Damn straight:
President Biden sought to boost Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s run for governor in Virginia on Tuesday, telling voters that a Republican victory would boost efforts to continue spreading falsehoods about the 2020 election and undermine democracy.
“We can’t let this happen,” Biden told supporters at an outdoor rally in Arlington Tuesday evening.
The president said that “extremism can come in many forms” such as “the rage of a mob” but also with “a smile and a fleece vest.” McAuliffe’s Republican opponent, Glenn Youngkin, has campaigned in a trademark vest. Biden’s reference to a mob followed his warnings about the violence of Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“Either way, the big lie is still a big lie,” Biden said, urging Virginians to “show up for democracy.”
Biden focused much of his speech on Trump. He said Youngkin had embraced the former president during the Republican primary, but that Youngkin “doesn’t want to talk about Donald Trump anymore.”
“Well, I do,” Biden said. “[Youngkin] won’t allow Donald Trump to campaign for him. ... What’s he trying to hide? Is there a problem with Trump being here? Is he embarrassed?”
Biden called Youngkin “an acolyte of Donald Trump” and quoted from a Washington Post editorial that said the Republican candidate had “failed” the “character test” by tolerating the former president’s lies about the 2020 election.
“At a moment when democracy itself is under assault, Mr. Youngkin chose to dignify a fundamental fiction that is subverting our system, rather than stand up squarely for the truth. In so doing, he proved himself unfit for office,” the Post wrote.
Here’s a little more from The Washington Post’s Editorial Board piece mentioned above:
It seems likely that Mr. Youngkin knows that U.S. elections, including last year’s presidential contest, have been largely free of any significant fraud or cheating, and that to suggest otherwise is flat-out dishonesty. No elections are immaculate, but there is zero credible evidence that conspiracies and malfeasance in voting have altered the outcomes of high-profile U.S. electoral contests in recent decades.
Nonetheless, for months, as he sought the gubernatorial nomination — and while Mr. Trump promoted those lies and refused to concede the results of the election — Mr. Youngkin refused to acknowledge that President Biden was fairly elected, by a comfortable margin, or that allegations that the 2020 election was stolen were baseless. To the contrary, during those months Mr. Youngkin’s No. 1 policy proposal, and the only one for which he supplied any detail, was to establish a state commission on election integrity, an idea that winked at the prevalent, and baseless, idea among Republicans that elections are fraudulent.
It was only after he secured the nomination that Mr. Youngkin finally said, grudgingly, that Mr. Biden is the legitimate president. Since then, he has rarely submitted to challenging interviews or media appearances, but he did finally acknowledge, under direct questioning, that past Virginia elections have not been marred by fraud — nor did he expect cheating in this one.
Yet both before and after those statements, he undercut them by continuing to flirt with pernicious lies. He dodged a question about whether, had he been in Congress, he would have certified Mr. Biden’s election; then, under pressure, he conceded it had been fair. Unsolicited, he raised questions about whether Virginia’s voting machines can be trusted by insisting that they be audited — which they already are. He attended an “election integrity” rally at Liberty University in Lynchburg, from which journalists were excluded.
And Dana Milbank from The Washington Post also highlighted this:
“Terry McAuliffe wants government to stand between parents and their children,” Youngkin said of his Democratic opponent. “And when parents across this great commonwealth said, ‘No, Terry, you’re wrong,’ he called his friend Joe Biden and asked the FBI to come silence us.”
PolitiFact already identified this baseless claim (that McAuliffe got U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to order the Justice Department to help combat growing threats against school-board members and educators) as a “pants on fire” lie. But Youngkin keeps repeating it.
“What we won’t do is teach our children to view everything through the lens of race,” Youngkin vowed, adding that “on Day 1, I will ban critical race theory.” It was perhaps the biggest applause line of the night.
Preceding Youngkin onstage, the Republican attorney general candidate, Jason Miyares, argued that “you cannot survive as a nation if you’re raising an entire generation of children to hate their country, and that is exactly what critical race theory is.”
Critical race theory isn’t taught in Virginia schools. It’s a phantom menace, whipped up by Fox News to fill White people with racial terror. Youngkin urged his supporters to fear a “20-year high murder rate,” even though overall violent crime decreased in 2020 in Virginia, among the safest states in the country.
Youngkin complained that “Virginia ranks 50th in the nation in standards for kids to progress in math, reading,” but Virginia kids’ actual proficiency exceeds the national average.
He suggested that Virginia “children cannot pass an 8th-grade math equivalency test” because of pandemic school closures — “so we will proclaim that Virginia’s schools will never be closed again to five-day-a-week, in-person education.” In reality, Virginia’s 38 percent proficiency in 8th grade math topped the national 33 percent. And the test results to which Youngkin referred were from before the pandemic-related closures.
Youngkin claimed that McAuliffe “said there’s no place for parents in their kids’ education” (a line that prompted boos and shouts of “communist”). But McAuliffe didn’t say there’s “no place” for parents. He spoke out against vigilantism in which “parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions. I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach” and “running down teachers.”
Why does Youngkin traffic in Trumpism? Because it’s the only way he can win.
All of this gave President Biden the ammo he needed to go after Youngkin:
Youngkin has painted himself as a moderate but has drawn criticism for his refusal to completely disavow Trump’s efforts to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election. The GOPer has also pledged to focus on so-called “election integrity,” feeding into ongoing Republican dog whistles about nonexistent voter fraud.
“To win the Republican nomination, he embraced Donald Trump,” Biden said. “Talk about an oxymoron: Donald Trump and election integrity? I can’t believe he puts the words Trump and integrity in the same sentence.”
McAuliffe, who served as Virginia’s governor from 2014 to 2018, has pledged to make it easier to vote, protect abortion rights and increase support for teachers while raising the minimum wage.
Biden leaned into his criticism of Youngkin later in his speech, saying Virginians should “know better,” while pointing to McAuliffe’s past run as governor in his appeal to voters.
“Extremism can come in many forms. It can come in the rage of a mob driven to assault the Capitol. It can come in a smile in a fleece vest,” Biden said, a direct attack against Youngkin’s campaign garb. “But the big lie is a lie. So Virginia, show up. Show up like you did for Barack and me. Show up like you did for me and Kamala. Show up for Terry McAullife.”
“Virginia, you can’t take anything for granted,” the president added: “So vote.”
What’s funny is Youngkin doesn’t want to be seen anywhere near Trump which indicates that Trump is way more toxic than having Biden campaign for McAuliffe. In fact, Biden’s counting on McAuliffe to win:
In doing so, and even with Biden’s numbers dropping of late, Democrats are leaning into an approach that past administrations have shunned: freely tying their own fortunes to the outcome of an early, down-ballot race. A win for Youngkin, Biden’s aides and allies say, may not scuttle his domestic agenda. But it would be the first domino to fall, foreshadowing potential problems with the party’s planned midterm quest to paint Republicans as too extreme to govern.
“If they want to make sure that Donald Trump is front and center running for president again, then don’t show up to vote,” warned Chris Korge, national finance chair at the Democratic National Committee, who is close with McAuliffe. “This could be the ballgame here.”
Underscoring their seriousness, DNC Chair Jaime Harrison and other officials touted the multimillion investment the party has made in the state, along with repeat visits from Biden, the first lady and the vice president. “We’re all in,” Harrison said before a Richmond rally for McAuliffe over the weekend. “Virginia is very important; we want to make sure that we turn the vote out.”
Biden’s all-in act is a break from his former boss, Barack Obama, whose team worked to distance itself from the Democratic gubernatorial campaign in 2009 and, in 2013, talked up the challenges of winning in Virginia given their control of the White House. Biden’s approach comes with obvious risks, offering Republicans an added measure to gloat about White House backlash should Youngkin prevail. Nevertheless, the president’s team and other party leaders have come to the conclusion that there is no other path.
Speaking of Biden’s former boss:
At recent rallies and campaign events, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who is seeking a return to the office he held from 2014 to 2018, has urged Virginians to take advantage of the array of voting options now available to them. The Democratic Party of Virginia and McAuliffe’s campaign have poured millions of dollars into early and absentee voting turnout operations, and organized numerous “Souls to the Polls” events that predominantly Black churches have long used to turn out voters after services in other parts of the country.
Democrats have also used voting rights to draw some of the sharpest contrasts between their candidates and a Republican slate of nominees that has focused heavily on so-called “election integrity” issues, the euphemism GOP lawmakers have used to roll back voting rights in a nationwide push fueled by Trump’s baseless conspiracy theory that last year’s election was stolen from him.
“All across the country, Democrats are trying to make it easier to vote, not make it harder to vote,” former President Barack Obama said at a McAuliffe campaign rally held on Virginia Commonwealth University’s Richmond campus Saturday. Republicans, Obama said, “are trying to systematically prevent ordinary citizens from making their voices heard.”
State lawmakers who spoke at the rally, including Virginia House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn, touted the new voting laws as one of the legislature’s biggest accomplishments since Democrats regained majority control in 2019. And she and every other Democrat who took the stage painted Democratic victories as necessary to protect those gains from Republicans like Glenn Youngkin, the GOP gubernatorial nominee who has put so-called “election integrity” at the center of his own campaign.
Virginia Republicans have tried to plaster a slightly softer facade on Trumpism in order to make the current, hard right-wing version of the GOP palatable enough to voters even in a state that has trended away from Republicans for a decade and resoundingly rebuked Trump twice.
Youngkin, a former private equity executive who is running in his first election, has attempted to paint himself as a moderate throughout the race. But he has struggled to strike a balance between that pitch and his appeals to conservative Virginians who still adhere to Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.
Youngkin in May said that President Joe Biden legitimately won last year’s race, but only after months spent tiptoeing around the question during a crowded and competitive Republican primary. He has at times refused to correct or refute baseless election-related claims pushed by voters at his campaign events, and has campaigned alongside Virginia Republicans like state Sen. Amanda Chase, who attended the “Stop the Steal” rally that precipitated the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Chase has already spread conspiracies about Democratic attempts to “steal” this year’s election.
She and GOP lieutenant governor candidate Winsome Sears were both featured speakers at a recent rally where attendees pledged allegiance to an American flag that was carried at the Capitol during the insurrection.
Youngkin condemned that episode. But he has said he would push stricter voter ID laws and create an “election integrity task force” as governor, and called election integrity the most important issue of the race ― a statement Democrats have eagerly cited as they try to tie Youngkin to Trump.
During Saturday’s rally in Richmond, Obama hammered Youngkin for attempting to hide his nods to election skeptics behind television ads that have sought to burnish his moderate, everyman credentials by highlighting his high school basketball career at Norfolk Academy and his first job washing dishes at a diner.
“You can’t run ads telling me you’re a regular old hoops-playing, dish-washing, fleece-wearing guy, but quietly cultivate support from those who seek to tear down our democracy,” Obama said. “Either he actually believes in the same conspiracy theories that resulted in a mob, or he doesn’t believe it but he’s willing to go along with it ― to say or do anything to get elected. And maybe that’s worse.”
Now to be fair, McAuliffe hasn’t just been making this race about Trump. Greg Sargent at The Washington Post points out this big issue McAuliffe has been bringing up on the campaign trail:
To an underappreciated degree, Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s candidacy has put paid leave in the foreground. McAuliffe, who served as governor from 2014 to 2018, has pledged to institute statewide paid sick, family and medical leave if elected, vowing to make Virginia the “first Southern state” to do so.
Numerous ads from the McAuliffe campaign have placed paid leave front and center. One ad casts passing a new paid-leave measure as pivotal to ensuring that “everyone is treated with dignity and respect.”
Another ad says this is central to making sure that “quality, affordable health care” is a “basic human right.” These ads place paid leave on a par with other longtime Democratic priorities that have been go-to issues in campaigns — such as curbing prescription drug prices and expanding access to baseline health care.
Jared Leopold, a Democratic strategist in Virginia who also consults for a paid-leave advocacy group, points out that Democrats have not previously highlighted the issue to this degree during gubernatorial campaigns.
“Paid leave was not a central part of the campaign message in the Virginia gubernatorial elections in 2017 or 2013,” Leopold told me, adding that McAuliffe is “blazing a new path” on the issue.
“If McAuliffe succeeds, you’ll see other Democratic candidates for governor run on a paid leave agenda in the midterms in 2022,” Leopold said.
And McAuliffe’s allies have been hyping up his record on climate change:
Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe rolled out a slate of ads focused on climate and the environment in a joint effort with Democratic groups on Tuesday, marking the start of the final week of Virginia's gubernatorial campaign.
McAuliffe, along with the Democratic Governors Association and the Virginia League of Conservation Voters PAC, will run television ads in the Washington, D.C., Richmond and Norfolk media markets, while digital ads will go up on YouTube, Google, Facebook, Hulu, Roku and MiQ.
The Hill was the first outlet to report on the announcement.
The McAuliffe campaign and the Virginia League of Conservation Voters PAC put out a 15-second ad summarizing McAuliffe's stances on climate, while the Democratic Governors Association went on air with a 30-second ad hitting Republican Glenn Youngkin over comments at a forum earlier this month when he said he did not know whether humans are responsible for climate change.
Meanwhile, this is what Youngkin has recently been fixated on:
Here is the most embarrassing thing I can think of. You are a high school senior. You read Beloved, Toni Morrison’s searing novel about slavery and family, as part of an A.P. English class. Then you have a nightmare about the book. For some reason, despite being 17 or perhaps even 18 years old, you tell your mother about this. At which point she, for some reason, tries to get the book banned from being taught in your entire county. You complete your humiliation and go along with it, telling The Washington Post that the book “was disgusting and gross” and gave you “night terrors.” Now it is eight years later. You are a lawyer for the National Republican Congressional Committee. You should have forgotten all about this mortifying incident. But for some reason, your mother starts talking about that time a book made you have bad dreams again, and somehow this becomes the biggest issue in the most important gubernatorial election in the country.
All of this is really happening. Since securing the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Virginia earlier this year, the private equity baron Glenn Youngkin has waged a relentless and disingenuous campaign based around what is being taught in the commonwealth’s public schools, mainly in an effort to catch a ride on the GOP’s current fascination with fearmongering about “critical race theory” and the idea that Democrats are indoctrinating students with social justice ideas. This more or less tracks with Youngkin’s effort to walk a fine line between keeping the MAGA faithful raged up and ready to go (to the polls) while simultaneously working to win back some of the affluent suburban parents who might be a little bit Trump-queasy. With the election a week away, polls have tightened and Youngkin is pushing this as his closing message: Elect me so we can ban critical race theory and retake our schools from the demon hordes who want to teach our children about American history.
To do so, he has enlisted the help of one of the protagonists of the night-terrors story, Fairfax County resident Laura Murphy, who, The Washington Post reports, “waged a battle against Beloved in schools beginning in 2013 after her son—a high school senior at the time—said it gave him nightmares while reading it for an advanced placement literature class.” That son, Blake Murphy, is now conveniently employed as an associate general counsel for the NRCC, a fact that I’m sure renders him a neutral participant in this latter-day campaign caper. Mother Murphy, meanwhile, once pushed a bill that would allow parents to intervene to have their children opt out of “sexually explicit reading assignments.” Terry McAuliffe, Youngkin’s current opponent, who served as Virginia’s governor between 2014 and 2018, vetoed that measure, as well as another, similar one.
And Youngkin and the GOP have been trying to exploit this:
One of the wealthiest counties in the country, Loudoun County has transformed in recent years — both demographically and politically. While control of the county’s board of supervisors has shifted between the parties for decades, Joe Biden sailed through Loudoun easily, winning 61% of the vote (a 6 percentage point increase from Hillary Clinton’s lead in 2016).
Loudoun has also grown in population and diversity; once a largely rural and white enclave, it’s now home to a prosperous tech corridor, a growing immigrant community, and increasing numbers of non-white residents.
Meanwhile, the county’s public school system — which was one of the last in the country to desegregate — has attempted to kickstart its own cultural transformation.
In 2019, a third-party audit concluded that Loudoun County Public Schools was a “hostile learning environment” for students of color and that staff often failed to address racist incidents. Multiple students, the local NAACP, and even the commonwealth’s attorney general have called for LCPS to correct systemic racial discrimination.
Earlier this year, Loudoun released a 22-page equity plan, calling for implicit bias training, enhanced protocols for handling racist behavior, and improved reporting systems for students.
This created the backdrop for one pillar of the conservative outrage that’s dominating the headlines out of Virginia’s election: a fear over purported “critical race theory” — a college-level discipline that Loudoun’s school system has repeatedly stated is not a part of the curriculum — and other equity issues that have metastasized into culture wars far beyond what’s being taught in classrooms.
In June, five parents sued the school system over the equity plan, alleging it violates students’ constitutional right to free speech. Parents began showing up in crowds to normally sparsely attended school board meetings, some already outraged by LCPS’ coronavirus school closures. (School reopening rallies had been taking place since the summer of 2020.)
One raucous hearing on a proposed policy to bolster protections for transgender students — a policy required by a recently passed state law — ended with an arrest, as parents condemned the alleged CRT curriculum and accused board members of teaching their children to hate themselves for the color of their skin.
Video clips of meetings went viral. Fox News, The Daily Wire, and other national conservative outlets picked up the story, framing the board’s equity initiatives as products of a dangerous liberal agenda. Board member Atoosa Reaser reported receiving racist death threats.
A group of conservative parents have pursued recall elections against five school board members (including Reaser), one of whom has already stepped down.
“It was simply about trying to make a statement and make a scene, continue with the misinformation and get that public,” says Todd Kaufman, the vice president of Loudoun4All, an advocacy organization formed by LCPS parents in response to the vitriol earlier this year. “It wasn’t actually about education, or fixing the schools, or addressing the needs of the schools.”
Most recently, the system’s handling of two alleged sexual assaults in schools reignited the media frenzy and parent criticism around the system’s equity initiatives. According to police, a student allegedly committed a sexual assault at one LCPS school, and assaulted another student at a different school months later. Conservative media outlets claimed the student was gender fluid — a fact that has not been confirmed by authorities, but nonetheless sparked criticism of the recently adopted policy that allows transgender students to use whatever bathroom aligns with their pronouns.
“It troubles us greatly that some in the community do use this as political purposes to divide the county just to win an election,” Kaufman says. “Obviously sexual assault is a serious issue, we support safety in schools…but the incident that allegedly happened, happened prior to the policy going into effect, so blaming the policy on something like that is just for political gain.”
Prominent conservative figures have only added fuel to the flames roiling LCPS in the past months. After the board implemented new rules to maintain order during public testimony (requiring a speaker to live in the county or have a child in the school system), right-wing commentator Matt Walsh announced he’d started renting a home in Loudoun to attend school board meetings (Fox reported he was paying a resident one dollar to rent a room).
Some Democratic voters in the county believe that like Walsh, the people driving the headlines are from a loud, mostly out-of-county minority, and don’t represent how Loudoun voters will fall this November.
“They’re renting a house here, and they’re attending the school board meetings and making a ruckus,” said Wendell Lockhart, a father of three and longtime Loudoun resident, as he cast his straight Democratic ticket at an early voting center in October.
Wendy Gooditis, the incumbent Democrat running to hold onto her seat in the 10th District, which represents parts of Loudoun, Clarke, and Frederick counties, is banking on it.
“There’s no question, at least on all the doors that I’ve knocked and all the people I have met, [that] it’s a minority of people who are swallowing that stuff,” she tells DCist/WAMU. “It must be a very noisy minority.”
But local Republicans clearly see it as an issue animating voters
Gooditis’ opponent, former Leesburg commissioner Nick Clemente, has made LCPS a focal point of his campaign, issuing multiple statements attacking her over the alleged “sexual assault coverups.” (Clemente did not respond to requests for comment.)
Greg Moulthrop, a Republican challenger looking to unseat the Democratic incumbent Suhas Subramanyam for a House of Delegates seat that represents parts of Loudoun and Prince William counties, handed out fliers at an early voting location in South Riding. His top two issues listed: “school closures” and “critical race theory.”
“Education’s always been the number one issue that I’ve come across [with voters], followed by public safety and the economy,” Moulthrop told DCist/WAMU. “If somebody is not doing their job or not doing their job well and you get that much outrage, it’s not manufactured outrage.”
Here are the facts:
Monday’s trial gave even more evidence that the right-wing narrative was inaccurate.
Authorities still have not commented on the attacker’s gender identity. Both the victim and her attacker ― who has consistently been referred to as a male ― have said that he was wearing a skirt on the day of the attack.
But Biberaj told HuffPost that based on the facts that came out at the trial, gender identity was never an issue in the case.
Republicans have long conjured images of transgender predators who utilize bathrooms as hunting grounds to scare people about inclusive bathroom policies. But those are myths. Government, law enforcement and school officials in places with transgender-inclusive policies say the “bathroom predator” has no basis in fact. Sexual assault is also already against the law, whether in a bathroom or elsewhere.
And indeed, the facts of the Loudoun County case they have been touting don’t seem to line up either, as The Washington Post recounted from the trial:
On Monday, the teenage victim of the Stone Bridge assault testified that she and her attacker had agreed to meet up in a school bathroom around 12:15 p.m. on the date of the assault. She testified they had not explicitly discussed having sex beforehand.
The teen testified she arrived first and chose to go in the girls’ bathroom because the two had always met in the girls’ bathrooms in the past. When the boy arrived, the teen testified, he came into the handicapped stall she was in and locked the door.
The two talked, before the girl testified the boy began grabbing her neck and other parts of her body in a sexual manner. She testified she told her attacker she was not in the mood for sex, but he forced himself on her.
The judge found the boy, who is now 15, guilty.
So here’s the current state of the race:
Here’s a look at the early voting signs:
Now here’s some analysis from someone at Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball:
Kudos to the folks at 90 For 90 for highlighting this:
It’s all about turnout and Stacy Abrams’ Fair Fight is helping boost turnout efforts. Received this e-mail from Fair Fight Action:
Our friends in Virginia need your help in next week’s elections. It is critical every eligible Virginia voter make their voice heard, because democracy works best when we all show up and show out. And here’s the best part: We can all play a role in helping get out the vote!
I encourage you to chip in your time and help ensure voters are prepared to cast their ballot. The number one way you can help Virginians right now is by canvassing neighborhoods in person—they need feet on the ground! If you’re unable to help knock on doors in person, there are also ways to volunteer from home.
Here’s how you can help:
- Tell your friends and loved ones in Virginia to make a plan to vote at iWillVote.com -- and remember to share this link on social media!
- If you can go to Virginia, volunteer in a Get-Out-The-Vote event at a location closest to you! You can find one here.
- Become a Voter Protection Super Volunteer — many roles are available and most can be done from the comfort of your home. Sign up here.
With your help, Terry McAuliffe and Democrats up and down the ballot will continue to lead the Commonwealth out of this pandemic, keep the economy strong, and protect the freedom to vote for all eligible Virginians. So much is at stake. I hope you will join me in getting the job done.
— Stacey Abrams
Click here to get your information about voting.
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Democracy and Health are on the ballot this year and we need to be ready to keep Virginia Blue. Click below to donate and get involved with McAuliffe and his fellow Virginia Democrats campaigns:
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