Thos Politico piece starts off with Terry McAuliffe, who is running to return to the Virginia Governor’s office again….
But pivots to look back a other politicians doing what they do from time to like ALL humans….
Make mistakes*….
For some they cost an election….
For some?
They are just repeated and repeated in an effort to make them reality….
No matter how wrong they might be…
Speaking at a debate late last month, McAuliffe responded to the culture war seizing public education — a fight largely centered on racial matters — by saying, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Whether it’s a reasonable position or not, within a day, the campaign of McAuliffe’s opponent, Glenn Youngkin, launched a six-figure digital ad buy highlighting the comment. By mid-October, it had become the centerpiece of the Republican’s campaign….
…
Indeed, the Trumpists may have returned the “own goal” favor by staging a raucous rally this week with Steve Bannon and other election fraud conspiracy theorists, and featuring a flag flown at the Jan. 6th rally that preceded the storming of the Capitol. In case the memories weren’t raw enough, Trump himself phoned into the event, calling Youngkin “a great gentleman” before going on to rage about the election. (Youngkin distanced himself from the occasion and condemned the flying of the Jan. 6 flag as “weird and wrong,” though days earlier he had thanked the conservative radio host John Fredericks for hosting the rally.)
An election this close is ultimately determined by many things, but we may look back at either the comments or the rally as the pivotal moment when the race turned. It’s a reminder that the recurrence of political foot-in-mouth disease is one of the constants in our political life. Again and again, candidates — or their supporters — have managed to do their campaigns significant, sometimes fatal damage. Yet McAuliffe is also operating in a world none of them could have quite anticipated, where gaffes may not matter like they used to..
…
Of course, not every clumsy or foolish remark proves fatal to a campaign. Indeed, there’s one example of a political figure who has committed rhetorical “own goals” throughout his public life. Each time — from his sneering comment about a Vietnam war hero to his xenophobic slurs at foreigners to his misogynistic comments about his delight in assaulting women — those remarks have been confidently declared as the last straw, the final self-inflicted wound.
Not yet. Maybe not ever.
And if Trump really has rewritten the rules of campaigns, McAuliffe and future gaffe-prone, blundering, brain-frozen politicians may even owe him a small bit of gratitude…
Note*….
I can count on the regular’s here knocking me for what they think could be any mistake I may or may-not have made….