CNN:

Democratic governors are facing a messaging conundrum: they say American democracy may hinge on their elections in 2022, but they’re not sure they can get most voters to care.

Attempts to meddle with the certification of the Electoral College count and the partisan takeovers of the voting infrastructure don’t seem to be front of mind for an electorate drained by nearly two years of pandemic living and a creeping sense of economic panic, and that worries a range of Democratic governors gearing up for campaigns who gathered in New Orleans this weekend for grim meetings about their 2022 electoral prospects.

They see former President Donald Trump cheerleading Republican efforts to twist state election laws in the GOP’s favor. They fear he’ll launch another presidential campaign in 2024 and that a bad Democratic year in 2022 could remove bulwarks of the democratic systems meant to ensure impartial vote counts — and results determined by those counts.

But the dozen Democratic governors who assembled for an annual policy workshop and donor conference definitely don’t want to be the next Terry McAuliffe, whose campaign for Virginia governor went down last month amid a fevered effort to make his GOP opponent out as the horseman of a Trump apocalypse.