2021 Elections

[GreyhoundFan]

For those of us in Virginia and New Jersey, we have gubernatorial elections this year. Repugs are hoping to break a long losing streak -- they haven't won a single statewide office (Governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General) since 2009. There are some parallels to last year's election -- Terry McAuliffe won the crowded Dem primary, even though a lot of people were lukewarm to him, it seemed like many feel he has the best shot to defeat the Repug nominee, Glenn Youngkin, who tries to paint himself as an businessman outsider. Both McAuliffe and Youngkin are wealthy white men who live in Northern Virginia, by far the largest number of voters in Virginia. McAuliffe was Governor from 2013-2017, but Virginia prohibits consecutive terms for Governors.  Because both are wealthy and have given their campaigns a lot of money, we are getting flooded with ads. I'm so sick of them already. I do like that an operative was able to get Youngkin recorded saying that he wouldn't be loudly anti-abortion because he knows that will lose him important independent voters in the general election, but once he's Governor, he'll take action against abortion. McAuliffe's ads are hammering that, plus the fact that Youngkin is anti-mask mandate. Anyhow, the WaPo published this good piece by Greg Sargent. It's not just about Virginia, but we feature prominently in the article: "The Zombie Trumpism of GOP governors gives Democrats a big opening"

Quote

If there is one thing that might get Democratic voters to take state-level races more seriously, it’s the Zombie Trumpism that continues to afflict GOP governors. In states where covid-19 cases are surging, they steadfastly refuse to take the virus seriously enough, and some are actively thwarting local efforts to combat it, a state of derangement that refuses to die.

This is why we should pay close attention to the Virginia gubernatorial contest. It is providing an opportunity for Democrats to prosecute the case against this sort of derelict governing — which, if successful, could offer a model for Democrats to get more aggressive in taking it on elsewhere.

The Democratic candidate, Terry McAuliffe, is placing public health questions involving masks and vaccines squarely before the electorate in a way that’s all too rare among Democrats. He is excoriating Republican opponent Glenn Youngkin for opposing vaccine and mask mandates, and casting this as a holdover of Donald Trump’s deranged approach to covid-19.

McAuliffe just launched a new TV ad campaign that hits Youngkin’s opposition to requiring masks in schools and requiring vaccines for teachers and health-care workers. The spot ties this to Youngkin’s declaration that “Trump represents so much of why I’m running.”

Youngkin opposes Virginia’s mask requirements in schools. He even vowed to follow Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, by blocking local school officials from implementing them, though Youngkin’s spokesman backtracked a bit on that.

Meanwhile, Youngkin has blasted vaccine requirements at Virginia universities and among state employees, and has come out against vaccine mandates generally. Though he encourages vaccines by choice, he also explicitly urged people to seek an “exemption” for “whatever reason.”

By contrast, McAuliffe — who was governor from 2014 to 2018 — supports mask requirements in schools, and supports requiring vaccines for school teachers and staff and requiring vaccines or tests for state employees. So this race puts our grand national debate over masks and vaccines on the ballot this November.

Though Virginia is a blue-trending state, this provides an important test case. It might illustrate whether Democratic voters will remain motivated in off-year and midterm elections despite their party controlling the White House and Congress, as opposed to all the anger and energy being concentrated among the out-party.

This might also help illuminate the durability of the shift of suburban and educated White voters to Democrats. If turnout remains relatively good for an off-year election in the D.C. suburbs in Northern Virginia and in suburbs around Richmond — which helped power President Biden’s 10-point statewide victory — that might bode well.

This also has implications for how engaged Democratic voters will be in the 2022 midterms, and in the battle for governorships and state legislatures. Democrats badly need to recapture ground in the states, as the huge voter suppression push and the active impairment of our covid response in red states both confirm.

You’d think such Democratic voters might get engaged by this lingering Trumpist derangement. Youngkin has tried to style himself as a pro-business Republican, to mute that Trumpist taint a bit in a blue-trending state. But Youngkin has fallen prey to the same absurdities that other GOP governors have.

Youngkin, like GOP governors DeSantis and Greg Abbott of Texas, constantly justifies opposition to any and all mandates with empty pieties about liberty and individual responsibility. But these Republicans cannot seriously explain why they selectively oppose mandates in the particular case of covid.

As it is, the covid crisis has exposed the vacuousness of a certain type of reflexive anti-government, anti-health-mandate posture, but that reflex alone can’t explain what is happening. Another factor is likely that the pull of the Trumpist vortex is powerful.

Many Republicans are aligning themselves with the obsessions of the Trump movement, and opposition to any sort of covid mandates has become a quasi-religious calling, perhaps because of their association with Enemies Of Trump.

Thus governors like DeSantis are using government power to prevent private businesses from implementing vaccine requirements, blocking them from protecting workers and customers as they see fit.

And they’re flouting conservative principles of local control by blocking local officials from implementing mask requirements in schools — ones counseled by experts on the grounds that mere voluntary masking will not actually allow communities to protect themselves.

Youngkin hasn’t gone quite as far as those governors, but he’s plainly trying to keep that Trumpist spirit alive to keep Trump voters engaged, to whatever degree he can get away with. And indeed, Youngkin and Republicans may soon find themselves in an even worse position: CNN reports that many experts believe that once school resumes, we may see covid outbreaks in districts that do not employ public health requirements.

That might illustrate in a terrible way the folly of GOP opposition to such requirements. If Democrats can successfully prosecute the case against Youngkin here, that may persuade them to lean harder into these arguments against Republicans elsewhere.

As it is, the public is broadly on the side of public health mandates as a sensible way of exercising collective self-defense in response to the new covid surge, and Democrats need to speak more forcefully to those voters. This could underscore the concrete dangers of ongoing GOP extremism and activate those voters politically, which could benefit the country if it makes GOP efforts to impair our covid response harder to sustain. Really, it can’t happen soon enough.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Trumpkin Youngkin stepped in it during an interview. I'm hoping this is his "macaca moment" -- that's when George Allen, who was the incumbent senator running for re-election, publicly called a person of South Asian descent macaca (monkey). That person was the only person of color at the event. The incident was one of several that turned the tide towards Jim Webb, the eventual winner.  I realize that what Youngkin said wasn't the same, but I hope and pray it energizes Dems and Independents to come out and vote against him.

"After soiling himself with Trumpism, Glenn Youngkin works to erase the stain"

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Glenn Youngkin is shocked, just absolutely shocked, that reporters are daring to ask him whether he would have supported certifying President Biden’s 2020 election win. The GOP candidate for governor in Virginia cannot believe this is even an open question!

On Monday, Youngkin faced heat from journalists after Axios reported that in an interview, “he wouldn’t say whether he would have voted to certify the election on Jan. 6 if he were a member of Congress.”

Pressed to explain himself, Youngkin sought to appear flabbergasted. “It’s a silly thing,” he told a reporter who asked about it. “I’ve said all along that Joe Biden was legitimately elected our president.”

But if Youngkin is facing questions about this, he has only himself to blame. While he has been less obvious about it than other Republicans have been, on this matter Youngkin has already deeply soiled himself with Trumpist lies about the 2020 election. Youngkin may wish to erase this right now as a general election candidate in a state that Biden carried by 10 points, but there is no reason to take him at his word.

First, note what Youngkin said in the Axios interview at issue here. After Youngkin’s walk back, Axios posted the full transcript: Asked directly if he would have voted to uphold Biden’s win, Youngkin mumbled about how he’s running for an executive position, not a legislative one, then immediately segued into a denunciation of the violence on Jan. 6.

It’s important to understand that this is the easy position for Republicans to take. Just about every GOP member of Congress who voted to overturn Biden’s electors will mouth words of condemnation of the violence. What most will not admit is that the lies about the election are precisely what inspired the insurrection, let alone that many in their party fed those lies for weeks leading up to it.

So Youngkin’s original position on this to Axios was basically indistinguishable from the craven evasions we’ve heard from many other Republicans for months now.

Then there are Youngkin’s own previous stances on this matter. Youngkin has repeatedly indulged voters who’ve suggested the 2020 voting might have been fraudulent or even that the result might ultimately get overturned by courts, the latter being a particularly deranged Trumpist delusion. As a Post editorial concluded, Youngkin has been “playing footsie” with the “big lie.”

What’s more, as a primary candidate, Youngkin pushed a noxious version of the Republican “election integrity” canard. Here again this is a position Republicans adopt when they want to feed the delusions and conspiracy theories of the Trumpist base while seeking to maintain plausible deniability for doing so.

On top of all this, according to a Post report, it was only after Youngkin had secured the GOP nomination that he fully and unequivocally declared that Biden had legitimately won. Youngkin deserves zero benefit of the doubt on any of this.

Indeed, it will be lost on no one that Youngkin made his comments to Axios at a time when Donald Trump is attacking him for not fully embracing “the MAGA movement.” It’s highly likely that, when asked whether he would have certified Biden’s win, Youngkin deliberately fudged, worrying that answering the question with a definitive “no” might dampen turnout among the Trump base, which he may need to have a chance at winning.

If so, the moral of the story is that flirting with Trump’s “big lie” will not be confined merely to GOP primary politics. Even Republicans in general elections think they need to humor that lie, or tread carefully around it, to keep the MAGA base engaged.

But when it comes to the rest of the voters, Youngkin might soon learn that those who soil themselves with the stain of Trumpism cannot erase it quite as effortlessly as they might have thought.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Trumpkin and McAuliffe debated last week. It was not pretty. There's no love lost between the two. I didn't realize The Lincoln Project did a video:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Jennifer Rubin: "Glenn Youngkin reminds Virginians: The GOP is out to delegitimize elections"

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Virginia’s Republican nominee for governor, Glenn Youngkin, makes no bones about his desire to discredit elections with vague allegations of fraud and unprovable suspicions about election machinery. He’s following the examples of former president Donald Trump, Republican candidate Larry Elder in California’s recall campaign and the fake election auditors in Arizona, who all trotted out the “big lie” of stolen elections (sometimes even before people voted!), driving the MAGA base into new bouts of rage and giving fodder to those who see violence as a permissible means of clinging to power.

“I think we need to make sure that people trust these voting machines,” Youngkin said ominously at a virtual forum with the Richmond Crusade for Voters on Monday. But Virginia already conducted a post-election audit, a fact Youngkin either did not know or was willing to conceal to fan the flames of doubt about the election. This heralds back to Youngkin’s first major policy proposal — one he has had to downplay lately — for an “election integrity task force.”

His opponent, former Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe, bashed Youngkin earlier in the campaign and reminded voters that Youngkin’s effort to sow doubt about the election came straight from the Trump playbook. The Post reported, “Youngkin made the issue the centerpiece of his campaign as he pursued the GOP nomination this year, hoping to court Republicans who agreed with former president Donald Trump’s unfounded claim that Democrats stole the 2020 election.” In July, McAuliffe called on Youngkin to drop out of a GOP “election integrity” rally, which a former GOP congressman dubbed a "conspiracy-palooza.”

Now Youngkin is back at it, winking and nodding to the MAGA base while avoiding the direct allegation that the 2020 election was stolen. He is trying to keep his supporters fired up and Trump on board without tipping his hand to the general electorate by overtly embracing the election conspiracy theories. Should he lose, expect his base to jump on the election “integrity” bandwagon and carry the “big lie” banner to Richmond, wreaking havoc on Virginia politics just as Trump did on a national level.

In response to Youngkin’s latest effort to pander to the MAGA base, McAuliffe shot back, tweeting:

Youngkin seems not to understand that what he says to one group of supporters does not stay with them. By perpetually letting on about his real views (about abortion, vaccines and voting), he plays into McAuliffe’s argument that Youngkin is concealing his radical positions, aiming to turn Virginia into Texas when it comes to abortion, and Florida when it comes to vaccine and mask mandates. (Youngkin at one point urged Virginians to try to opt out of whatever vaccine requirements were imposed.)

In a state that voted for Joe Biden for president in 2020 by a margin of 10 points and that strongly supports vaccine and mask mandates, Youngkin is at pains to feign moderation without alienating MAGA voters and their cult leader. This race is a preview of the sort of tightrope-walk Republicans will be compelled to undertake in competitive races in 2022. They cannot square the MAGA base’s thirst to hear their conspiracy theories confirmed and amplified with the need to appear sensible to large swaths of the electorate, including suburban women, college-educated voters and moderates.

Youngkin apparently thinks the solution is to talk out of both sides of his mouth. McAuliffe’s success in exposing that sort of cynical deception will give some indication as to whether Republicans can pull the same scam in 2022 in the midterms and gubernatorial races.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is an awesome piece by The Lincoln Project:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

How disgusting. I am praying that Trumpkin is defeated in November:

 

[fraurosena]

27 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

How disgusting. I am praying that Trumpkin is defeated in November:

 

"Godzilla of truth"  

Gotta love Republicans equating themselves with evil monsters. They can't help themselves from revealing who they really are, can they?

[Cartmann99]

47 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

How disgusting. I am praying that Trumpkin is defeated in November:

 

Can you be healed by touching any American flag from the insurrection, or only those that came in direct contact with His Orangeness?

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

Another good video:

 

 

 

And another:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Paul Waldman: "Another phony Republican campaign about a fake ‘issue’"

Quote

In theory, campaigns are supposed to be about what happens after they’re over: Candidates debate issues and present agendas, voters decide which person and program they prefer, and then the one who wins has to follow through and deliver what they promised.

In Washington, we’re seeing Democrats wrestle with the complications of governing as they try to pass something resembling the agenda President Biden ran on. Meanwhile, across the Potomac in Virginia, we’re seeing why Republicans don’t have to worry about that kind of struggle. They’ve run so many campaigns built on pandering, outrage, and phony “issues” that are forgotten the moment the campaign is over that the very idea that the way they govern should have something to do with the way they ran is a joke.

The Virginia governor’s race has been swallowed up by angry school board meetings and critical race theory. That’s the main dish in Republican Glenn Youngkin’s campaign, along with side orders of Trumpist voter fraud pandering and mask mandate hysteria.

Youngkin has followed a familiar pattern for Republican candidates. A wealthy businessman from the corporate wing of the party gets its nomination, in what could signal a campaign aimed at swing voters. He then decides the race will turn on enthusiasm from the base, so he transforms himself into an imitation culture warrior. A new issue emerges, one that promises to produce rage and fear among GOP voters. Burying any semblance of integrity he might have had, he embraces its potential for demagoguery and fearmongering.

Then if he wins, the issue on which he built his campaign is immediately forgotten.

And the voters who put him there? Weirdly enough, they often don’t seem to care. They’ve been manipulated and lied to so often — by their politicians and the conservative media — yet they’re fine with it. Unlike Democratic voters, they don’t expect much in the way of genuine government action. It’s as if all the pandering and outrage was its own reward.

Imagine it’s January 2023, and Gov. Youngkin gathers his staff for a meeting to celebrate the end of his first year in office. “I want to congratulate all of you,” he says. “We’ve done just what we said we would: For the last year, all of you have worked tirelessly, day in and day out, to make sure no critical race theory is taught in any school in the state.”

That scene is preposterous to the point of parody. The idea that what Youngkin would do as governor has even a remote relationship to what he is running on is absurd.

That’s not the case with every campaign — sometimes Republicans find political benefit in an issue that’s on their actual agenda, like cutting taxes — but when they dash to the front of an angry mob, everyone knows what’s going on.

The prototypical example is probably George H.W. Bush, who centered his 1988 campaign on Willie Horton; ask a historian how much of his presidency was devoted to prison furlough policy. Four years ago, Republican gubernatorial nominee Ed Gillespie, a high-priced corporate lobbyist, waged a scorched-earth campaign to convince voters that if Ralph Northam became Virginia governor the MS-13 gang would take over the state and murder everyone’s children. No one really believed that Gillespie would pay more than passing attention to MS-13 if he had won.

And today, what’s happening in Virginia is a combination of sincere anger on the part of conservative parents who fear that schools don’t represent their values, and an AstroTurf campaign funded by dark money groups in which Republican operatives pretend to be just concerned parents for their Fox News appearances. Youngkin promises to “ban critical race theory on day one,” which is kind of like promising to ban schools from discussing the theory of loop quantum gravity — you could say you’re doing it, but schoolchildren weren’t learning about it before anyway.

Multiple Republican states have passed measures this year imposing limits on what teachers are allowed to say about race, each one more stupid and authoritarian than the last. But if there’s anyone who thinks Youngkin actually cares about this, it would be a shock. Everyone knows what’s going on: Like Willie Horton and MS-13, this is just something he’s feeding the rubes.

And if he wins, it will be quickly forgotten. He’ll issue a proclamation, and maybe there will be a hastily-written bill that will die in the legislature. But he’ll spend his time working on his real agenda, which is mostly about tax cuts and making sure corporations are unencumbered by pesky regulations.

The media play a key role in the perpetuation of these cycles: Once a Republican gets elected, reporters barely bother asking what they’re going to do about the fake issue they ran on. Because we’re all so savvy, we know it was just an act. Indeed, if Youngkin wins he’ll be praised for having been so skillful and shrewd about it.

So this is the state of democratic accountability in the United States: Democrats run on a real agenda they struggle to deliver on because of the way the system enables GOP minority rule and makes progress nearly impossible, and Republicans run on a fake agenda they don’t bother trying to deliver on. It’s enough to make you think our democracy is profoundly sick.

 

[Becky]

13 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

A good one from Paul Waldman: "Another phony Republican campaign about a fake ‘issue’"

 

Excellent analysis, thanks for sharing this.  Read it all, y'all! 

[GreyhoundFan]

I'm so sick of his glib answers and his stupid "I'm just regular folks" vest:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Typical -- trumpkin wants TFG's endorsement, but doesn't want to be seen as too close to the orange menace.

 

[fraurosena]

Seriously, has anyone ever won their election after getting an endorsement from Trump?

[GreyhoundFan]

Rudes has decided to weigh in on the Virginia gubernatorial election with one of the weirdest videos I've seen in a long, long time:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I can't stand the vest. Or the man wearing it.

[Cartmann99]

10 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Seriously, has anyone ever won their election after getting an endorsement from Trump?

Sadly, yes:

Spoiler

Pfluger's my Congresscritter.

[fraurosena]

2 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

Sadly, yes:

  Hide contents

Pfluger's my Congresscritter.

Poor you!

Let's hope he's the exception to the rule.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Glenn Youngkin and the Trump Hypocrisy Two-Step"

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At least this time, members of the nation’s political class are right in their pronouncements about the importance of the governor’s race in Virginia to our country’s future.

That’s because Republican Glenn Youngkin is engaged in a trial run of a strategy that might be called the Trump Hypocrisy Two-Step.

If Youngkin succeeds, it will tell the GOP’s politicians all over the nation that they can simultaneously embrace Donald Trump for the purpose of rallying the former president’s base and playact moderation just well enough to win over the suburban swing voters they need to prevail.

A Youngkin defeat, by contrast, will demonstrate that Trump is lethal with middle-of-the-road voters, precisely what fence-sitting Republicans need to hear.

Virginia’s voters — especially moderate Republicans who want to build a better party and independents who want less polarized politics — need to send a message: Betting the future on the extremism Trump peddles and the lies he tells is a dangerous, ultimately doomed wager.

The same signal must be sent about Youngkin’s hope that railing against teaching “critical race theory” in public schools is the ticket to victory.

I use those quotation marks to note that this increasingly popular Republican talking point is deeply manipulative.

As Youngkin’s Democratic opponent, former governor Terry McAuliffe, told me in an interview on Wednesday, critical race theory has “never been taught” in Virginia public schools, and “it’s not supposed to be taught.”

Moreover, harping on critical race theory is an effort to rip apart parents on a serious issue that should be discussed calmly, thoughtfully and respectfully: How can schools offer students an accurate rendering of the American story?

A good curriculum would honor the country’s triumphs and its commitment to freedom while being honest about a past that denied that very same freedom to Black Americans for centuries through slavery, segregation — and, until the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, a withholding in many states of the most basic right of citizenship. A great nation does not lie to itself about its grievous sins and failures.

McAuliffe is right that Youngkin’s use of critical race theory is both a racial “dog whistle” and antithetical to a reasoned discussion. Youngkin, McAuliffe argues, is “stirring up parents, creating frictions where frictions should not exist.”

Surely Virginia’s citizens don’t want their state to become a showcase for the damage done when a Trumpist and right-wing minority is allowed to dominate the agenda at local school board meetings.

There’s one other kind of divisiveness voters should think about: the nature of Youngkin’s attacks on incumbent Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam for lockdowns of churches during the pandemic. Youngkin’s explanation for Northam’s decision? “I knew he did not start out every morning like I do, which is in prayer.”

Yes, he really said that. As it happens, Northam adviser Mark Bergman told me, Northam is a member of an African Methodist Episcopal Church and is “very much a man of faith.” Exploiting religion in this self-satisfied way is straight out of the Trump handbook, as is the evidence-free, deeply personal attack.

The biggest danger to McAuliffe, in what polls show is a very tight race, is less that Youngkin will vastly outstrip recent Republican candidates in his capacity to win votes than that too many Democrats will stay home.

At a rally last Sunday in Fairfax for McAuliffe and the Democratic ticket, loyalists who have been knocking on doors described to me what Karen Torrent, a former state Senate candidate from Falls Church, called “a little bit of an apathy problem.”

Myles Harmon, a retired government lawyer from Burke, saw the difficulties of enacting President Biden’s Build Back Better program as a downer for the party — one reason Democrats in Washington finally seem to be acting with some urgency. “Everyone is still exhausted, discouraged and unawake,” Harmon told me. “A lot could happen soon with Biden’s agenda, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

McAuliffe’s campaign is plainly aware of the turnout problem it faces, rooted in the present but also in history. As my Post colleague David Byler pointed out, in 10 of the last 11 gubernatorial elections in Virginia, the party that won the presidency lost the state’s governorship a year later. As it happens, McAuliffe, who won narrowly in 2013, is the exception.

His energetic closing focus on Youngkin’s ties to Trump is part of his effort to wake Democrats up. So is his attention to Youngkin’s stands on abortion and vaccine mandates. McAuliffe’s latest ad declares the election as being about nothing less than “protecting our democracy.”

Unfortunately, that’s not an exaggeration. As long as Republican politicians refuse to break with Trump, his name will be on every ballot. You can be sure that if Youngkin wins, Trump will be the first to remind us of this.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Youngkin accused of antisemitism after claiming allies of Jewish donor George Soros ‘inserted’ operatives into Virginia school boards"

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GOP gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin is facing allegations of antisemitism after accusing allies of Jewish philanthropist George Soros of a shadowy campaign to place secret political operatives onto Virginia school board

In an appearance Tuesday night at a rally at the Burke Volunteer Fire Department, Youngkin tried to link Soros, his Democratic opponent Terry McAuliffe, and cultural debates roiling some suburban Northern Virginia public school systems. In particular, some parents are protesting equity initiatives they associate with critical race theory, an academic framework that examines how systemic racism is ingrained in the country’s history.

“The present chaos in our schools lays squarely at the feet of 40-year politician Terry McAuliffe. It just does,” Youngkin said at an appearance Tuesday night. “But also at George Soros-backed allies, these allies that are in the left, liberal progressive movement. They’ve inserted political operatives into our school system disguised as school boards.”

When Youngkin, who some polls show is tied with McCauliffe, said Soros’s name, some in the crowd of about 700 people hooted and hollered.

Soros is a Hungarian-born billionaire who has given tens of billions to charity, in particular through his pro-democracy Open Society Foundations grant network. His critics sometimes use antisemitic tropes to characterize him, such as the suggestion that Jewish people are secretly pulling society’s strings.

“Evoking George Soros as a shadowy funder is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. This is an unacceptable statement from Glenn Youngkin,” U.S. Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) tweeted Wednesday evening.

In an email, spokesman Matt Wolking called the claim “ridiculous partisan nonsense.” He responded to Luria on Twitter by claiming Soros had funneled money to the congresswoman because he had donated to a pair of political action committees that gave money to her.

Asked where Soros has backed school board candidates in Virginia, his campaign sent The Washington Post links to articles about money connected with Soros going to prosecutor races but nothing about school board candidates.

Some Jewish groups had previously expressed concern about Youngkin during the campaign.

Haile Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, told Jewish site The Forward earlier this month that “Youngkin is not disassociating himself” from Republicans in the state using antisemitism and bigotry as a political strategy.

The Forward noted that Youngkin had appeared on the radio show of Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump administration official with ties to antisemitic groups in his native Hungary.

 

[Cartmann99]

No big surprise there.

 

[Cartmann99]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Dana Milbank: "Youngkin banishes Trump, but he can’t clean the stench of Trumpism"

Quote

GLEN ALLEN, Va. — They sanitized the event space. They scrubbed the speeches. The campaign of Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin eliminated virtually any indication that Donald Trump had ever existed. Instead, Youngkin invoked George W. Bush’s line about the “soft bigotry of low expectations” and stole a joke of John McCain’s.

But while Youngkin banished Trump, he could not wash away the stench of Trumpism.

At his rally here Saturday night in Richmond’s suburbs, Youngkin debuted his closing argument. It was a Trumpian blend of conspiracy theories, race-baiting and fabrications.

Conspiracy theory:

“Terry McAuliffe wants government to stand between parents and their children,” Youngkin said of his Democratic opponent. “And when parents across this great commonwealth said, ‘No, Terry, you’re wrong,’ he called his friend Joe Biden and asked the FBI to come silence us.”

PolitiFact already identified this baseless claim (that McAuliffe got U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to order the Justice Department to help combat growing threats against school-board members and educators) as a “pants on fire” lie. But Youngkin keeps repeating it.

Race-baiting:

“What we won’t do is teach our children to view everything through the lens of race,” Youngkin vowed, adding that “on Day 1, I will ban critical race theory.” It was perhaps the biggest applause line of the night.

Preceding Youngkin onstage, the Republican attorney general candidate, Jason Miyares, argued that “you cannot survive as a nation if you’re raising an entire generation of children to hate their country, and that is exactly what critical race theory is.”

Critical race theory isn’t taught in Virginia schools. It’s a phantom menace, whipped up by Fox News to fill White people with racial terror. Youngkin urged his supporters to fear a “20-year high murder rate,” even though overall violent crime decreased in 2020 in Virginia, among the safest states in the country.

Fabrication:

Youngkin complained that “Virginia ranks 50th in the nation in standards for kids to progress in math, reading,” but Virginia kids’ actual proficiency exceeds the national average.

He suggested that Virginia “children cannot pass an 8th-grade math equivalency test” because of pandemic school closures — “so we will proclaim that Virginia’s schools will never be closed again to five-day-a-week, in-person education.” In reality, Virginia’s 38 percent proficiency in 8th grade math topped the national 33 percent. And the test results to which Youngkin referred were from before the pandemic-related closures.

Youngkin claimed that McAuliffe “said there’s no place for parents in their kids’ education” (a line that prompted boos and shouts of “communist”). But McAuliffe didn’t say there’s “no place” for parents. He spoke out against vigilantism in which “parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions. I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach” and “running down teachers.”

Why does Youngkin traffic in Trumpism? Because it’s the only way he can win.

The rally in Glen Allen, outside a gourmet market and across from a Best Buy, wasn’t a MAGA gathering. Many attendees were professionals. Several wore North Face. More than one brought dogs in pumpkin costumes. The pre-rally music included Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” — twice. There were no Confederate flags.

But even here in the upscale suburbs, Republican rallygoers I buttonholed overwhelmingly accepted the “big lie” about the 2020 election and expected fraud in the gubernatorial election, too. “There’s going to be cheating,” one grandmother told me confidently, holding a signpost for support because of recent back surgery.

A guy in an “FJB” cap — as in “F--- Joe Biden” — told me he’s “already” seeing cheating, and he complained about Dominion voting machines (a favorite Trump target) and “corrupt” poll monitors.

Another man, in an “I kneel to return fire” T-shirt, feared the vote would be fraudulent, “just like the presidential election.” A woman in a “SOCIALism DISTANCING” long-sleeve also lacked faith in the integrity of the process. “That’s sad,” she said.

It is sad. This is a swing congressional district, represented by firebrand House Majority Leader Eric Cantor before he was ousted in 2014 in a Republican primary by a more extreme version of himself, who later lost to a Democrat, Abigail Spanberger. If Republicans subscribe to the “big lie” here, then it prevails everywhere.

So Youngkin catered to those held captive by Trump’s lies.

He demonized the liberal Jewish billionaire George Soros.

His running mate showed up at a rally featuring Trump and former Trump aide Steve Bannon, where the crowd pledged allegiance to a flag said to have been carried on the day of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.

He did an interview with Sebastian Gorka, an anti-Muslim former Trump adviser with reported ties to an antisemitic Hungarian group.

And he has encouraged the “big lie.”

Sure, he dresses it in a red-fleece vest and non-threatening platitudes: “soar and never settle,” “lift up all Virginians,” “a new day.” But underneath it’s Trumpism through and through.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Typical deceptive Trumpkin ad: