Thread by @SethAbramson

After how major media overreacted to a couple of races yesterday, they should never again refer to independent journalists or even social media discourse as melodramatic and hyperventilating. Talk about over-journalisming—the reaction to yesterday was preposterously over-the-top.

Before yesterday, everyone in politics agreed Democrats were facing a headwind because of two moderates blocking any action in Congress, the pandemic, and supply-chain issues—all things out of their hands. Today, everyone is pretending to be shocked by mixed-bag election results.

Any journalist who wanted to go on-air today and describe things from yesterday that *genuinely surprised them* was free to do so.

Instead, we got the conventional wisdom from *two* days ago re-packaged as a shocking (shocking!) new development.

Nope—it’s about what we thought.

Meanwhile, a slew of historic Democratic wins in mayoral and board races got ignored, and the fact that if Murphy wins in New Jersey (which he will) he’ll be the first Democratic gubernatorial incumbent reelected in NJ in 40 years got treated as some sort of *loss* for Democrats.

I’m not trying to make yesterday sound rosy. I’m saying with the current conditions in the country and world—and historical trends re: how the party in power does in elections like these—what happened is about what everyone expected would happen. Dems *know* what they need to do.

Democrats need to get more people vaccinated, prosecute the coup plotters, pass voting rights legislation, ignore the “CRT” bait, pass legislation even if it angers the lobbyists Sinema dines with daily, don’t use inaccurate taglines (“defund”), and focus more on economic policy.

Democrats also need to stop putting up charisma-free centrist candidates like McAuliffe who get their nominations because they’re party loyalists and fundraisers, and reclaim the mantle of “protectors of democracy and rule of law and individual rights” because right now they are.