Only four days before Tuesday’s elections in Virginia, in which the GOP swept to a huge victory as they won the governorship, the lieutenant governorship, the attorney general’s office, and possibly control of the state assembly, Vice President Kamala Harris unwittingly delivered a message that may well foreshadow a GOP deluge in the elections of 2022 and 2024, telling the audience at a rally for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe that the results in the election would “in large part determine what happens in 2022, 2024, and on” while warning, “Don’t Texas Virginia.”
“And Virginia, I’m here because the president and I care deeply about Terry McAuliffe, about the Commonwealth of Virginia and about the future of our nation,” Harris boasted. “Now you all know that every four years, when this election happens for governor of Virginia, it’s a tight election; it’s a close election, and it is a bellwether for what happens in the rest of the country.”
“You know, the last time I was standing with Terry, I saw a bunch of signs and they said, ‘Don’t Texas Virginia,’” she recalled, smiling, “Right, let’s not Texas Virginia.”
She continued, “Because you see, what happens in Virginia will in large part determine what happens in 2022, 2024 and on. And so I’m here to, yes, agree with everything you know that [rapper] Pharrell [Williams] talked about, about love of this state, everything that the former and future governor has talked about, his experience and his vision, and I’m also here to talk about the fact that each one of you, in your possession, has the ability to determine, yes, who will be next governor, but also by extension given the importance of this Virginia election, how the country is going to move.”
On Tuesday, before the voting results in Virginia came in, ABC News noted that the state’s results could serve as a bellwether for the nation as a whole, writing of the Democratic Party:
Rather than trying to divorce its fate from the off-year election, the national party has gone all in for the Democratic ticket, investing a record $5 million and sending top surrogates to campaign with McAuliffe. Those surrogates, which include President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Barack Obama, have made it clear: Virginia is a political bellwether.
The Wall Street Journal’s Aaron Zitner and WSJ What’s News host Peter Granitz discussed Virginia and how the results could serve as a bellwether for the nation as a whole. Granitz asked, “We should clarify the reason this race gets so much attention is because of quirks in the electoral calendar, isn’t it?”
Zitner answered, “Yeah. The Virginia election is an off-year election. It comes between the presidential election and the first midterm for that president two years later. And it’s often a good bellwether of what we’re about to see in the midterm when quite often it’s a weathervane telling us that there’s about to be a big reaction against the president who had just been elected the year before.”