After Stunning Apparent Youngkin Win In Virginia, Democrats Seek Answers
“There was record-shattering turnout today, and Youngkin won," analyst observes
Demoralized Democrats began looking for answers as to how a Donald Trump-backed Republican like Glenn Youngkin could be elected governor in Virginia when just a year ago Joe Biden ran away with the Old Dominion's 13 electoral votes by a 10-point margin — even before Youngkin was officially declared the victor.
Most immediately — and perhaps most predictably — the apparent loss of Democrat Terry McAuliffe has some Democrats second-guessing the political trajectory of the party, including that of Biden himself.
“Some in Biden-land are already asking themselves if the president has allowed himself to be tugged too far to the left while in office, and those voices are likely to get louder now,” New York Times On Politics editor Blake Hounshell tweeted.
Author and former top aide to one-time Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev), Adam Jentleson, challenged Hounshell by saying, “Blake, what high profile actions or positions has Biden taken while in office that are farther to the left than median voter opinion?”
Hounshell responded, “I'm not adopting this view, just conveying what people are saying. But the argument is that he should have gone with infrastructure and not tied the two bills together, thus miring himself in this progressive fight with Manchema.”
Hounshell was referring to passing the bipartisan infrastructure bill separately, without tying it to the larger Build Back Better Act as many progressives insisted.
“Manchema” is a reference to Sens Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, the two Democratic holdouts with whom other Democrats have had to negotiate in order to pass the Build Back Better legislation.
White women abandoning Democrats may well have played a significant role in the Youngkin win.
NBC News reporter Sahil Kapur noted a 15-point swing to the GOP with this group, year-over-year.
Fred Wellman, a senior advisor with the “Never Trumper” Republican organization Lincoln Project, lamented Youngkin's racist-tinged appeals on the campaign trail.
“What a train wreck. We need to take a hard look at how we counter the insidious racist fear mongering and messaging. Ignoring it isn’t working,” he said.
There are even more basic assumptions Democrats will have to examine, including what they have held as a truism that high turnout boosts their candidates.
“The theory that ‘high turnout will save McAuliffe b/c Virginia is a blue state' was never much more than wishcasting on this site. There was record-shattering turnout today, and Youngkin won. #VAGOV” Dave Wasserman, of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, tweeted.
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Biden hasn't gone to the left since the primaries.