Dems Still Don't Understand Why They Have Lost Ground In VA Gov Race

And they had better figure it out before the 2026 midterm

Adam Jentleson, former chief of staff to Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, tells the New York Times that the Democratic Party has lost its way by putting “too much emphasis on issues like climate change and L.G.B.T.Q. rights” while giving “far too much deference to the powerful liberal organizations championing those causes at the expense, some argue, of appealing to voters in battleground states.”

He says “the folks who are most to blame about Trump are the ones who pushed Democrats to take indefensible positions” that annoy voters. “Right now we’re pursuing every tactic imaginable except for the obvious one, which is taking positions that are more in line with the people we are trying to win over.” In particular, he says the ACLU “did more to contribute to Trump’s victory than many conservative groups.”

His think tank, the Searchlight Institute, is well-heeled but small. Using a “Shark Tank-style policy generation process”, they want “proposals from outside Washington with an aim of untethering mainstream Democratic thinking from the current ideological spectrum.” They might start by crossing the Potomac to find out what is happening on the ground in Virginia.

In the last three weeks, polls showed a tighter race than ever between Democrat Abigail Spanberger and Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears. Then Charlie Kirk was assassinated, potentially magnifying the culture war wedge that Earle-Sears has used against Spanberger. Virginia is a blue state, so the odds are stacked in Spanberger’s favor. To win, Earle-Sears must reach rural Virginians with a message about her opponent being an out-of-touch Beltway liberal. Can she pull it off?

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