Growing Republican wave is real

NEW HOPE, Pa. – The Democrats of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, felt the red wave building over the summer when frustrated parents filled school board meetings to complain about masking requirements and an academic theory on systemic racism that wasn’t even taught in local schools.

They realized the wave was growing when such concerns, fueled by misleading reports on conservative media, began showing up in unrelated elections for judges, sheriff and even the county recorder of deeds. And so they were not surprised — but devastated all the same — when Democrats all across this key county northeast of Philadelphia were wiped out in Tuesday’s municipal elections.

“This is a bell we need to pay attention to. This is something going on across the country,” said attorney Patrice Tisdale, a Democrat who lost her bid to become a magisterial district judge against a Republican candidate with no formal legal training. “The Democrats can’t keep doing politics as usual.”

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She’s among the down-ballot Democrats sending an urgent message to the national party: It’s worse than you think.

This suburban region northeast of Philadelphia is a critical political battleground in one of the nation’s premier swing states. It’s the type of place where moderate and college-educated voters, repelled by former President Donald Trump’s divisive behavior, helped Democrats retake control of Congress in 2018 and win back the White House in 2020. That’s what makes the setbacks here so alarming to many Democrats.

Some in the party privately suspected they were in trouble in Virginia’s high-profile governor’s race, which they ultimately lost. But Democrats also suffered embarrassing outcomes in Democratic-leaning suburban New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where they nearly lost the governor’s office and the state Senate president was unseated by a furniture company truck driver who spent $2,300 on his entire campaign.

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The focus now shifts to the even more consequential midterm election season next year, when control of Congress and dozens more governorships will be decided. Already, high-profile Senate races are taking shape in states like Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and here in Pennsylvania, where there is reason to believe the political dynamics could be different in November 2022.

Namely, Trump, who Republicans intentionally avoided in this week’s elections, will almost certainly be a much more significant presence next year. The early slate of Republican candidates, in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, have embraced Trump, his tone and his divisive policies much more than the Republicans on this week’s ballots. At the same time, Democratic strategists believe their party on Capitol Hill will eventually pass popular infrastructure and health care packages that voters will appreciate.

“There’s just not a correlation there in terms of what the issues are going to be a year from now and the kind of personalities and the kind of candidates that are running…