Tom Perriello was the preferred candidate in the Democratic primary of the Bernie Bros, but he was crushed by Northam 55% to 44%. if Northam loses, I can’t see it reigniting the Sanders vs Clinton fight. It will be more of a message to stay the hell away from cultural issues, since Gillespie is running on a bring back the Confederacy platform. Should Gillespie win, bathroom battles and Black Lives Matter will be as irrelevant to the Democratic platform as the free coinage of silver.
I think Republican-leaning voters are doing in Virginia what they did nationally last year. They’re probably not that enthused by Gillespie but they seem to be ultimately coming back home to the party. It’s the progressive-leaning voters who can’t seem to decide whether they want to support an establishment Democrat.
On that note, I sometimes get the feeling (have had for a while) that Sanders voters want Democrats to lose just so that they can say “We told you so” and then justify cleaning out the entire party. They might have a point in saying that it’s high time the Democrats become more of a working class party again, but I’m just wondering if the Sanders wing of the party can actually build something. Tearing something down is easier than reconstructing it. I just wonder if they can build a movement without turning off people in the center who desperately want an alternative to the Republican fascists but aren’t necessarily going to buy into $15 or $20 / per hour minimum wages and breaking up Wall Street banks.
Moreover, the Democrats have held the advantage in statewide races the last few cycles, with Tim Kaine and Mark Warner as Senators, Obama and Clinton carrying 3 state presidential election cycles, and McCauliffe as governor. If Gillespie actually finds a way to reverse the Democrats at a time when Trump is at historic lows in terms of presidential approval, it could very well signal the beginning of the end of the Democratic party as we know it. And I’m not convinced that all progressives necessarily seem to care, either. I get the feeling Sanders’ contingent believes that this would be a good thing. They would be wrong, of course, but it wouldn’t be the first time.
I’m not sure I’m following the reasoning in this thread: what’s more likely to lead to Democrats running to the right on guns and immigration and who-knows-what else: a colossal loss in Virginia this week, or a colossal win?
Nobody brought this up yet?
The Latino Victory Fund put out an ad against Gillespie which featured a bunch of minority kids running away from a black pickup truck with a confederate flag and a Gillespie bumper sticker. Followed by the reveal that it was a dream sequence nightmare from those kids, cutting to TV coverage of the Charlottesville march, and asking if this was the future we saw for Virginia.
This ad… did not go over well. Like, it was bad enough before the New York attack (at which point it was pulled, two days after it started running), and at this point it’s basically a gigantic own goal. Not a great look. Conflating “generic conservative who likes the battle flag in virginia” with “neo-nazi” is not going to work. At least not outside of the base that would never vote for Gillespie anyways.
Not in this thread , but a few days ago in a different thread.
The lesson of this race, win or lose, is that Democrats really need to figure out their immigration position.
“Ralph Northam wants police officers on the streets keeping you safe. Ed Gillespie wants them behind desks filling out paperwork for Donald Trump.”
But no, he decides to validate Democrats’ self-stereotype about their guys rolling over, crying, and flip-flopping whenever a Republican says something mean.
But, see, that sort of goes back to what I was just asking about: Northam, who earned an MD and spent years as an Army officer and years in the state legislature before he got elected lieutenant governor, clearly put plenty of thought into the situation before he decided it made sense to so change the script. So what should we say if he winds up winning this thing by a hair, after – in, apparently, his opinion – he took a step that apparently made him more appealing to the electorate?
(I mean, yeah, in that case we can always argue that we know better and he would’ve won by more if he’d stayed on-message – but, of course, if he loses, we can always argue that he would’ve lost by more if he’d stayed on-message. So what I’m asking is, is there any make-you-rethink-it “huh, guess that was the right move from a guy who knew what he was doing” outcome, in your view?)
Can you describe people’s impressions and any perceived effect from Mr. Gillespie’s ad that links Mr. Northam to MS13? Or the one that links Mr. Northam to a man convicted of possessing child pornography?
To be fair: I cannot.
Ah, too bad; I was hoping to learn more about how Virginians are viewing both candidates.
In your estimation, do people upset with Mr. Northam over the Latino Victory Fund ad know that he didn’t run it; that an outside advocacy group ran it? Is that just seen as inconsequential or is it not even acknowledged?
Do you think a large number of swing voters will turn to Mr. Gillespie because of the LVF ad?
On the day before the election, “both candidates claim momentum in Virginia governor’s race”, says the AP:
Meanwhile, Mr. Gillespie claimed he had the lead:
Fivethirtyeight’s Harry Enton has an excellent breakdown of the latest poll results. The analysis is very thorough; I recommend reading it if you’re interested in this race and in the 2018 midterms:
Mr. Enton’s conclusion:
The Democrats have been working on turning out the vote. We’ve had people coming to the door, people calling and people texting to make sure we get out and vote tomorrow. My Republican colleague who lives nearby says that he hasn’t had any contact him about getting out and voting.
Not sure how much this matters, but recall that in Gillespie’s race against Mark Warner, he outperformed his polling. By a lot.
The polls showed Warner with a really big lead. Warner ended up winning by less than 1%.
I can’t speak to VA specifically but my recollection is that state-level polling data was pretty crap in 2016, and it was a huge reason why so many pundits got the presidential race wrong. I wonder just how accurate statewide reporting is in VA. I suspect that a lot of non-white voters may be waiting to send the GOP a message, but I also wonder if Donna Brazile’s bombshell (which is actually a nothing burger in reality) will depress turnout among Dems. If the Dems lose this race then it’s the canary in the coal mine for their future prospects. This is a blue state for practical purposes and to lose it would be devastating for the Democratic party.
Not devastating so much as a rude shock, and would demonstrate how much power Trumpism has among white voters. Gillespie has played to those voters explicitly. And it’s not REALLY a blue state, so much as a purple state that Democrats have cracked the code on. Florida is also a purple state, yet Republican dominanted in recent years. In some states, one party is just better organized and has better candidates than the other party, despite being more competitive in Presidential elections. Democrats who win in Virginia statewide are definitely of the Blue Dog variety. And Republicans still feel free to run as ardent conservatives in that state. Although it hasn’t gone well for them.
Let’s call a spade a spade, we’re talking about RACISM, not T***pism. There are certain white Republican voters who respond very well to appeals to their racism. There is nothing more to it than that.
The reason I think it would be devastating for the DNC is that it might lead some to conclude that the party can’t win anymore and needs to be reformulated into something else. There are several important questions being debated by progressives in 2017. What does it mean to be a progressive? Does the Democratic party represent progressive causes? Can the Democratic party unite different shades of progressives? Increasingly, those on the far left want nothing to do with centrist Democrats and that concerns me because the coalition of voters is what is most likely to be successful in larger more diverse campaigns like statewide and national races. If the Democrats lose tonight in VA, I think there will be soul searching and the Bernie wing of the party is going to get louder. But with all due respect, I think they’ll be pushing the party in the wrong direction, the way that they did in 1972.
Here’s to hoping the Republicans conclude that “the party can’t win like this”, and needs to be reformulated into something non-Trumpian. 