#Terry McAuliffe’s free fall in Virginia a mess of his own making

Things are bad for President Biden these days, but he can take solace in one thing: At least he’s not Terry McAuliffe. 

The former governor of Virginia who is running to lead that commonwealth again is face-planting just days before the election. Even gravity can’t keep up with how fast he is falling in the polls to fleece-vested Republican Glenn Youngkin. But this debacle is much of McAuliffe’s own making. 

Recently, Stacy Abrams, the not-governor of Georgia, rolled in to campaign for McAuliffe, and he affirmed her ridiculous claims that her race for the Peach State’s highest office was stolen from her. It’s amazing. In the age of ”the big lie” about 2020, Democrats give credence to Abrams’ conspiracy theory about having her election stolen without even a blush at their hypocrisy. 

Then it was revealed that McAuliffe hired Marc Elias, the disgraced Hillary Clinton lawyer, even though Elias has been accused by special counsel John Durham of pushing the Russia “collusion” lie to the FBI. 

Elias’ specialty? Challenging election results. A move so embarrassing that McAuliffe sent an e-mail trying to “kill this story” — and sent it to the Fox News reporter by accident. 

Not exactly the A-team over there. 

Meanwhile McAuliffe seems to be running on a platform of disenfranchising parents from their children’s education. In a debate last month, he said that parents should not be involved in how their kids are taught. In the ensuing weeks his friends in the media have given him ample opportunity to walk it back, but he just keeps digging in. 

Now the former, and increasingly less likely to be next governor of Virginia, says that his opponent and parents who decry critical race theory in kindergarten are blowing racist dog whistles. The Fox News poll found that Youngkin’s 1-point edge on education has now jumped to 12. 

McAuliffe thinks Virginia has bought the Democrats’ entire left-leaning agenda. And they haven’t. 

One should always be careful about declaring a statewide election a bellwether for the nation, but that’s hard to avoid in a state that Biden won by 10 points — but that now seems ready to slam the door on Democrats and their ultra progressive agenda just one year later. 

McAuliffe could have run as a human being, not as a depository of Democratic Party dogma, but he made his choice. 

As the Biden agenda burns and Virginians wake up to lunacy in their schools, Terry’s got a problem. He’s now losing badly and there is no apparent way to fix it. 

These days, every swing state GOP House member is checking themselves out in the mirror wearing a Youngkin-style fleece vest, as the soft-spoken outsider seems to be the way. That remains to be seen. 

What is seen is that Terry McAulife’s campaign of right thinking social superiority is collapsing. It turns out Virginians know their own mind. They want some say in their kids’ schools. They want reasonable governance. They don’t want an all powerful and beneficent government. And if the polls are to be believed, they don’t want Terry McAuliffe.