Are the Democrats really in trouble?

WTF?: The big challenge for Democrats coming out of their losses in Virginia on Tuesday is figuring out how to reinvigorate the voters they need most as they move into next year’s challenging midterm elections. That’s going to be a challenge because Republicans will do everything they can to stall the progressive legislation that voters want.

Voters are angry. They’re mad at Wahington politics, which they feel are broken. Biden is the man at the top and the Democrats the party in charge to take the blame.

Democrats are struggling to achieve that kind of motivation with their supporters, many of whom say they feel burned out by politics. Some are disillusioned with the party that controls Washington but is unable to deliver results. Others are more preoccupied with concerns such as the coronavirus and inflation.

Key to Biden’s 2020 win in Virginia and elsewhere were “surge” voters — among them, younger people and people of color — whose revulsion toward then-President Donald Trump brought them to the polls, many for the first time, in 2018 and 2020. But to them, nothing has changed.

Biden can’t get his party to pass a popular infrastructure bill. He has offered benign assurances that events have summarily contradicted inflation, Afghanistan, and the southern border. According to Gallup, no president elected after World War II lost more public support in his first few months of office than he has. Biden’s losses are particularly steep among independents. If Biden doesn’t recover, this is bound to have down-ballot effects.

Democratic officials and strategists said that to counteract what unfolded in Virginia — vital anti-Democratic and anti-Biden energy driving the conservative base and suburban independents to vote Republican — the party needs to improve its economic pitch significantly, engage with young voters, voters of color, and women under 50 far earlier and more aggressively than they have this year and renew efforts to recruit a more diverse slate of candidates.

The voters are sending a message to all politicians. Either work for us and pass legislation that WE need and want, or we will send you packing.

For the Democrats, it’s another lesson in marketing. The Republicans are going to stall everything in hopes that voters blame them and vote them out. The absolute joke is on voters because Republicans ate going to turn the screws.

Originally published at https://commonsenseandpolitics.com on November 3, 2021.