McAuliffe is Trying His Hardest to Lose an Election He Should Win Easily
Terry McAuliffe's Campaign Goes From Bad to Worse After New Allegations of Wrongdoing Emerge
Maybe Terry McAuliffe pulls off a victory in the blue state of Virginia on Tuesday, but the gubernatorial candidate has not had a good month. It’s been one self-inflicted wound after another. Yesterday, in what I believe was likely a coordinated smear, employees of the Virginia Democrat Party got caught posing as white supremacist supporters of Republican Glenn Youngkin.
Then there were the accusations of racism, the doubling down on trashing concerned parents, and McAuliffe’s attempt to kill a damaging story showing his campaign paid money to election conspiracy kook Marc Elias. I could keep going, but I won’t — while noting that there are several more examples of such strategic brilliance occurring in just the last week.
Now, another big story has broken. McAuliffe’s campaign appears to have possibly taken $350,000 from a foreign entity. Further, that company is linked to a money-laundering scheme.
“Terry McAuliffe has a history of accepting foreign contributions. The FEC must fully investigate these serious charges that he accepted $350,000 in illegal foreign contributions for his current campaign,” said Washington, D.C. attorney, Paul Kamenar, counsel to NLPC, who drafted and filed the complaint with the FEC.
LycaTel LLC, owned by Sri Lankan-British national Allirajah Subaskaran, gave McAuliffe $350,000 in July, the Free Beacon first reported in early October. The company is a New Jersey subsidiary of Subaskaran’s U.K.-based telecom conglomerate, which boasts a complicated web of offshore businesses and has been the subject of tax-fraud and money-laundering charges in France.
Whether this is actually illegal or just extremely unethical would depend on what an actual investigation finds, and we all know there won’t be one, because this is a Democrat we are talking about. The donation could be legal if the American-based subsidiary gave the money without any direction from its foreign leadership. That’s a very gray area, though, and one ripe for abuse. For my part, I highly doubt this New Jersey-based telecom company just decided they really liked Terry McAuliffe down in Virginia.
If there exists a more perfect scam to launder foreign cash to an American politician, I’m not aware of it. McAuliffe’s campaign has been an absolute dumpster fire from the beginning so I wouldn’t put anything past him. What I do know is that despite gobs of outside money and influence, including visits from Barack Obama and Joe Biden, McAuliffe finds his political future on life-support in a state he should be walking to victory in.
To their credit, most Virginians have shown themselves to be more astute than Democrats give them credit for. Instead of lining up along partisan lines to deliver McAuliffe an easy win, voters have handed Youngkin major momentum, even in places like Alexandria, where the Republican candidate held another high-energy, well-attended rally last night. If there’s any electoral justice left out there, and I’m not sure there is, Youngkin will put McAuliffe away next week. If that happens, it’ll be a great day for Virginia and the country as a whole.
The hits just keep on coming for Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe and honestly, they could not be happening to a more deserving guy, particularly at this stage of the race where mud is all but literally being thrown at the wall in hopes that some of it will stick to Republican nominee Glenn Youngkin.
The latest example comes courtesy of CNN of all places. Before we get to it, we should make clear we’re well aware that standard operating procedure at the Biden apologist network is to carry water for Democrats, especially in critical election races where they’re struggling to stay afloat. The Virginia gubernatorial battle is no exception, as our own Nick Arama noted earlier in a report on how CNN’s resident pseudo-tough guy Chris Cuomo tried to help the sexual predator enablers at the Lincoln Project massage their disgusting (and admitted) “tiki torch” smear attempt on Youngkin.
During a Friday live segment on the state of the race, CNN reporter Dan Merica pointed out that it was somewhat odd with just days left in the campaign that McAuliffe’s rallies were so “sparsely attended,” with the usual caveats (bones) thrown in about how some of them had been in “rural” parts of the state. Further, he noted that even those who were attending the McAuliffe events didn’t seem to be too fired up at the rallies unless some of the big Democrat names (like former President Obama) were also there. Watch:
In the below mashup of clips and photos from McAuliffe rallies, we see that Merica appears to be right on the money in pointing out how the enthusiasm for McAuliffe just doesn’t seem to be there:
You know it’s getting bad and that the Code Red button is being mashed at McAuliffe HQ when even CNN files a negative report about a Democrat.
All of this lines up with the embarrassing fundraising email McAuliffe’s campaign sent a week ago noting they “thought folks would be fired up to get out the vote, but at this point, it seems like enthusiasm is at an all-time low.” The lack of enthusiasm could also have something to do in part with former Virginia Democrat Gov. Doug Wilder (who is black) unloading on McAuliffe over his pandering to black voters, something Wilder portrayed as wholly insincere and nakedly opportunistic.
In contrast, photos and videos seen on social media show Youngkin’s rallies down the homestretch are full of energetic crowds of people hungering for real change (the kind that makes the right kind of a difference) in the state of Virginia, something Terry McAuliffe won’t give them. Instead, McAuliffe would rather insult voters by insinuating they’re racists for expressing legitimate concerns about Critical Race Theory. An odd campaign tactic for sure from a seasoned political veteran and Clintonista like McAuliffe.
Perhaps that’s yet another reason for the lack of fire and passion at McAuliffe events.
As I’ve said before, it’s got to be enraging to an egomaniac like Terry McAuliffe that not only has his campaign collapsed mostly by his own hand but also that he has so far been unable to successfully use former President Trump’s support for Youngkin to paint him as a “racist,” try as often as he might. In fact, the only person Terry McAuliffe has hurt through this campaign has been Terry McAuliffe.
Meanwhile, Glenn Youngkin continues to mostly go it alone, not bringing in any GOP star power perhaps because he sees that what he’s been doing so far is working – selling himself and himself alone.
Tuesday cannot come soon enough. I absolutely cannot wait.
McAuliffe's Latest Move Is One of Pure Panic
With polls in Virginia now showing Republican Glenn Youngkin leading the gubernatorial race, there’s a sense of panic emanating from the Terry McAuliffe campaign.
At one point earlier in the month, I believe McAuliffe felt he had the ability to go ahead and sew things up, especially given Virginia’s heavy blue lean. That strategy included bringing in Barack Obama, Stacey Abrams, and Joe Biden to rally support. But Virginia is an odd state that has seen wild electoral fluctuations over the last decade.
After it became clear his blitz of big-name Democrats had failed, the desperation only got worse. That culminated yesterday in a disgusting stunt yesterday to paint Youngkin as a white supremacist that The Lincoln Project has taken credit for (though, no one should buy there wasn’t coordination).
But perhaps the biggest piece of evidence yet that McAuliffe is in the midst of a last-second panic has been revealed. After months of making his entire campaign about Donald Trump, the Democrat is now saying the race isn’t about Donald Trump.
Terry McAuliffe claimed on Saturday that the Virginia gubernatorial election is “not about Trump” — even though the Democratic gubernatorial candidate has invoked the former Republican President perhaps more than any other political figure.
The comment, which belies the fact that tying Republican nominee Glenn Youngkin to Trump has been a central political strategy for McAuliffe since the start of the campaign, represents a significant shift for the Democrat just days before Tuesday’s election and on the final day of early voting in Virginia.
Here’s the thing with “significant shift(s).” No campaign makes them within days of an election — unless they definitively believe that they are losing.
McAuliffe has made Trump a centerpiece of his campaign, and that’s been a theme repeated by everyone involved. Joe Biden, for example, mentioned Trump well over a dozen times during his stump speech for the gubernatorial candidate. In just the past few days, McAuliffe has referenced Trump and his movement multiple times in trying to quell the damage he’s done with the parents of school-age children in Virginia.
So for him, at this incredibly late hour, to try to reset his campaign to be about real issues and not screaming “Trump” over and over is a big red flag. What’s ironic is that had he made this move earlier, it may have actually paid dividends and carried him to victory. As I mentioned, Virginia leans blue, with Biden carrying the state by 10 points just a year ago. All McAuliffe had to do was be sane, talk about improving the economy, and not make parents the enemy.
That’s not what happened, though. Instead, he went scorched earth as an insider politician ranting about MAGA, while Youngkin beat the ground on issues voters care about. McAuliffe’s strategic blunder will not be rectified by an eleventh-hour shift in messaging. With early voting and Youngkin seeing so much enthusiasm, the cake is largely baked going into Tuesday.
The only question is whether Virginia’s partisan lean will be enough to save the Democrat. We’ll all find out soon enough.
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