Thursday, December 16, 2021

Democrats Have a Voter Problem in Maryland?


Salena Zito, "Maryland Voters Send a Warning Shot to Democrats"
The problem for Democrats and Biden is they listen too much to the loudest liberal activist voices in the party and ignore the people who put them in office.


OLDTOWN, Maryland—This ancient colonial town nestled along the north branch of the Potomac River could not be more different from the upscale suburbs of Chevy Chase located much closer to the tidal portion.

While both are in the same state, this town of 86 people is more culturally connected to the people and places in West Virginia and Pennsylvania close to this region than the D.C. suburb located in the center of wealth and power in this country.

Yet they do share one recently developing commonality that has gone under the radar of the national press that tells the story of a state, and by default, a country so disapproving of the president and the Democrats that even the bluest of blue-state voters can’t pretend anymore that things are going well.

With a border Biden has refused to visit, crippling inflation that he initially dismissed as temporary, and a broken supply chain that has affected every segment of our lives and our economy, Biden is widely seen by voters as negligent on all of those issues.

His problems do not end there. Ending the war in Afghanistan, a move that had widespread support, was never supposed to be at the expense of American lives. His management of COVID-19 became political instead of managerial, and how he and the Justice Department have addressed parents’ distress with local school boards has sent chills to suburban parents here and across the county.

And the oddest thing is that this administration and its surrogates think all the public are concerned about is passing a massive social spending bill filled with liberal programs that overreach at every turn.

The message is: Once it becomes law, all will be fine.

A bill so massively outside the norms of a traditional social spending bill is not why people voted for Biden, and anyone who says otherwise is peddling spending pornography. Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) would know that if they took the time to listen.

But they don’t.

As one Democratic strategist told me last week, “If Biden can just get a win and pass this bill, voters will be happy,” completely missing why voters are falling away from Biden.

In October, the Goucher College poll conducted here in Maryland showed that since March, Biden’s job approval went from 62 percent to 53 percent, with only 43 percent of independent voters approving of his performance.

The two Democrats representing the state in the Senate, Senator Chris Van Hollen, who is up for reelection in 2022, and senior Senator Benjamin Cardin, were underwater at 44 percent and 46 percent.

Republican Governor Larry Hogan, conversely, is at a robust 68 percent approval rating, up 6 percentage points since the last poll

Hogan has lived up to his promise to be a good conservative manager and not an ideologue. Whether they are here or Baltimore, Hagerstown, Cumberland or the suburbs of Bethesda and the Chesapeake Bay, his voters have rewarded him for living up to his promise.

He won this very blue state’s support in 2014 under very similar circumstances to what happened in neighboring Virginia in its gubernatorial race, an antidote to a party and a White House bent on plowing ahead with overreaches voters never elected them to do.

Barack and Michelle Obama campaigned here against him that year alongside Hillary Clinton, never fully understanding that they were the reason voters were unhappy.

The polling in blue Maryland showing Biden losing the heart of the bluest of voters, a place where the chance of a Republican winning here for president is less than zero, is not an outlier. It is happening all across the country in both red and blue states.

The problem for Democrats and Biden is they listen too much to the loudest liberal activist voices in the party and ignore the people who put them in office. Yet, oddly, it appears they are operating as though they are one and the same.

22 comments:

  1. Or, his distance from Trump. Pretty sure the Deranged Dreamsicle will try to whip up a primary challenger against him for having his own mind.

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  2. Maryland's RNC is still in the Never-Trump hands. They'll block any legit challenger w/exception of Andy Harris, who's an incumbent Congressman.

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  3. That is a good thing. Trumpism would flip MD deep blue.

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  4. 20% of Maryland's workforce works for government.

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  5. President Joe Manchin lol

    https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/586357-charlamagne-the-god-harris-get-into-heated-exchange-after

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  6. lol! More than half of the Democrats in Congress are bought off RINOs, including the entire Leadership.

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  7. I'm sure Joe Manchin will change his mind if the left calls him enough names.

    You'd think the so-called "Resistance to Trump" on the Dem side would have learned from Trump's greatest flaw... Don't shit on someone you need...

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  8. I meant DINO. But I was still wrong. Joe Manchin is actually a trumper.

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  9. lol! If it weren't Joe Manchin taking the fall for the "DINO's" it would be someone else being thrown under the bus to keep up the pretense of Pelosi and Schumer's DNC Leadership "faux progressiveness" and "solidarity" with the "Progressive Caucus". There are also more than one DNC Leadership trojan horses in the caucus... insurance policies, I suppose.

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  10. The thing is, the Dems don't really have (and probably never will have) a far left Senator who could derail everything with their one vote. Bernie Sanders doesn't have the balls to try.

    Watch as they strip the Build Back Better Act of the lefty bullshit Manchin can't stomach to try to get it to pass, Bernie Sanders will STFU.

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  11. He is enjoying a brief moment / delusion of "everyone will vote with me" that may or may not have any substance to it. They wanted Kamala Harris to cast the deciding vote, and Manchin aborted it. Kyrsten Sinema is probably a hard no also. The Dems in the Senate are hardly the monolith they think they are.

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