Dems Couldn’t Have Done Better

Created
Fri, 10/11/2023 - 04:00
Updated
Fri, 10/11/2023 - 04:00
The polls are driving them crazy but the performance on Tuesday should make them keep their heads down, do the work and recognize they have a good argument and all the other side has is hate. Ron Brownstein on the election this week and what it means for Democrats: Democrats yesterday continued to perform better at the polls than in the polls. Even as many Democrats have been driven to a near panic by a succession of recent polls showing President Joe Biden’s extreme vulnerability, the party in yesterday’s elections swept almost all the most closely watched contests. Democrats won the Kentucky governorship by a comfortable margin, romped to a lopsided victory in an Ohio ballot initiative ensuring abortion rights,and easily captured an open Pennsylvania Supreme Court seat. Most impressive, Democratsheld the Virginia state Senate and were projected to regain control of the Virginia state House, despite an all-out campaign from Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin to win both chambers.Among the major contests, Democrats fell short only in the governor’s race in Mississippi. The results extended the most striking pattern from the 2022 midterm election, when Republicans failed to match the usual gains for the party out of the White House at a time of widespread public dissatisfaction with the president. Democrats, just as they did last November, generated yesterday’s unexpectedly strong results primarily by amassing decisive margins in urban centers and the large inner suburbs around them. The outcomes suggested that, as in 2022, an unusually broad group of voters who believe that Democrats…