Terry McAuliffe’s Other Obstacle in Virginia Race: Democrats’ Apathy

Terry McAuliffe doesn’t do subtext well.

So when Mr. McAuliffe appeared on “Morning Joe” on MSNBC this week, it wasn’t long before the Democrat let slip the biggest challenge he’s facing next month in his bid to reclaim Virginia’s governorship. “People got to understand, Joe, this is about turnout,” he told the show’s co-host, Joe Scarborough.

Mr. McAuliffe could be forgiven for effectively reading his stage directions out loud. While he is running against a self-funding, and hazily defined, Republican, polls and interviews show that Mr. McAuliffe is confronting an equally daunting obstacle: Democratic apathy.

With former President Donald Trump out of office, congressional Democrats in a bitter standoff and Virginia Democrats having claimed every political prize, Mr. McAuliffe is straining to motivate the liberal voters in his increasingly blue state.

At the moment — one that is being watched closely by both parties for clues about the elections next year — he is bumping up against a fatigued electorate.

Virginia has elections every year, because its state campaigns are in odd-numbered years while its federal elections are, as everywhere, in even years. But voters here are drained from the Trump administration’s round-the-clock drama, which they felt more acutely because of their proximity to Washington, where the local news is also national news.