Virginia Mega Thread: The Youngkin Administration

[President Johnson]

I’m going for McAullife +11

That's optimatic, but far from impossible. I think it will be similar to 2017.

[President Johnson]

Is he trying to lose?

https://twitter.com/GlennYoungkin/status/1433187809368723456

Does Trumpkin know that Virginia is an extremely pro-choice state? Why would he think this is a winning message, abortion rights are an extremely important issue to many Virginians.

It's not just that, also ranting about job creation and economic competence. Virginia was doing well under T-Mac the last time. And T-Mac is also a successful businessman, so he certainly knows something about job creation.

[President Johnson]

I'm not sharing the pessimism expressed by some in this thread. I think this will be similar to the California recall, when Democrats will come home in the final weeks and days. T-Mac will probably have more consistent polling leads by mid/late October and be at around 50% and finally end up winning something like 53-45%.

[President Johnson]

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1451896196923068424

It's beyond embarrassing Biden can't legally fire Trump's lobbyist Louis DeJoy as head of the Postal Service. The guy is just a rich donor doing the Republicans' bidding to undermine vote by mail. So much for a draining the swamp.

[President Johnson]

The fact that Youngkin will most likely lose shows we live in a partisan hellhole now and we may be entering an era where even gubernatorial elections results are like federal race results .

Well, T-Mac has done a very good job in his first term and putting him back in office would just sort of confirm that.

[President Johnson]

I agree that if you're running false flag operations to try to smear your opponent, you're probably not winning. I was all about to blame the loss on progressives for holding up the infrastructure bill, but if this is how McAuliffe campaigns then he brought the loss upon himself.

If you run false flag operations to smear opponents, you at least make sure not to get caught.

[President Johnson]

Each Tuesday after the first Monday in November I come to hate the fact the US six to nine hours behind Europe and not vise versa, so you can never watch election results live without staying up all night. If at least election day was a Saturday. I just stay up in presidential elections.

[President Johnson]

One thing I don't understand is how red avatars can talk out both sides of their head regarding turnout levels.  First, they'll say low turnout is a good sign for them because Democrats' Virginia coalition is full of "high propensity" voters (i.e., White college-educated types.)  Then, they'll turn around in the face of probable +3M turnout and say this is also good for T-Mac?  which is it?  lol

Like, I still fully expect McAuliffe to win ~6 pts but the Atlas pundit-think is beyond silly

I'm really surprised you're expecting T-Mac winning by that much.

[President Johnson]

I’m really curious how the math all works out. I don’t think Virginia has enough blood red rural counties to Texas this, but I could be wrong.

Yeah, the high turnout is good, but GOP counties do seem to be a bit ahead of Dem counties in terms of turnout.

OTOH, pretty much all the polling had Tmac doing way better with RVs then LVs, so high turnout in general should be a good sign.

A bit ahead of Democrats wouldn't actually that much of a problem? Pretty much no one at this point suggested T-Mac will win by the same margin of ten points than Biden. Even my previous prediction of eight points was lower.

Half the margin of 2020 would overall be very solid, especially with expectations lowered in the final weeks.

[President Johnson]

I wish they had digged deeper about Biden approvals, what exactly it is that they're unhappy with. The stalemate in congress? Thank Manchin and Sinema.

[President Johnson]

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.

[President Johnson]

In the end it just goes to show you that voters will find any reason to throw a party out of power lol

This sentence seems to suggest that TMac (quite possibly) losing is the voters’ *fault* instead of the voters’ *choice*

Peak Atlas Democrat brain, y’all

I know this is an old comment but I feel need to respond to it

My final post on election night was not about blaming voters for not picking TMac It was about making a larger statement about how our current political environment works

Bill Clinton famous statement about it being all about the economy, stupid is increasingly no longer relevant today because voters do not reward politicians anymore for a good economy like they did in the past. They also don't punish politicians for a bad economy like they use to because Obama won in 2012 despite the economy still not being great and Trump almost won in 2020 despite the country being in a recession.

looking at this race objectively had this been the 1980s, 1990s or even the early 2000 terry mcauliffe would have won the election just based on low unemployment numbers alone but because of the increasing partisanship, it is hard for either party these days to really benefit from a decent economy or low unemployment numbers

Now in farness I have heard some suggest that inflation is the reason for mcauliffe loss, but to frank with you I'm not convinced that terry mcauliffe would have won this election, even with low inflation because ultimately this race was not really about the economy

it was about this....

48% of voters chose taxes and the economy as their most important issue.



For those who chose the "culture war" issue of Education, 44% still voted for McAuliffe.

This poll basically just proves my main point

Terry McAuliffe is losing to Glenn Youngkin on the economy and jobs at a time when Virginia is actually doing even better than the country as a whole and unemployment is at 3.8 percent

Again had this been the 80s 90s or even the 2000s there is no chance that Glenn Youngkin would be beating McAuliffe on that issue when the economy was doing that well. The fact is Terry McAuliffe and Dems literally got no credit for the great economy in virigina would scare the heck out me if were the Dems heading into the 2022 midterms

These results suggest to me that voters may not reward the Dems even if the economy is doing well in 2022 or even if the Dems do pass popular bills like infrastructure.

High inflation is an issue that can affect more people directly than High Unemployment

Both can be true at the same time. This and the culture war stuff, each just apply to different voting blocs that together make a winning coalition.

[President Johnson]

https://twitter.com/CNNPolitics/status/1455996526493421571

[President Johnson]

Weird question: Is there some kind of tradition Virginia governors wear this wider tie in silver at inauguration? I noticed both Northam and Youngkin did so.

[President Johnson]

I know blue avatars will strongly disagree with this because he’s governing as a republican in a likely D state but I think there’s a lane in the presidential primary for Youngking as a common sense conservative who only fights culture wars that are started by Dems, and additionally can claim credit for ending covid tyranny in the US now that blue state governors are ending mandates

Interestingly, a lot of Republican swing state governors have been pretty hard right in recent years (Scott, DeSantis, LePage, Walker etc.).

[President Johnson]

https://twitter.com/JulieCareyNBC/status/1493231639178231815
Hero!

Good

Credit where credit is due.

Yeah, especially that Youngkin actually says it out loud. All Republican governors including DeSantis and a large majority of elected officials know that the vaccines are effective and perfectly safe. It's just that some have decided to make it political issue because they think it benefits them.

[President Johnson]

Governor Youngkin is probably not going to listen, though:

Most Virginians don’t want Youngkin in 2024 presidential race, poll shows

He's more likely to run for vice president or Treasury/Commerce Secretary, I guess?

[President Johnson]

Interesting that it's the exact opposite pattern compared to the federal level.