Background Briefing: November 3, 2021

On By gram

 

Dog Whistles Worked for Republicans in Virginia While Intraparty Fighting Hurt the Democrats

We begin with the role of dog whistle politics in the Youngkin victory in the Virginia governor’s race and the debacle for the Democrats who lost the other top races along with control of the state legislature and speak with Amanda Marcotte, a feminist author, blogger, and a politics writer for Salon. She is the author of Troll Nation: How The Right Became Trump-Worshipping Monsters Set On Rat-F*cking Liberals, America, and Truth Itself, and her latest article at Salon is “Virginia election: Democrats left listless without Donald Trump: Youngkin didn’t need Trump for a bigotry-based campaign, but McAuliffe couldn’t get out deflated voters without him.” We discuss how a lot of Virginians who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 — 33% — stayed home while Republicans only saw a 15% drop-off in turnout and in the end Youngkin got 85% of the vote share Trump got the year before, but Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe got only 66% of Biden’s 2020 share.

 

Can the GOP Run Two Campaigns in 2022, One For the Trumpsters and a Youngkin-like One?

Then we speak with Amy Fried, a Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Maine and the author of Pathways to Polling: Crisis, Cooperation, and the Making of Public Opinion Professions, and her latest book, co-authored with Douglas Harris, At War with Government: How Conservatives Weaponized Distrust from Goldwater to Trump. We discuss whether the Republicans can run two simultaneous campaigns in 2022, one for the Trumpsters and another Youngkin-like campaign to reassure suburban women. 

 

SCOTUS Seems to Want Red State Gun Laws in Blue State

Then finally we assess how the Supreme Court might rule on the New York gun case about which they heard oral arguments today. Joining us is Jake Charles, the executive director of the Center for Firearms Law at Duke University who writes and teaches on the legal regulation of state and private violence, Second Amendment doctrine and theory, and the place of guns in the criminal legal system. We discuss the conservative majority’s apparent bias toward rural red states against urban blue states when it comes to guns, indicating that protections for citizens against the proliferation of guns in cities will be overturned.