Pity poor Virginia Democrat Elaine Luria. She represents Virginia’s 2d District (Chesapeake, Virginia Beach, and the Eastern Shore). She’s also a member of the January 6 show trial; I mean Committee. She’s in a tough fight for survival. After redistricting, her old R+2 district is now R+6, and her home is no longer in the district. Cook Political Report rates her seat as a “toss up,” but it takes a lot of imagination to see how R+6 translates into a coin toss in the 2022 environment.
Luria is distressed because she can’t believe that no one in her district gives a rat’s patootie about the J6 Committee.
Speaking to Vox, Luria expressed her disappointment that Republicans were not dealing with the gravity of the attack on the Capitol and directed her ire specifically at her opponent, state Sen. Kiggans. “She won’t say Biden was legitimately elected president, even though she’ll dance around it. ‘He really lives in the White House. I wish he didn’t. He is the president. He’s ruining the economy,’ and all these petty and flippant remarks that don’t have the seriousness or gravity of someone who is trying to take that responsibility of writing and upholding the laws of the country. There is a spectrum, some folks are a lot more vocally spewing conspiracy theories and other things, but she certainly in my mind has refused to acknowledge the facts.”
When asked if she thinks Kiggans knows what she is saying is wrong, Luria responded, “That’s the part that bothers me about it the most. I absolutely think that she doesn’t believe what she said, as a person. She doesn’t believe that but she feels she has to say it.”
Sad but true. As a society, we are entering that environment that characterized the USSR in Solzhenitsyn’s “Live Not By Lies.” We are obligated to nod and mouth phrases that our questioners nor we believe — for instance, COVID, January 6, the 2020 election, transgenderism, white supremacy, etc. — if we are to keep our jobs or avoid being victims of the “cancel culture.” If Kiggans said what most Republicans believe, that the January 6 investigation is political warfare, that our Republic was never in danger, and that the legitimacy of Biden’s election is very questionable, she would be pilloried.
Luria acknowledged that voters were struggling with high inflation. “I’m very sensitive to the fact that it is a difficult time economically for people right now, gas prices, consumer prices, you know, paying more than you’re accustomed to at the grocery store.”
The poll that had Luria tied with Kiggans also showed that 39 percent of voters in the southeast Virginia congressional district had the economy as their top issue. Only 14 percent ranked threats to democracy as their top issue, which lagged behind abortion as well as the economy. This was reflected nationally: In a recent national poll conducted by the New York Times and Siena College, only 8 percent of voters thought “the state of democracy” was the most important issue facing the country, lagging far behind the 44 percent who picked either the economy or inflation. Further, a Republican operative familiar with the race noted to Vox that January 6 just wasn’t an issue that seemed to be moving voters at all in polling.
But Luria pushed back pointedly when asked about the fact that voters were not terribly concerned about the state of American democracy. “I’m just tired of answering this question,” she said. “It should be front of mind for everyone. Just wake up on January 20, 2025, and see how you feel when we’ve lost our democracy.”
The real question isn’t why her district is dismissing the J6 crap; it is why a Congresswoman in an R+2 (and later R+6) district allowed herself to get sucked into a no-win nothingburger like a vendetta on Donald Trump and his supporters.
And yet, despite knowing all this, the “closing” ad for her campaign featured what? You guessed it, the January 6 demonstration.
There is probably nothing more sad or pathetic than a politician who actually believes their own bullsh**. You won’t find her like of jihadi fervor among the Adam Schiffs, Chuck Schumers, and Mitch McConnells in Congress. I’d be shocked if any of those men, and a hundred more like them of both parties, believed in much of anything more substantial than they should be running things. You have to look to the Liz Cheneys and Adam Kinzingers to find people so gullible that they buy into what everyone else knows is a grift — I sorta take that back. I think they started out knowing it was a scam to punish Trump and raise their own political profiles (they accomplished that, just not in the way they planned) but came to be believers…that’s actually much worse than starting out as a believer.
No sane person believes the fate of the Republic was in any jeopardy during the January 6 demonstrations. The Capitol Police didn’t believe it when they opened the doors to the Capitol and let the unarmed protesters in.
There were only two fatalities on January 6; both were protesters. One was Ashli Babbitt, a USAF veteran who was executed in cold blood by a Capitol Hill police officer, Lt. Michael Byrd, even as SWAT officers were nearby. By nearby, I mean that when she fell to the floor, she fell at the feet of a Capitol Police SWAT officer.
The other was Roseanne Boyland, who collapsed in the scrum and was pepper sprayed and beaten with batons by police as she lay on the ground.
More likely than not, Luria will go down in flames (that figurative speech for you feds monitoring this site). She’s going to go down not because she is any more anti-American or corrupt than any other Democrat (by the way, when these clowns wave their military service around to rationalize the actions that they take to damage this nation, I just want to scream that Benedict Arnold was a veteran, too). She’s going down because she’s an idiot who credulously internalized whatever bullsh** her party leadership threw at her.