The Other McCain

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Democrats Desperate in Virginia

Posted on | October 18, 2021 | Comments Off on Democrats Desperate in Virginia

You can tell by the TV ads that are running in the D.C. metro market that the Terry McAuliffe campaign is in deep trouble. The essence of the Democrat’s pitch, in the off-year gubernatorial campaign, is that Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin is a puppet of Donald Trump.

Let’s be clear about just who Glenn Youngkin actually is — a Richmond native who attended Rice University on a basketball scholarship (he’s 6-7), majored in engineering and management, and later got an MBA from Harvard. He spent 25 years with the Carlyle Group investment firm. If he is, or ever was, an extremist, nobody has discovered any evidence of this. Youngkin is Mister Clean, a calm and level-headed businessman without scandals in his past, and this is why the only way the McAuliffe campaign can try to attack him is by playing the “Orange Man Bad” card.

It should not be necessary for McAuliffe to attack Youngkin at all. A former governor, McAuliffe has near-100% name recognition in Virginia, while Youngkin is a little-known political newcomer. Virginia has been trending “blue” for the past 15 years; Hillary won Virginia 50%-44% in 2016, and Biden won the state by a 10-point margin last year.

Terry McAuliffe would have been cruising toward a November landslide, were it not for the disastrous failure of Joe Biden’s presidency. Since early August, Biden’s job-approval number in the RCP average has dropped about 7 points, while disapproval has risen by 9 points. Biden has been “underwater” in the polls for six weeks and, now that Americans are increasingly concerned abourt shortages of basic consumer goods because of the supply-chain issue, there is little hope of recovery.

There are real policy issues in Virginia — particularly the controversy surrounding Critical Race Theory, which McAuliffe has bungled — but the toxic cloud looming over the gubernatorial campaign is the stench of Biden’s failure, as even McAuliffe himself acknowledges:

Virginia Republican Glenn Youngkin holds less than a one-point lead over former Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) in the state’s gubernatorial race, according to a Trafalgar Group poll released Friday.
The poll, conducted October 11–13 among 1,095 likely voters, shows Youngkin with 48.4 percent support compared to McAuliffe’s 47.5 percent support, giving Youngkin a 0.9 percent edge.
The remaining respondents are split, 1.3 percent in favor of a third party or write-in candidate and 2.8 percent undecided. The third party candidate on the ballot, Princess Blanding, identifies as a Liberation Party member and will primarily serve as an alternative for Democrat-aligned voters. The poll’s margin of error is three percent.
Of the last three Trafalgar polls, this most recent one marks the first time Youngkin has led McAuliffe in the blue-leaning state. The last poll, taken at the end of August, showed McAuliffe with a slight edge over Youngkin, 46.6 percent to 46.3 percent. The one before that, taken in early July, had McAuliffe up by close to two points, 46.8 percent to Youngkin’s 45 percent.
McAuliffe said this month in candid remarks during a virtual rally with state Democrats that President Joe Biden, whose approval rating is hovering at record-low levels, is causing his campaign “headwinds.”
“But we’ve got to get Democrats out to vote,” McAuliffe said, per a clip of the event. “We are facing a lot of headwinds from Washington, as you know. The president is unpopular today unfortunately here in Virginia so we have got to plow through” . . .

Which is why Democrats are now saturating the TV airwaves with commercials depicting Youngkin as a Trump puppet — which might actually backfire, if you stop to think about it. After all, there must be a certain number of Biden voters who now feel “buyer’s remorse” over their role in electing this senile incompetent as president, so telling them that the Republican gubernatorial candidate is a Trump clone? No, that’s not necessarily going to make them want to vote Democrat again.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! And speaking of Virginia, perhaps you’d care to read the biography of a great Virginian.




 

Category: Election, Virginia

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