Licking your wounds. That’s what Democrats are doing after last week’s impressive Republican showing in Virginia, New Jersey, and elsewhere.
I wasn’t sure where the “licking your wounds” saying originated, so I looked it up. According to Wikipedia, “Wound licking is an instinctive response in humans and many other animals to lick an injury. Dogs, cats, small rodents, horses, and primates all lick wounds.”
So do Democrats, apparently. I suppose they belong in the “humans” category, though one could just as easily argue most Democrats also populate the “small rodents” and “primates” classifications. Knowing them, if someone called a Democrat a “primate”, liberals would automatically tag it with a racial connotation. But accusing a Democrat of being a “primate” is a bigger insult to monkeys and gorillas and chimpanzees than to the politicians themselves.
It doesn’t take a veterinarian or a genius to declare that Democrats are feeling wounded these days, so a little licking of their festering scabs wouldn’t be out of sorts for them. The looks on liberal pundits’ faces last Tuesday night as the results rolled in was reminiscent of the expressionless alarm the same honks exhibited on Election Night in 2016. All because one of their darlings, carpetbagging scumbag idiot Terry McAuliffe, looked to be going down to defeat at the hands of a relative political nobody, Glenn Youngkin.
(Check out this story -- Truck driver defeats 20-year Democrat Senate President in New Jersey.)
How could it be, they must’ve wondered. McAuliffe had every advantage a Democrat might have -- virtual incumbency, a proven talent for lying through his every orifice at the drop of a campaign contribution, and a political war chest befitting his exalted status as a leading member of the Democrat establishment hierarchy. Below perhaps only the Obamas and Clintons and Bidens, Terry M drew as much worship as the secular/atheist party could muster.
Yet now, Glenn Youngkin is preparing to move into Virginia’s governor’s mansion. It’s a good thing. As for Democrats, last Tuesday’s voting revealed other truths that could be hard for them to swallow -- or lick. The political landscape has changed remarkably in one year’s time, having gone from the supposed triumph of placeholder senile Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election to Democrats all-but needing to find a new candidate for 2024.
Don’t feel pity. When you’re dumb enough to plant pooping Joe in the driver’s seat of your combine, don’t be surprised when you reap what you sow and it smells funky. Roger L. Simon wrote at The Epoch Times after the Virginia elections:
“It wouldn’t be at all surprising, however, if somebody else emerges as the Democratic candidate in 2024. I imagine this morning many are beginning to think about it. (Pro tip: It won’t be Pete Buttigieg.)
“What happens now is not the conventional ‘anybody’s guess.’ The ball game for 2022 and 2024 is the Republicans’ to lose. Unfortunately, they are capable of it, as they have shown before. The key to success will be vigilance, indeed increased vigilance, on the part of the rank-and-file. Youngkin came out of nowhere, meaning he came from us. That’s to be emulated.
“Beware the entrenched, the RINOS, the Lincoln Project, and so forth. We see them everywhere, perhaps even more in red states than in blue, spouting rhetoric they never really intend to fulfill. They are as bad as Obama and Biden, perhaps worse.”
Hear! Hear! As is usually the case, Simon is right on. Simon says, and people should listen!
The jury is still out on what kind of governor Glenn Youngkin will turn out to be, whether he’s a dyed in the wool conservative true believer or someone more akin to a standard “let’s compromise and get along to try and preserve power” establishment swamp dweller type. Youngkin’s said nice things about Donald Trump in the past -- his quotes were replayed over and over in McAuliffe’s campaign commercials -- but yet the now governor-elect made no visible attempt to tie himself to the former president or solicit the New Yorker’s help in getting out the vote.
As I argued last week, Youngkin and Republicans probably should’ve won by a larger margin considering how awful the economy is under Joe Biden (except for maybe the northern Virginia suburbs, which will always have plenty of money because of the presence of thousands of federal bureaucrats and its proximity to the rapidly expanding federal government) and the heinous nature of McAuliffe himself.
If Youngkin does go soft, much of the momentum that Republicans currently sense will evaporate fairly quickly. It’ll feel like air rushing out of punctured balloon, with all the expectations now heaped on Glenn’s basketball shooting shoulders. Even if the GOP is stopped on major tax relief and cultural initiatives by the Democrat-controlled Virginia state senate, Youngkin would do well to use the bully pulpit to advocate for conservative policies. And it wouldn’t hurt to take a big chunk of Trump’s MAGA agenda and make it Virginia’s.
Simon is correct in suggesting Youngkin and company should keep a sharp eye out for the RINOs and Lincoln Project sloths in the Virginia GOP establishment. They aren’t great in number but you sense they’re always lurking in the nearest sewer. I took a walk down the main thoroughfare in Colonial Williamsburg not long ago and spotted a lady sporting a “Lincoln Project” hat. I was tempted to confront her, but she probably has hidden fangs and a typical NeverTrumper’s nasty attitude underneath her calm exterior.
What Youngkin and other Republicans must do now is figure out how to keep Trump close but somehow avoid the former president’s personality bugaboos that seem to repel independents. As Simon pointed out in his piece, “Youngkin outran Trump in nearly every, maybe every, of the 133 Virginia counties.” I don’t have any way of verifying it, but as Fox News’s Bill Hemmer was clicking different counties on his magical electric board last week, Youngkin was certainly running (by percentage) ahead of Trump in most if not all of them. There’s a lesson there.
The question is, why? Are the prognosticators right, that Trump can’t win back the suburban votes he lost at the beginning of his political career? Once the soccer moms were turned off by his jabs at Megyn Kelly, were they gone for good?
It’s true that Trump is more popular now than he was on Election Day 2020, and some persuadable people admit they made a mistake in voting for senile Joe and his cackling gal pal Kamala, but to have Youngkin run ahead of Trump everywhere is astonishing. Did this help prove the oft-repeated notion that Republicans can win without Trump, or that Trump would act as a drag on the 2024 ticket?
It's a debatable proposition. Some conservatives make the case that Trump should be very involved in the 2024 campaign, but he shouldn’t be on the ticket himself. Gwendolyn Sims of PJ Media put together a pretty solid set of contentions for Trump staying out. One of her most persuasive claims was that Trump, at 78-years-young in 2024, will be too old for the job. After seeing 78-year-old senile Joe falling asleep and slurring his words even when completely sober, it’s hard to dispute the argument, even if Trump is much more “with-it” than Biden.
Time will tell. Youngkin’s overall performance should at least be taken to heart when the 2024 campaign approaches. Many Republicans would welcome and support another Trump candidacy, but we won’t get anything if we lose. And America’s future is too important to risk on a “what if” contention.
Was Simon also prescient in suggesting Democrats will come up with a different candidate to go against the 2024 GOP nominee?
Immediate Democrat reaction to the debacle in Virginia -- and near debacle in New Jersey -- was to double down on their pre-election rationale that passing the bipartisan infrastructure farce along with their welfare loaded “Build Back Better” bill would’ve solved all of their problems with the voters. People aren’t dumb -- they see what’s happening in the White House and Capitol Hill and are rallying against the goodie-grab in any way they can in a non-federal election year.
Biden is virtually untouchable right now. But Americans can do whatever possible to make it certain that senile Joe and Kamala’s administration will only last one term. Put it this way, if Biden were on the ballot last week, he would’ve struggled to earn 40 percent in the Old Dominion. And he won here by 10 points in 2020.
Who will Democrats nominate? Their bench isn’t exactly stacked. Logic suggests it will be someone outside the political mainstream, but there aren’t any liberal Trump-like candidates that come to mind. Oprah Winfrey? Michelle Obama? Colin Kaepernick? None of them would survive a primary race.
For now, conservatives should be content to watch Democrats lick their proverbial wounds and suffer the knowledge that the Democrat brand under senile president Joe Biden has been severely injured, with more crashes yet to come. 2022 and 2024 aren’t all that far away and it’s time to think about the next move in the political chess game.
Virginia elections
Glenn Youngkin
2024 Democrat presidential candidates
Republican governors
Democrat Congress
Biden welfare bill
Build Back Better
Lincoln Project
Joe Biden
2024 GOP presidential candidates
Donald Trump
Ron DeSantis