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State Rep. Christopher Markey spent Tuesday night driving back from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he’d been working as a poll watcher at a precinct in a small Catholic school. He dialed the satellite radio to CNN and headed northeast, listening as presidential election returns came in.
“By the time I got to Connecticut, it was over,” he said.
The “blue wall” was not holding, and would eventually collapse entirely as Republican former President Donald Trump won state after state in his third presidential bid, this time against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
Markey had not been wildly optimistic about this election. He said he hoped that character would matter enough to voters to block Trump’s path to a second term in the White House.
Trump was, after all, the first president to be impeached twice. The first presidential candidate to run as a convicted felon while facing three other pending criminal cases. The first to have been found civilly liable for sexual assault and fined $83 million. The first to have provoked a violent attack on the U.S.Capitol in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
“If we lose to a guy like that, then we need to change our policies,” said Markey, a moderate Democrat whose district includes all of Dartmouth and a portion of New Bedford’s far North End. “We need to reflect on our priorities.”
For local Democrats, a moment to ponder the outcome, and consider where to go from here. For the chairman of Trump’s Massachusetts campaign, former Bristol County Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson, a time to celebrate an affirmation of what he’d be saying about Trump’s momentum.
“People, regardless of party, are fed up with a government less focused on the things that matter to the average person,” Hodgson said on Wednesday.
He said he believed that fear and anger about migrants was a “huge” factor in the outcome.
Many voters were looking at the amounts of money spent by the state and federal government on shelter and other benefits for migrants who have not gone through a full legal immigration process and who, in their view, should not be here at all, he said.
“Who’s paying for that?” Hodgson said. “We’re not anti-immigrant, we’re just pro law. … We need to get back to basic fairness. I think that’s what you’re seeing right now.”
A number of Democrats, including Markey, also wonder if their party should revisit basic questions: what do we stand for? For too many voters, what do we appear to stand for? Has the left wing taken us far afield of most voters?
Markey wonders if perhaps his party often starts with a worthy goal, then goes too far.
Has the state gone too far in housing migrants, which has cost up to $1 billion so far in some estimates? Has the Democrat-dominated state Legislature gone too far in allowing a 16-year-old girl to have an abortion without their parents’ consent? Markey asks whether the effort to accommodate transgender people has gone too far in school athletics.
“I think all our core beliefs are noble and honorable,” Markey said. “But do we go too far to prove a point, or because we’re a supermajority?”
Bristol County Sheriff Paul Heroux, from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, said recent moments in the presidential campaign supported his feeling that Harris was headed for defeat. In late October and on Monday, Harris staged concert rallies in Philadelphia featuring, among other recording artists, Bruce Springsteen and Lady Gaga.
“I thought, oh God, these guys are really out of touch,” said Heroux, who defeated Hodgson to become sheriff in 2022.
Harris was projecting the joy she hoped voters would see as a welcome contrast to Trump’s often angry and aggrieved demeanor. Heroux was wondering how that would look to voters unhappy with the status quo.
“I’m not having fun, I’m pissed off. Immigration is running crazy and these guys are having a party” said Heroux, imagining aloud what a discontented voter could be thinking.
A former state representative and Attleboro mayor, Heroux offered three-part advice for fellow Democrats: Don’t examine the voters’ flaws, consider your own. Listen to what people are saying about their grievances and make policy accordingly. Simplify the message.
New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell said President Joe Biden, in an apparent effort to distance himself from the harsher aspects of Trump’s immigration policy, let the migrant surge go on too long at the southern border. He eventually acted to sharply restrict the flow of people, but too late to avoid leaving the impression that he, and the Democrats, were not taking the matter seriously.
He credits Biden for an economic recovery from the pandemic that by many measures — growth, slowing inflation, low unemployment — is a success. He also acknowledges that the rosy statistics are not necessarily consistent with the experience of people struggling financially.
“It’s hard to make the case that the Democratic Party is the party of the little guy,” Mitchell said.
In this election season. state Sen. Marc Pacheco, a Democrat from Taunton, decided not to run again, leaving Beacon Hill after 36 years in the Legislature: four in the House, 32 in the Senate. His own district just flipped to a Republican, Taunton City Councilor Kelly Dooner, who defeated the Democratic candidate he endorsed, Raynham selectman Joe Pacheco, who is not a family relation.
He sees that local outcome as part of the national political picture.
As local news media have vastly diminished, voters are not able to follow and get to know the public officials down the block. Sen. Pacheco noted that Joe Pacheco fared best in Taunton and Raynham, where the voters know him best.
Voters knowing little or nothing about the candidates themselves follow the more familiar terms of the national discourse, Sen. Pacheco said. The situation flips on its head the maxim attributed to former U.S. House Speaker Tip O’Neill: all politics is local.
Sen. Pacheco said his party has to act on its traditional strength advocating for the working and middle class. Also figure out how to better deliver that message, clearly, and repeatedly, at least as well as Trump, the master salesman who just made a historic political comeback.
Email reporter Arthur Hirsch at ahirsch@newbedfordlight.org.
People vote based on the price of bread, not on social or foreign policy. I’m not sure why Dems can’t figure that out, but until the do they will lose every national election.
The people who voted based on the price of bread yet ignored the prospect of huge tariffs voted against their own interests and have demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding of basic economics.
Harris ran towards the right on every issue (including strict border policies, “most lethal military on the planet”, tax breaks for small business owners), won over zero republican voters, and did nothing to cater to the democratic base of support. No single-payer healthcare, no college debt relief, no ceasefire. Centrist democrats like Chris Markey got everything they wanted out of her campaign, refuse to recognize why it failed, and are doubling down on becoming more like republicans. If I were a republican, why would I vote for diet versions of republican policies, and not the real thing? Progressive policies win.