Jon Margolis is a VTDigger political columnist.
Happy Labor Day.
Meaning welcome to the political campaign, which by tradition and folklore begins on this holiday.
Not much of a campaign in Vermont, at least as far as tension and drama are concerned. By something close to consensus, the conventional wisdom has proclaimed that, with one exception, Democrats will prevail this year: Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, Democrats for all but one of the statewide races, enough Democrats down-ballot to give them perhaps an even bigger majority in the House of Representatives than they now enjoy (95 Dems, 43 Republicans, 12 others).
That one exception? It’s the race for governor, where Republican Gov. Phil Scott is expected not simply to beat Democrat/Progressive David Zuckerman but to demolish him. To pulverize him.
So says the conventional wisdom, which is usually right. That’s how it gets to be conventional, and in this case there is ample evidence to support it. Scott has run a scandal-free administration. Polls rate him among the most popular governors in the country. By something close to common consent (including the consent of David Zuckerman), Scott has done a superb job handling the Covid-19 pandemic. The governor has more money in his campaign treasury, and the ability to collect even more should he need it.
So that’s that. This race is O-V-E-R over.
Not, as a great American philosopher once said, until it’s over. That will be Nov. 3, and one thing that politicians and those who write about them have learned over the years (well, have been taught; have not learned) is that no candidate is unbeatable, no race unwinnable, no outcome impossible.
To put it another way, the future lies ahead. Unforeseeable events between now and (whenever) can upset even the likeliest prospects. In politics this has happened before (see: 2016, presidential election of). It will happen again, and there is some evidence to support the notion that Zuckerman can make a race of it.
To begin with, noted Scott McNeil, the executive director of the Vermont Democratic Committee, “Donald Trump is going to have a rough time in Vermont,” probably ending up with less than 30% of the votes, “so to count out any Democratic nominee at this point is a dangerous proposition.”
Furthermore, McNeil added, Zuckerman is “battle-tested,” having won two competitive primary and two general election campaigns in the last four years.
He’s also battling, which Scott, for now, is not. Check the “events” link in the two campaign websites. Zuckerman’s shows events (most of them remote) for every day this month; Scott’s is blank.
Not that the candidate who’s way ahead needs to campaign as much. And Scott gets to campaign twice a week without paying for it or calling it campaigning through his press conferences on the Covid-19 situation, regularly broadcast by radio and television stations.
But Zuckerman isn’t just campaigning; he’s attacking. He’s been condemning Scott’s policies, most recently his return-to-school policy which some parents and teachers think leaves too many specific decisions to local school boards with not enough statewide coordination.
Scott, Zuckerman said, “placed additional burdens on our schools at the same time proposing to restrict funding, remove local control, and mandate student to teacher ratios.”
So far there is no indication that Scott has noticed these attacks, much less than any sign they have cost him votes. But constant sniping is a good tactic for an insurgent.
Asked how Zuckerman can close the gap with Scott, Democrats usually fall back on their familiar litany of issues about which more Vermonters agree with them: minimum wage, family and medical leave, legal and taxable marijuana, tougher measures to fight global warming.
But those differences were just as true when Scott was elected two and four years ago. Mere issue disagreements rarely convince persuadable voters to abandon a reliable incumbent.
But Zuckerman campaign manager Megan Polyte brought up another point perhaps worth examining. The Covid-19 pandemic, Polyte said, “exposed some of the inequalities David and others have been fighting for a long time. It showed how many people are living so close to the edge, paycheck to paycheck, and how this economy is affecting them. It gives us the opportunity to engage people around issues that are a little deeper than usual because the struggle of so many people is so acute right now.”
This could provide Zuckerman with an opening. Phil Scott is not a Donald Trump Republican. But he is a Republican, and has been an advocate of the Republican policies (often grudgingly accepted by Democrats) that created today’s level of income inequality. The “neo-liberal” ideology of low taxes, low prices, low wages, and less regulation did not lead to an era of broad-based prosperity and opportunity. It led to an economy in which the average worker’s real wages have barely budged for the last 20 years and millions of middle-aged people earn fewer real (inflation-adjusted) dollars than their parents did in their middle age.
The pandemic laid bare that reality, nationally and in Vermont, where a supermarket clerk is designated “essential” but earns less than $11 an hour. There is a political potential there for a campaign that knows how to exploit it.
So perhaps a close race is not impossible. And if the race is close, well … anything can happen.
None of which is to suggest that a Zuckerman victory is likely. He’s vulnerable to attack, too. If the race gets close, Scott could unleash some of those attacks, or contract them out to his allies in the Republican Governors Association. It’s their specialty.
But it’s only Labor Day. Because all sorts of weird stuff can happen (and has), it might be wise to hold off on declaring any race O-V-E-R over until Halloween.
