alex covered the gubernatorial race from the ground in virginia. tom periello represented virginia s fifth congressional district from 2009 to 2011. he has a new opinion piece entitled youngkin s victory in virginia is a warning. tom, let me start with you. i was in charlottesville on election night in 2010 where you lost that race in the big sort of tea party backlash. you have personally experienced this. what do you make of what happened last night? look, i think it is a warning in time for democrats to avoid next year the losses that we had in 2010. first of all, it was a much closer election. we saw the democratic coalition turn out in a close race. but really at the end of the day i think we saw that simply being anti-trump is not enough. democrats will have to show the
to paraphrase the late-great nipsey hussle, democrats feel like the last time that they checked, they won by ten points, no sweat. and there was no smut on their rep. so, last time that they checked, it shouldn t be a tight race. and yet it is. it looks like a tight race from the indications we have, nothing matters till you get all the votes in. i ll always tell you that. i m not predicting, but there s also history that serves the republican argument here because virginia is this off-year race, and historically it almost always flips back to the party that just lost the white house the prior year because opposition and politics breeds energy. and that leaves plenty of questions on this election eve about which history may echo tomorrow night. let s get right into it. we have pulitzer prize-winning columnist and associate editor for the washington post, democratic strategist juanita toll over. and tom periello.
educatus. but here s some of what voters were saying about attacks are playing. i don t like the crt training. those children are not going to get what they need. parents do have a big say in education. this critical race theory is something to me that is ridiculous. it s a racist dog whistle. we all know, everybody knows that critical race theory is not taught in our schools. and it s unfortunate that they re using that dog whistle instead of talking about the issues. tom? well, first, i thought your obama tease at the beginning was going to be his part of the jay-z induction speech the other night. [ laughter ] it may be, tom, but people will have to wait till the end of the hour. i didn t mean to ruin the tease. [ laughter ] i wonder whether we are
tom, we go to you as the virginian, which history will echo, do you think? well, listen, we ll know when the votes are counted, but the early vote looks very strong for terry mcauliffe and an incredibly diverse slate of delegate candidates that are also up for grabs. we do see that historical headwind that favors republicans. we still have off-year elections that have been protected in virginia to try to minimize african-american votes. but what we ve seen is two things, a republican party that can t quit trump, and we ve seen a democratic party that has delivered at the state legislature all the things that congress, we hope, is going to do, raising the minimum wage, family medical leave, decriminalization efforts that youngkin tried to run against but found was very popular even with swing voters. so we see democrats that have delivered and are trying to unite folks against really a set of culture warriors that most parents are just getting a little sick and tired of dealing
also see strong returns in the day of vote. because we know when more people show up at the polls, democrats tend to fare better. and that s something we should all be keeping an eye out for, the cadence and pace of votes that are happening on the day as well as the margin that democrats can have. yeah, what you just said sounds like, oh, it s a good thing for democrats but it s also just literally true. we see that in the national turnout. we see that in sort of the shrinking aging white electorate that has been the sort of bread and butter of the gop, and then a place like virginia the presidential year and the off-year is a turnout battle, is it not, tom? because high turnout can look more like a presidential year where we just showed clinton won the state, biden by the largest ever, hence the nipsey hussle reference, which i know means something to you, tom. [ laughter ] and then obama twice to juanita s observation as well. we had our reporters out there talking to voters. and y