After the curtains closed on the antagonistic 2017 election cycle, the “Blue Wave” of Democrats that crashed on the political shores on Virginia brought forth 15 newly-elected progressive state lawmakers to the House of Delegates.
Spurred on by their vehement opposition of President Donald Trump, they were armed with personal vendettas on everything Republican, conservative, and fiscally responsible.
Their hopes of bringing forth a more progressive agenda in the state legislature were charged with ushering in the “new” and pushing out the “old” of the Old Dominion. However, as liberals across the commonwealth and across America cheered the diverse crowd into the political arena, the immense thrill of victory deteriorated into a vast, nonsensical heap of unpassable legislative measures.
Campaign promises from Democrats turned out to be highly unreceptive in the Virginia House just over one month into the 2018 session. Nearly every bill proposed or sponsored by a freshman Democrat has shattered against the wall of conservative and responsible governance. Because of this, Democrats have started turning on their own kind. Consequently, the “Freshman 15” of the House is now acting in accordance to be donned the “Freaky 15.”
A few weeks ago, in measure of bipartisanship and acting on the grounds of the “Virginia Way,” Republican Majority Leader Todd Gilbert (R-Rockingham) extended an olive branch to his political counterparts. He was offering a chance to the Democrats to give one of their own members a new seat on the House Joint Rules Committee. However, after six days of liberal infighting, the rule amendment failed after nearly every Democratic member voted against it.
Although the General Assembly has been in session for just over one month, the halfway point of “crossover” is upon the lawmakers. In just over 30 days, many freshman Democrats are coming to terms with the fact that their historic ride into the halls of the Virginia legislature has become nothing but a boondoggle.
“It’s been tough. It’s certainly a learning experience,” said Delegate Danica Roem (D-Prince William). According to the Washington Post, the nation’s first openly transgender person elected and seated in a state legislature has had all 14 pieces of sponsored legislation killed.
“It’s been tough,” is a now a common saying among those in the “Freaky 15” delegation. Nearly every bill put forth by them has struggled to see any sort life in the legislature. Although most of the bills have failed on party-line votes, their propositions have been seemingly counter intuitive to what voters actually wanted.
For example, it was hard to find a Democrat running against an incumbent Republican last year that ran on issues that involved raising taxes. Well, that is because there were none. In reality, most said they would not.
It is quite vexing then that the largest tax-increasing legislative agenda in decades would come forward so silently. But, of course, that is the Democratic way.
A majority of millennials, minorities, and mothers voted to put Democrats in the Virginia House of Delegates in 2017. However, while the new lawmakers enjoyed a clear electoral favor from millennials, that may not have been the case if they were actually kept abreast of their proposed legislation.
One of the three massive tax proposals that came from the liberal delegation was the “Netflix tax.” This legislation would have affected millennials in a vastly disproportionate manner. The “cord-cutting” generation did not get their name for no reason. Millennials did not want to be leveraged by the high-priced entertainment issued by television programming and wanted the freedom to pay for exactly what they want to consume. Sounds like a conservative’s freedom chant, right?
“I was expecting a lot of partisanship, I wasn’t expecting quite that much,” said Delegate Lee Carter (D-Manassas). Carter has been an outspoken member of the Democratic Socialists of America, a clear opponent of the usually-normal operating procedures of Virginia government.
Majority Leader Gilbert says, “it’s nothing personal, it’s just how things have always been with freshmen in both parties.” Gilbert claims it takes time for lawmakers to learn how the legislative process works and to build relationships with other lawmakers to understand hoe to get things passed.
“People come in here with a ton of bright ideas that they think are a magical fix to whatever issue concerns them,” he said. “You don’t just get to come in and dictate to everybody else how the world works and what public policy looks like,” he added.
Although Governor Ralph Northam laid out his progressive agenda at the beginning of the year, there was not an overwhelming endorsement of it among Virginians. Like the “Freaky 15,” he was also elected on a wave of anti-Trump sentiment. Normal people do not live by the defiance of an ideal, in this case conservative ideals. In the Trump-era, resistance politics from the left is exactly what it says – resistance, not progression.
The Republican-led House has pushed through an abundance of legislation that will help Virginians in their everyday lives, as well as cutting stifling regulations. They did so even with the screaming opposition from the left. Even though the atmosphere in Richmond may not be as resentful as it is in Washington, the happy-go-lucky Republican delegation in the House is still breathing the air of political despair created by Democrats.
The radical agendas on which some Virginia Democrats ran their campaigns in 2017 have failed. In Saul Alinsky’s “12 Rules for Radicals,” a popular read among America’s progressives, “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” Accordingly, the power held is created by two things: money and people.
In the case of the “Freaky 15,” power is something they do not have and Republicans definitely do not think they have it in any way, any manner, any fashion. People are starting to turn their backs on Democrats because they came to power on a wave of indignation, using a “scorched Earth” policy to insult their way to 201 North 9th Street.
In the case of money, the Democrats are flat, dead broke. They lost the fundraising battle in 2017.
At the national level, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is “encouraging” candidates in Virginia to raise their own money so DCCC funds can be expended elsewhere. Presumably, where they really need it. Obviously not Virginia, money cannot fix the problem of a bad candidates.
If perception is reality, two things may possibly be true considering what has happened during the 2018 session of the General Assembly: Democrats are untrustworthy and unintelligent.
