For months now, former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe has tried and failed to portray his opponent, Republican Glenn Youngkin, as a clone of Donald Trump. The argument, to the Democratic base, is that allowing Youngkin to win would be like letting Donald Trump win, or at the very least, letting Trump start a comeback for 2024.
The only problem for McAuliffe is that Virginians aren’t buying it. Youngkin is endorsed by Trump, and the GOP gubernatorial candidate has said positive things about the former president, but Trump’s name is not on the ballot, Youngkin’s name is. As a candidate, Youngkin figured out how to resurrect the Bob McDonnell coalition of 2009, bringing together the suburban country club class of Republicans and independents married with grassroots conservatives. After that, hammer the kitchen table issues people care about, like education, transportation, and the economy. McDonnell won the state back for Republicans by 17 points in 2009, a year after Virginia just voted for Obama by 5 points over John McCain.
This time it’s Glenn Youngkin hoping to run a McDonnell-esque campaign and recapture a state, which has trended blue, by forcing a complete reversal in statewide politics a year after Biden won the state by 10 points in 2020.
Luckily, Youngkin has some help in his quest by way of a bumbling Democratic candidate intent on running against Donald Trump. Instead of focusing on issues Virginia voters care about, Terry McAuliffe has called in big names like former President Barack Obama to visit the Commonwealth to campaign against a name not on the ballot:
“You can’t run ads telling me you’re a regular ol’ hoops-playing, dish-washing, fleece-wearing guy, but quietly cultivate support from those who seek to tear down our democracy,” said Obama, referencing the tightrope the former businessman has been walking as he tries to remain loyal to Donald Trump to please his conservative base while not alienating the increasingly Democratic-leaning suburbs in Northern Virginia.
“We’re not going to go back to the chaos that did so much damage,” Obama added, again tying Youngkin to the 45th president. “We’re going to move forward with people like Terry leading the way.”
It’s a strategy that so far has yet to be very fruitful for Democrats despite prevailing conventional wisdom that says Trump is the best way to turn out the Democratic voting base.
Aside from Obama, McAuliffe also brought in Stacey Abrams recently to warn that Republicans would try to steal the election in Virginia. This is right after McAuliffe got done accusing Glenn Youngkin’s Election Integrity plan as being a “dog whistle” for election conspiracies:
“You see, I’m here to tell you that just because you win doesn’t mean [you’ve] won,” Abrams declared, with McAuliffe nodding in the background. “I come from a state where I was not entitled to become the governor, but as an American citizen and as a citizen of Georgia, I’m going to fight for every person who has the right to vote to be able to cast that vote. And here in Virginia, you need to cast that vote for Terry McAuliffe!”
So, Glenn Youngkin is the “election fraud” conspirator while McAuliffe nods along to Stacey Abrams’ disproven claims that she should be the Governor of Georgia right now if not for a stolen election. Again, the inconsistencies in messaging and messengers are laughable if not outright embarrassing for Democrats.
Every other word out of McAuliffe’s mouth is “Trump” followed by “abortion.” It’s a failed strategy that even someone like Obama can’t overcome, and it actually tends to turn voters toward voting Republican:
The strategy to nationalize the Virginia governor’s race might seem obvious, given that Trump was a one-man turnout machine for Democrats across the country, particularly in the suburbs where Democrats made massive gains. But it also runs against the dominant Democratic thinking during the Trump years: Democratic candidates largely avoided talking about Trump during his presidency, not feeling they had to remind voters of the proverbial elephant in the room. Instead, swing-district lawmakers like Virginia’s own Elaine Luria and Abigail Spanberger focused on kitchen table issues to woo persuadable swing voters to their side.
In fact, the candidates who centered their messaging around Trump instead of talking about specific policy issues often saw that strategy backfire. Democratic data guru David Shor found that one of Hillary Clinton’s memorable ads, featuring women watching Trump making misogynistic comments, was among those that actually made more voters support Republicans than those who had never seen them.
Democrats went into the Virginia governor’s race with one goal and that was to tie any Republican nominee to Donald Trump. Youngkin has been shrewd, no doubt, in praising the former president, accepting his strong endorsement, but also blazing his own trail forward. Issues that matter in a gubernatorial election differ greatly from national issues in many cases. In Virginia, voters are concerned with education and the economy, issues that Terry McAuliffe and his surrogates like Obama have barely addressed. Instead, Obama is up there ranting about making progress by electing fresh and new leaders of tomorrow like …uh… Terry McAuliffe. What?
McAuliffe, to his credit, has admitted Democrats are tired of being bludgeoned with fear of Donald Trump, but he’s going to keep punching them anyway:
McAuliffe knows there is a problem without Trump ever-present in people’s minds. “There was a burning intensity the last four years for people to vote,” he said in a telephone interview on Friday. “It was exhausting for four years. It was Trump, Trump, Trump. People lived with it constantly. It infuriated and disgusted so many people. It’s not there in the same intensity.”
Democrats are not excited for McAuliffe and no amount of Trump-scaremongering is doing much to change that.
As an example of the enthusiasm gap, around 2,000 people showed up for Obama’s rally in support of McAuliffe, a rally that included several big Democratic names and the entire Virginia statewide Democratic ticket:
Around 2,000 people were in attendance for the rally, according to people familiar with the event’s planning.
Notable Virginia Democrats including Sen. Tim Kaine, Gov. Ralph Northam, Attorney General Mark Herring, and lieutenant gubernatorial nominee Del. Hala Ayala were also in attendance.
On the other side, with no former presidents and no sitting U.S. senators in attendance, Glenn Youngkin also rallied with 2,000 people in nearby Henrico County, a suburb of Richmond where Obama and McAuliffe were speaking:
This is what a movement of over 2,000 Virginians in Henrico sounds like on the #WinWithGlenn Bus Tour! #VAGov pic.twitter.com/1ke2MaKbBM
— Christian Martinez (@C_RMartinez) October 24, 2021
Obama has been a terrible surrogate over the years when offering endorsements and support. Make no mistake, Obama is still popular among Democrats, especially with African-Americans. He was, after all, the first black president and can deliver an inspiring speech. However, his likability rarely transfers to the weasels he’s endorsing, like Terry McAuliffe, a washed-up tool of the Democratic Party establishment. Try to gin up excitement for McAuliffe and you can hear a pin drop.
For now, Youngkin is dunkin’ on Obama and issued a challenge to “44”:
Hey @BarackObama, I hear you're in town trying to bail out @TerryMcAuliffe's campaign. If you're up for a game, I'm ready! pic.twitter.com/sBcmObowZ1
— Glenn Youngkin (@GlennYoungkin) October 23, 2021
The long and short of it for Democrats in Virginia is that they miscalculated and will very likely pay the price on Nov. 2. Running against Donald Trump, with Joe Biden’s failures wrecking the economy and ruining the country in the background only tends to remind people what they might be missing from the previous administration.
