Virginia Mega Thread: The Youngkin Administration

[Cashew]

Okay, we are at 41 pages now. My goal is to hit 100 pages by end of election night. Let's do this!

Just not with maps that have Virginia Beach going Democratic.

If you continue rambling and asserting things without any evidence and telling us what ignorant PredictIt people think even when we didn’t ask for it, 100 pages should be really easy.

Inb4 he says "i'm in a facebook group called reopen Virginia", for the 87th time.

[Cashew]

I'm glad I tempered my expectations for this race after the Tox poll gave me an ulcer. In spite of this, that poll being an outlier after all and me actually nailing my updated Youngkin+2 prediction were the only minor silver linings. It was an excruciating night otherwise, like every election since 2014 (2027 and 2019 excepted).

I want to be sedated.

https://twitter.com/tripgabriel/status/1455892930800066564?s=20

See? I f***ing knew we couldn't trust suburbanites in general. They hate Trump, but only him personally. They're like relapsing addicts with the GOP without him.

So if Democrats can't rely on them, or even voters of color anymore, what does a winning Democratic coalition even look like? Let's face it, we're going the way of the British Labour Party but we can't even partly blame Scotland like they can.

Democrats never want to admit this, but we do in fact need the old New Deal coalition if we want to be as competitive in local and congressional races as we are for the presidency. In safe blue districts/states, run as liberal a candidate as you can find. But down south, Democrats have his really stupid idea of running of socially liberal fiscally moderate-conservative corporatists which NOBODY LIKES OUTSIDE OF THE WEALTHY NORTHEAST. Run socially conservative populists.... like legitimate populists... run a bunch of tough Teddy Roosevelt clones who a more traditional electorate can trust to represent them on cultural issues and fight for their best interests on economic issues. I'm tired of seeing (insert generic effeminate beta male neoliberal here) lose year after year. When they do manage to squeak out a victory, they always sell their voters out to corporate donors.

Perhaps Democrats should do this, but "Democrats" are not a Council of a dozen people in the northeast dictating everything state parties do. There is no guarantee that the Ababama Democratic party would become more socially conservative simply because the DNC commanded them to. The onus is not only on the Democratic party to go out on a limb to try out this, there has to be a marketable demand coming from below as well.

Where is this Demand? I see plenty of wannabe populists who vote Republican while blasting Democrats for being too corporate, but then push comes to shove simply fall in line behind the GOP and have done nothing to push the party in a more populist direction. Where is the pro minimum wage faction of the Republican party? The anti toll roads faction? The negotiate drug prices faction? Where are the cracks that Democrats are supposed to exploit?

I would not mind it if this happened, but the conclusion I heave reached is that many of these people you speak of democrats appealing to are simply not serious. Either as flat out concern trolls, or they secretly want the coastal elites they hate to do all the hard work for them rather than grinding to take over state parties, all the while screaming angrily that the party that they didn't vote for is betraying them, while being silent on the party they did vote for.

[Cashew]

I'm glad I tempered my expectations for this race after the Tox poll gave me an ulcer. In spite of this, that poll being an outlier after all and me actually nailing my updated Youngkin+2 prediction were the only minor silver linings. It was an excruciating night otherwise, like every election since 2014 (2027 and 2019 excepted).

I want to be sedated.

https://twitter.com/tripgabriel/status/1455892930800066564?s=20

See? I f***ing knew we couldn't trust suburbanites in general. They hate Trump, but only him personally. They're like relapsing addicts with the GOP without him.

So if Democrats can't rely on them, or even voters of color anymore, what does a winning Democratic coalition even look like? Let's face it, we're going the way of the British Labour Party but we can't even partly blame Scotland like they can.

Democrats never want to admit this, but we do in fact need the old New Deal coalition if we want to be as competitive in local and congressional races as we are for the presidency. In safe blue districts/states, run as liberal a candidate as you can find. But down south, Democrats have his really stupid idea of running of socially liberal fiscally moderate-conservative corporatists which NOBODY LIKES OUTSIDE OF THE WEALTHY NORTHEAST. Run socially conservative populists.... like legitimate populists... run a bunch of tough Teddy Roosevelt clones who a more traditional electorate can trust to represent them on cultural issues and fight for their best interests on economic issues. I'm tired of seeing (insert generic effeminate beta male neoliberal here) lose year after year. When they do manage to squeak out a victory, they always sell their voters out to corporate donors.

Perhaps Democrats should do this, but "Democrats" are not a Council of a dozen people in the northeast dictating everything state parties do. There is no guarantee that the Ababama Democratic party would become more socially conservative simply because the DNC commanded them to. The onus is not only on the Democratic party to go out on a limb to try out this, there has to be a marketable demand coming from below as well.

Where is this Demand? I see plenty of wannabe populists who vote Republican while blasting Democrats for being too corporate, but then push comes to shove simply fall in line behind the GOP and have done nothing to push the party in a more populist direction. Where is the pro minimum wage faction of the Republican party? The anti toll roads faction? The negotiate drug prices faction? Where are the cracks that Democrats are supposed to exploit?

I would not mind it if this happened, but the conclusion I heave reached is that many of these people you speak of democrats appealing to are simply not serious. Either as flat out concern trolls, or they secretly want the coastal elites they hate to do all the hard work for them rather than grinding to take over state parties, all the while screaming angrily that the party that they didn't vote for is betraying them, while being silent on the party they did vote for.

That faction you are saying doesn't exist does indeed not exist among the politicians... but it's a huge faction of the voters.... Many are former Conservative Democrats such as myself. That's the core of the problem. R politicians don't represent the economic interests or views of their voters to a very large extent. Even Steve Bannon will tell you this. Polling consistently shows that the R party is hated by R voters more than the D party is by D voters.

How do you think Trump steamrolled in the R primary while promising single-payer healthcare (he praised the Australian system), raising taxes on the wealthy (did the opposite) as well as protectionist trade and cutting off the supply of illegal immigrant labor? That's the opening. You disarm the cultural issues off the bat and then the debate becomes who's more friendly to the working class.... the GOP doesn't want to debate on those terms.

I also think the Democrats should return to nomination via convention in some of these areas.

So why no take action to change the Republican party then? If you are umsafisfied with a republican officials economic position economic positions but find voting for democrats unpalatable, the solution is to run as a republican yourself and seek to oust the incumbent. Why then do we see such passivity among these voters? Sure they might gravitate towards a politician with populist rhetoric when they show up but where is the proactive action at the state level? How many state legislators have they elected? City Council members? Why are these populists so upset then the coastal elites they hate don't come down from their ivory tower to save them from the mean republicans they associate with?