Virginia Mega Thread: The Youngkin Administration

[DaleCooper]

Regardless of what the margin ends up being, the fact that Republicans were able to improve upon the GOP baseline here by running against teaching Toni Morrison books is really all that any of us needs to know.

You're simplifying Youngkin's campaign. His support for censorship and infantilizing Virginia's students was well disguised behind a reasonable, pragmatic platform. Republicans (except for Trump and the Q people) are better at hiding their nanny state tendencies than the Democrats are.

[DrScholl]

And for those comparing this race to other states you need to remember that Virginia Republicans picked a nominee by convention, not primary. The same can't be said of other states so the candidates are going to have to run much more far-right campaigns to get out of the primary.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Youngkin has to be considered favored by now. But it's definitely not over, not yet.

[Crumpets]

Democrats didn't lose all three of Gov, Lt. Gov, and AG based solely on McAuliffe running a bad campaign. I think clearly all the blackface and #MeToo controversies of the past few years have flipped all overly-woke types to support Republican candidates out of revenge.

[Green Line]

People were sick and tired of having their children taught to be racist in public schools.  Fight all day over the semantics of whether its TECHNICALLY "CRT", the people know what their children are being taught, and its racist and anti-American.

[VBM]

Establishment Democrats are the most out of touch people on the planet

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/aoc-defends-critical-race-theory-being-taught-in-schools/ar-AAMnukn
?

She’s out of touch too. There’s also too much out of touch “progressives”. Dems need to give up on CRT, Latinx, affirmative action, and ease the rhetoric on gender

[Associate Justice PiT]

https://twitter.com/PollProjectUSA/status/1455693839109279747?t=nk4qJRyd2D2q0ngk...

     Might as well if you can call Youngkin, but it is still big. If the HoD flips too, it will serve as a powerful lesson to not sink your state party's electoral fortunes with a poor gubernatorial candidate.

[Chips]

Decision Desk HQ has called it.....

[Horus]

I am so tired of this country.

Blame the Democrats who nominated a Clinton has been. This is about the failures of third way neolib politics.

Hopefully this is the final nail in the coffin of the Republican lite wing. Swingy suburban voters are never going to be the base of the supposedly left wing party. Ever.

 So we should have run a birdie Sanders clone? Please. The answering meal liberal is an exactly a cure all for the Democratic Party's party's ills. If Terry McCullough had run at least as good a campaign as he did 8 years ago, he might have had a shot here.

 Addressing the issue  Constructively now, I have to admit I'm a little surprised as I was under the impression that, republicans notwithstanding of course, that McCullough had left office reasonably well reasonably well liked and popular.

No, the answer is to run Democrats who actually have a plan and can both run on issues and motivate voters. Fetterman, Conor Lamb, Ossoff, Warnock, AOC, they don't have to be from the Sanders wing.

McAuliffe motivated no one, he ran against Trump instead of his actual opponent and he isn't charismatic.

How is AOC not from the Sanders wing?

I was giving examples of Democrats from all wings of the party.

My point is it doesn't matter if the Democrat is far left or on the center, they just have to run a decent campaign, motivate voters and not be too close to Bill and Hillary Clinton. McAuliffe did none of that.

[DaleCooper]

I am so tired of this country.

Blame the Democrats who nominated a Clinton has been. This is about the failures of third way neolib politics.

Hopefully this is the final nail in the coffin of the Republican lite wing. Swingy suburban voters are never going to be the base of the supposedly left wing party. Ever.

 So we should have run a birdie Sanders clone? Please. The answering meal liberal is an exactly a cure all for the Democratic Party's party's ills. If Terry McCullough had run at least as good a campaign as he did 8 years ago, he might have had a shot here.

 Addressing the issue  Constructively now, I have to admit I'm a little surprised as I was under the impression that, republicans notwithstanding of course, that McCullough had left office reasonably well reasonably well liked and popular.

No, the answer is to run Democrats who actually have a plan and can both run on issues and motivate voters. Fetterman, Conor Lamb, Ossoff, Warnock, AOC, they don't have to be from the Sanders wing.

McAuliffe motivated no one, he ran against Trump instead of his actual opponent and he isn't charismatic.

How is AOC not from the Sanders wing?

The Sanders wing is equally out of touch with American voters.

[The Free North]

I am so tired of this country.

Blame the Democrats who nominated a Clinton has been. This is about the failures of third way neolib politics.

Hopefully this is the final nail in the coffin of the Republican lite wing. Swingy suburban voters are never going to be the base of the supposedly left wing party. Ever.

 So we should have run a birdie Sanders clone? Please. The answering meal liberal is an exactly a cure all for the Democratic Party's party's ills. If Terry McCullough had run at least as good a campaign as he did 8 years ago, he might have had a shot here.

 Addressing the issue  Constructively now, I have to admit I'm a little surprised as I was under the impression that, republicans notwithstanding of course, that McCullough had left office reasonably well reasonably well liked and popular.

No, the answer is to run Democrats who actually have a plan and can both run on issues and motivate voters. Fetterman, Conor Lamb, Ossoff, Warnock, AOC, they don't have to be from the Sanders wing.

McAuliffe motivated no one, he ran against Trump instead of his actual opponent and he isn't charismatic.

So what you're saying is that if a candidate was more likable and ran a better campaign, they would have a better shot at winning?

Groundbreaking.

The Sanders wing is incapable of winning at a national level and has lost as many down-ballot races as they have won. McAuliffe was a terrible candidate this go around and Biden is not very popular right now. Thats all there is to it.

[AncestralDemocrat.]

Youngkin has to be considered favored by now. But it's definitely not over, not yet.

If Wasserman calls it.. it's over.

[BoiseBoy]

Well I must say I was not expecting it to get this bad for Democrats. Congratulations Governor Youngkin, Lt. Governor Sears and Attorney General Miyares.

[DrScholl]

Establishment Democrats are the most out of touch people on the planet

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/aoc-defends-critical-race-theory-being-taught-in-schools/ar-AAMnukn
?

She’s out of touch too. There’s also too much out of touch “progressives”. Dems need to give up on CRT, Latinx, affirmative action, and ease the rhetoric on gender

I'm not sure how Democrats as a whole have taken up CRT. The first time I ever heard about it was when Republicans started bombarding school board meetings.

[NOVA Green]

Early vote has stalled, basically. Still only 21% in, compared with 60% of E-Day.

https://www.vpap.org/electionresults/20211102/statewide/

DEMs vote early PUBs vote often?   

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

In summary, Youngkin ran an excellent campaign while McAuliffe ran an awful one. Dems cannot control the narrative for the life of them... BTW I fully believe if the Dem party in Loudoun had their sh**t together TMAC would have won bc this CRT/anti-trans narrative wouldn't have spun out of control...

If this was just about campaign quality, then why are downballot R's doing close to as well as Youngkin?

Hint: It's because the entire democratic party and Joe Biden is unpopular because of inflation, Afghanistan, COVID, not getting anything done in Washington, and generally extreme social stances.

[CityByTheValley]

No better way for Youngkin to win than seeing Loudoun and Fairfax crown him. Dems need to stay away from the aggressive CRT messaging and embrace something more inclusive and appropriate for middle and high school kids. Could also see Asian parents (like 20% of the demographic here) revolting against making Thomas Jefferson, probably the best high school in the country academically, lottery based as opposed to merit centered. Although it’s pretty laughable to think a more leftist candidate would win VA at all; I could see the Republican winning Loudoun  and cracking 40% in Fairfax at that point. Abandoning the suburbanites would be a huge mistake because I can safely say the WWC is not going to come back if we leave the party.

[Alben Barkley]

Dave not only called it, he thinks Youngkin could win by as much as 5.

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1455695676025839618?s=20

[Pollster]

Youngkin presenting a golden example of why you should always aggressively define yourself positively as quickly as possible with the general electorate. Great job to his team, in all honesty.

[Vespucci]

People seem to be focusing more on McAuliffe's bad campaign than Youngkin's good one. If Republicans can run similar campaigns next year they could get their red wave. I'm not entirely confident they will, though.

The takeaway is that the thing people dislike about Trump is not his rhetoric, but his tone. Youngkin ran close to Trump on the issues—making CRT the key issue was definitely a Trumpy thing to do—but was much nicer about it. Democrats are in big trouble if they don’t figure out how to counter the rhetoric.

Agreed, mostly - you can see this through the numerous blue avatars that opposed trump but seem all in on DeSantis 2024. (Although I would say that some Trump rhetoric like the electtion fraud stuff is genuinely unpopular.)

I will note that Youngkin-type campaigns lend themselves more to gubernatorial elections. Tonight is a much worse sign for Gretchen Whitmer and Tony Evers than for Maggie Hassan or Catharine Cortez Masto.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Youngkin has to be considered favored by now. But it's definitely not over, not yet.

If Wasserman calls it.. it's over.

Personal preference, but 2016 helped teach me to be quite conservative with my calls.

[lfromnj]

Yeah Kentucky 2019 was about Bevin being an idiot, and the Lousiana Governor election was just JBE being a good incumbent. The entire ticket is winning here.

[roxas11]

WHERE IS NON SWING VOTER? HAHAHAHAHA

ouch lol

Hey, leave friend NON SWING VOTER alone, he probably just went to bed early....

[The Undefeatable Debbie Stabenow]

No better way for Youngkin to win than seeing Loudoun and Fairfax crown him. Dems need to stay away from the aggressive CRT messaging and embrace something more inclusive and appropriate for middle and high school kids. Could also see Asian parents (like 20% of the demographic here) revolting against making Thomas Jefferson, probably the best high school in the country academically, lottery based as opposed to merit centered. Although it’s pretty laughable to think a more leftist candidate would win VA at all; I could see the Republican winning Loudoun  and cracking 40% in Fairfax at that point. Abandoning the suburbanites would be a huge mistake because I can safely say the WWC is not going to come back if we leave the party.

Please point me to the Democratic Party's "aggressive CRT messaging." I'd love to see it.

[Pres Mike]

Democrats lost because the country is sick of covid restrictions, inflation and rising gas prices.

Biden should have done more about supply issues and gas prices. Democrats should have talked more about BBB.

The school board issue ended up a winning issue. CRT isn't taught in Virginia or anyone. But it goes with parent control. Parent control of masks