The campaign of Democrat Terry McAuliffe is entering the final weekend before Election Day with a sense of dread doused in urgency. The polls have trended strongly in Youngkin’s direction, Republican enthusiasm is off the charts, and the fake white nationalist tiki torch stunt in Charlottesville on Friday may have been the icing on the cake. If anything, Friday’s hoax, perpetrated by Democratic Party of Virginia campaign staffers in cooperation with the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, will likely remind voters which campaign is actually running on the issues, and which is running against Donald Trump.
According to reports, insiders for the McAuliffe campaign and various Democratic strategists are worried about a looming disaster on Tuesday if Virginia, a state that went +10 for Biden, goes red:
A loss in the Virginia governor’s race, long considered a bellwether for midterm elections, would trigger all-out panic among Democrats far beyond Virginia. The party is already wary about their chances in elections that will decide control of the House and Senate and statehouses next year.
Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democratic National Committee, acknowledged a McAuliffe loss would be a “doomsday” scenario.
The finger-pointing among Democrats has already started. It wasn’t that McAuliffe ran a bad campaign (he did), it’s President Biden dragging him down with sagging approval:
History is working against Democrats, who control the legislative and executive branches in Virginia and in Washington. Traditionally, the party that holds the White House almost always loses the Virginia governor’s race. McAuliffe himself was the first in 40 years to break that trend in 2013.
McAuliffe’s team points to Biden’s slipping popularity, which has fallen close to Trump’s levels at this point in his presidency.
Yes, the national headwinds are against McAuliffe, but most of the time his campaigning has also been filled with frequent foot-in-mouth statements and assertions. The blatant nature of repeating “Donald Trump” as many times as possible will only motivate a certain number and type of voter. What about taxes? Transporation? Energy? Education? The list of state-level issues goes on and on, McAuliffe has barely touched them.
Now, in relation to Friday’s bungled tiki-torch white nationalist stunt, McAuliffe allies are worried it could be yet another example of how desperation is setting in:
Lis Smith, a former senior advisor to Democratic primary candidate Pete Buttigieg tweeted: “What a massive, massive screw up. The last thing that the McAuliffe campaign needed this weekend. A total disservice to the hundreds of hard-working staffers on the ground.”
Meanwhile, Mark Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, told The Washington Post: “The overreach backfires because it is so ridiculous in its execution it hurts the point they’re trying to make.”
Even some prominent Virginia Democrats were quick to denounce the ill-advised hoax as being in incredibly poor taste, no matter who was responsible:
Virginia legislator Sally Hudson tweeted: “Charlottesville is not a prop. Our community is still reeling from years of trauma—especially this week. Don’t come back, @ProjectLincoln. Your stunts aren’t welcome here.”
It’s been a no-good very-bad month of October for the McAuliffe campaign.
On the other side, Glenn Youngkin has been focused, laser-like on the issues important to voters. While McAuliffe is giving interviews entirely dismissing parental concerns about education, Youngkin is attending rallies with parents and pledging to restore respect to parents seeking a role in their children’s schooling.
The trajectory of voters seems to be set after weeks of improvement by Youngkin to catch up and surpass McAuliffe in several polls. The Charlottesville debacle, which was at least blessed by the McAuliffe campaign if not outright planned, may be yet another inflection point where Democrats overreached and overplayed their anti-Trump hand.
McAuliffe campaign social media accounts were quick to call on Glenn Youngkin to denounce the racially-charged hoax, which means they at least approved of it and tried to use it to their advantage before disavowing it. For some reason, Democrats enjoy dividing people on race, so much so that they all reneged on calls for their black-face-wearing Gov. Ralph Northam to step down.
The bigger story from Friday was McAuliffe’s decision to hire Clinton-backed electioneering attorney Marc Elias, then attempt to kill the story from headlines. The Charlottesville stunt seemed to do that, but it’s worth asking why Democrats are bringing in lawyers to challenge the results of an election that hasn’t happened yet. We probably already know the answer.
