After Glenn Youngkin’s win in Virginia, many Democrats have been aggravated over the Democratic Party’s on-going in-fighting, and failure to put public pressure on the Justice Department to indict Steve Bannon. Republicans have reacted to the victory with their typical over-confidence, claiming that vulnerable Democrats might as well “retire or lose“. The Youngkin victory should not be taken as proof that MAGA ideology as alive and well, and Republican politicians who make that their key takeaway do so at their own peril.
As Democratic voters work through the stages of grief, there are a number of key factors they should consider about the Youngkin victory, and what it suggests for the 2022 mid-terms. Lincoln Project Senior Adviser Tara Setmayer and former RNC Chair Michael Steele discussed those issues on a recent episode of The Breakdown on Lincoln Project TV.
A brief abstract of their discussion as I perceived it is that Terry McAuliffe made several key errors in the race. First, McAuliffe spent far too much time trying to tie Youngkin to Trump, even though Youngkin repeatedly referred to himself as a more moderate “Romney style Republican”, and repeatedly turned down offers from Trump to appear at campaign events in Virginia. McAuliffe’s approach would have worked if he were running against someone like Andy Biggs or Louie Gohmert, but he wasn’t, and his failure to pivot his campaign message was part of his problem.
McAuliffe also made a vital error when he failed to offer any greater clarification after a debate gaffe where he said parents shouldn’t get to decide what their children learn in school. McAuliffe could have come forward to say that he mis-spoke, that he absolutely supports the right of parents to have a say in what their children are learning, but that we live in a very partisan age and there have to be limits. McAuliffe could have supported his call for limits by pointing to factions in the GOP that are making violent threats against school board members over mask mandates, talked about that part of the Republican Party who thinks that purging “CRT” from public schools means eliminating any and all teaching about the Civil Rights movement (Steele went into an extended discussion of how Democrats have a tendency of failing to comprehend how average people relate to certain terms in politics, and focusing on academic definitions rather than what average Americans think). If McAuliffe had clarified his statement, and turned the question back on Youngkin, forcing him to take a stand on that radical element within the GOP, he may have been able to win back some more moderate voters, or at least depress turnout among Trump loyalists for Youngkin.
Setmayer and Steele’s points are definitely worth considering, and the reality is that the two Republicans who should be most encouraged by the Youngkin victory are Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, who have both demonstrated that they are ready and willing to separate themselves from Trump by being on the January 6th committee. Analyses of exit polls from the Virginia race suggest that Youngkin’s win was largely possible because of suburban women voters who voted for Biden in 2020, but then switched to Youngkin because they were offended by McAuliffe’s comments about public school curriculum. The thirteen Republicans who voted for the Biden Infrastructure Bill are likely to have looked at the Youngkin victory and decided that their best shot at re-election in 2022 is to emulate Youngkin’s more moderate approach, and start moving away from Trump.
Trump loyalists, including Marjorie Taylor-Greene have already started attacking the 13 Republicans who voted for the Bipartisan infrastructure bill, labeling them as “RINOs” and insisting that repairing our nation’s bridges and roadways is now “out of control government socialism”. Republicans could find themselves in a very difficult situation in 2022 if suburban voters decide that Taylor-Greene’s side of that argument is too “MAGA” for their liking.