Virginia Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe is popular, but Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam is having trouble getting ahead of Republican Ed Gillespie. The state hasn’t elected a Republican statewide in eight years, and while Clinton won the state in 2016—the national Democratic Party is getting “jittery” about the race, according to The Washington Post. It also has exposed how Democrats really didn’t care about their down ticket races. In the aftermath of the 2016 election, some Democrats felt that their original strategy of giving the finger to white working class voters and maximizing turnout in the cities was fine; they just had a bad candidate in Hillary Clinton. Other Democrats were not so sure, knowing that the party’s collapse in the rural America contributed to Donald Trump’s win. It’s a rather stark difference between the two parties. As the GOP tread water in opposition, they work diligently to win state and local races, contributing to Democrats losing 1,000 elected officials in state, federal, and local races. The GOP controls 69/99 state legislatures and two-thirds of the governorships. For Democrats, they didn’t even know some of their state-elected officeholders:
The Democratic National Committee gathered here over the past week with one worry on every activist’s mind: We’d better not lose the Virginia governor’s race.
It’s a surprising case of the jitters over a place that hasn’t elected a Republican to statewide office in eight years — and that voted resoundingly against Donald Trump last year. But nationally, Democrats haven’t won a marquee race since losing the presidency. They lag Republicans in fundraising. A loss for Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam against Republican Ed Gillespie on Nov. 7 could stir doubts about message and strategy just as the party is gearing up nationally for next year’s all-important midterm elections.
Another round of infighting—Democrats have yet to finish their first round, which began when Hillary Clinton lost the election; Bernie Sanders supporters feel if he had won the nomination, Trump would’ve lost. That’s not an insane assessment, but alas—that didn’t happen. The post-2016 unity tour that featured DNC chairman Tom Perez and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was fraught with heckling of Perez from progressives. Moreover, the fact that Sanders—who isn’t even a Democrat—was headlining the tour, and the progressive heartburn seen during it, was quite the window into the Democratic Party’s woes.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2017/10/24/uh-oh-national-democrats-are-getting-jittery-about-virginias-governor-race-n2399531
