Trump Wins - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Trump Wins
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So the day after Virginia voters handed Democrat Terry McAuliffe a huge defeat in the governor’s race? And also elected the first African-American female Lieutenant Governor (Republican Winsome Sears) and the first Latino Attorney General (Republican Jason Miyares) in the state’s history? After all of that, what is President Joe Biden’s response?

Why, that trifecta of Democrat losses is all the fault of … those racist Trump voters. The Democrats lost, said Biden, because of those “conservative folks who turned out in the red districts who were Trump voters.”

Which is another way of saying that the real winner of the Virginia elections this week was … Donald Trump.

Week in and week out of this fall election, Democrat McAuliffe raced around Virginia campaigning against Trump. The night before the election, McAuliffe gave a 15 minute speech at a rally — and attacked Trump not once, not twice but thirteen times! And, but of course, he wasn’t alone in attacking the former president. Barack Obama campaigned for McAuliffe and made a point of attacking Trump supporters. When Biden himself showed up to campaign for McAuliffe he shouted out that “I ran against Donald Trump and so is Terry.”

In other words, McAuliffe, Obama, and Biden are obsessed with the former president and his supporters. So, quite deliberately — not to mention repeatedly — they went out of their way to attack Trump. Result? McAuliffe got clobbered.

Without ever touching down in the state to campaign for Youngkin, Trump emerges as the clear winner in this race.

Which, of course, means that he will also loom large over the 2022 elections. If anything is clear from Tuesday’s Virginia results — not to mention the shocking hairs breadth GOP loss (as it now stands) in very blue New Jersey — it is that the base of the Republican Party still loves Trump.

The huge issue in Virginia was the racist Critical Race Theory. Democrats and their media allies tried to pretend CRT isn’t in the state’s schools. Which quickly brought this headline from Fox News:

Virginia promotes book telling teachers to embrace CRT, which McAuliffe says isn’t being taught

Book promoted by Virginia education department says, ‘Teachers need to be taught how to question Whiteness’

Oops!

Whatever else the CRT issue did, it was a decided reminder of Trump’s constant warnings about this or that group of elites shoving their far left progressive policies down the throats of Americans who viscerally oppose them.

There is a reason Trump was elected in the first place and why he still has such a tight grip on the GOP base to this day. It is the same reason in the long ago history of American politics that Democrat Franklin Roosevelt had such a hold on what he called the “forgotten man” — the blue collar or working Americans looked down upon by what, in FDR’s day, millions of Americans saw as an elitist Republican Party filled with and run by members of sniffy country clubs.

In one of the more remarkable turns in American politics, beginning with the rise of Ronald Reagan and continuing on with Donald Trump, the Democratic Party of FDR and the Republican Party of Herbert Hoover switched constituencies. This began to come clear in the 1980s when the heavily unionized Macomb County, Michigan, which had given 63 percent of its vote to Democrat John F. Kennedy in 1960, voted overwhelmingly — 66 percent — for Reagan. Thus was born what came to be called “the Reagan Democrat.”

Today the support of blue collar workers and average working Americans is steadfast for Trump. And hearing the insistent attacks on Trump — not to mention themselves — during all of the fall Virginia campaign they turned out in droves to thumb their nose at their Democrat opponents by voting for Glenn Youngkin — along the way handing a victory to Trump, who wasn’t even on the ballot.

Except, of course, thanks to McAuliffe, Obama, and Biden, Trump became very much an invisible name on the Virginia ballot. And he won. Big time.

The question now is will Democrats repeat their huge mistake in 2022? In all the various state elections for governors, U.S. Senators, U.S. House members, and state legislators, will Democrats campaign against their opponents on the ballot — or Donald Trump?

At this point one suspects Democrats are so obsessed with Trump that they will not be able to help themselves. Which means that this time next year Trump will have won — again. Bringing in a GOP House and Senate along the way.

Sitting somewhere in one of his famous clubs, one can only imagine that Donald Trump is laughing. And getting ready for 2024 when his name will actually be on the ballot again.

Buckle in — and get the popcorn.

Jeffrey Lord
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Jeffrey Lord, a contributing editor to The American Spectator, is a former aide to Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp. An author and former CNN commentator, he writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com. His new book, Swamp Wars: Donald Trump and The New American Populism vs. The Old Order, is now out from Bombardier Books.
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