One year after Joe Biden won the presidency by dodging interviews, debates, and proposing as little policy as possible to instead divert all attention on Trump being bad and Biden being not-Trump, the former Democrat Governor of Virginia Terry McAuliffe is running for the position again (Virginia has a law that you can’t run for Governor in two back to back terms) is running on a very similar strategy and still all about Trump. Which would be strange if Democrats cared about issues in their state and not a perpetual orange-man-bad offensive strategy, but since that’s still their top concern – that’s the candidates top concern.
Earlier this month, McAuliffe mentioned Trump 18 times in a 12 minute CNN interview.
A few days ago in a single speech for McCauliffe, Biden mentioned Trump 24 times.
In virtually every appearance, candidate McCauliffe and surrogate Democrats supporting him not only keep bringing up Donald Trump, but use the majority of their time to focus exclusively on the former President instead of the candidate they’re running against. The problem is that while the Democrat party remains obsessed with Trump, it hasn’t been working as a focus to convince voters to support McCauliffe, so one day before election day – McCauliffe attempted to reverse course on the messaging…
CNN was even snarkier about the messaging flip on the air:
This somewhat offhand comment is being blown out of proportion by the press to suggest that McAuliffe’s tossing his entire campaign strategy out the window in the final hours. He isn’t. He’s still laser-focused on Trump, knowing that scaring Democrats about Glenn Youngkin may be the only way he can get them off the couch and to the polls.
What’s interesting to me is that it was CNN that dinged him for it, not Fox News. The media is liberal but they can smell the panic from McAuliffe’s campaign lately and can’t resist a storyline that communicates his desperation.
Youngkin’s campaign responded with a revamped edition of the video above, now with more examples in a minute long cut of what is still just a small selection of the times McAuliffe tried to make the campaign about Trump now that he’s trying to say it isn’t only after he started to lose in the polls:
Candidates pivot as needed with their campaigns focus of course, but this ridiculous insult to Virginia voters intelligence was ripe for ridicule, which was why even CNN couldn’t help but note it above. The especially slimy part of this gaslighting isn’t just the ‘on second thought, forget what I’ve made my entire candidacy about please’ nature of the backpeddle, but the pure projection of it all. Specifically: Youngkin had never embraced Trump or Trumpism or the MAGA agenda or any of the big Trump talking points or campaign issues and by all accounts is much more of a Mitt Romney style Republican, so McAuliffe’s fearmongering that Youngkin is a dangerous Trumpie Virginia should be afraid of was always a dishonest smear, but also one that he is legitimately guilty of himself in regards to the Democrats “Trump”, Hillary Clinton. While Youngkin and Trump were never allies or connected in any way yet Democrats tried to make them appear synonymous with each each other – McAuliffe and the Clintons have always been very close, but due to Clintons unpopularity, McAuliffe has ran away from that association in exactly the way he falsely accused Younkin of doing with Trump…
In fact, McAuliffe literally has more ties to Donald Trump than his opponent he’s trying to frame as Trumps best friend…
McAuliffe’s lying projection aside – this Trump-scare tactic is just part of a larger ‘scare Democrat-leaning voters so they give you power to protect them’ strategy. McAuliffe doesn’t just deserve to lose for lying about this specifically, but also for avoiding issues the state he is trying to be the governor of again faces by distracting focus to fake issues at large.
McAuliffe wants Virginians to be scared of Covid, so he lies about it:
McAuliffe wants Virginians to be scared of racist Republicans, so he creates a hoax where Democrat operatives pretended to be racist Republicans so McAuliffe and his allies could pretend to be shocked and denounce it (most, but not all, later deleted the fake-outrage tweets after the alleged Republican racists were revealed to be anti-Republican Democrats perpetrating a hoax):
And in perfect line with the trend: the actual things in Virginia that require concern are – surprise! – the things that Terry McAuliffe says (but doesn’t actually believe) are in great condition. eg: the terrible school system that McAuliffe kept his own children out of but claims is “great” for everyone else…
Election day is tomorrow. For the record, the same scam is being pulled by Democrats in New Jersey for their Governor’s election as well:
Jersey is surely going to go Democrat as they only vote for Republican Governors when their Democrat Governors go to jail or have to resign over corruption riddled scandal (which has been nearly every Democrat Governor in the past 20+ years, so this will be the first Democrat Gov in awhile to win reelection).
But will the fearmongering work in Virginia which is only “mostly Democrat” and not solidly blue for the past 20 years? They’re already making excuses for when it doesn’t and you guessed it – it’s gonna bet those phantom rrrrrracists to blame:
Developing…