© Reuters/Gaelen MorseFormer US President Donald Trump
What have we learnt from the results in Virginia, New Jersey, and elsewhere, and what do they herald for the upcoming midterms and the 2024 presidential race?
With roughly a year to go until the midterm elections,
it's time to look at the top five takeaways from the 2021 election cycle in the wake of Republican victories in Virginia and beyond.Takeaway No.1: The Democrats are not in touch with voters on most issues.This takeaway is either a no-brainer or a dastardly lie, depending on where you fall on the ideological scale.
Conservatives, who always think Democrats are out of touch with normal American values, will likely feel vindicated. Progressives, on the other hand, will argue it wasn't the ideas or policies proposed by Democrats that were at fault, but the execution of policies and
the inability of moderates in the party to embrace more radical, revolutionary proposals such as defunding the police, or the New Green Deal.
We'll get into the specifics of policies in a second, but
the magnitude of the losses seem to indicate that, whatever the Democrats are arguing for, the country isn't buying. It's not like the Democrats just lost one race in Virginia; they lost a lot of races in Virginia - and elsewhere.
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