My take on McAuliffe's loss and what it means for the future

I wanted to wait until the results from the Virginia race were known before renewing my offer to volunteer to create a new brand of activism in the Democratic Party:

1. McAuliffe made a mistake in the debate by saying that parents should not have a say in the school curriculum (when he could have said that parents’ voice would always be welcomed unless they reflected extremist positions like that of some school boards in Texas). That would have been an easy fix had McAuliffe simply admitted that he misspoke. But he didn’t do that.

Then we saw the repeat of the ‘death panels’ of the Obama era. As with the ‘death panels’ (a bizarre issue created by the Tea Party for his base’s consumption), Trump’s base used a concept the left neglected to define (Never, never create a concept if you can’t define it first, before your opponent does!): critical race theory. Critical race theory exposes the racial bias the system implicitly has and should be corrected, something on which Martin Luther King would have agreed. And yet, it was easily turned into a divisive message that accused white people of being racists. As with the death panels, this bizarre charge was ignored. Next we knew, Republicans had tied critical race theory to McAuliffe’s unfortunate answer about parents’ say on the curriculum and misrepresented the former as the latter (the way the Tea Party repackaged the ‘death panels’ and sold them to the general public as ‘socialized medicine’), so reaching both their base and the general public while increasing the salience of education in the voters’ minds. The democratic answer: crickets...

My proposal to create a Barber Commission (led by Rev. Barber) would have easily dismantled the Republican message by proposing, instead of critical race theory, a national call to all races in America to correct the racial bias still existent in the system to make it worthy of the memory of Martin Luther King and of the intellectuals from which he took his ideas, like W.E.B. Dubois and Frederick Douglas. Instead, we had Youngkin quoting Martin Luther King to court suburban voters by invoking an America where people was judged by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin...

Having failed miserably in this simple issue, McAuliffe moved to nationalize the election in the hope of tying Youngkin to Trump.

2. Nationalizing the election was a torpid move since Biden’s popularity in the state had fallen almost 20% since the 2020 elections.

It got worse though. Biden never fought Manchin and Sinema by going to West Virginia (as FDR did to defend the projects he wanted despite the resistance of Southern conservative Democrats) to sell his Build Back Better in terms of jobs for those states (so sinking the rest of the party to not risk the allegiance of those two) or even tried to look as if we was trying to tackle the supply chain crisis that is already creating inflation expectations (what was not true when Larry Summers wrote his op-ed in the Washington Post or even the first time I proposed Biden to involve the military on a temporary basis to provide logistics support with facilities and personnel to unclog the supply chain as FDR used the military to provide logistical support to his Civilian Conservation Corps). And no, no voters I have talked with cares whether Biden’s in Glasgow right now. In other words, while Republicans have been good at repackaging the bizarre issues their base likes for massive consumption, Democrats have failed miserably to repackage the Build Back Better bill in terms of the issues voters care the most: the economy, inflation. As I write this report, Biden’s approval on the economy is already 12% net negative on the economy (while Trump stayed net positive to the end of his administration): https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_biden_job_approval_economy-7321.html

And no, I am not saying that this is necessarily the harbinger of a disaster in 2022 and 2024 because I believe these numbers can be reversed, but public opinion has its own inertia. It’s like a big ship that, unless there is a traumatic event (like 9/11) doesn’t turn easily. But quick action is needed. There is a significant risk of losing the House next year. If what the Tea Party did to Obama (with impunity) counts as a lesson, that may be the end of the Biden’s presidency.

Unfortunately Biden has surrounded himself with mediocre advisors who claim to know FDR because they read the book of Jonathan Alter although their actions know how little they know about the New Deal. These are not definitely advisors cut in the pattern of Louis Howe, political advisor who helped FDR win his gubernatorial race in New York and helped him win the White House. And unfortunately the Democratic Party is not sponsoring leaders like Hector Perez Garcia, who did so much for Kennedy and Johnson, being rewarded with achievements for the Chicano community in return. This activism, oriented to policy, has been replaced by an activism plagued by kids whose main goal is to express themselves through videos and flashy massive emails. As much as I would like to be able to help the Biden administration, voices like mine are not welcomed by these activists, whose major is in the fanboy activism and event hosting that are liked so much in the Twitter world. That’s why I want to renew my offer to volunteer to create this Bobby Kennedy brand of activism to improve the Democratic message and efficiently channel ideas for the good cause (as Heritage Action is doing for the bad one). Otherwise, I am afraid the likes of O’Malley Dillon, Mayorkas and Blinken are going to sink the Democratic Party for a long time while the Youngkins soften Trump’s image in such a degree to make his comeback in 2024 possible.

Looking forward to having that Zoom meeting with you,

Alfredo Bravo de Rueda