If you want to have a top surrogate defending the Harris-Walz ticket, then former Virginia Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe isn’t your man. He’s not evil, but the governor didn’t have the best outing defending the record of the 2024 Democratic ticket. For starters, McAuliffe wasn’t going to be able to sell the talking points with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, who is also a close friend.
At times, McAuliffe was not on board with the party platform either. Hannity pressed him on the issue of abortion and how extreme the Democrats have become since Bill Clinton’s ‘safe, legal, and rare’ days. Democrats were never a fully pro-life party, though a substantial number of them had identified as such historically. Hannity highlighted how Democrats want abortion on-demand, taxpayer-funded, and up to the point of birth. McAuliffe said that’s not the true party position before lying about how Trump’s Supreme Court took that freedom away from women. Abortion hasn’t been criminalized in the United States. It’s still legal, always has been, but now states have more latitude regarding restrictions. That’s an entirely different debate. Hannity came out in favor of a 15-week ban, which McAuliffe seems to think was a more reasonable position than a six-week ban.
Former VA Governor Terry McAuliffe went on Hannity tonight to defend the Harris-Walz agenda.
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) August 21, 2024
It did NOT go well. pic.twitter.com/efYzh56Fkq
On Tim Walz’s weirdo record on tampons in boys’ bathrooms and transgender health care, McAuliffe tried to deflect by pointing to his record as a governor on taxes and prescription drugs, it didn’t work. When pressed on the issue regarding parental notification of certain procedures, McAuliffe conceded that parents should be notified. Hannity wondered how he could support a ticket that endorses this policy.
“Sean, everyone is different, okay” replied an exasperated McAuliffe, before pivoting to the “mosaic” of the American electorate to move away from the extremism of the Harris-Walz ticket.
On Kamala avoiding the press, McAuliffe sold the line about her doing multiple public events, before also conceding that the vice president should do a sit-down interview. On the matter of Medicare-for-All and nuking the legislative filibuster to enact it, McAuliffe, who says he’s pro-capitalist, could only say that she would manage a great economy.
McAuliffe is a Democrat who might not be considered one of the elite starters of the Democratic Party, but he can play. In the NFL, there are many quarterbacks who may not be starters, but they’re good enough to have long prolific, and at times, impactful careers. That’s McAuliffe, and he struggled trying to spin the lengthy far-left antics of Kamala Harris. The point is no one can spin this because her positions are set in stone. It’s why YouGov scrubbed their page on her, along with various media outlets tweaking their past stories about her unofficial ‘border czar’ appointment.
I’m sure Democrats don’t want Terry doing anymore interviews if he concedes that key parts of their agenda are wrong to a Fox News host. Yet, it also shows that a) they’re indefensible, and b) Trump should have no problem turning Harris inside out when the debate comes next month.