would be nice to see the shock waves that would be caused if its squiggly little shape was colored blue.
As a party, it seems we still have issues with control of the narrative. If this is a deliberate attempt by the media to smear the President and try to bring about some kind of change of candidate, then the DNC needs to confront that, and the Biden campaign, which has already responded, needs to figure out a way to get on top of it.
I'm tremendously disappointed in the manner in which the justice system in this country is working, with regard to a former President who tried to subvert the Constitution, steal and election and stay in office after the will of the people voted him out. I'm disappointed that we had enough people in the electorate who either couldn't see through his phony image, or wanted something that destructive in the presidency to vote for him and put him in office in the first place. But this hasn't worked the way it should have, from the very beginning, and it remains to be seen if convictions can stop it before the Republican party destroys itself with another candidacy.
Nevertheless, I think President Biden is the best choice for President, and I think he will win re-election, especially if the indicted, failed ex-president is the Republican nominee, because Biden is a Democrat who trusts the courage of his convictions.
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