i think he was anxious to have something that he could talk about. but, i mean, the people weren t going to feel it by now. youngkin would still be, you know i loved david plouffe s line, kissing donald trump s ample behind but in secret and trying to keep it quiet that he was kissing his ample behind. he would still be doing that and doing critical race theory and talking about how parents are being disrespected. so i m not sure in all the other architectural problems that were talked about would still be here. keep in mind that history also tells us that the governor who runs in the opposite party of the sitting president after a president is elected in virginia has a hard time. so i i agree with everything that david plouffe said, that we need to learn from this election and the other thing that we have
bearer called domestic terrorism of the same foul stench the same as those who attacked us on september 11th? might we have put ourselves in a different position about one party being better than another party on protecting the home homeland if we focussed on those issues? i think if virginia you know, there s been local issues there. again, i think it s been a tough environment for democrats to run in. an environment that i expect to improve. but, yeah, you have to remember terry mcauliffe has tried to make this as much a choice as anything between him and youngkin, governor newsom did that during the recall, the national coverage has been democrats in washington, democrats on democrats, and republicans are sort of hiding. if the democrats want to have a successful election next year, you re right, you need to basically stick a shiv in the republicans for what they did on the pandemic. they extended the pandemic. they re embracing domestic
now they had 45 days with no excuse early voting. early reports, as i think steve suggested, may show there was greater turnout today in some of those northern virginia areas that are important to a democratic win. so i wouldn t be surprised if things don t quite shape up the way the polls have suggested. if some of what we re seeing this early is accurate. say more. you re more optimistic that the cautious optimism expressed by the democratic chairman or less? right now, from what i m seeing, i m a little more optimistic, but we don t have visibility into these numbers. and it could be that we see low propensity republican voters turn out in greater numbers, the way we saw in south texas, for instance, and surprised a lot of people in the november 2020 election. that could be going on. i m just saying that from what we see right now, the very early reports in terms of the economy
there s no question that glenn youngkin has put forward what i think is going to be a blueprint for republicans across the country going into the 2022 midterms. picking and choosing his issues. using these racial and other cultural wedge issues, basically engaging in racial priming to amp up his base, staying away from trump. he handled that very, very well. treated trump as toxic, didn t have him come in to virginia. and at the same time, doing what he could to fire up his base. on the flip side of that, look, there s nobody who knows virginia politics better than terry mcauliffe. what we see in this election is a different landscape today in terms of the ability of virginians to vote. for instance, the virginia legislature made it such that instead of just seven days of early voting, that folks had four and they had to have an excuse.
have. that s my biggest point right now when i look at this and analyze it. we are where we are with the democrats because they let down their sails, drifted into a port that had been moved further downstream by the republicans. i will put that analysis to our conversation. jamie harrison will join the conversation. still ahead, i ll be joined i will join rachel madow and joy reid in the next hour. the first exit polling will be out. steve kornacki will be here. he will be here all night long. next, for us, are virginia democrats showing up? and talking about those closing messages, we ll look at the final ads on the air in virginia over the final days. each candidate sending a warning what a win for the other guy