As I’ve been doing for 20 of the last 21 years, this Marylander was involved in the election protection effort for the general election in Virginia. This time, I spent hours getting showered by the GOP culture war from my Republican counterpart for much of the day. It’s one thing to see it on social media, but to experience the relentless regurgitation of right-wingnut talking points and the venom dripping from her perfect white teeth felt quite different. I hope you’ll bear with me as I recount the day.
I started the day in my role as an ‘outside’ poll observer — as an out-of-state resident, I’ve either done this gig, or manned the party boiler room phones taking reports, good and bad, from the polls by inside and outside observers. Volunteers with the local party were there for the first 5 hours — a retired schoolteacher, followed by a pair of 30-something Moms Demand Action activists — passing out sample Democratic ballots. There was a GOP poll observer inside the poll, but no one outside contacting voters on their way in, until a very attractive bottle blonde pulled up with a stack of GOP sample ballots.
She was friendly throughout, which definitely made the experience more bearable, and a welcome contrast to this one GOP woman voter who had taken a beaming selfie vid with a set of Youngkin/GOP yard signs, before instantly turning stone-faced when I wished her a good morning.
This woman — not named Holly, but we’ll go with that — was a living avatar of what we’re up against. She was very friendly, as I said already, and allowed me to take shelter from the cold rain under her open minivan tailgate, as we jointly approached voters with our sample ballots. As you might expect, we talked a lot over the hours which followed, before I moved on when another Dem volunteer came at 3:00;.
“Holly,” self-described as being very new to all this, she was constantly on her phone getting texts from her circle with photos and messages that elicited excited approval from her. She showed pictures of her kids (2 in college and one in high school), but decided not to show me her video from the great Youngkin rally in Loudoun County the night before.
She regularly expressed her irritation at mask mandates and people who were wearing them in their cars, the child abuse involved in having kids mask up, etc. She railed on about “my side” has “broken” the country, broken people, damaged kids. She challenged me to explain why Vermont, with the highest vaccination rates, has the highest case rates. I probably should’ve pulled out my phone to pull up the real data for her, but I didn’t want to be confrontational, so I demurred by merely saying I doubt that was the case, and explained that the numbers can be easily mischaracterized if one is looking at pre-vaccine numbers vs post-vaccine rates.
“Holly” was a bundle of energy, largely horribly misdirected, and she held court on a range of matters, but kept coming back to the on craziness of liberals and their media who broke this country in pushing useless masks and forcing vaccines (How many will we need? Do you know how much money pharma has made $4 billion! The vaccine doesn’t work. It’s like the flu, it can’t be eradicated). ‘Did I know about the protests all around the world? 10,000s of people. She was sure they’re not being shared in some circles — that my side doesn’t know they’re happening. I replied “We know about them. And, we react with sadness.”
When she pivoted ot other stuff, she spoke of hoping that we could have a fair, undisputed election — I agreed, and ventured my opinion on some decent ideas Republicans have put forward, especially on securing absentee ballots (asking for a personal identification number seems fair to me — and, I might add, Stacey Abrams eventually spoke out in agreement). Nonetheless, “Holly” spent the next hours complaining about each voter who showed up with their absentee ballot to drop it off in the drop box. She insisted they should have to show ID like people going into the poll had to do. I explained there’s no good reason to do that, because the real comparison is with people who put their ballots into a mailbox instead. This reasoning never satisfied her.
“Holly” said she trained to be a poll watcher, but was doing the sample ballot pass instead, when she heard there was no one at the poll doing it. When her friend rolled up, they had a chat about whether she needed help, and her co-conspirator rolled on to another site.
Holly went on about the “craziness” and problems with the schools, especially in Loudon (showing me the photo of protestor on the floor in handcuffs, who she said was the father whose daughter had been raped. I’m sure she also had in mind the Critical Race Theory stuff.
I could’ve explained that, probably unlike her lawyer husband, I’m a fairly rare bird even in the legal world, because I’ve actually learned about Critical Race Theory in class in law school, because I was fortunate enough to be at a school where Richard Delgado taught for a year asa visiting professor — but I just didn’t see the point. She said how excited she was to be dong what she was doing 00 very excited about their candidates, especially the Lt. Gov candidate, an African-American (I’ll give her credit in that she NEVER mentioned her race) a former Marine. Whatever the outcome though, she was really looking forward to getting involved in school board races to come — especially in Fairfax County, which has so many problems now. I replied that Fairfax schools are famously excellent. She said “They were.” Her “daughter went to Duke!”
Imagine the horror which has befallen Fairfax schools in the ensuing 2 or 3 years since her daughter graduated from the county schools!!
Of course, there was the dig at Biden’s age and health. she talked about meeting him several years ago, and discussing their mutual affection for the Delaware coast, where they both have homes. She said he’s “not the same person now!” I’ll give her this — she expressed her belief that BOTH parties needed to have better candidates for President.
Ultimately, my take away was how extraordinary this dialogue turned out to be, offering so much insight into what we’re going to confront in the years to come — these energized, and often comfortable or affluent white suburbanites energized by the new culture war. She and her friends are a dynamic, if deeply deluded group. They probably would’ve always voted Republican, but now their motors are running and they’re out there — as “Holly” said: “That’s how you win, right? You outwork the other side!”
They are out there, FIGHTING to blow up existing school boards, training to protect integrity of elections, and dismissing any of the initiatives Democrats offer.
What was McAuliffe’s tepid response? not to talk about Virginia really, not to defend his badly phrased comment about not letting parents tell teachers what to teach. His whole effort was to try to link Youngkin to Trump — as Sara Gideon tied to do with Susan Collins. It won’t work -- certainly not in states like Maine and Virginia, where there are fiercely anti-elite responses to the northeastern liberals running things. We have to fight — for the progressive agenda, and to challenge the culture war themes with full-throated defenses of our side, rather than trying to claim some higher ground by trying to label their candidates with the Trump label. When Trump isn’t on the ballot, there won’t be ballot-splitting. We need to have our own message, our own armies of volunteers.