Programming note: Today, Wednesday, I'll be back with Colin Brazier on GB News live at 8pm Greenwich Mean Time - that's 4pm North American Eastern/1pm Pacific.
UPDATE! If you missed it, Colin's show is re-run at 4am Greenwich Mean Time, which is midnight Wednesday on the North American East Coast, 9pm on the West. You can watch from anywhere on the planet by clicking the livestream below:
~As of dawn, the Republican candidate appears to have survived the night. Clinton bagman Terry McAuliffe, a near parodic example of the awfulness of the political class, has not yet conceded and is sticking to his demand to "count every vote" (if necessary, after "re-scanning" them), but the media have called the Virginia gubernatorial race for Glenn Youngkin, and that would appear to be that.
Combine that with New Jersey, where the incumbent Dem is neck-and-neck with an opponent he despises and whom the polls gave no chance, and even us the-glass-is-one-sixteenth-full types have to account it a good-ish night for Republicans.
~That said, I'm already weary of the usual clichés. This was a droll response from Tucker:
Salena Zito: This election is more of an insider-outsider election than a liberal-conservative one. And in an insider-outsider election, the party in power tends to lose.
Tucker Carlson: Yeah, especially when the party in power is destroying the country.
Is Glenn Youngkin an "outsider"? He was co-CEO of the Carlyle Group, the world's largest private-equity firm and a very byword for the ultimate insiders, even if one discounts the conspiracy theories that attach to, say, their 2001 investor conference, held on September 11th that year with "guest of honor" Shafiq bin Laden. That's the sort of awkward booking that could happen to any organization. Pace Ms Zito, Mr Youngkin is a very wealthy insider whom real outsiders - the victims of America's "education" unions - handed a genuine issue.
To his credit, Youngkin didn't fumble the pass. We shall see how he governs.
~Dan Bongino exults of last night:
THE REVOLUTION HAS BEGUN! Cry more, libs.
I am not averse to revolution, and indeed Covid Without End has changed the cost-benefit analysis. But the "expert" opinion on Virginia has coalesced in nothing flat around less lively interpretations of last night: Youngkin was able to hold the Trump base while adding "suburban women"; seventeen per cent of the new Governor's voters are Virginians who "disapprove" of the forty-fifth president. So the Youngkin triumph will be used by the Republican establishment to advance the narrative that successful post-Trump candidates will be fellows of moderate temperament who don't frighten the horses, etc.
~Are "libs" really crying? Last night Joe Biden, Air Force One, the decoy Air Force One and the transports carrying the eighty-five car motorcade returned to US soil. Those few presidents and prime ministers who were permitted even perfunctory face time with "the leader of the free world" report that he was pretty much out of it, in private. In public, he fell asleep and stumbled through the same teleprompter passage twice without noticing the repetition. At the G20, he was barely in the group photo, out at the far left end next to the bloke from the Congo - whether the French Congo or Belgian Congo I know not, and doubtless neither did Joe.
He attended the Glasgow climate-change summit with what even for an American entourage was risible excess. Driving him from his hotel to the conference, Biden's motorcade had to stop at a petrol station to gas up the limo while Joe slumbered in the back trying to decide which prompter paragraph to mumble multiple times. Apparently none of the chaps in the other eighty-four cars had thought to run "the Beast" down to the local BP or Shell the night before.
To take a man overseas to sleep in public during a climate-change snoozefest required an entourage that generated 2.16 million pounds of carbon over five days.
Yet half the country takes this rubbish seriously - which is why the Virginia and New Jersey elections are squeakers. In a healthy society, anyone running against a "consensus" as decadent as that on display in the Biden climate motorcade would win eighty per cent of the vote.
~Or - just a thought - maybe squeakers are the best you can do when you're a party that doesn't argue its corner but just sits around waiting for Democrats to screw things up sufficiently for the other guys to benefit by default.
~As to real outsiders with sufficient money to enter American politics, Donald J Trump can tell you how that goes. The Deep State has outlasted Trump, and is still going about its filthy business. Kyle Rittenhouse is looking at life in prison for defending himself during just another breakdown of law and order in just another American city. Enter the dirty stinking rotten corrupt Federal Bureau of Investigation:
FBI Spy Video Shows Kyle Rittenhouse Being Chased Down at Kenosha Riot...Which Explains Why You've Never Seen It
No, indeed. They sat on it for over a year, until Mr Rittenhouse's lawyers, on the eve of trial, learned of its existence. What is it the pom-pom girls of American conservatism say? "Oh, it's just a few bad apples at the top..." If you define "the top" as everything from flying Peter Strzok to debrief Alexander Downer in London to faking up a plot to kidnap a Democrat governor to planting G-men in deep cover in MAGA groups on January 6th to dispatching a crack team of agents to investigate a Nascar garage-door opener to surveiling school-board attendees.
The money-no-object federal authorities have the resources to fly fixed-wing aircraft over the lawless crapholes recording the chaos and disintegration on the ground, like Nato occupiers monitoring upcountry villages in Helmand. And for what purpose do they use this awesome power?
To screw over some teenager whose politics don't fit their narrative.
The FBI is irredeemably corrupt. Disband it and replace it with an agency of far fewer powers. That's the conservative position, if not yet the pom-pom girls'.
~From last night:
ELECTION NIGHT MIDNIGHT UPDATE! As Sal Tessio writes in our comment section:
As of 10.30pm Eastern it's looking good for Youngkin in Virginia and the Dems are even sweating the governor's race in my state of New Jersey...
Ah, but it often looks good for the Republican at 10.30. Ninety minutes later in Virginia, as is traditional in American elections, the Republican lead is narrowing - and the Democrat is talking about "counting every vote", some of which apparently need to be "re-scanned", so it could be some time.
But, as things stand, it looks like McAuliffe will have some difficulty coming up with enough votes for his chums to "count", and Murphy in New Jersey will have his work cut out. I recall a Trump line from a few weeks before Election Day 2020: "Suburban women, please like me." In Virginia, they seem to like Youngkin in large numbers.
I also recall Obama's more recent line about "phony" culture wars. No, the culture-war stuff is real and, if you frame it right, persuades those Biden-voting "suburban women" among many others. It's the peripheral trivia cowed Republicans talk about most of the time that's phony.
We'll see if this holds up through the 3am ballot-box drop-offs.
~We opened The Mark Steyn Club well over four years ago, and I'm thrilled by all those SteynOnline aficionados across the globe - from Fargo to Fiji, Vancouver to Vanuatu, Surrey to the Solomon Islands - who've signed up to be a part of it. With exterior pleasures still canceled across much of the map (shows, pubs, sports, movies, restaurants) those in search of strictly in-home diversions can find more information about our Club here - and, if you've a pal who might be partial to this sort of thing, don't forget our special Gift Membership.
