I really have nothing much to say about NYC’s mayoral campaign. No one thought Curtis Sliwa had any chance of victory, and the results proved that assertion correct. That said, I DO NOT think it’s good for NY to not have competitive races for mayor. You can search here for my homage du merde for Mike Bloomberg. There are some real issues with Adams and his close ties to the NYPD, and I’m ready to wait and see.

But what about the rest of the evening? What about the loss of the Virginia governorship to Glenn Youngkin, a Republican unashamed to identify with Trump and Trumpism?

Here’s some thoughts.

I don’t think this is just Virginia and I think the implications for 2022 are pretty clear. The electorate was happy enough to elect a ‘not-a-Trump’ to pay scant attention to Biden’s real history as a ‘centrist’. But people made their way to the polls to do more than vote for a ‘not-Trump’. Here are the expectations many people had going into January 2021:

• student college loans wiped out or reduced
• Aggressive prosecution of the Trump machine
• real action on climate (blocked now by Manchin and Synema)
• a rollback of the tax system put in place by Trump
• reforms to the ACA—too many Americans are STILL GOING bankrupt because of a for-profit system that no other G20 country has
• Rejection of single-payer or any of the critical reforms needed to healthcare

I know some of the problem is in a Senate where senators who voted to block impeachment of the first insurrectionist president in history will block everything. But people hold Biden responsible for things he could’ve addressed from day one. I don’t think any of the 80million who pulled the lever or punched the chad for Biden are really happy with him and as long as he can no longer be compared to Trump, he and the Dems are in trouble. And the country lost another gubernatorial seat to the party that is trying to obstruct free voting.

I know, the argument is that Virginia can’t elect someone trending toward Bernie Sanders’ talking points. But if Biden isn’t creating hope for the Blue constituency that something better is on the way, 2022 will be an ugly time with results that leave Biden dead in the water.