i call a white supremacist agenda to refine our reality and force us to live under their definition. this divide in the democratic party is why political experts are saying this vote could act as a bellwether for next year s mid-term election. sandra: we re watching it in minneapolis. bill: it is down to the wire in virginia. republican glenn youngkin fighting terry mccauliffe in a high stakes battle for governor. a race that could shake up politics in virginia and across america. new hour begins now. election day. bill hemmer. dana has the day off and back tomorrow. sandra smith. sandra: great to be with you this morning. we miss dana, hope she has a good day off. i m sandra smith. both candidates running neck-and-neck in a state president biden won by 10 percentage points. republicans hoping for an upset as the sign of more wins to come giving them a boost in next year s national mid-terms
that s right. look, the culture war issues i think do have resonance across the country among independents and republicans and even some democrats. it is education, also crime. those are kitchen table suburban issues. i think this race will say a lot more about the state of the democratic party and where the landscape is than about the republican party. there are issues to be learned there. you have to be back also to the economy. the problem for democrats is they believe, they seem to have this belief that passing these two massive spending packages will be a cure all for the party. in the latest fox poll you had 2/3 of voters saying the two packages will either not help the economy or make things worse. i think the democrats unwillingness to step forward and address inflation, gas prices, food prices, and even worse to sort of be dismissive and mocking about concerns
so many of these businesses felt so restricted during the pandemic. they are trying to come back alive. business owners have spoken up as well. bill: the other thing is have democrats in washington over reached? have they overread what they perceived to be a mandate in the election? 50/50 senate. bill mcgurn writes this. in some ways mr. mccauliffe suffers from the same problem as the democratic moderates in congress. they have no moderate agenda. what moderates offer is a somewhat cheaper knock-off of the progressive agenda. on that note you heard what joe manchin did yesterday against the build back better plans and if the brakes are being put on by him and a few others. sandra: there will be lessons learned by republicans as well. axios talking about trump lite. perhaps this will be the test for how republicans either embrace or not embrace donald
controlling them and teachers unions are a very large part of that. that remains to be seen. sandra: newsweek also says youngkin is showing the way for 2022 republicans. we talk about lessons learned. newsweek says the republican party needs to treat families as its main constituency and cultural issues are winning issues. the left s woke agenda is very unpopular among the majority of americans. fighting back against that agenda is appealing to every single group that youngkin needs to win. it is firing up the base and it is tapping directly into the concerns of much-discussed suburban voters. really interesting. also put that in bigger picture in the discussion of how donald trump was used for glenn youngkin in this race. opponent tried to use him against him. there should be a strategy learned if he pulls off victory and how he didn t offend donald trump as axios put it this morning but kept him at a distance.
we have done better in the early voting than any republican has done in early voting. has everything to do with the fact that republicans also decided to turn out early. we were running a get out the vote effort from day one on september 17th. get friends out to vote. we set records in a number of counties that are all red that had never really voted early but got early vote out. i think we ll see strong early returns in northern virginia, too. sandra: your race, while local and a gubernatorial race is being watched all over the country. perhaps as an example or perhaps as lessons learned as we look out to the mid-term elections. if victorious tonight what do you think your party will take away from how you ran your race? i think what i ll take away from it is that first of all a guy who started 10 months ago with a 2% name i.d. in a poll that had a 3% margin of error