People are talking about how 'muh suburban margins republican win' or whatever without knowing who Mastriano really is. Youngkin did a balancing act that drew enough suburban voters while holding the base. Ciattarelli did basically the same thing just under the radar.
Doug Mastriano will not do that.
Doug Mastriano is literally insane. He's not a Youngkin-type, he's not even a normal Trumpist Republican. Mastriano is a massive extremist, while also having unpopular views on fiscal issues (see Rand Paul) that could hurt his vote totals with the #populist crowd. An underrated concept is that Youngkin probably would have lost if he campaigned with Trump constantly. Regardless of Biden having terrible approval ratings, Trump is still underwater.
Saying that Mastriano will win because he'll focus on economics and Shapiro will campaign on 1/6 displays a fragrant lack of understanding in the race. Pennsylvania Democrats are perhaps the only state party that are better at running campaigns than their GOP counterparts. Mastriano will run as a #StopTheSteal culture warrior nutjob. And even if he ran only on economic issues (which he'd never do) he'd be dragged down in the suburbs because of his well-documented past while turning off rural voters with his right-wing fiscal views.
This was true and wow some people were dumb.
