A Bellwether Election?

     Apparently, the polls are now unanimous: Glenn Youngkin commands a significant lead over Terry McAuliffe in the race for governor of Virginia. Even the blatantly partisan Washington Post has called out McAuliffe on his lies, gaffes, and dirty tactics. Were the polls a reliable indicator of anything, Virginia would elect Youngkin its next governor…but as has been said many times, the only poll that really counts is the one that takes place on Election Day.

     Despite Youngkin’s lead, the prognosticators have predicted a narrow win for McAuliffe. Indeed, I consider that more likely than any other result, for two reasons. First, Virginia has been “turning blue” for some time, owing to the great many federal workers who’ve made their homes there. Second, the Democrat Party has adopted a win-at-any-cost posture, and is likely to deploy its full range of cheats to put its favored candidate in the Commonwealth’s governor’s mansion. So Virginia’s urban districts will “turn out” at approximately a 100% rate, and the Dems will cheat to whatever extent is required to make up any remaining margin.

     After the famous presidential election of 2000, in which a handful of votes from a single state decided the contest in favor of George W. Bush, commentator Mark Steyn coined a striking phrase. He spoke of the need for future Republican candidates to prevail beyond “the margin of lawyer.” At that time, of course, the threat to a Republican’s electoral victory took the form of post-balloting legal challenges to the accuracy of the tallies. But as the poet has said, things are different today.

     Should my pessimism prove incorrect and the election go dramatically Youngkin’s way, as would be appropriate given McAuliffe’s deceits and gaffes, it will be a marker for the Congressional elections to come in 2022. The Democrats are playing a “mainchance” strategy. While public-opinion polls have suggested that the GOP will pick up seats in both Houses of Congress, the Democrats, sensing that the loss of control of those bodies would put an end to their national agenda for the foreseeable future, will shove the throttle to the firewall on their election-corruption engines. If Youngkin prevails tomorrow, extreme nationwide Democrat vote fraud in 2022 will become a certainty.

     Whether Republican candidates and the party apparatus would mount legal challenges to the integrity of stolen elections, this year or next, is unclear. The GOP has shown little appetite for such combats. Indeed, had they challenged the blatantly corrupt tallies in two states in 1960 – Illinois and Texas – Richard Nixon would have prevailed over John F. Kennedy. As Nixon was opposed to the notion of going to war in Vietnam, the nation’s history would be quite different.

     The central consideration to bear in mind is that word gets around. People cannot be fooled for long. They will know if the elections are stolen from their preferred candidates. If the Republican Party, nominally the party that stands for limited government, free markets, and a strong national defense, should again fail to defend their interests, they will withdraw their support once and for all. They will begin a determined search for an alternative at last. They might not settle on a democratic approach – note the small “d.”

     And so the Virginia gubernatorial contest might be a harbinger of more than just the probable outcome of the 2022 elections. As I wrote earlier this year:

     People will tolerate a great deal before they snap, but they will snap. Especially if they’re being told that they must tolerate personal abuse or oppression, the abuse of their loved ones, or the destruction of something they love. And if Americans should snap, the reverberations will circle the globe. As Larry Correia and others have observed, we’ve got two and only two settings: Vote and Shoot everybody. Governments, law enforcers, bureaucrats, and activists should beware. Day by day we move ever closer to throwing that switch.

     Keep your freezer full, your pantry stocked, and your powder dry.