'Very bad night for Donald Trump': MSNBC's Morning Joe says Virginia election shows GOP how to move on from ex-president
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough declared the election wins of two Republican candidates a "very bad night for Donald Trump."
The twice-impeached one-term president claimed credit for Glenn Youngkin's win in Virginia, after his Democratic opponent made Trump a prominent campaign issue, but the "Morning Joe" host said the numbers just don't back that up.
"Can you believe the split between Youngkin and Trump?" Scarborough said. "Youngkin plus-13 over Trump. I said early on in passing, last night was a very bad night for Donald Trump. A guy who kept him in a locked box, he has favorability plus-13 over Trump. People are saying, we have to keep Trump in Mar-A-Lago behind the gates. When he stays away, we can get the coalition back."
Political analyst John Heilemann pointed out that Youngkin had focused on a culture war issue that resonated with voters, and then his opponent Terry McAuliffe fumbled just weeks before the election.
"There is a huge difference between the way 'wokism' plays out on college campuses and how it plays out in elementary schools in Virginia," Heilemann said. "Your friends kids' who are dealing with, on liberal college campuses, we can have that conversation. That wasn't what was happening in Virginia. There was a discussion about whether critical race theory was being taught in schools. The Youngkin campaign didn't have an example where it was being taught [but] I thought Terry's handling of it was malpractice."
"In a situation where Youngkin was trying to take an issue, education, which, in my experience, had never been the No. 2 issue in a statewide race, never seen that before," Heilemann added. "As soon as that came out from the exit poll, before they started doing numbers, I was like, Terry's in trouble, McAuliffe is in trouble. Youngkin spent six months trying to make that issue central and was taking the anger and resentment, some of it's white grievance, some of it's fear, some of it's economic anxiety -- they're mad at Joe Biden, white suburban parents, vaccine mandates, there are a lot of angry parents, and Youngkin found that."
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