Late night hosts debate why Democrats lost big on Tuesday, lean toward Terry McAuliffe's dancing

"Earlier today, President Biden returned to Washington, D.C., after a six-day trip to Europe — then he saw last night's election results and went right back to Europe," Jimmy Fallon joked on Wednesday's Tonight Show. "It was a tough night for Democrats, starting with their loss in the Virginia governor's race," and now "Republicans haven't been this excited since they realized that you can print fake vaccine cards off of Google Images."

Democrats "barely eked out a victory in the race for governor of New Jersey, and that state is more blue than an orgy of Smurfs," Trevor Noah said on The Daily Show. "But the bigger loss was in Virginia." He suggested Democrat Terry McAuliffe's dance moves may have tipped the gubernatorial race to Republican Glenn Youngkin: "You know what they say, 'Dance like nobody's voting for you.'"

Seriously, "why did Democrats do so badly in Virginia last night?" he said. "Well, it depends on who you ask." He ran through the likely factors.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

YouTube

Watch On

"A lot of factors go into every victory and every election, but I believe the deciding factor here was that Youngkin had the one quality that Virginia voters wanted most: not being Terry McAuliffe," Stephen Colbert said on The Late Show, also cringing at McAuliffe's dancing. "Maybe I'm alone, but I'm not that upset — I've already endured the worst election in American history" in 2016, he said. "This one just seems like another election. 'Oh, no, Terry McAuliffe didn't win? Will the Republic survive our post-Terry future?'"

Look, "people tend to vote more when they're upset with the person in power, and right now that person is Joe Biden," Colbert said. "Voting is like democracy's Yelp review. You never leave a comment when the soup was tasty, but if you bring me still water when I asked for sparkling, I will burn your bistro to the ground!"

YouTube

Watch On

"It's just a tough political environment for Democrats right now," Seth Meyers said on Late Night, and instead of "ludicrously blaming progressives" for Tuesday's losses, Beltway pundits should finger "the Manchins and Sinemas of the world" for dragging out passage of popular legislation "so it's longer and more painful than Terry McAuliffe dancing on stage." Seriously, he told McAuliffe, "I never thought I would say this, but have you thought about taking dancing lessons from Donald Trump?"

"Things aren't great, but they could definitely be worse," Jimmy Kimmel shrugged on Kimmel Live. In fact, on this one-year anniversary of the the 2020 election, "let's look back at the many times Donald Trump warned us of what would happen under a Biden presidency." And so he did.

YouTube

Watch On