Funny - I’ve got a long list of his accomplishments. But since the standard right-wing talking point is that he’s accomplished nothing, I guess we have to discount all those.
But I tell you what: you keep crowing about how your guys nearly won and how the other guys nearly lost, if it makes you feel better.
So, how long before we’re allowed to talk about anything other than the ACA? Because, y’know, this is a big country, and other things inevitably come up. The Democrats’ solution, of course, is to talk about more than one thing at once, but I realize that may be too complicated for Republicans.
We have been for years. Sayeth the expert:
And, about 2012:
Ever heard the truism “You can’t beat somebody with nobody”? Name your plausible Dem candidates, and your plausible GOP candidates, and tell us who beats who in your world, please (so we can bet on the opposite result in ours 
).
For the purposes of this thread, it is unfortunate for the GOP that Cooch and the VA Attorney General candidate lost close elections. If they had won, the GOP would have learned that Tea Party candidates can win, and they should continue in that direction. Had they lost in a wide margin, the GOP would have learned that they have gone too far with the Tea Party stuff, and to win they should dial it back. Instead, both the Tea Party and the Mainstream GOP wings have supportable arguments, and the internal party fight goes on.
That’s not original with me, I saw the above analysis in a WashPost column.
But such analysis does not go far enough. Cooch should have won big in VA. Instead he was on the ropes the whole campaign. That wasn’t just the unexpected corruption scandal around then Governor McDonnell, Cuccinelli was an extremist and could not escape the image he spent his career building. A last minute financial push from backers (who had mostly fled him) and last minute relaxation by the McAulliffe campaign, made the race close. Had the election’s outcome been in doubt, the McAulliffe campaign would have put more effort at the end. McAullife almost lost there! That’s the same McAulliffe who should have been toast from the get go - the smarmy, carpetbagger, insider, Clintonista, party hack with failed businesses and minimal connection to state politics.
Since “Crazy Ken” was far behind for most of the campaign, and the Lt. Gov candidate was a wingnut’s wingnut, GOP donors put all their support in the the AG campaign. They almost won there - even though Obenshain’s positions are as Tea Party as one can get. Despite all that effort, Obenshain is still a state Senator, and the Dem is the new Attorney General.
The Democrats swept the top 3 state offices in Virginia, for the first time in years - maybe decades. The Democratic candidate won one of the 2 special elections for the newly open State Senate seats, and perhaps the other seat as well - it’s very close and in a recount. The GOP lost the governorship, and they may also have lost functional control of both houses of the VA legislate. Narrow losses, but important ones.
Has the VA GOP learned their lesson? If they have a single candidate for the upcoming US Senate race against incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Warner, or a primary, then yes. If they have a caucus (which is how they chose Kookinelli and the Lt. Gov. Batshit candidate), then no.
As I’ve said before, you Democrats are over-optimistic if you think electoral victories for Demos are almost certain. Only once since Truman has a party kept the White House for more than 8 years: that was Bush the Daddy running on the coattails of phenomenally popular Reagan. The GOP came close in 2008 despite the jokish Palin, and in 2012 despite the non-charismatic Romney. In 2016 we’ll still have economic malaise and shrill political lies. GOP perfidy will be ignored; note that their drive to sabotage U.S. credit rating was forgotten as soon as they invented Website-Glitchgate.
It seems striking to me how shallow the field for Presidential candidates is. After Hillary (whom some people don’t like :rolleyes: ) the Demos have almost no one. If Christie is out of the picture, Jeb Bush seems to be the only sane GOP choice. That seems astounding! Whatever his qualifications might be, why would Americans want the brother of the most incompetent President ever?
Good luck to all of you, Red and Blue alike! I’m afraid you’ll need it.
I disagree that either the 2008 or 2012 elections were close, specially 2008.
I’m not sure what definition of “sane” you’re using, but Paul Ryan and any number of vaguely recognizable governors are plausible candidates.
I think it’s important to keep in mind (a) that the Teahadist wing is going to keep doing what it’s doing, regardless of election results, as long as the GOP still has some power. (And right now, they’ve still got lots.) And (b) that the intraparty division is largely about tactics rather than goals.
I don’t see why. Other than Bob McDonnell v. Creigh Deeds in 2009, where the GOP managed to find its most presentable candidate in some time, and the Dems put up a candidate that was arguably weaker than McAuliffe, the Dems have been winning at the statewide level in Virginia ever since 2006. So given that the GOP put up a bunch of extremists on the ticket, why should they have done better rather than worse than the recent track record?
I think that’s an exaggeration. Through the end of September, polls that showed Cooch behind by more than 5% were the exception.
I am barely more fond of McAuliffe than you are, but I don’t see it. I expect that if he’d gotten the nomination in 2009, he would have lost narrowly to McDonnell. I can’t see why he should have been toast in 2013.
See above.
We’ll see. But if they clear the field for Ed Gillespie, they’ve learned the wrong lesson. Gillespie is about as close to a GOP version of McAuliffe as you could find - corporate-friendly Washington insider with minimal connection to Virginia - but one takeaway from 2013 should be that McAuliffe won despite those traits rather than because of them. Another should be that he was able to win despite that handicap, so why should they expect a Republican with the same handicaps to win?
Not that it matters. Is there a more popular statewide politician in Virginia than Mark Warner? I can’t think of one. Whoever runs against him is toast.
And he didn’t mention that little dustup in 2000, where not only was the result close, the Dem candidate won the popular vote.
Depending on what you think happened in Florida and Ohio, the Republican nominee has not won a Presidential election since 1988. That streak is easy to extrapolate.
The critical point for understanding is that 2010 doesn’t predict 2014 either.
2010 was an anomaly. Please look up the word, since you refuse to understand it. The conservative wing of the party did a fantastically effective job of turning out voters. Some estimates said that they voted in larger percentages than in the 2008 presidential election, which if true is absolutely unprecedented.
Can that and will that happen again? You are required to believe it can and will if you think that 2010 is a predictor. I think it’s unlikely. The Tea Party had momentum and publicity, a large number of wealthy backers, and the incomprehension of its foes, both Democrats and mainstream Republicans. Two of those are gone. The Tea Party has been getting less publicity and more criticism. And neither the Democrats and the establishment Republicans will be taken by surprise again, already raising huge amounts of money in opposition.
Local elections are not national elections, and I expect the Republicans to do comparatively well in 2014. That means keeping the House and picking up some Senate seats. Taking control of the Senate is iffy. They have to flip six of the seven riskiest Democrat seats without losing a single one of their own. Compare that to Romney’s need to win nine Democratic states without losing any in 2012. I gave that a flat 0% chance. The Senate odds are better but not even as high as 50-50.
If you want us to take you seriously get some new arguments, rather than trotting out all the losers from the past.
Did I say take you seriously? Were you alive in 2000 and 2001? Winning is its own mandate and Bush is conclusive proof that even you can’t brush aside.
Agreed.
The ‘third-term jinx,’ I know, I know.
It’s a bullshit jinx. Starting with Ike (I suppose we could include Roosevelt/Truman, but they kill the ‘jinx’ right away by being 3-1 in 3rd/4th/5th/6th term elections), the GOP as the 2+ term party is 1-4 (losses in 1960, 1976, 1992, and 2008; a win in 1988), but the Dems are 1-1 (loss in 1968, win in 2000*) in two dead heats.
2016 just is what it is. Recent history (2000-present) and current demographic and voting trends will have a lot more to do with how the 2016 table is set than 1960, 1968, 1976, and 1992 taken together.
*If you’re gonna go for patterns, you’ve got to go with the popular vote, since the distribution of electoral votes changes every 10 years.
I’m not sure they need to learn any lessons. They’re heavily favored to hold the House of Representatives, which they’ve been using quite successfully to move policy increasingly in their preferred direction over the past three years.
And they’ve been doing far too well in state legislatures and gubernatorial races, which has enabled them to block the Medicaid expansion in roughly half the states, to reduce to a relative handful the number of states with state-level insurance exchanges, to restrict abortion more in the past two years than in the previous two decades, etc.
I think it’s clear that the Dems are the party that really needs to learn some lessons.
First lesson they need to learn: to stop being a pack of scared rabbits, and take an occasional stand on behalf of the bottom 80%.
The 2000 election didn’t give Bush a mandate. 9/11 did. well, that, and Democrats puss out when Republicans are in the White House. Republicans have much more spine in the minority, which would come back to bite them someday, you know, if Obama ever becomes popular enough that crossing him has a price.
Bush governed as if he had an immediate mandate, every single day of 2011 before September 11. There were endless calls for him to embrace bipartisanship because he had lost the popular vote and was considered an illegitimate president. In what we call reality, he laughed.
Hey, that’s not entirely true!
The Dems puss out when either party is in the White House, dammit. :rolleyes:
Other than that, I can’t find a thing there to argue with. 
Just to clarify, the :rolleyes: is at the Dems, not adaher.
Other than his tax cut, it didn’t do him any good before 9/11. Absent those attacks, I’m still convinced he’d have been the GOP’s Jimmy Carter, i.e. largely ineffectual.
Carter didn’t have a small cabal of people in the White House intent on manipulating him for their own ends, and able to do so, though. If anything, Carter’s criticism was mainly for micro-managing, not obliviousness. If not for 9/11, Cheney & Co. would have found something else soon enough.
You’re confusing what Bush did with what the Democrats could have done to stop him. They could easily have defeated his tax cuts, but folded.
Presidents that won big victories got to do big things: FDR, LBJ, Reagan. Presidents that won little victories did not. And even in the case of those three political giants, they had to maintain public approval to be successful.
A President who is underwater has no clout. A popular President can make the opposition fear to cross him lest voters retaliate in the next election.