What Went Down During The 2021 Elections

Micah, last night’s results do make me wonder how challenging the long tail of the pandemic will be for Democrats going forward. Obviously, many voters did not like how Trump and the Republicans handled the public health side. But I think voters were also primed to care about education because there’s still some lingering anger from parents over last year’s school closures — and tensions around parental autonomy are not going to abate as vaccinations for younger children become a reality. I’ve seen some discussion of whether congressional Democrats’ decision to bag paid family leave as part of the big spending bill will anger parents in next year’s midterms, but I think debates around schools could be a lot more potent.

I said this (ineloquently) on the podcast, Micah, but I agree with you that a lot can just be chalked up to human nature — and, therefore, you can’t easily separate my “it’s all macro trends!” from Nate’s “what are the real-world reasons?”

It’s virtually impossible for a government to do everything well, and because the grass is always greener on the other side, voters (and, to be honest, the media) will fixate on the stuff that isn’t going well, and that becomes the reason (or excuse, if you like) why voters turn against the party in power. Right now, it might be the delta variant; it might be the sluggish economy; it might be lack of action in Congress. But whatever it is, it’s scratching an itch that is inevitably going to be there.

Ahead of yesterday’s election, both Trump and Youngkin surrogate Amanda Chase were still beating the election fraud drum, with Chase even baselessly claiming that votes would be digitally switched. So how does Youngkin’s win fit into that narrative?

Well, Big Lie believers are rationalizing the victory by claiming that the election was rigged but that enough patriots came out to vote to overwhelm the planned fraud. Here’s the top comment on the top post currently on Patriots.win, a pro-Trump message board:

“Of course the elections are still rigged. I am not even remotely pretending otherwise. We need to vote en masse every time anyway to keep forcing them to cheat even harder. Not voting is surrender.”

And here’s part of a Telegram post from last night by a major QAnon influencer who has more than 125,000 subscribers:

“Here’s a dose of reality: Youngkin’s already won the Governorship. Right now the slow motion votes rolling in closing the gap is them attempting to cheat. Here’s the kicker though; MAGA came out and crushed their algorithms tonight! Virginians weren’t leaving it for chance and swept the state red!”

If you thought Republicans winning elections undercuts the Big Lie narrative, that is absolutely not the case.