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Official 2013 Election Day Thread

Tea Party was the only clear loser yesterday:

-Had they not forced the government shutdown a flawed Cooch would have beaten McAullife
-Even with a government shutdown Bolling would have won, but the Tea Party forced a convention rather than a primary
-Palin campaigned for Booker's opponent in NJ and he still lost by double-digits. Christie had nothing to do with the wingnuts and won by more than 20 in the same state
-Holy roller birther candidate was beaten by a rational pro-business 'Pub in a House primary in one of the most conservative districts in Alabama in an off year low turnout special election.

Tea Party will claim Cooch would have won if he campaigned with Palin and enbraced Cruz during their joint appearance. They'll also be bitter that the GOP turned off the VA money spigots 6 weeks ago. Their loopy fatwa is no longer against Dems, it's against GOP establishment.

Dems should be concerned that Cooch nearly won and that they didn't do anything to trash Christie during the election. They needed to spend a ton of money to barely beat an extremist in a state Obama won twice. Reice Priebus could never get elected statewide in Wisconsin, so I'm still surprised McAuliffe won.

Establishment GOP has to be stoked with wins by Christie and in Alabama, but they didn't get a clean KO in VA so they'll still have to deal with the Tea Party wingnuts who are even more pissed than usual. Christie refused to campaign for Cooch in a state he'll need in 2016.
 
Milhouse said:
that's because the libertarian platform is insane
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I used to label Libertarians as arrogant, outspoken republicans with a nasty chip on their shoulder who liked to get up on their soapbox way too often.

Then the Tea Party happened.
 
SkinsNDeacs said:
One more...

T Mac might be the first candidate that I can think of that won a state wide election that You can't find one person who has a good thing to say about him. He has to be the worst candidate to win a major election in my lifetime.
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You are correct about this, except the Clintons appear to like McAuliffe - so that's 2 people. I've yet to meet a fellow Dem here who likes the guy. I've lived in VA for 25+ years. Kookinelli is the worst candidate we've had in my lifetime for Gov here, barely edging out McAuliffe. McAuliffe is easily the worst Dem candidate we've ever had. Hell, he outspent a little known and poorly funded senator from the western part of the state in the 2009 primary and lost easily. And the only reason he was the Dem nominee this time around is the national party strong armed those mulling interest to stay out of the race. This is still a mostly conservative state, even more so when you get outside of NOVA. Joe Generic Pub would have won this race easily. The trouble is neither Kookinelli nor EW Jackson were anything close to being generic.

And TR is dead wrong and Helton is correct about Bolling. Bolling is similar to both Mark Warner and John Warner - 2 centrist and popular senators who have always won easily here. Bolling would have gotten a good bit of Dem crossover and would have trounced McAuliffe (as I said, most of my Dem friends and I would have voted Bolling). What happened here is the tea baggers and Christian Right control the Pub party in VA at a grass roots level and they over reached. The larger problem for VA Pubs, however, is that will not be the resounding message that everyone takes home from this. The tea baggers and Christian Right will point out that Kook only lost by 3 points and was outspent 4:1 (much like Creigh Deeds was outspent in 2009 because the Dem nationals didn't care for Creigh). They're gonna scream and yell that had the national Pubs spent more $$ they would have won. But what they're ignoring is that they lost to a historically awful Dem. Creigh Deeds or Tom Periello would have won by 7-10 points and spent a small fraction of what McAuliffe spent. The $$ wasn't the issue here. The issue is both parties were putting lipstick on 2 fugly pigs, and the Pub pig was mildly fuglier than the Dem pig. And I'm willing to bet that that underlying issue will be lost on the tea baggers and Christian Right.
 
SkinsNDeacs said:
2 post election thoughts.

Last night might be the beginning of the end of the Tea Party's dominance over the Republican Party.
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Not remotely, because as I said in my previous post, they're gonna blame it all on the lack of $$. Kook would have needed to have lost by double digits or close to it for the tea baggers to have taken a major hit. Christie winning easily in NJ will be the much bigger hit to the tea baggers than Kook losing a close 1 in VA.
 
The Tea Party isn't even remotely rational, so they'll offer up tortured rationalizations and continue to deny reality. There's no way that any conservatives stayed home in November 2012 because Mitt was too moderate. They'd already seen four years of Obama. Bachmann is the only 'Pub who could lose her gerrymandered district and GOP money backed the non-Tea Party guy in Alabama because they've been embarrassed enough. Jim DeMint's a complete moron, but the Tea Party is marching lockstep with his nutty dream of 33 purist Senators. Doesn't matter that they couldn't pass anything, effectively filibuster, or override a veto, but they'd be ideologically pure. They'll cling to the lack of funding for Cooch desperately and never forgive the establishment GOP. The only way they'll ever be stopped is if the GOP nominates somebody like Cruz or Palin in 2016 and they lose 40+ states.
 
It looks like the gender gap wasn’t as wide as expected for VA, 51% of women voted for McAuliffe and 42% for Cuccinelli. (7% for Sarvis.)

In NJ, meanwhile, 57% of women and 51% of Hispanics voted for Christie. (Perhaps skewed slightly by voters staying home because Christie was a slam dunk, Guessing the early election for Cory Booker helped there a bit?)

VA link
NJ link
 
cville deac said:
Not remotely, because as I said in my previous post, they're gonna blame it all on the lack of $$. Kook would have needed to have lost by double digits or close to it for the tea baggers to have taken a major hit. Christie winning easily in NJ will be the much bigger hit to the tea baggers than Kook losing a close 1 in VA.
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It fits their narrative that the party isn't unifying behind them like the Senate Republicans. They can point to moderate Republican money staying out of the race and people voting Libertarian to make a point instead of to defeat the liberal.
 
cville deac said:
Not remotely, because as I said in my previous post, they're gonna blame it all on the lack of $$. Kook would have needed to have lost by double digits or close to it for the tea baggers to have taken a major hit. Christie winning easily in NJ will be the much bigger hit to the tea baggers than Kook losing a close 1 in VA.
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I think AL was a FAR bigger blow to the Tea Party than VA.
 
Imagine if that money spent on primaries went toward job creation or feeding the poor.
 
We would still have high unemployment and a lot of hungry poor people.
 
SkinsNDeacs said:
We would still have high unemployment and a lot of hungry poor people.
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Had the House passed the bipartisan Senate (78-22) roads bill, over 1M people would have jobs today that don't. Our economy would be growing by about 1% more than it is.

This is a cut and dried issue.
 
RJKarl said:
Had the House passed the bipartisan Senate (78-22) roads bill, over 1M people would have jobs today that don't. Our economy would be growing by about 1% more than it is.

This is a cut and dried issue.
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:bowrofl:
 
Wakeforest22890 said:
Right but we would have more jobs and fewer hungry poor people right?
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I am not sure that is true. I haven't seen anything that shows throwing more money at those problems = desired outcome...certainly not $1 for $1. I guess it would depend on what job creation and feeding the poor programs your are going to funnel it through. If it is going through the federal bureaucracy color me skeptical it would make much of a dent.
 
If I throw $10 at the grocery store, I get food.

Private money goes to these elections, not federal government money.
 
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