Obviously, Democrats need to do something different over the next year if they're going to have any chance at all in the midterm elections. That was the overwhelming message from last night's dismal election returns. Because what they just tried pretty obviously didn't work. At least, on a small scale. The off-off-year elections which always follow a presidential year only include two statewide races, in New Jersey and Virginia. That is a very small slice of America, but it's all the data we have to work with, so the natural inclination is to draw national political lessons from it all. Some will wind up being correct, some won't. After reading some other people's opinions about last night, here are the ones I'm inclined to believe right now:

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For whatever reason, New Jersey and Virginia set themselves up as political harbinger states. They hold their gubernatorial elections the year after presidential elections, and since they're the only two such races in the country in these off years, they almost always get plenty of national attention. The question now (as always) is: "What are the chances for the party in power in next year's midterm elections?" The fact that these two races don't always accurately predict much of anything when it comes to midterms is always conveniently ignored, as the pundits spend months dissecting both the build-up and the aftermath of the two state contests. This year is no different, and all eyes are on Virginia (since New Jersey seems safely in the Democratic column, this time around).

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This week, the House of Representatives declared that Steve Bannon was contemptible. Well, that's not strictly legally accurate -- they actually officially held him in contempt of Congress, but it's more fun to say it the other way. Because he so obviously is, of course.

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So we're now really down to: "Build Back Smaller." Once again, Democrats have taken what could have been monumentally historic change and watered it down to the point where many Democratic voters are going to actually wind up disappointed, even if a deal is struck and something passes Congress and is signed into law by President Joe Biden. Whatever passes will still be historic legislation, just as Obamacare was (and still is), but a lot of Democratic voters will inevitably be left with a strong sense of "what might have been."

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Today, the United States Senate staged a Kabuki vote for the benefit of one senator. It will probably come as no surprise to hear that Senator Joe Manchin was the reason for this doomed attempt to pass new voting rights legislation. This is, in fact, the second such Kabuki vote this year on the subject, the only difference being this time around the Senate voted on the compromise plan Manchin himself had drafted. And, just like before, it failed along strict party lines. The entire exercise was designed to prove to Manchin that this was exactly what was going to happen.

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Today's article title is from the song "Time," by Pink Floyd. Here's the whole first verse, for the proper context:

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

This lyrical rock masterpiece sprang to mind this week as we watched the Democrats... um... not get much of anything done. It's as if they had all the time in the world -- which they most assuredly do not. Especially relevant is that line: "Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown," since Congress is once again on vacation all week long. Most people don't even get Columbus/Indigenous Peoples' Day off work, but for Congress it is yet another excuse to blow off an entire week. This isn't that long after they took a month and a half off, mind you. Outdoing the Senate (which just took this week off) was the House, which took an entire two weeks off -- for a minor federal holiday most people have to work on.

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One year from now, the midterm elections will be looming in front of us. Candidates will be out on the hustings, frantically campaigning their little hearts out. But what will be the big issues they'll be talking about? It is impossible to say, really, beyond predicting: "it will not be what the pundits are worrying about right now." A year is an absolute eternity in politics, and in a year's time few will remember the topics which are currently hot -- that's a generic prediction that almost always comes true, so it's pretty safe to say right now.

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It's one of those rare weeks in Washington, where Congress is actually forced into doing its job -- legislating, holding hearings... you know, the things the taxpayers actually pay them to do. As usual, they are facing multiple deadlines. They deserve zero pity, though, since they just returned from their annual month-long summer vacation. If they had stayed and worked instead of gone and played, then they wouldn't be facing all these time crunches simultaneously. Which is why we say: zero pity.

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In less than a week, congressional Democrats will face a deadline of their own making. Next Monday is the day Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised she would bring to the House floor the bipartisan infrastructure bill that the Senate has already passed. Because it has cleared the Senate, the next step for the bill (if the House passes it) is President Joe Biden's desk, for his signature. But unfortunately, it is increasingly looking like the companion budget reconciliation bill will not be ready for a vote -- perhaps not in either chamber. Since these two pieces of legislation are linked, this may mean neither one of them passes (at least, not next Monday). This would endanger the two bills which not only form the base of Biden's agenda, but also the basis for Democrats to run their campaigns on next year. Either both bills pass, Biden will be seen as a transformative president (on the order of L.B.J. or even F.D.R.), and the Democrats can run on a spectacular record of getting good things done in Washington -- or none of that will take place at all, which would pretty much doom the Democrats chances in the 2022 midterms. In other words, it's an important week -- one that may actually stretch into being an important month.

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California Governor Gavin Newsom emerged victorious from his recall election last night, chalking up a rather stunning margin: with 71 percent of the vote counted, "No" on the recall was beating "Yes" by a whopping 28 points (64 percent to 36 percent). Not quite 2-to-1, but close. Since it was a special recall election held at an odd time, it garnered more than the normal amount of media and political interest nationwide -- especially after a poll a few months ago seemed to suggest that the race was somehow neck-and-neck. Obviously, it wasn't. Newsom may in fact beat the margin of victory he managed in his last election. Whatever the final numbers turn out to be, though, it's hard not to use the word "landslide" to describe the outcome.

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