There’s going to be plenty of political analysis about why the Democrats had a disappointing election night on Tuesday, most notably with Republican Glenn Youngkin defeating Democrat Terry McAuliffe for the governorship of Virginia. One of the best pieces I read leading up to the election was by Zach Carter, a prominent political reporter and author of a splendid biography of John Maynard Keynes.
In his newsletter In the Long Run, Carter emphasized that Covid’s disruption of schooling has made suburban voters, who the Democrats have made a big part of their coalition, much more susceptible Republican messaging:
COVID-19 has been terrible for everyone, and it has been especially hard on parents. Unpredictable school closures didn't just screw up parental work schedules, they drove millions of parents, including 3 million women, out of the workforce altogether. Remote learning doesn't work well for most kids and has been accompanied by rising levels of depression and anxiety among students. Between April and October of last year, the proportion of mental health visits to doctors spiked 24 percent nationwide for kids aged 5 to 11, and 31 percent for kids age 12 to 17. Existing disparities in learning got worse – with the biggest hits coming down on kids with disabilities, kids from low-income families and kids from Black and latino families – all demographics that Democrats expect to do well with at the ballot box.
For the podcast, I spoke with Carter about the election, the continuing pandemic and the long tail it will have, how the Democrats need to prioritize economic issues, how Youngkin created Trumpism without Trump, divisions in the Democratic coalition, the threat of authoritarianism, and much more (including a side glance at Isaac Asimov’s Foundation).
(Edited by Emily M. Keeler)
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Podcast: Losing the Suburbs