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'17 Specials & '18 Midterms Thread

cville deac said:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entr...ia-governors-race_us_59fc9562e4b0415a420b7623

Don't disagree that Northam hasn't run a good campaign, and that he actually is a bland and boring stiff. He's a long career VA politico, and it was his time to run - Herring, our AG, would probably be the better candidate. That said, stories like the above aren't helping either. We don't exactly need left wing groups calling him a racist and causing intra party strife a few days before the election. I'm glad Howard Dean, the group's founder, condemned them.

The 1 thing I disagree with you, however, is that this race shouldn't be close. Last time around, McAuliffe beat a right wing lunatic by all of 2.5%, and would have lost badly to Bill Bolling, had VA Pubs had the sense to nominate him. In 2009, McDonnell (the Pub nominee) beat Creigh Deeds by 15%. In 2005, a fairly popular Tim Kaine beat a SW VA yahoo by 5%. VA is still a fairly conservative state, and true progressives tend not to do well outside of NoVa, Richmond, Portsmouth and Cville. Our state senate is Pub by a couple of seats, and the house of delagates is heavily Pub. Pubs outnumber Dems in the house 7 to 4. And Gillispie almost took down Mark Warner in 2014, losing by less than 1%. Northam would have trounced Corey Stewart. But this race was destined to be pretty close. VA has leaned Dem in recent national elections (I believe because the Pub party has become so right wing), but it's somewhat mostly Pub otherwise. We're not Alabama by any means, but we're also a far cry from Maryland despite its proximity to Virginia.
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I get what you're saying, and certainly Virginia is more of a purple than blue state, with large areas of rural Deep South red. What I meant by "the race shouldn't be close" is that Gillespie is himself a creature of the DC Establishment - he is the swamp, yet Northam has basically allowed Gillespie to set the terms of the race, and to run as a populist outsider rather than the GOP insider that he really is. Northam may never have won by a wide margin, but I'm just not so sure that the race would be as close as it is if Northam had run a better campaign and not allowed Gillespie to define himself as a populist outsider standing up the "librul establishment elite." Whether Northam wins or loses, the Dems really need to get their act together and start finding, and running, better candidates. I sometimes get the impression that the Dem Establishment still thinks its the 1990s - Bush II, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, the Tea Party, and now Trump & right-wing social media have all changed the game - and veteran Democratic pols like Northam don't seem to realize it, or at least they certainly don't seem to know how to deal with it. Just my take.
 
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Highland Deac said:
Democrats need to prepare for these type of ads and attacks, and they're not. IMO, Northam has run a terrible campaign - today one of the morning news shows compared his campaign to Hillary's last year - especially in how tone-deaf his campaign has been to rural Virginians. The Confederate memorial ad backfired terribly, and he's run as a bland, boring stiff with no common touch - this in an era where Populism is all the rage and being portrayed as part of the "establishment" is a political kiss of death. He should have tied Gillespie closer to Trump, but he's not, and instead, as a panelist noted, his campaign doesn't really seem to stand for anything, other than electing him governor. No doubt Gillespie's attacks are absurd, but they've been effective at firing up his base, and Northam seems to have no real response. Andrew Sullivan has a good article about the Virginia campaign and Northam's failures as a candidate. Northam might well still win (Hillary did win Virginia), but this is yet another race that shouldn't be this close, and yet it is. Sullivan's article is here: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/11/how-the-democrats-are-failing-the-resistance.html.
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Republicans have been giving themselves an advantage for years. I lived in fairly red states for many years, and I used to assume that that was the reason that Republicans would run ads tying their opponents to any nationally despised democrat, with the implication being that even working with this person was a negative. (Ex: Inez Tenenbaum, Demint's opponent in 2004, "works with democrats like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry". My personal favorite was the Georgia candidate who imitated Obama's voice over the phone, praising his opponent). Maybe its different in deep blue states, but I never noticed Dems doing anything similar with W, for instance. Virginia, which is not deep red, still seems to be the same-Gillespie is tying Northam to Mike Bloomberg*, which Northam is leading ads with "If Trump is good for Virignia, I'll work with him." Republicans have dictated the tone for years.

*I assume this is at least in part to excite the anti-semites of VA? I didn't know Bloomberg carried the universal loathing of Pelosi or Hillary.
 
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Highland Deac said:
I get what you're saying, and certainly Virginia is more of a purple than blue state, with large areas of rural Deep South red. What I meant by "the race shouldn't be close" is that Gillespie is himself a creature of the DC Establishment - he is the swamp, yet Northam has basically allowed Gillespie to set the terms of the race, and to run as a populist outsider rather than the GOP insider that he really is. Northam may never have won by a wide margin, but I'm just not so sure that the race would be as close as it is if Northam had run a better campaign and not allowed Gillespie to define himself as a populist outsider standing up the "librul establishment elite." Whether Northam wins or loses, the Dems really need to get their act together and start finding, and running, better candidates. I sometimes get the impression that the Dem Establishment still thinks its the 1990s - Bush II, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, the Tea Party, and now Trump & right-wing social media have all changed the game - and veteran Democratic pols like Northam don't seem to realize it, or at least they certainly don't seem to know how to deal with it. Just my take.
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The Dem bench in VA is thin. Basically, it's Kaine and Warner, who will hopefully continue keeping their seats. Our last 3 candidates for governor have been fairly weak. Deeds wasn't well known or funded but had beaten McAuliffe in the Dem primary (McAuliffe was thought of as a carpet bagger, which he in fact was), and he got routed by McDonnell. McAuliffe was well funded but not well respected, and as I said, he would have been trounced by Bolling. But fortunately, the Pubs ran Cuccinelli and EW Jackson, who were both complete religious freaks (Jackson had been quoted as saying yoga led to devil worship). And as you've noted, Northam is as exciting as toast. Now, one other thing I'll say about VA is it's not that prone to populism on the left or right - Rubio trounced Trump, and Hillary trounced Bernie here. So even though Gillispie and Northam are both as establishment as you can get, neither will be hurt by that. The Pub party here does have a strong Religious Right leaning due to Lynchburg (Falwell) and VA Beach (Robertson), but that has come back to bite them. And I believe part of the reason populism doesn't fare well here is it's a fairly well educated state outside of the rural areas. And the rural areas aren't much different from North Carolina. The main reason we've gone from red to purple is because the yuge growth in NoVa over the last couple of decades. Most of the rest of the state is red, and you can't reasonably expect Northam or any other Dem to do well there.
 
cville deac said:
The Dem bench in VA is thin. Basically, it's Kaine and Warner, who will hopefully continue keeping their seats. Our last 3 candidates for governor have been fairly weak. Deeds wasn't well known or funded but had beaten McAuliffe in the Dem primary (McAuliffe was thought of as a carpet bagger, which he in fact was), and he got routed by McDonnell. McAuliffe was well funded but not well respected, and as I said, he would have been trounced by Bolling. But fortunately, the Pubs ran Cuccinelli and EW Jackson, who were both complete religious freaks (Jackson had been quoted as saying yoga led to devil worship). And as you've noted, Northam is as exciting as toast. Now, one other thing I'll say about VA is it's not that prone to populism on the left or right - Rubio trounced Trump, and Hillary trounced Bernie here. So even though Gillispie and Northam are both as establishment as you can get, neither will be hurt by that. The Pub party here does have a strong Religious Right leaning due to Lynchburg (Falwell) and VA Beach (Robertson), but that has come back to bite them. And I believe part of the reason populism doesn't fare well here is it's a fairly well educated state outside of the rural areas. And the rural areas aren't much different from North Carolina. The main reason we've gone from red to purple is because the yuge growth in NoVa over the last couple of decades. Most of the rest of the state is red, and you can't reasonably expect Northam or any other Dem to do well there.
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North Carolina is gradually moving in Virginia's direction - urban areas like Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham steadily make up a larger and larger percentage of the state's population and statewide voting, while many of the rural counties are either stagnant or losing population. Eventually the 10 or so most urban counties will simply be able to outvote the rest of the state. They're already close - Hillary only lost NC by about 3.5%, while Tillis beat Hagan by less than two percentage points in 2014, in what was a very good GOP year. As long as the urban areas keep growing as they have been, while the rural areas continue to struggle economically, there will eventually be a shift, as the GOP strength is now almost entirely in the rural, small-town areas while the Democrats are winning by large majorities in Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, and other urban areas.
 
The pundit I was listening to today said anything less than a 3 point win for Northam would encourage Pubs to run a Trump style campaign. With that logic, we all benefit from a Northam win.
 
 
 
NJ called for Murphy.
 
Wakeforest22890 said:
Democratic socialist is gonna beat the House Whip
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The Democratic Party establishment is aligned with Dominion Energy, a regulated monopoly, and supportive of Dominion’s desire to build the Atlantic Coast natural gas pipeline across Virginia. Like their GOP counterparts, the Democrats are recipients of the cash Virginia’s top corporate political contributor pumps into the system, and the Democratic Party of Virginia received $125,000 in 2016, according to the Virginia Public Access Project.

Carter opposes its plan for a natural gas pipeline and opposed its plan for a high-voltage transmission line that was to go through residential neighborhoods in Prince William County; the plan has stalled under local resistance. Environmentalists oppose the pipeline plan, with some questioning whether Atlantic Coast is necessary for Virginia’s power needs.

“I’m to the left of them on economic policy,” Carter said of his party. “I am unabashedly pro-union, pro-worker. I’m openly fighting against the large corporate interests. That’s something that you don’t see a lot of politicians in either party do very much of, and that’s something that Virginia frankly has not seen very much of since the days of Henry Howell.”
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Trump threw Gillespie under the bus in a tweet.
 
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