I read this thread earlier on the morning page by page before checking the full results. What can I say? A true mess!
In all fairness, I credit Glenn Youngkin for running a strong campaign and pulling this off. Never expected it to happen, although my optimism begun to disappear in most recent days and weeks. I kinda feel embarrassed, also for ever thinking T-Mac would be a good presidential candidate. He ran a poor campaign in a race was absolutely winnable. Nonetheless, it's a lazy analysis just to say Youngkin had a strong and T-Mac a bad campaign. That's pretty much true, but the Democrats underperformed in other races as well. Even New Jersey is a disaster, perhaps even more so than Virginia.
The Democrats really need to get their sh*t together and run competent campaigns all across the country, although my confidence in them has very much declined. Maybe I'm just having a wrong view over the Atlantic Ocean since large parts of the Republicans have become so extreme that in my European bubble it's impossible to imagine they run competitive elections.
And last but not least, the Virginia election finally puts the "high turnout automatically benefit only Democrats" to rest. I thought that for a long time as well, but hereby confess that I was wrong. Maybe that was sort of true in 2010 or 2014, but certainly no longer the case. Especially as a number of demographic blocs aren't that solid Democratic (suburbanites, Hispanics, etc.). And the Democratic Party better figures out how to address that. So far, they seem pretty much clueless.
McAuliffe would never ever have been a strong candidate for prez. Trump would have slaughtered him, and even a dude like Mitt Romney would have had a decent chance in any election that hasn't a strong D-leaning enviornment. He doesn't have much charisma and could easily have been portrayed as a swamp creature with strong Clinton does.
Tmac only got lucky in 2013 by winning with 47.8% while a Liberartian took 6.5%.
