The Schoolyard: Andrew Rice

Why Did the Democrats Lose So Badly? One simple answer: Parents everywhere were furious.

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ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT, 24 hours later than expected, news organizations announced that Phil Murphy had been reelected governor of New Jersey. The narrow victory the day after Election Day was a dumbfounding rebuke of the state’s Democrats, who went into the election with the drink-clinking serenity of the ensemble in the first act of The Poseidon Adventure. With the exception of one or two outliers, the polls showed Murphy winning by eight or more points. Instead, his party got smacked by a Republican wave. Murphy managed to win by a whisker, thanks to late-arriving results from machine-run North Jersey counties. But there were shocking outcomes down the ballot. In South Jersey, the president of the state senate, an ally of the state’s most powerful political boss, lost to a truck driver who reported spending $2,160 on his campaign.