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McCauliffe Affirms School Signs
The Virginia gubernatorial race will be over, plus or minus the stuffed ballot boxes, Tuesday, November 2. In the closing week, it appeared the electorate was shifting towards the Republican candidate, Glenn Youngkin. To the extent the shift was real, it was driven by the veteran Democrat hack Terry McAuliffe saying the quiet part out loud on education. His statement, in a late September debate, hurt him in the polls, but he has doubled down in the closing days of the election. Contrast this with his shift away from trying to make the election about President Trump. Is this a sign his campaign is confident the fix is in, that they have secured the margin of cheating?
In the September 28 debate, McAuliffe addressed school curricula and parental voice, a hot issue:
“I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decision,” McAuliffe said. “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
Youngkin jumped all over this political fumble and has made the race all about education. He has been helped by the outrageous conduct of one or more Virginia school boards and the Stasification of federal law enforcement by Attorney Gruppenführer Garland. In the closing weeks of the election, with early voting/cheating already underway, curious yard signs cropped up, reading “Keep Parents Out of Classrooms, Vote McAuliffe, Keep Virginia Blue.” While both campaigns have denied any part in the signs, McAuliffe effectively embraced the signs’ message in his last big media appearance before Election Day.
Terry McAuliffe appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press, where Chuck Todd tried to help him:
Todd said, “Governor, what about that that you feel as if you were taken out of context? Do you feel as if anything you said there should reassure parents that they have some say in their kid’s schooling?”
McAuliffe said, “Listen, that was about a bill I vetoed which people were very happy that I vetoed the bill, that literally parents could take books out of the curriculum. I love Billy and Jack McAuliffe, my parents, but they should not have been picking my math or science book. We have experts who actually do that.
So, yes. a vote for McAuliffe is a vote to keep parents out of classrooms. A vote for McAuliffe is a vote for the woke educrats. Contrast this defiant declaration with his sudden new claim the Virginia race is not about Trump. This came after months of saying the opposite:
Glenn Youngkin’s team put together these clips of Terry McAuliffe trying to identify Younkin with Trump, then put out another compilation of McAuliffe praising and associating himself with Donald Trump a few years back.
Why, after the tiki torch trick burned the Democrats, would McAuliffe double down on state control over children and parents? Does he believe the Democratic vote manufacturing machine has the election fixed already? Consider the Federalist story on Fairfax County officials’ flagrant flaunting of voting laws:
Earlier this month, Fairfax County, Virginia — a locale that broke 70-30 for President Joe Biden and Democrat Sen. Mark Warner in 2020 — previewed the attacks on election integrity likely planned for the midterm cycle of 2022 and beyond. There, election officials in the deep-blue county approved absentee and mail-in ballot applications lacking the statutorily mandated last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number, then promptly mailed these unauthenticated individuals ballots for next Tuesday’s election.
While last week the Virginia Institute for Public Policy (VIPP), a public policy organization dedicated to election integrity, filed suit against the county registrar and the three members of the Fairfax County Electoral Board responsible for flouting state election law, a hearing on the case is not scheduled until Friday. By then, the election will be only days away and a court is unlikely to order ballots returned by the deadline discarded.
Virginians will have to vote hard, turning out beyond the margin of cheating. As Hugh Hewitt wrote in 2004, If It’s Not Close, They Can’t Cheat.” More precisely, if real voters are determined, they will bury the cheaters, canceling the cancelers. They are who we thought they were; will Virginians let them win anyway?
Published in Elections
I wonder if that’s really true. There seems nothing too outrageous for those that don’t want to see it to overlook. In other words, I think what counts as ‘close’ is much, much bigger than we thought.
It may have been true in 2004 but it hasn’t been true for many years since. The machines can correct for turnout, they’ve perfected it.
As for the candidates, Republican or Democrat it largely doesn’t matter. If they can be controlled, the billionaire elite running the country couldn’t care less which party they represent. And there are few Republicans left who refuse to play ball.
Voted this morning at an admittedly remote and pro-GOP county. For the first time I can recall, I didn’t see a single Dem sign posted in the surrounding area approaching the polling place. Not one.
Shall I conclude that the Dems have switch from printing signs to printing ballots?
Shut up Peasants!
I’ve been reading various MSM sites this morning, and I get the sense that the race isn’t as close as some on our side might think. And of course we expect fraud. So here’s my sophisticated prognostication, as good as any pundit’s. (Except maybe VDH or Tucker.)
When people on our side say things like “If it’s not close they can’t cheat”, I have to shake my head and move on. They’re living in the past.
One thing I’ll be looking for tonight and the next few days is how well Team Commie tracks Team Patriot, because monitoring during the election and the count is one aspect where the left has really improved its game. Last November, Team Senile received late night vote dumps that dramatically sent them into the lead – those were clumsy.
I think it’s right to expect an early blue lead from the cities, matched later as rural votes trickle in. On the other hand, if they play those cards too early then corrective action later becomes more obvious. A single state does not have the same dynamics as the nation during any election phase, but especially not during the count.
By Friday, I expect the fix to be in and sealed.
With all the focus on the Governor’s race, has there been much reporting or polling about the state house and VA’s “senate” (House of Burgesses, House of Delegates”?).
Any wave that would carry Younkin across would have to make a substantial change in that legislative allocation as well- I’m assuming.
That’s a little different from how it’s done in Oregon. Here the votes from the eastern and rural (conservative) counties are counted first. The metropolitan votes come in slower, so they can know how many progressive votes are needed to win.
Clifford, good post. Thanks.
I hope the Republican voters of Virginia read the comments here and conclude from them that it’s over, voting is pointless, the game is rigged, and they may as well stay home.
We wouldn’t want them wasting time and energy in an already lost cause, after all.
It’s not just the GOP voters in Virginia. Our county GOP did a phone bank operation for the Virginia election yesterday. (I didn’t know about it until it was all over.) If they had been reading Ricochet they could have known not to waste their time.
The dichotomy between blind, go-along get-along resignation on the one hand and despair on the other is a false one.
No – we want them motivated to demand real change. It seems to work for the opposition.
Yes. The sweet spot is an angry and defiant resolve that leads to big turnouts to support Republican candidates in the general election, and growing insistence on conservative candidates during the primaries. The danger is getting so angry that we walk away from participation or, even worse, make some desperate and counter-productive third-party move.
Working in our favor is the reality that the left is so bad that a great many people will naturally be incensed when they learn about what’s going on.
I know that there is a contingent of folks who feel that way but it begs an important question: If the electronic voting systems are systematically compromised – and I think most people would agree that to some degree they are – then why bother voting?
My answer is that for those of us who see the same pattern repeating in every new election, voting in strong numbers provides another opportunity to document the fraud. Every new instance of overvoting, every time a vote is tallied by a dead person, every time a vacant lot registers 300 votes it’s more evidence against the fraudulent system. Think of it as a perennial sting operation. Now that we know the perpetrators tactics, every time they roll out those machines we can watch and document their crimes.
So vote, and eventually maybe someone with guts and honor will do something about it, just not the GOP.
Not, perhaps, in that order. The Republican Party must be changed. An angry and defiant resolve to hold the various and multitudinous parts of the party to account is essential to real change.
Deep and sweeping change is possible, both in the party and the country. A system wherein the senior Senator has a giant war chest to primary candidates he doesn’t approve of is just screwed up.
I think electronic systems are “systematically” compromised the same way I think America is “systemically” racist. There’s a little bit of truth to it, but I’m skeptical that either is broadly true.
Exactly. This is what I hoped would come out of the 2020 fiasco: an increased awareness of our vulnerability to electoral fraud. I’m about to vote here in New York, and two of the five statewide ballot proposals are blatantly designed to make it easier for people to vote illegally.
(For folks in New York: I strongly encourage you to vote “no” on statewide items one through four. I don’t care about the last one.)
And now…
wait for it…
wait for it…
There we go.
Other than things accomplished by Donald Trump, what has the Republican party accomplished in the past 30 years?
Yes, I get your point. But, while I am the very antithesis of a gloom-and-doomer, I think we have to be really careful right now to win every election we can. While I think the left is busy slitting its throat, too many Democrats in Washington can make an end-run around that self-destruction and slit our collective throat through, for example, nationalization of voting laws.
So, yes, push hard in the primaries. But also push hard to limit the damage Democrats can do during this particularly dangerous time.
PS An advantage of anti-woke backlash is that it’s going to be fundamentally conservative in nature. That’s going to punish the Democrats and, I expect, push the Republicans to the right.
The machines are designed for fraud. The Dominion system is designed to allow for fractional tabulation, to create ballots out of thin air, to assess and adjust voter intent, and to allow dual boot, and off-site access. That is a systematic method of vote manipulation, is it not?
Prove me wrong.
Republicans in Congress have thus far prevented the federalization of election law this year. Republicans at the state level are taking control of the voting process in an effort to prevent a repeat of 2020’s “emergency” chaos.
I don’t expect to convince you that the glass is half full. I’ll be content if I can just pose a counterpoint to relentless hopelessness.
They’ve done nothing to expose the fraud or hold the guilty accountable for multiple election related violations. Nothing.
Except for a couple of hundred state legislators, private citizens have uncovered everything by volunteering their own time, talent, and treasure – not federal investigators, not congressional committees, not journalists, and certainly not GOP party bosses.
After all of that the congressional Republicans want credit for stopping new 2020 style legislation? Pardon me if I don’t stand up and cheer.
Worse, we are where we are because Lyin’ Ryan and Mitch McConnell, along with a number of state officials, colluded with the Democrats to stop the 2017 election fraud investigation. President Trump called the issue correctly when there was a real opportunity to enact real federal election integrity legislation. Lyin’ Ryan and McConnell were determined to protect their crony wing of the RepubliCAN’T party.
I think it’s more complicated than that, Clifford. We had ample time, and a Justice Department in a Republican administration, to attempt to prevent the irregularities of 2020. We waited way too long, and then acted in a grossly incompetent (in my opinion) manner, with a series of flamboyant and amateurish stunts that were almost certain to fail and that, even if they had succeeded, would have been devastating to the country. I’ll let the Republicans take the blame for that, but they’ll share it with the administration specifically.
I think we lost 2020 in at least three different ways — not counting unparalleled levels of media fraud and censorship, and whatever plain old electoral fraud occurred. But I don’t think there’s any point beating up the Trump administration about it now, nor do I think we should be beating up Republicans. We should be engaging them to do better.
We’re seeing better in several of the states now. And, again, we’re seeing Congressional Republicans holding the line in Congress and preventing the misbehavior of 2020 from becoming enacted into legislation. We need to do more, but the best way to do that is to constructively engage the Party.
Sometimes, you are very very infuriating. Even TheDonald is cracking down on the anti-vote shills.
We are capable of voting AND recognizing its futility. It’s people like you that have put us in this position and we are trying to convince YOU that “vote harder” won’t work. But apparently, the only way to prove it is to drive voter turnout up to 100%. But if it’s true electronic tabulations can control for that, then NOTHING would convince you fraud is happening.
So please, get back to us when you actually have some reachable standard that must be met to convince you the election is stolen?
Honestly, I hear that a lot. And it always makes me smile.
The problem, Stina, is that you are not capable of voicing the futility of voting while not simultaneously discouraging others from voting.
Recognize (though I think you’re mistaken) its futility all you like. But if you’ll be good enough to do it in private, you won’t discourage others from getting engaged in the political process and, yes, voting.
By the way, that is not telling anyone to “shut up.” That’s merely observing that we will do better if we encourage people to participate with a hope of winning.
At the moment, it’s looking good for us in Virginia. I hope it remains that way — and that every single Republican and right-leaning independent in the state decided that voting wasn’t pointless and actually got out and voted today. Because a Republican win would be really terrific.
Currently, I think very much that you have adopted an unfalsifiable position on vote fraud. There isn’t anything that would convince you of it. Which doesn’t make you a well reasoned person in the slightest.
I doubt there is anyone who doesn’t think there was vote fraud.
Like much of HR’s writing, whatever his views on vote fraud in 2020 and the possibilities going forward, he’s handled the issue like a truly skilled politician in his writing here. Just the right amount of middle ground that he can commiserate with whatever side pushes back.
2020 was too late. 2017 was when Republicans had control of Congress and the office of the president. At no point did we have effective, operational control of the DOJ.
It now appears likely that Youngkin AND the Republican candidates for Lt. Gov. and Attorney General are all going to win.
VIRGINIA
84.17 % Precincts Reporting | 77% expected vote
Nov. 02, 2021 9:41 pm
Lieutenant Governor – General
86.48 % Precincts Reporting
Nov. 02, 2021 9:47 pm
Attorney General – General
86.48 % Precincts Reporting
Nov. 02, 2021 9:47 pm
Now that’s what you expect from down ticket races… that they more or less have the same % as the lead.