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Election Night Takeaway

by | Nov 3, 2021 | Campaigns, Opinion, Party Politics

The 2021 general election is one that we won’t soon forget. 

There is a new Republican governor of Virginia. First-time political candidate Glenn Youngkin defeated former governor and longtime Democratic operative and fundraiser Terry McAuliffe. 

The election was a humiliating defeat for the Democrats, where they pulled out all the stops with surrogate events featuring Obama, Biden, Harris, and the teachers union head.  Remember, Virginia is where Joe Biden saw a 10% margin of victory just over a year ago.  

Then there’s New Jersey, where it looks like the current governor, Democrat Phil Murphy, will barely win. His opponent, Republican Jack Ciattarelli, nearly won the off-year race despite Democrats holding a 1 million voter registration advantage. Let me repeat, in case it didn’t sink in: Democrats had 1 million more registered voters over Republicans!

Here in Iowa, while the races were smaller, the sentiment was the same. In Polk County, Johnson and Ankeny, we saw several conservative candidates defeat entrenched liberal Democrats in local school board races.

What was the motivator? In addition to inflation, high unemployment, and a deeply unpopular president, liberal Democrats have been leaning into an increasingly toxic message that parents shouldn’t have a place at the table when discussing issues about education and what their children are taught.

Terry McAuliffe himself was quoted saying, “I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions,” then adding, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

That is a truly remarkable thing to say.

Governor Reynolds understood that and said as much today at a press conference. Referring to the race as “a great indication that parents matter.”

She went on to say parents “made the determination that they weren’t going to be told to go home and shut up, that these are their children and they’re going to engage in the process.”

However, the most important takeaway from yesterday’s election here in Iowa was that we saw an undoing of one of the left’s biggest fairy tales, that Republicans have somehow been working diligently to suppress voter turnout and undermine the democratic process.

The narrative was undermined yesterday by some of the left’s most prominent surrogates, the media.

Preliminary data from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office provides data that will be very difficult for Democrats to spin. 

Over 425,000 individuals cast their ballots in yesterday’s election. That means from 2019, more than 66,000 more people voted yesterday than they did two years ago. 

Turnout and participation like this should be impossible if you listened to the fear-mongering and lies Democrats and the media spread earlier this year when the Iowa legislature passed comprehensive election integrity legislation. 

Voters are fed up with being told things aren’t that bad, that they’re racists, that they shouldn’t have a voice in their kids’ educations, and that more government is the solution to their problems. 

If Democrats are paying attention, they would see this as a wake-up call and stop trying to push this nation off the cliff to advance some progressive fantasy of a big government utopia. 

Sadly (or happily, if you’re a Republican), there is no sign of that from Democrats. For example, here is Nancy Pelosi this morning:

Based on the voter’s sentiment and the Democratic party’s platform, politicians like Cindy Axne and Abby Finkenauer have little to look forward to next year.