Democrats look for lessons in Virginia and New Jersey as a blame game inside the party rages
CNN
If there was a silver lining for Democrats' disastrous Tuesday night, it was learning a year ahead of time just how imperiled their hold on power really is.
Democrats suffered a demoralizing defeat in Virginia, losing all three top statewide offices in a commonwealth that President Joe Biden won by 10 percentage points a year earlier, and are just narrowly hanging on in reliably blue New Jersey, further highlighting the dour national mood aimed at the party. The issues raised by the dismal night were clear: The party had lost some ground in the suburbs and did nothing to stem Republican gains in rural enclaves; failed to recognize the potency of core Republican arguments or produce arguments to negate them; and misjudged the strength of anti-Donald Trump messaging a year removed from the former President's time in office.
What and who to blame for those mistakes, however, has proven more elusive.
The judge who oversaw Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial in New York on Friday informed the former president’s defense team and prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office that a comment was posted on the New York State Unified Court Systems’ public Facebook page last week by a poster who claimed to be a cousin of a juror, saying that Trump would be convicted.