(10-07-2021 04:09 PM)Bronco14 Wrote:  VA's lost for good IMO

You may be right. But one of the WSJ’s most brilliant political commentators, Kimberly Strassel, thinks that there may be a chance this time, thanks to a Republican candidate that knows how to run on policies instead of personality:

Quote:Every Democratic playbook for five years has featured the same bolded, all-caps word: Trump. The Virginia governor’s race is now showing the limits of that strategy. The left can’t expect to win simply by playing the Trump card—especially when Republicans are running on issues.

***

[…] Mr. Youngkin continues to rise, and this week’s Emerson poll put the race to Nov. 2 in a dead heat. Democrats are panicking, and Mr. McAuliffe is scrambling to attack Youngkin policies directly, rather than the semi-retired dude in Mar-a-Lago.

***

The McAuliffe strategy ha[d] been to try to force Mr. Youngkin to choose between the state’s southern working-class Trump voters, and Northern Virginia’s anti-Trump suburbs. But in an interview at a hotel here, Mr. Youngkin—energetic and affable—explains that he never saw it as a “balancing act” or even a choice he had to make. “Sometimes candidates chase issues, but here the issues I care about—what got me into this—are the issues Virginia cares about. And they bring people together.”

***

Democrats are banking that Mr. Trump will continue to divide the other party. But Virginia is a reminder there’s a stronger uniting principle, one that Mr. Youngkin sums up: “Losing stinks,” he says. “Folks understand that we are 0-13 in statewide wins since Bob McDonnell, ” the Republican who won the governorship in 2009. “In the runup to my primary, the party came together—the Forever Trumpers, the Never Trumpers, the tea party, the single-issue folks. They understand that if we don’t have a competitive GOP, Richmond belongs to Democrats, and Virginia is [forever] lost to these policies.”

Link to full article (although I think you need a subscription): https://www.wsj.com/articles/terry-mcaul...6#cxrecs_s

I’m not banking on it. But I’m starting to feel a bit more hopeful.