It is a quadrennial tradition.  The party in the White House has poor results in the gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, and the pundits predict doom and gloom in the mid-term elections.  (Of course, then the party in the White House has losses in the House and maybe losses in the Senate and the pundits say “see we told you so.”  So what lessons should we take from this week’s results.

First, Terry McAuliffe did make a gaffe.  Using the classic definition of a gaffe, he told the truth that nobody wants to hear.  In his case, in response to questions about education, he noted that parents do not get to dictate to the schools what the schools teach.  This statement is partially true.   But as with most sound bites, explaining what was meant takes a lot of time and does not overcome the gut reaction to the original statement.

What is absolutely true is that public schools are not a system of private tutors.  Teachers are responsible for teaching a class of students.    For the system to work, Johnny has to be using the same books and Kathy.  So Johnny’s parents do not get to decide the materials that Johnny has to read for the course.

That does not mean that Johnny’s parents have no role in choosing the curriculum for their school.  They do.  First, they get to vote for governor and the state legislature (and in some states, the state school board).  And in doing so, they have influence over the basic graduation requirements for the state.  Do students have to take a biology course in high school?  Does the American History course have to cover slavery and Native American history?

Second, they can lobby their legislature/state education agency to change the standards or the approved text books for the state.

Third, they get to vote for the local school board.  Again, depending on the state, the local school board (or at least the people hired by the local school board) gets to set the basic curriculum (subject to the state standards) for the schools in the district and pick the specific textbooks (assuming that the state authorizes several text books for a subject) that will be used in the district.  The school boards also hire and supervise the teachers in the district.

Finally, the parents can lobby the school board (including speaking at meetings) to convince the school boards to change policies.  While I disagree with the sentiment, if parents want the school board to relax mask mandates or not mandate teachers and staff to be vaccinated, that is a proper role for parents.

But if the school board decides that teachers of American History should make sure that students understand the less than benevolent or  honorable ways that the U.S. government treated native populations over the course of the Nineteenth Century or that African-Americans have been the victim of discrimination starting with being forcibly transported to these shores and enslaved and continuing with Jim Crow laws and then selective enforcement of the law, Suzy’s parents do not have the right to say that my child should not have to attend.  And if the school board thinks that students should have a basic understanding of genetics and evolution (which would have helped tremendously with the discussion of COVID variants over the last year), Reverend Green does not get to exempt his children from that course.

Having mistakenly opened that can of worms, it was hard for McAuliffe to recover.  But it is unclear that this gaffe actually mattered in the end, other than giving the GOP a good wedge issue.  One thing out of Virginia this week was how little split voting there was.  McAuliffe slightly underperformed the rest of the ticket, but that was because there was a progressive running a third party candidacy for Governor which got less than 1% of the vote.  The three Republican candidates — for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General finished within 1% of each other.  While split ticket voting was never that common, it has declined to almost nothing.  To contrast this recent vote, I took  a look back at the 2008 vote totals in my state when there was a 13-14% swing from the best Democratic candidate to the worst.  By 2020, in my state, the total swing was under 5%.  In short, barring a real bad candidate like Roy Moore, the split ticket voter is going the way of the dodo.

For the way forward, we again face a familiar debate.  Legislating is ugly. As a lawyer who has to follow what legislation is moving in my state legislature every year, there is no time so hectic as the last week of session when bills are changing daily and the ideas from one bill that appears to have reached a road block magically transfer to a bill nearing final passage.  And seeing good ideas being stalled in the legislature tends to discourage part-time activists who mistakenly thought that winning an election meant immediate success.

But that leaves us with the two arguments that are always made at this time in a presidency.   Is the problem the failure to deliver which has depress turnout in the base?  Or is the problem the programs that are being pushed which has energized the opposing party and convinced that tiny sliver of persuadable voters that perhaps they made a mistake supporting the president’s party?  Objectively, there is no good way to measure which mattes most as both things are occurring at the same time.  And politicians tend to believe that what matters most is what matters to them.  So those politicians who represent districts that are closely divided tend to see the problem as the rest of the party is trying to move too fast.  And those politicians who represent solid districts see the problem as not delivering what they promised in the last election.

I think the lesson that needs to be learned is a little of both.  While it is okay to spend a little bit of time trying to generate consensus behind proposals, getting bipartisan support where possible, ultimately the majority party has the responsibility of just sitting down, finalizing the significant legislation, and getting it done.  While it might not be everything that the party base wants, there needs to be some  delivery on some promises to permit the party to say to their voters that we got you X this time.  If you want Y, we need bigger margins in the next election.

Hopefully, we are finally moving on legislation having passed the infrastructure bill last night.  And the reconciliation bill looks likely to be finalized by the end of the month.  Unfortunately, these votes are about five weeks too late for Virginia and New Jersey.