Northam is “the guy who gave a million dollar check to a fake chinese company.”
As a historian, you always look for the first-person accounts as to what went wrong.
Of course, we here at The Republican Standard have been announcing that just about everything that can go wrong with a campaign is going wrong with the Northam campaign. This hasn’t exactly earned the praise of mainstream media outlets, some of whom purchase an inherent tilt to the left in an effort to drive a different narrative altogether.
So don’t let us convince you. Instead, let Richmond Democratic supporter Brendan Tilly convince you:
Paid television media isn’t everything though, and an effective field campaign tapping into energy on the left combined with positive earned media can overcome even the biggest media buys.
That’s not happening. In an admittedly unscientific survey of friends throughout the state — the only people who have been contacted are strong dem supporters living in strong dem neighborhoods such as Arlington and Alexandria.
In my Richmond neighborhood, which contains a relatively dense and walkable mix of swing, base and irregular voters. There is absolutely zero evidence of a Northam campaign beyond one neighbor who apparently drove to the campaign office downtown to pick up a yard sign. No phone calls, no canvassers, no mailings, no digital ads and very little earned media, much less net-positive earned media. Basically no Northam presence at all in a neighborhood that should be near the top of most Dem targeting operations.
Some of Tilly’s answers to the actual three-alarm fire that is enveloping the Northam candidacy are a bit much… firing the campaign staff at this rate would send the message that the building really is on fire and capsize what remains of the campaign.
Yet some of the other advice — campaign field staff that knows Virginia, building (or buying at this rate) a field operation — is more diagnosis than solution.
Of course, this is where it gets dicey:
Go to the line, perhaps flirt with crossing it… even if the attack is slightly unfair, similar to Gillespie’s China ad, put it out there and let Ed explain that he never actually held a tiki torch while praising Trump. Fire up the base. Raise hell and money. Steal adderall from an underpaid field staffer, chug some beers and go out on stage and yell that you’re not going to stand idly by while Virginia elects another Donald Trump.
For those of you who remember the mantra “Let Ken Be Ken” in 2013? The Northam campaign now finds itself in a rather odd admixture of Cuccinelli 2013’s errors and Deeds 2009’s inability to execute.
What’s more? Would Tom Perriello be having these issues at all? Probably not… which speaks to a latent division in the Democratic base that pollsters are simply going to keep missing.
Meanwhile, as Confederate statues (66%) and kneeling before the National Anthem (74%) continue to unify and rile up the Republican base, the forced errors coming from outside the Northam circle are only magnifying the problems within.
Tilly has earned his chops in Democratic circles. One really doesn’t want to say that the Democrats (and the media) just aren’t reading the tea leaves on this one for fear of being labeled “fake news” whenever one utters a contradictory opinion to the narrative… but as poll after poll after poll confirms the opposite, the so-called counter-narrative starts becoming something more ominous — reality.
