Pride goes before a fall. — Old Saying, based on Proverbs 16:18
You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it. –Haggai 1:6b (NIV)
An old saying that cautions against arrogance is “Pride goeth before a fall.” No one can read minds, but I have a hunch one reason for the Republican wins last week was Democrat overconfidence.
Most analysts agree that victor Glenn Youngkin (R) has “mad skills” especially for a political newcomer and ran an incredibly effective, focused, disciplined campaign; in contrast, in hindsight we can see Terry McAuflffe (D) ran an unsuccessful one.
What are some indicators that overconfidence or pride led to the Democrats’ downfall last week? Here is a list in no particular order.
- Terry McAuliffe was a former governor. He had already won in 2013, so why not win again? (Virginia is the only state in the Union that forbids a governor from serving back to back terms.)
- As a former governor, he had enjoyed relative popularity in his first term and enjoyed higher name recognition this time. Shouldn’t high name recognition help again?
- Our current governor, Ralph Northam, had made outrageous comments endorsing “post-birth abortion”–leaving a baby to die after it had been born, plus a racist photo was exposed in his medical school yearbook. However, after the original outcry, the Democrat establishment and corporate media circled the wagons and protected him, and kept him in office till today. If the Virginia voters could tolerate that sort of scurrilous behavior, would they not overlook McAuliffe’s shortcomings and return him to office?
- Democrats had enjoyed a remarkable run of winning the last 13 (!) statewide races in the Old Dominion: previous elections for president, governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and our two US senate seats. With such a winning streak, how could they lose now?
- Northern Virginia (NoVa) keeps growing. Thanks to its proximity to Washington, the DC suburbs keep expanding. Since many people moving there are from blue-voting areas and have jobs directly or indirectly related to ever-growing government, many vote Democrat. Many Democrats have won office recently by catering to NoVa and a few other blue strongholds around Richmond and Tidewater while ignoring (if not actively insulting) voters in the remaining 80% of Virginia’s landmass, so what was keeping McAuliffe from replicating that strategy again this year?
- McAuliffe led in the money. Obviously political campaigns run on money, what some call “the mother’s milk” of politics. However, as a renowned cash bundler for the Clintons, McAuliffe has a rolodex handy for pumping well-heeled liberals for fat donations. On August 17, leftwing billionaire George Soros dumped $250,000 into the McAuliffe campaign, a fact cited in the September 20 column. Far and away, most out-of-state money that came in was for McAuliffe–a large amount coming from New Yorkers. That led me to observe back earlier in the fall, “Virginia has the best politicians New Yorkers can buy.” With all that money, why not just buy enough TV attack ads to bury the Republicans? When I think of all the money donated to the campaigns of McAuliffe and other Democrats last week, with so little to show for it, I am reminded of the verse from Haggai 1:6b. “You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.”
- Democrats are used to having most of the media as a trusty mouthpiece for them. Examples include reporters last spring and summer who ignored our nation unraveling but asked President Biden about his ice cream predilections. Thinking you have the media in your pocket to give you positive coverage for free disguised as “news” makes politicians lazy because they do not expect to be questioned or challenged. That all came clear in October when WJLA, the ABC affiliate in the DC area, arranged for twenty-minute interviews with both McAuliffe and Youngkin. Note this is ABC we are talking about, not some right-wing media. About halfway into the interview McAuliffe lost his cool, cut off the interview, and walked off set. He stode off complaining to the interviewer “You should have asked better questions” and “You should have asked questions your viewers care about.” In contrast, Youngkin sat calmly and answered questions for the full twenty minutes.
In closing, these thoughts that McAuliffe failed due to overconfidence and pride are not just talking points of Republicans enjoying victory laps. Tulsi Gabbard, Democrat from Hawaii who represented Hawaii’s second congressional district from 2013-2021 and sought the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination made this remark on Twitter after Youngkin’s win on Tuesday:
McAuliffe’s loss is a victory for all Americans. Why? Because it was a resounding rejection of efforts to divide us by race, the stripping of parental rights, and arrogant, deaf leaders. This benefits us all. — Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) November 3, 2021
Sources:
Analysis of Spending in VA Governor’s Race
Examples of reporters asking President Biden about Ice Cream
Video of McAuliffe walking out of an interview at 10:50 mark scolding the reporter “You should have asked better questions. You should have asked questions your viewers care about.”
