How Trump Accidentally Handed Dems Their Big Win in Virginia

The “vote yes” campaign featured Trump in all of its closing ads in areas where it ran up huge numbers. Voters know who started this war.

On Monday night, just before Virginia voters approved a referendum Tuesday that will allow Democrats to draw up to four new House seats before the midterms, Donald Trump captured the true essence of this situation in a single sentence. “I don’t know if you know what gerrymandering is,” Trump told a conference call of Virginia supporters, “but it’s not good.”

Trump, of course, urged Texas Republicans last summer to gerrymander to help the GOP hold the House, then pressed other red states to follow suit. That prompted Democrats to retaliate in blue states. Trump initiated this arms race. So by declaring the Virginia initiative “not good,” he inadvertently confirmed the actual Trump-GOP position: Republicans should be permitted to rig elections to their maximum benefit, and Democrats should roll over and accept it.

It’s fitting that Trump laid this bare so clearly. Because as it turns out, Trump is perhaps the primary reason that the referendum passed.

In the “vote yes” campaign’s final days, 100 percent of the ads that aired in Northern Virginia markets heavily emphasized or featured very prominent imagery of Trump, a source familiar with ad buy information tells me. “Trump’s mug was all over the communications that voters were receiving, specifically among the lion’s share of the voters we needed,” the source says. “Trump’s name and face were plastered all over the mess he made.”

It was largely Northern Virginia that put the referendum—which passed by a narrow three points—over the top. The most heavily populated areas there—Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William, Arlington, Alexandria—all voted for........

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