Thread by @JoyAnnReid

Dunno who needs to hear this but McAuliffe’s problem wasn’t that Dems didn’t pass Manchin-Sinema’s infrastructure bill. Had that passed, the people who would disproportionately benefit: white guys who work construction & owners of big contract firms, would still vote 65/35 GOP.

It’s the OTHER bill — the one they nuked parental leave, college debt repayment and a major climate provision out of — that actually would help the people who mainly vote for Democrats: minority, young and single women, working class POC, white collegians… you know: their base.

McAulliffe’s problem was that A) the overall mood narrative is bad for Dems & Biden, and B) Youngkin, like the Republican he is, filled the vacuum with inchoate fear of threats to the cherished historical narrative of a glorious history of unbroken white Christian great/goodness.

It’s not like that’s not easy to do in America, where a portion of the population has always prized group dominance over democracy and shared progress. Nixon did it. Reagan did it with “welfare queens.” Atwater preached it. GWB did it with Willie Horton. Trump LUXURIATED in it.

And it almost always works. Recall that the number three man in the House Republican caucus allegedly called HIMSELF “David Duke without the baggage.” Laundering white fear of “replacement” and loss of power is the oldest trick in the book. Dems just don’t know how to answer it.

Why? Because as I said last night, to effectively do so they would have to actively and aggressively defend THEIR base, the way Republicans go to the mat to defend even their most extreme voters. But most Dems can’t or don’t want to. They crave the voters they don’t have.

Progressive Dems are almost alone in vigorously defending the kind of people who would actually be open to voting Dem and would reward them if they delivered. But for doing that, they take a beating from their party and the Beltway press. So here we are.

Obviously meant GHWB not GWB in the earlier post. Don’t have the energy to redo the whole thread.

And last but certainly not least McAuliffe’s other problem is that there was nothing new or particularly interesting about his candidacy. To beat Virginia’s long history of flipping gubernatorial parties to the opposite of the president’s party, maybe run someone novel to voters?