Phil Murphy survived. Polls that showed the incumbent Democratic governor of New Jersey ahead by double digits turned into an election night near-death experience. Murphy eventually won by 2.9 points—a margin wider than that of Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory in Virginia. Which is of absolutely no comfort to four vulnerable New Jersey Democrats in Congress. For them, last week’s surprisingly tight result kicked off a year of cold sweats.
“Tom Malinowski, Josh Gottheimer, Andy Kim, Mikie Sherrill—oh, yeah, they have something to worry about,” says Julie Roginsky, a Democratic strategist who used to be a top adviser to Murphy. “They won their districts in 2018 largely as a result of opposition to Donald Trump, and the abandonment of Trump by college-educated voters in their districts who typically would have voted Republican.”
Trump, as you might have heard, is no longer president. And many of those mostly white, often female New Jersey suburban swing voters are mad as hell—about how the state bungled public school closings during the pandemic and about what are still quaintly called pocketbook issues, such as taxes and gas prices. Those are big reasons why some senior Democratic campaign operatives are assigning greater weight to the results in New Jersey’s gubernatorial race than to those in Virginia, which drew greater press attention. The Garden State dynamics appear to have more application across the country in next year’s midterms. “People are focusing on Virginia when they probably should be focusing on New Jersey,” a top national Democratic strategist says. “The Virginia campaign was influenced a bit by its proximity to the Washington media market. The New Jersey race was pure national atmospherics. The bad political and economic tide really reared its head there.”
The jump in inflation reported this week, a statistical ratification of what voters had already been seeing, sure isn’t going to help Democrats fight off a red wave, even though Republicans aren’t offering any real solutions. But the current jolts could end up serving a useful clarifying purpose. “The economy, on the metrics, seemed to be doing well this past year. But that’s not what voters feel. If I were Malinowski or Gottheimer or Sherrill or Kim, I would talk about nothing other than trying to make the lives of their constituents more affordable,” Roginsky says. “And places like New Jersey, California, New York, Maryland are high-tax states where the SALT deduction, for instance, means something not just to billionaires but to middle-class voters. Whether progressives and the Squad like it or not, the road to the Democratic majority runs through these suburban swing districts.”
The culture war isn’t going away, of course, especially after Youngkin successfully updated the playbook Republicans have been using for decades, with Willie Horton evolving into critical race theory. “Lee Atwater would probably be pleased at how good the Republicans in the age of Trump have become at identity politics,” says Bakari Sellers, a Democratic strategist from South Carolina. “If you look at some of the exit polls, a large percentage of voters who came out because they didn’t like critical race theory also didn’t have any kids in school. But it was such a driving force. And you realize that Democrats are decently inept about talking about issues revolving around race.” With Republicans now labeling themselves “the party of parents,” the national Democratic strategist believes the best counteroffensive will be simplicity. “Democrats have to learn not to give a nuanced response,” he says. “‘Well, it’s not taught in public school.’ Wrong fucking answer! What you say is, ‘I’m against teaching critical race theory in public schools. What does have a place is teaching our history, including the scars of slavery.’ You take the wedge issues off the table.”
All the tactical skirmishing will matter to the midterms. So, too, will the final shape of Biden’s “Build Back Better” bill and those of the dozens of congressional districts whose lines are still being redrawn. Yet the Democrats’ best hope for containing the damage may be time. A rebound in Biden’s popularity, if it is to come, probably won’t arrive until next spring, but that would allow him the chance to boost candidates in the fall. “The thing is, when you get your ass kicked, you don’t want to deny it, but you don’t want to misdiagnose and you don’t want to overreact,” John Anzalone, Biden’s pollster, says. “The silver lining is that it’s November 2021, not October 2022. I don’t think any of us believe the political, economic, and COVID environment are going to be the same. We have the potential for an incredibly powerful message. But we’ve got to get shit done.”
Sean Clegg is one of the few Democratic strategists whose candidate won big this fall—though California governor Gavin Newsom was in a significantly different contest, running to stave off recall against a field of fringe Republicans. Still, Clegg is alarmed by what he saw unfold on the East Coast last week. “Biden’s negative coattails were longer than Trump’s,” he says. “What happened in Virginia and New Jersey is that there has been a seismic shift in the president’s popularity, his image, the perception of his competency and job performance. And if we don’t fix that, it’s not going to be a question of right track, wrong track for Democrats in 2022. The train is going to be off the track.”
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