Virginia and the Horse-Races of Beltway Elections
Ideological fanaticism has blinded Democrats to how things look to normal people--and that’s an incredibly good position for the opposition to be in.
The gubernatorial race in Virginia is the hottest political horse-race story in America, and for good reason. Any real change in America is going to come from the tension (of one kind or another) between brave and committed governors in red states, and the permanently-blue federal state inside the Beltway.
But, considering this is pretty-blue Virginia—with the growing mass of federal government bureaucrats, contractors and hangers-on causing the floorboards beneath them to creak from their imperial bulk—I don’t have much hope a Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin would join Florida’s Ron DeSantis or Texas’ Gregg Abbot in standing up to the Biden administration and their overreach. The state is too blue, and a GOP governor doesn’t have that much room to maneuver.
Even so, thanks largely to months of insane Critical Race Theory outrages in Northern Virginia schools—and the recently blue Loudon County especially—Youngkin has managed to take advantage of the most important political cleavage in America at this moment: the voters vs. Democratic Party’s utter fealty to its constituent group, the increasingly radical teachers unions.
The teachers unions—and, really, the whole education establishment, from pre-school to post-doctorate—have been, over the course of the last decades, thoroughly radicalized into the most aggressive ideological leftism. Their embrace of CRT is of a piece with their racial and sexual obsessions, their rejection of free expression, and other manifestations of their radicalism too numerous and complicated to catalogue here. (“You know it when you see it,” was said to describe pornography, and it’s apt here too as that’s literally what we’re dealing with.)
The young and committed GenZ and Millennial cohort most enthusiastically pushing the woke “successor ideology” in education, of course, went to school with their friends and room-mates who gravitated toward media professions. As they’ve got identical prejudices and fanaticisms, it’s not surprising that the mainstream media finds itself in the same kind of bind: unable and unwilling to disavow the insanity in Virginia’s classrooms, they have no choice but to attack the parents (also known as voters) who raise common-sense objections to, say, things like gay porn in the classroom.
Since its inception in the late 19th Century, the central conceit of Progressivism has been the idea that credentialed expertise always leads to better, more just and virtuous outcomes; America’s tradition of messy freedom guided by the decisions and mores of its citizens must be tamped down, they believe, in order for a far more profitable rule by experts.
For more than a century, they had to keep this idea under wraps, as justifying the disenfranchisement of the voters doesn’t usually win elections. But we’re in 2021, and the Long March has decamped at its final destination. They’ve marched so long without real opposition that the last person who objected was miles back on the road; they no longer have the ability or the inclination to convince—or even to recognize when or why it would be necessary to do so.
That’s obviously the case when Slate is running pieces with bizarre titles like, “As a Parent, I Would Rather Fake My Own Death Than Take Over Curriculum Planning From Teachers and School Boards” or “Parents claim they have the right to shape their kids’ school curriculum. They don’t” in Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post.
Ideological fanaticism has blinded them to how things look to normal people--and that’s an incredibly good position for the opposition to be in. Polls showing Republican Glenn Youngkin neck-and-neck with (or even ahead of) former Democrat Governor Terry McAullife are almost certainly real and express discontent with the radicalism of the woke left, even on the part of reliable, nearly-religious Democrat voters.
This is true regardless of who eventually wins the race, as fraud and chicanery have made elections in blue states—or, at least, anywhere there’s a powerful Democratic political machine—nearly impossible to fairly assess. After the “fortifications” of elections in many states in 2020, I think it’ll be increasingly impossible to attest to the veracity of election outcomes in most of these states.
I have many friends in politics who are following the Virginia race. All attest to the high level of GOP enthusiasm, but I don’t know anyone who trusts the outcome will be fair and without massive fraud.
For this reason, despite the polls, I think it’s safe to assume that McAullife will prevail (somehow, wink-wink). In a way, he must. For Democrats, this race is about a lot more than just the state of Virginia; if they fail to take this race, they’re afraid of the heightning expectations for a “red wave” election in 2022.
I’ve long been uninterested by these kinds of stories that tend to fascinate the political press and portend certain “waves” of one kind or another, as they’re so transparently narrative-creating and -reinforcing.
The classic “wave” narrative story always centers on the legislative branch and the House of Representatives’ elections every two-years. Of course, an entire industry of news and opinion journalists—almost without exception, the most dull and least insightful people in the business, who specialize in talking “optics” and are strangers to discussions of political philosophy or, really, anything that gets past the most surface political concerns.
Structurally, these people will never know what time it is, because their continued employment depends on the regular, repeating drama of the act itself. They are hype-men, invested in the system as it is, not at all different from entertainment reporters who follow the Oscars; sure, they have their own hobby-horses and preferences, but one thing they can be counted on not to question is the crucial importance of the Oscars itself. And yet, corporate political commentary in America—on both the Right and Left—is largely entrusted to these same people.
These election horse-race stories are a nutrition-free diversion; they have the effect of keeping us tied to meaningless and disposable plot points, when the arc of the story never changes.
Of course, we should care whether Democrats control the three branches of government—but only because they tend to pass massive, damaging and nation-altering laws. And yes, their proactive ability to do tremendous damage through investigations and leaks is profound. But the reverse clearly isn’t true: Republicans, when in control of Congress, are complacent, timid or—at best—well intentioned and inept. The only advantage of a GOP-controlled Congress is a brief reprieve from Democrats’ advancing radicalism, and their seemingly-boundless ambition for leftward, structural change through legislation.
The Democrats’ ambitious and bloated legislation isn’t written by a Congressional Brain Trust, of course; it’s generated over the course of years and decades by a cadre of dedicated (and quite brilliant) activists and lobbyists. The Members of Congress get briefed, sign their names, and take to Twitter. This abdication of responsibility allows Members of Congress (of both parties) to become social media stars and influencers, rather than actual legislators.
As Angelo Codevilla pointed out, other than these massive radical bills, though, Congress has relegated itself to passing continuing budget resolutions and raising debt-ceilings, under threat of media-generated hysteria and “government shutdown.”
The American form of government once taught in civics classes (to the extent anyone alive remembers them) has been transformed into a wholly new regime, ruled by a permanent administrative state with shared tastes and prejudices, fanatically-committed its ideology, and—as we saw vividly from 2016-2020—is self-aware enough to neutralize any potential threats to its power.
While we have some brilliant and exciting Members of Congress—and friends who will soon join them in the legislative branch—Congressional races are essentially pointless, at least, if we’re interested in changing the dangerous course America is fast barreling down. Nothing will change; just more horse-races and the attendant political entertainment to keep Americans from thinking about things that really matter.
That leaves us with what’s important—increasingly to the exclusion of anything else: red states.
Republicans in red states need to drink deeply from this Virginia lesson, and lean into issues like CRT or gender insanity—basically, anything the hard-left media insists is a “third rail” or “divisive” culture war issue.
Republican governors too timid to do this deserve to be pressured by their constituents and newer, more enthusiastic members of their state legislatures. If they fail to reorient themselves and join the fight, they must be discarded and replaced.
On the Turntable
It’s difficult to pin down the most beautiful moments on Caetano Veloso’s new album, Meu Coco--which is (depending on how you count) the latest of more than 50 albums he’s released since his solo debut in 1968. One of these exquisite moments certainly hits halfway into the second track, “Ciclâmen do Líbano,” a languid and delicate ballad with an Oriental string arrangement reminiscent of mid-century Egyptian popular music. The unison lines—arranged by Veloso’s cellist, longtime collaborator and music tutor, Jacques Morelenbaum—could be stolen from an Oum Kalthoum performance, and evoke the same kind of mystery.
The cellist makes another two stunning appearances, this time as a soloist, on the stunningly inventive “Não Vou Deixar” or the very catchy, traditional samba, “Sem Samba Não Dá.” Mei Coco is full of these moments.