Youngkin says He’s Not Going To Trump’s Tele Rally, Right-Wingers Don’t Want Trump To Go Either

It is the day before Election Day in Virginia and confusion still reigns at this late hour as to what two principal figures in the election and the GOP are actually going to do about tonight’s tele rally. Trump teased last week that he was going to Arlington, then he modified it to a phone appearance Monday night. That brought this response from Glenn Youngkin.

Youngkin told reporters he is not going to participate in the tele-town hall that Trump is holding for the party’s Virginia ticket on Monday. via @ericbradner

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) October 30, 2021

That was Saturday morning. Then there was the brou ha ha with the Lincoln Project staging a scene in Charlottesville with half a dozen alleged Youngkin supporters carrying tiki torches. That went over like the proverbial fart in church. It also led to speculation that Youngkin might change his mind and actually attend the Monday tele rally and lend his voice to Trump’s.

The presumption that most people have about Youngkin’s desire to appear or not appear with Trump is that it is two fold: One, Youngkin wants to have his cake and eat it too, both keeping the Trump base but not over identifying with Trump so that he can lure back other Republican voters into the fold and two; Youngkin is concerned that Trump is going to talk the crazy talk about rigged elections and thereby depress voter turnout.

That’s where things stand today, is wondering exactly what Youngkin will in fact do and what Trump will say tonight and what effect that will have on the polls. A lot of people are nervous.

I consulted Larry Sabato’s crystal ball and he just moved the race from Leans Democrat to Leans Republican. Here’s some background information to ponder, as we have to keep our eyes on the prize of the 2022 midterms, no matter what happens tomorrow in Virginia.

How Virginia has, and hasn’t, predicted the midterms

As we reach the end of the Virginia statewide campaign, we find ourselves a bit stumped about what is likelier to happen. But before we offer some concluding thoughts on the race, we thought we’d dig a little bit deeper on a question we often receive: How well does the Virginia gubernatorial race, a rare odd-numbered-year statewide race that takes place between a presidential election and a midterm, project the future? In other words, do the trends one sees in a Virginia gubernatorial race end up being replicated in the midterm?

The history is murkier than one might think, although the race has acted as a better bellwether more recently. Table 2 shows the Virginia gubernatorial races since 1965 along with what happened in the subsequent year’s midterm election.

Table 2: Virginia gubernatorial races vs. subsequent midterms, 1965-2017

When Democrat Mills Godwin won the governorship in 1965, Virginia was at the tail end of an eight-decade, one-party period of dominance, the last of 21 consecutive Democrats to hold the top job in Richmond. Naturally in this era, Virginia was not much of a national barometer, and Godwin’s comfortable victory in 1965 gave not a hint of the anti-Lyndon Johnson Republican wave of 1966 driven by a backlash to LBJ’s liberal domestic agenda, Vietnam, and more.

Four years later, Virginia finally became a two-party state, and the GOP’s Linwood Holton — a Richard Nixon ally who capitalized on Democratic factional in-fighting — handily won the governorship in 1969. Yet by the time Nixon’s 1970 midterm occurred, economic problems and more angst about Vietnam gave the Democrats additional U.S. House seats and governorships, though Republicans picked up a few in the U.S. Senate. Holton, a progressive Republican who endorsed Democrats later in his life, passed away last week.

There is no finer guide to what might happen in politics than studying history. However, bear in mind that when Trump got into the mix he unbalanced the normal political equation.

Closing thoughts on Virginia

Whatever happens on Tuesday, the takeaways for the national environment shouldn’t be all that different whether McAuliffe wins by a tiny margin or Youngkin wins by a similarly small margin.

The more interesting result would be if the race broke clearly one way or the other — as in, if either candidate won by more than a few points. A Youngkin win by several points would offer confirmation that the political environment has broken wide open against Democrats. Meanwhile, if McAuliffe wins by several points, it may indicate that Biden’s poor approval ratings are not as much of a drag on Democrats as one might otherwise think. There will be plenty of time to analyze the results after we get them.

But let’s assume that the bulk of the polls are correct and that the race ends up being very close either way. Both of those possible results — a narrow win by either candidate — would suggest a significant falloff for Democrats from their strong Virginia performances in the Trump era and represent, at the very least, a bright red “check engine” light at the midpoint of the Democrats’ journey from last year’s presidential race to next year’s midterm.

The polls indicate a nail biter race. The problem with that, is that Trump has so poisoned the political bloodstream with his toxic talk of stolen elections that if McAuliffe squeaks by, the MAGAs will scream fraud, as they already have been. If Youngkin takes the victory, then the narrative will change to Youngkin being cheated out of a landslide, just as Trump claimed a landslide, when in fact he lost by a landslide. We don’t know, we can only speculate. But at least we won’t be sitting on pins and needles for too much longer.