There's not much to see here honestly. Biden has a 43% approval rating. Terry ran a bad campaign that was more or less a re-run the 2016 Clinton Campaign, IE: "Trump Trump Trump!"' except Youngkin isn't really Trump. He's just willing to pander to the Trumpian base. Terry also made a really bad gaffe about parents and education in school…
There's not much to see here honestly. Biden has a 43% approval rating. Terry ran a bad campaign that was more or less a re-run the 2016 Clinton Campaign, IE: "Trump Trump Trump!"' except Youngkin isn't really Trump. He's just willing to pander to the Trumpian base. Terry also made a really bad gaffe about parents and education in schools.
Youngkin re-ran the Southern Strategy with CRT being the new racial dog whistle constantly being pumped out by Fox News in a year where the political environment is bad for Democrats (the party in power), all the while the main stream media covered him as if he was a Mitt Romney Republican. This allowed him to get the Trump Base out and win over white suburban women.
I'm sure the lesson that all the "smart folks" will draw from this is that if only progressives had voted for Manchin's highway bill, things would be different... but this was a state wide wipeout that was probably due to structural factors more than anything.
Republicans have an radically different political strategy for a lot of reasons:
The party is almost completely homogenous. It's a party for white, Christian, right-wingers who mostly want the government to do nothing at all. It's pretty easy to govern when the only thing your base wants from you is federalist society judges and to fight culture wars (which is a much easier thing to do than actually legislate).
Democrats are a much more diverse party which makes messaging much more difficult. They also actually care about governing and delivering legislation, which is much harder than simply going on cable and saying things that your incredibly homogenous base all agree on.
I'd also say, while yes, obviously there were racial undertones to last years election, there is a pretty big difference between Youngkin's dog whistle racism and Trump's bull horn racism. Most voters don't have the slightest clue what CRT is, but they know exactly what someone means when they say: "shit hole countries", "go back to where you came from (to racial minorities)", "good people on both sides", "Proud Boys, stand back and stand by" etc...
It's like JVL and others have said here, having no policy agenda is a republican superpower.
Democrats actually care about governing and good policy which sometimes leads to ugly negotiations. Republicans don't give a crap about any of that and they never get penalized for it. They only get rewarded.
There's not much to see here honestly. Biden has a 43% approval rating. Terry ran a bad campaign that was more or less a re-run the 2016 Clinton Campaign, IE: "Trump Trump Trump!"' except Youngkin isn't really Trump. He's just willing to pander to the Trumpian base. Terry also made a really bad gaffe about parents and education in schools.
Youngkin re-ran the Southern Strategy with CRT being the new racial dog whistle constantly being pumped out by Fox News in a year where the political environment is bad for Democrats (the party in power), all the while the main stream media covered him as if he was a Mitt Romney Republican. This allowed him to get the Trump Base out and win over white suburban women.
I'm sure the lesson that all the "smart folks" will draw from this is that if only progressives had voted for Manchin's highway bill, things would be different... but this was a state wide wipeout that was probably due to structural factors more than anything.
Republicans have an radically different political strategy for a lot of reasons:
The party is almost completely homogenous. It's a party for white, Christian, right-wingers who mostly want the government to do nothing at all. It's pretty easy to govern when the only thing your base wants from you is federalist society judges and to fight culture wars (which is a much easier thing to do than actually legislate).
Democrats are a much more diverse party which makes messaging much more difficult. They also actually care about governing and delivering legislation, which is much harder than simply going on cable and saying things that your incredibly homogenous base all agree on.
I'd also say, while yes, obviously there were racial undertones to last years election, there is a pretty big difference between Youngkin's dog whistle racism and Trump's bull horn racism. Most voters don't have the slightest clue what CRT is, but they know exactly what someone means when they say: "shit hole countries", "go back to where you came from (to racial minorities)", "good people on both sides", "Proud Boys, stand back and stand by" etc...
It's like JVL and others have said here, having no policy agenda is a republican superpower.
Democrats actually care about governing and good policy which sometimes leads to ugly negotiations. Republicans don't give a crap about any of that and they never get penalized for it. They only get rewarded.