The news out of the Virginia gubernatorial race puts Republican Glenn Youngkin and Dem retread Terry McAuliffe in a dead heat with just over a week to go before election day. Which is weird because Virginia is solid blue. Though not too long ago it was solid red.
In 2004 it went for Dubya. Since then exclusively for the Democrats in presidential contests. Virginia, like California, Colorado, Arizona, and Georgia are states that went from red to blue, or at least purple, within modern memory. Could Virginia be switching yet again? Unlikely. But this year is different, though it also proves an old political adage.
That adage states that an incumbent, which as a retread McAuliffe virtually is, who is neck and neck with a challenger close to the end game is going to lose. Why? Because the incumbent has had years to make themselves amenable to a majority of voters. If they haven’t achieved that by now they probably won’t achieve it at all and thus the advantage, and swing votes that decide an election, go to the challenger.
Other factors of this race only bolster that. Joe Biden is an albatross around the neck of Terry McAuliffe. McAuliffe has even said that, in so many words, publicly. Thus McAuliffe bringing in Biden to campaign for him shows the level of desperation the McAuliffe campaign has been reduced to. Even Jim Carville, one of the best American political field generals of all time and a Democrat, says he is scared to death about this race.
Then there are issues in Virginia other than this race itself that will bring people to the polls. The big one this year is CRT and the Biden administration’s Gestapo-like tactics against parents who oppose it. Not only is it incredibly wrong, but it shows a political tin ear that defies imagination. It doesn’t take an Atwater to figure out that parents vote in large numbers. And black parents, who the Democrats must have to win, are socially conservative especially when it comes to their kids.
When AG Garland first starting making authoritarian noises on parents and CRT, DC cognoscenti figured it was just that, noise, a sop to the hard left on the PC race issue. But then he and his minions doubled down on the threat. That is madness. It is asking for trouble. And then comes the history of the thing.
Off year elections can be great bellwethers. I can remember the upset win of Christie Todd Whitman in New Jersey in 1993. Her gubernatorial victory set the stage for the Gingrich Revolution of 1994. Then, like now, a new Democrat president had stumbled in his first two years. But comparatively Bill Clinton was a raging success compared to Joe Biden. Ergo, the Virginia results should reflect the Biden albatross. Our call? Youngkin by 2.
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