Wasserman's seen enough--Youngkin defeats McAuliffe

[book_worm]

Dave Wasserman
@Redistrict
·
2m
I've seen enough: Glenn Youngkin (R) defeats Terry McAuliffe (D) in the Virginia governor's race. #VAGOV

[honest.abe]

1. Damn.

[DURHAM D]

2. who is Wasserman? Link ?

[BlueCheeseAgain]

6. Election prognosticator.

He tends to call things earlier than the AP and networks do, but he's almost always right.

[AZSkiffyGeek]

9. Dave Wasserman from Cook Report

@Redirect on Twitter. Best election forecaster I’ve seen the past few cycles.

[BlueCheeseAgain]

3. Yeah, doesn't look good at all.

This makes 11 times out of the last 12 elections that Virginia has elected a governor of the non-presidential party.

They did it when they were deep red, and they're still doing it now that they're light blue.

[uponit7771]

11. Looks like the 6% flip is coming from rural areas meaning more Trump counties voted for Youngkin

... than Mcauliffe

[Claustrum]

21. It's not only the rural counties.

Terry is running a few point below what he needed in the big counties as well.

[maryellen99]

4. Enjoy your racism and massive Covid outbreaks Virginia nt

[OAITW r.2.0]

16. The stupid don't understand what they elected.

They will see what Freedumb looks like.

[carburyme]

5. Isn't it too early

To call🤨🤨🤨

[Claustrum]

12. They have done the numbers per county and both Wasserman and Nate Cohn

showed that almost every county (including big Fairfax/arlington counties), Terry is a few points behind what he needed to be.

[VarryOn]

7. It's over. Nt

[tishaLA]

8. When I heard David Plouffe earlier on MSNBC

I figured the news wouldn't be good. He's a good liberal, but he's also a realist who reads the numbers well. Sucks.

[highplainsdem]

10. So the GOP culture war against school boards and science beats Democratic messaging?

[WarGamer]

18. what WAS the DEM messaging?

Calling Youngkin Trumpkin?

[highplainsdem]

22. It wasn't strong enough or coherent enough.

[uponit7771]

19. Only 64% of democrats believe Voter Suppression is a problem (link), what messaging? Last year ...

... people we respected blamed a slogan of the oppressed on down ballot losses when the post mortems said the messaging down ballot was bland at best

[LuvLoogie]

24. or lack thereof

There was more energy out of Newsome than McAuliffe.

I never got what Dems see in this guy. Kind of flat in my opinion.

That's okay. The Wing Nuzi's take Virginia for a while. They'll continue to shove all-in on their winning message of hate and lies.

[highplainsdem]

25. Yep.

[wellst0nev0ter]

13. Hope the Biden obstructionists in our party are happy

[Drunken Irishman]

17. This is as much on McAuliffe as anyone.

He ran a truly awful campaign and let his opponent define him in the last couple months.

He also ran a bad campaign in 2013, nearly losing then too despite being the favorite - that time it was to another right-wing loon. He eked out a win but couldn't this go around.

[uponit7771]

23. What was wrong with the campaign this go around? thx in advance

[Drunken Irishman]

35. Lots...

1. He assumed Virginia was okay reelecting him (well, giving him another term as governors are not eligible for consecutive terms). I think Virginia takes this quirk fairly seriously. The last Virginia governor to win a second term was Mills Godwin, back in 1974 (and he left the Democratic Party and ran as a Republican to do so).

2. McAuliffe spent most the race making this a race about Trump. He kept the focus on Trump - his speeches were largely about Trump and how Youngkin was a Trump Republican. The whole narrative, from both his campaign, and outsiders like the Lincoln Project, who he worked it, as well as others like MeidasTouch (the brothers on the left) was to basically make the election about Trump. That doesn't galvanize voters - especially when Trump isn't in power. It worked in 2018 because HE WAS THE PRESIDENT. It fell flat in 2021.

3. His response to the CRT issue was not good and Youngkin was able to use it to galvanize the party.

4. Enthusiasm, for whatever reason, was not there for him. This kind of ties into the first point. He maybe misjudged the appetite for a career politician.

5. His answer in the first debate, where he said parents shouldn't tell schools what to teach, was just tone-deaf. This has been one of the Republicans' most successful talking points for 40+ years - give control of education BACK to the community (the parents). It's effective because no parent wants a bureaucracy outlining exactly what the schools should teach. They want influence. Whether you agree or not. And the exit polls show MOST Virginians believe parents should have some influence in the curriculum.

Just my view as an outsider. This was a race we should have won. Instead, we played it on the GOP's playing field. Americans don't vote issues. They vote emotions. It's why a huge majority of Virginians who voted, according to the exit polls, support a woman's right to choose yet just elected a governor who is against that right.

[Lochloosa]

36. #5 was just a stupid mistake and there was no recovering from it.

[uponit7771]

51. Thx, I've been posting dems "CRT" like issue to stoke votes is 1/6 but we're pussyfooting around

... with the terrorist instead of making a color coded alert system out of them

[uponit7771]

53. YEP !!! "...They vote emotions...." AMEN !! I just rec'd this comment a couple of minutes ago. Dems

... need an emotional stoking issue like GQP has with CRT and it needs to be factual like 1/6 terrorist with color coded alert system or "Republicans will keep taking your children" ... and beat them on the head with it

[Claustrum]

26. Exactly.

Saying parents have no say in the teaching in public school (not a direct quote) is bad. There is a much better way to answer to CRT BS without saying that at all. Even a non-parent like me believes that parents should have a say in what is taught in school.

[uponit7771]

30. +1, I posted this months ago that dems are letting MAGA define CRT and they're going to use it to ..

... get out there base while we have ?!

Yeah ...

After 911 GQP demonized dems as terrorist sympothizers .. we should do the same with them using the 1/6 assholes

[BlueStater]

34. What say should they have?

Should they pick and choose what parts of history their children learn?

Instead of telling teachers how to do their fucking jobs, maybe they should pull their kids out of school and teach them themselves if they’re so concerned.

[Drunken Irishman]

37. Easy. "I think we need better cooperation and communication..."

"...parents absolutely should have a say in their children's education but it's important we never let one minority voice dictate the whole process. We can only achieve success in the classroom through a cooperative approach between schools, teachers and parents..."

Or some shit like that.

His answer: “...I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

That comment was tone-deaf. Completely tone-deaf to the whole situation and Youngkin pounced. He didn't need to make it so blatant. He could have easily turned it around and made a point about the need to lower the temperature and he didn't.

And it's not a blanket issue. I live in Utah. Land of the Mormons. My mom had to go to the school when I was in elementary school because the teachings in one of my classes was obscenely pro-LDS and dismissive toward other religious groups within the classroom. By Terry's own admission, she should just shut up.

That isn't going to win over anyone and it shows how complex the issue is.

[Dorian Gray]

45. Yeah...

if my kid's school started teaching that Slavery was good and the Holocaust didn't happen, you better believe my voice would be up in their business.

Parents have a right to have a say. That's why they often run for school boards and the like.

[BlueStater]

50. If it was up to certain right-wing parents, their kids would never learn about evolution or slavery.

They want to keep their children horrifically ignorant? Fine, but teachers shouldn’t have to play a part in their bullshit.

[Dorian Gray]

52. Right...

I think having a say is different than setting the curriculum. But what TM answered was the former, and he said they shouldn't have a say.

It's been pointed out that that was shortsighted and easy enough to twist into something worse than what he seemed to mean.

So many threads are talking about poor democratic messaging. This is an example of that.

[Claustrum]

38. Stop conflating two different issues. That's what republicans like to do.

Believing that parents should have a say in what's taught in school is a separate issue from what history should or should not be included in the text books.

You can believe in parent's being a part of the conversation of what should be taught, while also believe that they shouldn't whitewash the history.

[Crunchy Frog]

42. Yeah, that's a winning campaign message.

[BlueStater]

47. I'm running a campaign? That's news to me. 🙄

Parents should not be telling teachers how to do their goddamn jobs. I say that not as the manager of whatever campaign you bizarrely seem to think I’m running, but as a private citizen with an opinion.

[Hav]

31. I was thinking about this as well

I definitely think getting a good deal done would have been a better environment for the Dem candidate.

[wellst0nev0ter]

32. Need to have something to run on

Can't just react to culture wars

[Claustrum]

33. Getting good legislature passed is a good start. But we need to do more.

We need to be out there selling what we are doing. Democrats have a tendency that we think people will see the good results. But the truth is, people hear the framing on the issue rather than what the actual result is, example being ACA. We have a tendency to believe we will get rewarded by our hard work behind the scene but these few elections show that it's how the issue being framed that's more important.

We keep letting the right define the narrative and then we are supposed at how people took the right's framing of issues and then call them unreachable. No, they were reachable but they only heard the right's framing of CRT. They don't even know what CRT is.

[wellst0nev0ter]

43. Biden and other Democrats couldn't really promise too much

Because Manchinema kept gutting the BBB bill to within an inch of its life.

Imagine if Biden promised X number of weeks of family leave.

Then imagine if Manchinema nixed family leave from the final bill.

Think "Lie of the Year" over and over and over again by the mainstream media

[Claustrum]

44. But we can talk about vaccines or the 36k stock market.

We have a problem in that we like to stay in the back and do the hard work behind the scene while no one is out in front getting the message out. We believe that people will see our goods but it's clearly not the case in the pasts few years. We need to claim the narrative instead of staying quiet and let the media and right wing frame the narrative.

[wellst0nev0ter]

46. Need more than that to excite the Democratic base and win

We did that in Georgia earlier this year with the promise of $2,000 checks out the door.

Declaring that we made people eat their vegetables and made rich people richer isn't going to cut it anymore.

[Deep State Witch]

14. Time To Build the Wall

Across the Potomac.

[mvd]

15. This is so depressing

I know the VA gov trends did not favor us, but this seemed winnable. Never was crazy about McAuliffe as a candidate. We need some fresh voices in VA.

[calimary]

20. Shit.

[viva la]

27. When do the early votes and absentees get counted?

I just can't believe it. How can VA have come so far out of segregation and Jim Crow and official racism, and then elect this guy who deliberately brings racism back? Encourages it?

[Cha]

28. So Fascist Virginia.. so

heartbreking.

[Polybius]

29. Has Wasserman ever been wrong after saying "I've seen enough "?

Ever?

[Claustrum]

48. I don't recall him being wrong.

But there is a lot of math and data to back up his call. He showed what Terry need per county and each county in his tweet, Terry was running 3-5 points behinds what he needed in almost every county (both rural and urban counties).

[GP6971]

40. Enjoy your stay!! n/t

[vercetti2021]

41. See you on the battlefield

Projection don't make you look good there bud

[marble falls]

58. What it is always about is supporting Democrats. Good luck.

[johnp3907]

59. You love wasting time, don't you?

I read, like, 5% of this before I alerted on it. You’ll be “cancelled” in a a matter of minutes. But thanks for the Free Advice!

[GP6971]

60. Enjoy your short stay!! n/t

[ZonkerHarris]

49. Virginia is about to become the new Florida or Texas.

[Neurotica]

54. For those of us who live here, it is looking like a very dark day.

I worked on issues in the past, when the GOP had full control here in VA. Especially issues that touched on education and the public school system. It was difficult. And now things are arguably worse given the insurrectionist fervor and Qanon craziness. Not sure how we find our way out. As many others have said, messaging is the key. But until we figure out the messaging, we are likely stuck--once again--with dealing with this situation. Never thought we'd be back in this place...

[gldstwmn]

55. Who? Youngkin's lead is shrinking.

[manicdem]

56. Blowout

Wow this is shocking. Mcouluffe was supposed to have won this easily, but he got outvoted by more than the polls predicted Not looking good for 2022 and 2024.

[gldstwmn]

61. The lead just shrank again. McAuliffe is down by less than

90,000 now.