Virginia Mega Thread: The Youngkin Administration

[Alben Barkley]

https://twitter.com/LVozzella/status/1336452345861967881

That’s a wrap, McAuliffe will be governor again.

[Alben Barkley]

Glad T-Mac is returning, and hope VA will get rid of its ridiculous archaic "no consecutive terms" law like KY did over 20 years ago.

[Alben Barkley]

Well, Mr. Ojeda said the same in 2018/19.

Oh god Carter is gonna try and primary Biden

LOL he’ll get 3 votes.

[Alben Barkley]

Pundit media still trying to make T-Mac's "parents shouldn't get involved in what teachers teach" somehow a gaffe.

Still not sure how that was a gaffe since again, most rational people, Dem OR Rep, would agree that parents need to generally butt out and let teachers teach.

Also, of course, despite Youngkin making a gaffe by allowing Trump to do that call in rally this week, the main focus here is a weeks old quote from T-Mac.

The "liberal media" at it again. They want this race to be close so badly.

https://twitter.com/politico/status/1449359793437782019

You would think so, but both my anecdotal experience and the polls say that's not the case. Unless you're going to be very strict about what counts as a "rational" person I guess, but some otherwise not entirely stupid people at least do seem to think this these days. All part of there being more and more helicopter parents who want to butt in to every part of their kids' lives these days I guess, and can't stand the idea of someone else influencing them or god forbid the kids think for themselves and develop independently of their parents.

[Alben Barkley]

Youngkin is literally running attack ads against a a man who is not even eligible to run because he is utterly incapable of running against his actual opponent on anything of substance.

Time to join Larry Elder, buddy!

There's still room!

[Alben Barkley]

If Youngkin was winning right now there would be no need to ever bring up Ralph Northam because even if voters voter agreed with on him on the Dems hypocrisy over blackface, I still think most people do not care about this issue at all and others see it as old news that they have moved on from a long time ago

Ultimately it's simply not a good sign for Youngkin at all that he feels at this stage of the campaign that he needs to focus more on what Ralph Northam may have done 30 years ago than on actually convincing voters to support him and his policies

First of all, the point wasn’t "bring[ing] up Ralph Northam" so much as it was reinforcing the perception of McAuliffe as a hypocrite who loves to brand himself like the reasonable adult in the room while behaving just like Trump when it comes to protecting his own party and those in his circles (the ad highlighted McAuliffe's defense of Northam, not Northam's actions). McAuliffe has consistently been tying Youngkin to the racist appeals of Trump, a supposedly 'un-scientific' approach to COVID, stolen election rhetoric, cultural extremism, etc., and what those ads do is turn the tables on him, exposing his rhetoric as hypocritical and performative. McAuliffe has been staking everything on tying Youngkin to Trump, so it’s not surprising to see Youngkin trying undermine this line of attack.

Second, you paint the impression that this "blackface" thing is somehow the dominant theme of his campaign, which it clearly isn’t. It’s not accurate to say that he isn’t "convincing voters to support him and his policies," but given how incredibly negative the McAuliffe campaign has been from day one (you could just as well spin that as a sign that McAuliffe feels like he needs the race to be nationalized to really feel good about his chances), he obviously has to counter unless you expect him to unilaterally surrender in what is a full-fledged war (especially against a professional electoral hitman like McAuliffe).

The one impression (and maybe some others will agree) I’ve gotten is that if you just observed their demeanor and didn’t know their actual party labels/positions, you’d be tempted (especially after the Trump era) to think that McAuliffe is the Republican and Youngkin the Democrat in this race. Youngkin comes across as much more level-headed, less erratic and negative, more optimistic/forward-looking, and more 'soothing' than McAuliffe. It’s quite different from the Gillespie 2017 campaign, which was arguably easier to paint as an inauthentic and transparent attempt at demagoguery designed to stir up Trumpian fears about illegals and caravans. Also, it was easier for Northam to pull off the reasonable moderate shtick when Donald Trump was actually in the White House. You can tell just how much McAuliffe/Democrats depend on Trump in this race — we’ll see how it pays off for them in states that are actually competitive in 2022.

That's a hell of a lot of words about a race you and I both know is safe D.

Dare I say it, but are you... giving in to the hype? Are you actually believing that Youngkin can win this thing because you personally like him? Despite VA's... PARTISAN LEAN???

Good GOD!!!

Anyway, all I know is that I saw a clip of Youngkin accusing T-Mac of being "like if Bill and Hillary Clinton had a son." Literally no better reason I can think of to vote for anybody. Thanks, Glenn!

[Alben Barkley]

Hahahahahahahaha

[Alben Barkley]

as someone who's worked with the mcauliffe team since march, I can tell yall that if he loses it is fully because of the terrible organization of his campaign. the loudoun and Fairfax dems are also  absolutely awful at their jobs and have let the GOP completely control the narrative. meanwhile they are handwriting postcards to safe d houses asking them to vote... at the early voting location in loudoun there are 5 GOP helpers handing out voting guides and not a single democrat there.... they truly do not have their sh**t together. trumpkin was a campaign tactic doomed to fail when the GOP candidate is essentially mitt romney... this was a perfect storm of sh**tty campaigning from the dems, so if youngkin wins, I don't think it means anything about the partisanship of the state other than the fact that va dems are SOOO BADDD

Any individuals who are particularly incompetent in the VA Dems, or is it too broadly spread out to justify singling out anyone?

I know there was a major campaign restructuring in the summer for Terry's campaign that resulted in 2 months of dead silence while all the CRT/SB bullsh**t was going on, so that definitely didn't help. I don't think it is an issue with VA Dems as much as it is Terry's campaign just not knowing what they are doing. They clearly thought this race was safe until September so they didn't even campaign or do anything until that point whereas Youngkin has been out fighting all year. He has run an excellent campaign all things considered.


Also, as a Loudoun resident and LCPS student, I think it's crucial that everybody understands what is happening with this rape situation. The blame in placing this kid back into LCPS has nothing to do with the school board as it was out of their hands at that point (criminal charges). They legitimately did not know what happened as it was in the hands of the DA Buta Biberaj. I don't know why she decided the kid wasn't a risk (I've heard he was SPED) but she is the one who made the decision to place him back in schools, not the school board. Also, there is no evidence that this kid is trans or even was wearing a skirt other than what this girl said. I also want to say that the walkouts last week were not political in nature other than being mad at LCPS for tolerating rape culture in general (there was a specific situation at my school that exemplified this). As the kid literally in the front of the walkout, I can assure everyone on Atlas that it had nothing to do with trans kids, CRT, or the gubernatorial election in any way.

Also CRT is bullsh**t we learn the opposite so that's all a bunch of lies too

If you are serious and not a troll, you might have inadvertently helped Youngkin anyway because that was NOT the narrative that went around. I keep hammering away here about the importance of OPTICS that so many Democrats just don't seem to comprehend. In politics, it doesn't matter what people's actual motives or intentions are. What matters is how it is conveyed by the media and perceived by the voters. And this walkout contributed to a perception of a Loudoun County in chaos thanks to wokeness gone mad, to the point that even the kids are fed up with it. Regardless of whether that's true or not, it's the narrative that's being widely spread nationally, and I imagine within much of your state as well.

[Alben Barkley]

Hahahahahahahaha

Did you make this ?

No I found it on the Campaign Trail subreddit. Not a real mod, just a meme.

[Alben Barkley]

More Campaign Trail memes!

[Alben Barkley]

Bloodbath incoming.

[Alben Barkley]

The exit polls aren't always great but I can't think of the last time they were so wildly off-base they didn't give a decent sense of which way the race was going to end up. I remember in 2016 they were the first time I really got a sinking feeling of "My god he's actually going to win this thing." It's happening again...

[Alben Barkley]

STOP THE COUNT!!!!

[Alben Barkley]

Steve Kornacki just called it "Buck-a-Nin" county for Buchanan County.

Uh... is that actually how it's pronounced or...?

[Alben Barkley]

Oh now down 20, lol.

COUNT THE VOTES!!!

[Alben Barkley]

Steve Kornacki just called it "Buck-a-Nin" county for Buchanan County.

Uh... is that actually how it's pronounced or...?

Alben Barkley watches MSNBC. Lol. I'm shocked, shocked I tell you!

First time I have since the CA recall, mainly for Kornacki but OK.

[Alben Barkley]

I'm going ahead and calling it for Youngkin.

[Alben Barkley]

The current live breakdown on CNN has the 2020 presidential vote at 46/46, liberal turnout at 23%, and the conservative vote . So either:

A) Entire sample isn't in yet
B) 04 and 18 repeat where it was a sh**tty sample altogether
C) A lot of voters are lying about their prior voting history
D) The polls were right and people in the VA-Dem GOTV operation+T-Mac campaign need to be yote into the Potomac for letting the Rs so easily control the narrative and issues of a winnable race.

It is D.

[Alben Barkley]

Youngkin is pulling Putin level numbers in SWVA, holy s--t. If that starts happening in similar Eastern KY counties, Beshear might be screwed.

[Alben Barkley]

Huge vote dump, Youngkin still up by 6.4

[Alben Barkley]

Youngkin will win by less than a point. Could be recount territory. Polls might have actually been spot-on for once.

[Alben Barkley]

Kornacki says the Loudoun vote is early/absentee.

RIP T-Mac.

[Alben Barkley]

https://twitter.com/tencor_7144/status/1455679776870608902?s=20

The dump makes more sense if it's early vote.

[Alben Barkley]

Well now I'm just confused lol

Kornacki's saying one thing, Wasserman something else... Does anyone actually know who is right? Kornacki even checked with his behind the scenes people it seemed before confirming that.

[Alben Barkley]

If T-Mac ends up narrowly pulling this off, but we won't know for forever because Fairfax f--ked up and it will look like Youngkin won for all that time, it will just fuel more of the conspiracy theories. Forget draining the swamp, we need to drain all the incompetent morons from election boards.