Lessons of the Democratic Failure in Virginia

There are some important ones. Peter Juul and John Halpin break it down at The Liberal Patriot.

“Why did Terry McAuliffe want to be governor of Virginia?

It’s hard to say. He presented no affirmative agenda or vision was ever presented in this race. But we do know that he wrote off entire groups of voters, e.g. parents, based on a political fallacy and that his opponent wanted to cut taxes and defended parents’ role on education.

The thermostatic response that occurs among voters whenever they see one party with too much power - like Democrats winning the presidency and Senate while retaining control of the House in 2020 - certainly didn’t help and likely explains a good deal of the results. Even so, given McAuliffe’s lackluster and aimless campaign it wasn’t hard to see the ultimate outcome.

It’s easy to blame “dark money groups” and conservative media outlets like Fox News for the prominent role education issues played in the Virginia governor’s race. These groups and outlets, many progressives tell us, have ginned up an utterly fake controversy over the allegedly anti-racist approaches being adopted by schools in Virginia and elsewhere across the country. At core, this argument amounts to what our colleague Ruy Teixeira calls the Fox News Fallacy: the idea that if conservative outlets and groups criticize something – anything – there couldn’t possibly be any foundation to the criticism and it’s “the job of Democrats is to assert that loudly and often.”

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Democrats Need More Than Anti-Trumpism

McAuliffe lost because he had no vision or agenda, and defended positions