Donald Trump could once again win on Tuesday. It’s not yet confirmed, but the candidate he supports, Glenn Youngkin, is slightly ahead in the race for Virginia’s governor, according to opinion polls.
A Yongkin victory would be a severe blow to the Democrats. That will confirm their concerns that the mood in the country that gave Joe Biden the presidency, and their party’s narrow majority in both houses of Congress, has changed.
Your supporters can stay home sometimes. He is frustrated by the difficult realization of Biden’s major reform plans, which were once again stranded in Congress last week due to differences among Democrats.
and nonpartisan voters who voted Democrat because they never want Donald Trump in the White House to view Yongkin with less disgust.
Like Trump, he presents himself as a businessman who wants to change politics, but more seriously.
Yongkin didn’t drop Trump in his speeches, but he looked forward to letting him speak at his campaign rallies. When the battle for the Republican nomination was still going on, journalists could not get him to admit that Joe Biden was a fairly elected president of the United States. Having won that nomination, and consequently had to appeal to a larger group of voters, he did.
rescue
The Democratic candidate at first seemed to be able to win easily. Terry McAuliffe was a former governor of Virginia, so getting to know his name is good. He has excellent ties to the National Democratic Party, which is why all kinds of public figures, including current Democratic President Joe Biden and former, Barack Obama, have appeared at his campaign rallies recently. But that now looks like a rescue, while it was still seven percentage points ahead in August.
McAuliffe’s loss may herald a disastrous national election day for Democrats one year from now, November 2022, when all seats in the House and a third of the Senate will be voted on. It must be a little disappointing and Republicans take the lead in those two chambers, leaving President Biden paralyzed for the remaining two years of his term.
But there is a chance of more direct damage. Republicans are also likely to win a majority in the Virginia House of Representatives on Tuesday. Or it will happen in that state’s next election, in 2023. A year later, in 2024, Virginia might be one of the states sabotaging the presidential election.
That’s a heavy word, but it’s what Republicans are working on. After Trump lost the election last year, he and his supporters fiercely argued that this could only happen through fraud. They called on Republican lawmakers in a number of key states, where their party has a majority in Parliament, to correct the result.
In the end, this did not happen. Members of Parliament neither wanted nor dared. Election officials in those states — including elected office holders who were Republicans — denied any significant fraud. Thus, despite the number of dissenting votes in Congress and the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters, Congress confirmed the election results on January 6.
A lie has become a dogma
That could change in 2024. The lie that Biden stole the election has become a dogma in the party. The Republicans who held out last year have no future in the party. For example, Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger announced Friday that he will not run for re-election next year. He is now one of the few in Congress to systematically criticize Trump. The same thing is happening in many countries. So in 2024, the resistance to “correcting fraud” for election results, for example after a new loss for Donald Trump, will be much smaller.
But the governor has a veto in his state and can block that. If McAuliffe wins, Democrats won’t have to worry about that state in 2024. Of course they have to win the presidential election there, but if they do, they will also be recognized for that victory. And this is important, because Virginia is one of the main states that vote for Democrats, then Republicans, and where the actual presidential decision is made.
A large group of Democratic supporters warned Friday on the Politico website that governor positions are at risk in more of these states next year.
According to them, Democrats shouldn’t wait until the last few months, but they’ve already started working on voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Nevada. They wrote that “anyone who uses the veto in those countries may be the last line of defense against him.” […] The kind of election undermining that will legitimately keep the president-elect out of the White House in 2024.”
Bas Den Hond is a reporter in the United States. He writes a column every week. Read it here again.
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