How Biden's Cold Indifference In Afghanistan Is Going To Play in Virginia
Short version? It is going to entirely depend on what Youngkin does over the next two weeks.
Allow me to try to avoid some of the more obvious pitfalls with regards to Biden’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from Afghanistan and offer a cool and dispassionate assessment of where we are, what this will mean in Virginia, and how it will impact McAuliffe moving forward.
First and foremost, despite the best efforts of Democratic PR firms, this is going to be a disaster that will define the Biden presidency. Call it the “Jimmy Carter variant” if you will — for many Northern Virginia defense contractors and those who know them, this is going to be one of those defining moments where friends, family, co-workers and colleagues are going to look backwards and say that something — anything — could have been done differently.
The talking point that Biden was merely continuing a Trump-era policy? Foolish at best, as former Secretary Mike Pompeo has been first and foremost (and forthright) that the Trump plan was to scale back incrementally, whereas the Biden plan almost immediately withdrew contractors and left the Afghani military (ANA) to their own devices.
Martin Amin Rhamani with the Afghanistan-US Democratic Peace and Prosperity Council writes in the page of The Bulwark — a publication not precisely known for its hostility to all things Biden:
When Western forces entered the country, it was a failed state, devoid of modernity and hope. But twenty years later there were so many bright spots. We were making progress for women and girls, in civil society, education, health care, culture, and in sports. We have tens of millions of young Afghans, raised in a democracy, building a future for themselves and their country, embodying the same ideals and dreams that America’s youth have. Afghanistan didn’t have the benefit of 250 years of a democratic political system to guide us—but we were on our way.
We knew that American shoulders could not support Afghanistan forever—but we also didn’t think our friends would leave us in the dead of night.
Second and perhaps more forcefully, no one in the Biden administration anticipated that the US withdrawal would have such catastrophic consequences. If fact, US State Department Secretary Blinken was adamant that we would not see a Friday-Monday collapse.
Yet that is precisely what happened in Afghanistan.
In short, no amount of backpedaling or public relations spin is going to rescue the narrative that Biden has effectively replicated the 1975 withdrawal from South Vietnam to a new generation of Americans in 2021.
What This Means For Virginia
POLITICO has already run some preliminary polling showing a 20-point freefall among Americans as to whether or not we should withdraw from Afghanistan. Only 25% of Americans believed that the withdrawal was “going well”:
Support for withdrawal remained at a partisan divide in the poll, with 69 percent of Democrats and 31 percent of Republicans supporting it. Still, just 38 percent of Democrats and 14 percent of Republicans reported that the withdrawal is going well.
When asked if the withdrawal would invite the likes of al Qaeda or some other terrorist group to return, support plummeted even further, with 35% saying we should withdraw while 48% arguing we should remain.
Only 38% of Americans say we should withdraw even if it means surrendering the country to the Taliban.
If the 20-point freefall over the weekend is any indication of next steps, and one believes that the stories out of Afghanistan are only getting worse — roving death squads, journalists in hiding, and families trying to pack themselves on C-17s in Kabul — then the Biden administration is in deep, serious, and abiding trouble indeed. When even liberal writers such as Matt Taibbi and Glen Greenwald throw down the gauntlet, you know that things aren’t just bad — they are catastrophic.
In suburban Virginia, this only hurts McAuliffe. Having reached their theoretical maximum in 2017 and staring down a D+1 congressional generic ballot in July 2021, Virginia Democrats are no longer on their back foot — they are on their backsides.
One might ask the reasonable question as to why international issues impact statewide races. Fair enough — the answer is that Virginia is a Washington D.C. exurb where the national climate impacts the state climate in massive and direct ways.
Gone is the spell of a moderate, rational presidency trumpeting a “return to normalcy” — images of helicopters leaving the US Embassy in Kabul, of human beings falling off of C-17s… this is not normal.
This is a debacle.
In short, whatever change there is in the electorate after all this is said and done? The numbers shift will be permanent — or at least as permanent as it is going to get in politics barring some other event (i.e. a government shutdown in October).
Youngkin Has One Shot To Define The Race
In August 2001, former DPVA Chairman Mark Warner enjoyed a 5-point lead over Republican Attorney General Mark Earley employing a tried and true tactic of running hard in union-led coal country while running up the margins in Fairfax County. Warner event went so far as to lavish his wealth on a race car — actually a race truck — with his name on it to show folks in Southwest Virginia just how down-to-earth he was.
Warner made his money in telecommunications, of course. What gets lost in the hagiography is that he made his money navigating a telecommunications bill he helped write under Senator Chris Dodds (D-Connecticut) — a move that would be illegal today, but wasn’t illegal then.
I digress.
On September 11th, 2001 a group of 19 terrorists threw three planes into buildings in New York and Washington, bringing down the World Trade Center and one of the wings of the Pentagon.
For a brief moment, Earley and Warner tied up.
Then nothing.
Slowly over time, as the Earley campaign dithered in their good fortune, the Warner campaign reoriented itself, allowing the headlines regarding national security concerns and the shutdown of National Airport to pass by. Warner slowly re-established his own footing as the true outsider who knew how to revive and economy and get things done.
Warner restored his 5 point lead by October. The rest, they say, is history.
Just last Friday, The Hill released a poll showing McAuliffe up over Youngkin by two points — 47-45. Of course, it is easy to imagine the race as statistically tied, but being on the wrong side of the Margin of Error (MoE) means that the race is probably closer to where Youngkin is 2-6 points down and not one point up.
You see what I am driving at here?
McAuliffe’s Next Move
If McAuliffe’s intentions are to run in 2024 for the Democratic nod for president, then you can expect the positioning in the Biden camp to begin in earnest.
At some point, critics of Biden from within his own party will become audible and then undeniable as early positioning for moral leadership begins. Let’s face it — even in the Democratic Party, images of Saigon 2.0 aren’t exactly going to win the honorable middle.
So Youngkin has a rather odd opportunity here. A national one, if he so chooses.
The Republican Party of the next twenty years doesn’t have to define itself by what it is against, but rather by the values it is for. Those values have to have a figurehead — someone who can breathe life into a vision that speaks to the angels of our better nature.
Biden and McAuliffe come cut from the same cloth. They know what is best, and if it costs few thousand innocent lives so be it. The mammoth size of the American economy — at least for now — will provide for a multitude of moral sins. Deals will be made. Money will exchange hands. Scruples will be laughed at.
In short, Fast Terry McAuliffe is the epitome of everything we despise about the Washington cubicled elite — the very same blue checkmarks on Twitter who told us to shut up and sit down when they withdrew from Afghanistan, and the very same ones who told us to shut up and sit down as the Taliban began slaughtering our Afghani allies in Kandahar.
That the only defense of the blue checkmarks and so-called “experts” at present is more scolding is more than irksome... it's the condescension that motivated the Taliban, to be very honest about it.
The secret — perhaps — to the next 10 weeks lies in that example right there.
In Matters of Taste, Swim With The Current…
Here’s our bottom line.
Will the Biden withdrawal from Afghanistan move the polls? Undoubtedly… but for a time. Will it bring Biden’s approval ratings in Virginia down from 47%? Most likely, but bear in mind at least two events:
The Mississippi abortion case is about to be heard in October.
The US House is going to vote — and undoubtedly refuse to compromise with Senate Republicans — on the budget bill in October.
So here’s your game.
Youngkin is going to have a 5-6 week opportunity to hoover in as many individuals of goodwill who are willing to give Republicans a try in contrast to Democratic failures. Early voting starts on 17 September, so this is a golden moment for Youngkin if the sails are out.
And then SCOTUS comes on the horizon.
And then the budget comes on the horizon.
Here’s the kicker.
Can the Youngkin campaign (1) survive the SCOTUS hearings on overturning Roe v. Wade without alienating either pro-lifers or suburban voters, and (2) can the Youngkin campaign — after surviving this storm — deftly pivot into a messaging campaign that will put the blame on a government shutdown squarely on the shoulders of Biden and Pelosi?
That is going to entirely depend on how much Youngkin can run up the score in the next 5-6 weeks.
Caveat lector… but if Youngkin can swing around with a message that sounds more like Jack Kemp and less like Ted Cruz or Tom Cotton?
It’s a matter of taste. For principle’s sake.
Shaun Kenney is the editor of The Republican Standard, former chairman of the Board of Supervisors for Fluvanna County, and a former executive director of the Republican Party of Virginia.