Eric Holder's latest failure

Eric Holder tried to reshape the 2020 elections. According to Salena Zito's reporting, Holder failed. That isn't earth-shaking news. Why he failed is noteworthy, though. According to Ms. Zito, "all of the money, power, and influence was circulated by the same set of people who all share the same worldview. They never once considered that the people they were trying to buy, influence, and push to their side didn’t share that worldview or their values." It isn't that they weren't well-funded, either:

Within months, Holder managed to raise raised over $10 million. By the start of 2020, he had raised over $50 million. Then, during the election, he targeted 13 states to flip legislative chambers and put his organization to work behind more than 250 state-level candidates.

That should've been enough cash to flip a few majorities. It failed. The reason it failed isn't just that the people didn't share Holder's worldview. It failed because Trump's policies changed millions of voters' thinking for the forseeable future. This video is slick -- and dishonest: In it, Mr. Holder said that "This happened because in 2010 and 2011, a group of Republicans backed by dark money, invested heavily to gain control of state legislatures to gerrymander like never before and to manipulate maps for the next decade." In 2009, Democrats insisted on passing Obamacare, aka the ACA. Democrats ignored citizens speaking up at townhall meetings in August, 2009. From that point forward, the red wave was on. Republicans won a net of 63 seats in the US House. More impressively, the GOP won more than 500 state legislative seats and flipped multiple legislative bodies. Dark money wasn't a hot topic, either. Citizens United had just barely been decided. A majority of Republicans who won in 2010 were heavily outspent by Democrat incumbents. Simply put, Mr. Holder is spewing BS. What he said has little to do with reality. It isn't surprising that his organization got its butt kicked.

Candidates who run in local state House and Senate races tend to be those whom people run into at the local grocery store or at children's soccer games. The ones who win tend to be the candidates who run on local issues, not on a national platform. These are the people who tend to care about their schools, roads and bridges, and local community centers. The candidate who speaks to them on those issues will win. This is the case with state Sen. Devlin Robinson, who challenged incumbent Democratic Sen. Pam Iovino and won a suburban seat that is located within Lamb’s district. Democratic down-ballot candidates like Iovino often got swept up in a national Democratic message that was very far removed from the day-to-day concerns of voters. In short, what Holder missed is pretty simple. Politics is local. When people try to make it about their cause rather than voters' concerns, they find themselves out of step, no matter who is behind them, no matter how much money they have, no matter how much backing they get from the cultural curators.

Don't expect Democrats to start listening to the people anytime soon. What's happening at the school board level is a sign of who's fired up and who isn't.