'We are going to embrace our parents'
| 'We are going to embrace our parents'  It's the most basic rule of politics: Listen to the voters.
Yet despite the hundreds of millions of dollars that campaigns splash on polling in the United States, politicians still get so caught up in their own political obsessions that they ignore what's in front of them. Virginia's next governor, newly-elected Republican Glenn Youngkin, had tapped into pandemic-exacerbated concern over how schools are run, and the cost of groceries. His Democratic foe Terry McAuliffe lost by fighting the last war — as did President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and ex-President Barack Obama — who all blasted Youngkin as a Trump clone.
McAuliffe didn't just fail to provide solutions to school issues, or to effectively counter conservative media demagoguery on how America's tortured racial history is taught. He missed the mood in his own state by saying out loud that parents shouldn't have a say in what their kids are taught.
Biden knows the fundamental rule. While Trump last year obsessed about himself, the current President won his job by identifying America's desperate desire to exit the pandemic. Trump had no plan and lost. Biden was doing well this year when the pandemic was in retreat. But once the Delta variant struck, his pledge that the worst was over dented his approval ratings when it turned not to be true. His chaotic Afghan withdrawal hardly helped either.
Are Democrats still listening? The sweeping social safety net bill they are struggling to pass would improve millions of lives by providing better, cheaper health care; free pre-kindergarten schooling; and low-income housing. Many people want those things and they could respond with votes down the line. But a months-long internal party fight over the details between liberal and moderate Democrats has obscured the big picture.
Americans are ready to be done with Covid. And they now face new challenges including high gasoline prices, a dragging economy, and the fact that Thanksgiving dinner will cost an arm and a drumstick this year. The country is low on optimism as it heads into the holiday season.
Unless Democrats do something about it, they are going to lose the midterm congressional elections next year. And then the last two years of Biden's term will be throttled by Republican majorities.  'We are going to embrace our parents' "We're going to embrace our parents, not ignore them. We're going to press forward with a curriculum that includes listening to parents, as well as a curriculum that allows our children to run as fast as they can, teaching them how to think, enabling their dreams to soar. Friends, we are going to reestablish excellence in our schools," Youngkin triumphantly told supporters late on Tuesday night. The world and America Ethiopia is nearing the brink of all-out civil war.
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 A breakthrough at COP26? At least 20 countries have agreed to end financing for fossil fuel projects abroad, a UK official told CNN, in a deal expected to be announced Thursday. Several had already agreed to end international financing for coal, but this would be the first agreement to include oil and gas projects as well. The science has long been clear: The world has to ramp down the burning fossil fuel if it hopes to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. What happened in Tuesday's elections? Virginia: Republican businessman Glenn Youngkin created a new election blueprint for his party by appealing to hardcore Trump voters without alienating suburban moderates who have decided recent national elections. It will be a harder trick to turn when his term as governor starts next January.
New Jersey: If anything, the struggle by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy to squeak to reelection was a bigger danger sign for Democrats than Virginia. Biden won the Garden State by nearly 16 percentage points only a year ago.
Minneapolis: In the city where George Floyd was murdered, voters rejected a ballot measure that would have replaced the Minneapolis Police Department with a city council-run Department of Public Safety. The result was a blow to the activist movement which has struggled to turn the Black Lives Matter movement into police reform -- but it will be a relief for moderate Democrats seeking to assuage fears that they might "defund the police."
Mayor's races: While there's trouble in suburbia, Democrats have no such worries in cities. In Boston, a city hardly known for diversity, Michelle Wu will become the first woman and person of color to serve as the city's mayor. Voters in Pittsburgh and Cleveland chose progressives to lead their cities. But heavily Democratic New York City will have Eric Adams, a more centrist candidate with a tough on crime message as mayor. And upstate, the Democratic mayor of Buffalo claimed victory in a write-in campaign over a socialist candidate who beat him the party primary. 'How do we pass it on to our child, who's going to grow up in America?' Growing up in India, Akruti Babaria didn't have to think much about Diwali. The traditions just happened; she and her sisters would spend hours creating elaborate rangolis in their home and she never had to look far to find someone who could explain the meanings behind all the rituals.
But when she moved to the US with her parents at age 16, traditions became harder to maintain. And once her son was born, she realized she didn't have answers to all the questions he might ask about their culture. "We started to feel a bit of distance from our traditions and practices in the sense of: How do we pass it on to our child, who's going to grow up in America, who is Indian American, who had parents who are immigrants?" said Babaria, who lives in Buffalo, New York. -- CNN's Harmeet Kaur and Alisha Ebrahimji explore how Indian Americans are making Diwali their own here. Thanks for reading. Thursday is Diwali, a festival of lights. Russian President Vladimir Putin holds talks with Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell will visit Brasilia. And it's the 22nd OPEC and non-OPEC ministerial meeting in Vienna. View in browser | All CNN Newsletters
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