Virginia governor’s race
Everyone keeps saying this is a very meaningful race.
I’m not so sure. I consider Virginia a fairly—although not entirely—blue state. If Ralph Northam (D) wins, I don’t think it has much meaning. If Ed Gillepsie (R) wins, it has a bit more meaning because it would be a come-from-behind win. But I still don’t think it tells us much about what will happen a year from now in Senate and House on a nationwide basis.
A year is a long long time in politics.
UPDATE PM: It’s looking pretty bad for Gillespie.
If he loses (and I believe he will) the Democrats will talk incessantly about how significant it is for 2018.
I live in Northern Virginia and it is a blue state now. We will find out later tonight if the state legislature flips.
Larry Sabato has tweeted that his Crystal Ball will now show VA as blue, not purple.
Unofficially, the Republicans barely held the House of Delegates, 51-49, but there will be recounts in several races so that could change. One of the NoVa districts has voted in a transgender, replacing a longtime incumbent Republican.
The result in the governors race isn’t that surprising, given that the state went Democratic in the last three presidential elections and has two Democratic senators. Tonight’s victory gives them three of the last four governors.
Gillespie was an establishment Republican, unattractive to Trump voters, but the Trumper he defeated in the primary probably would have fared worse. Virginia is Blue and will be for many years to come.
When I came here in 1972 NoVa was represented by two Republican congressmen. Now even the counties further from DC (e.g., Loudon) are going Democrat. Fairfax, which used to be solidly Republican, is now trending dark Blue.
The change in NoVa is due to the relentless efforts of the DC media, led by the WP, and via the huge increase in Hispanics and other immigratnts since the 80s.
If diversity is what the democrats aim for why do 90% of immigrants from Mexico and othe American countries? The only way to achieve tru diversity is to have control of our borders, and diversifying the incoming immigrants by taking in qualifying people all over the world instead being forced to only accept immigrants concentrated from a handful of countries. But let’s be real, do democrats really give a darn about diversity? no. They are just offering criminals who entered the country illegally citizenship in exchange for their relatives with citizenship voting for the dems. Basically they are betraying the interest of the country to abet criminals in exchange for the criminals’ relatives votes for now and the illegals’ votes in the future after they become citizens with the help of the treasonous democrats. How is it different in nature from colluding with a foreign power to win an election and promise to sellout interest of country if elected in exchange? The democrats are clearly colluding with foreign power like Mexico and foreign illegal immigrants to steal our elections, why don’t we have special committees to investigate that?
Echoing/underscoring the assessments at the head of this comment thread, M J R sez yes: the statists who once confined themselves to the Maryland suburbs of Dee Cee have slowly but steadily moved into Ole Virginny — which will be blue for the foreseeable future. Cheers.
Democrats, fu*k you all for condemning trump of colluding with a foreign power when 1/3 of your true constituents ain’t even Americans
Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness;
Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter
Gillespie’s shellacking, and it is a shellacking, should be a wakeup call the Republicans in Congress to start doing what the campaigned and won by promising the last 4 elections. However, I predict they don’t believe the message- they will claim that Trump is bringing them down and they should sit back and do nothing at all going forward.
Why would people vote for the republicans if their messages are identical to the left? Other than guns tell me one thing the Ryan republicans support or oppose that is different than the democrats bc I want to hear it. They support Obamacare and against tax reform, so why don’t republicans just change their names to democrats 2.0
The Republican pols don’t seem to get it.
Conservatives have the superior policy proposals. Vastly!
They also have a conception of what government does and how government can best serve the people which is quintessentially American: Their principles are recognizably a continuation of the American experiment in liberty, whereas leftism is an abandonment of that experiment.
And, the Conservative base loves America, whereas leftists are unable to mention the word without unreflectively and indiscriminately disparaging the whole history of the country.
Those are the attributes of Conservatism in the American political spectrum. That’s a lot to be proud of!
Yet Republican pols seem to keep trying to hide it, as if they’re ashamed of it.
The logical move by Republican candidates is to campaign boldly, to wave the Conservative flag proudly, and to distance themselves from the corrupt culture of the elites.
But what did Gillespie do? He campaigned as a centrist. He did his best to sound half-hearted, like a defeatist or a sellout waiting-to-happen. His campaign literature talked about his and his wife’s long history inside the beltway as if that was a plus. He (perhaps I should say, his idiotic campaign manager) was so tone-deaf, that he didn’t realize how that would immediately raise suspicions of disloyalty in a GOP voter’s mind!
The proximity effect is real: You dislike your distant enemies (the leftists) but you really despise the traitors in your midst.
And when they aren’t yet a traitor, but they adamantly refuse to show signs of being emotionally committed to your side’s flag? Well, in that case, you don’t despise them yet, but you don’t trust them, and your fervor about supporting them is nonexistent.
No wonder Gillespie did worse than Ken Cuccinelli did.
we need to pit hispanics against hispanics, we need to fearmongering hispanics into hating the democrats that new coming latinos will come in to steal their jobs and dilute their salaries.
pit student against teachers, fearmongering the student into hating their liberal teachers by promoting this idea that the reason why they are so much into debt of student loan is because their liberal teachers stole all their money paying themselves high salaries and wasting their tuition into doing useless researches while teaching them nothing useful. why can’t conservatives fearmonger like liberals do, we need to win win win i don’t care what dirty tricks we use, principles are useless if upholding them make you lose.
During the nearly forty years that I lived in Virginia, it was easy to track the trends that led to yesterday. The outer DC suburban counties of Fairfax and Loudon took turns at leading the whole country in population growth. I haven’t seen statistics, but I am sure that Prince William County is growing at a comparable rate. Even my beloved Fauquier County was beginning to experience the sprawl. Those new residents for the most part had one thing in common, they were part of the federal government/beltway complex with a vested interest in big government. Throw in the radicalization of the college towns, and the traditional Black Democrat vote in Norfolk and Richmond, and the GOP faced overwhelming odds.
Virginia and California share some characteristics, in that large swaths of the state lean GOP, but are overwhelmed by the population centers. Of course, the country as a whole experiences a similar dynamic. We are becoming a country divided by differences in ideology and culture that are becoming ever more acute.
I fear that the divide between Trump and the party is going to bear bitter fruit. I think the onus is on Trump to mend some fences because he has the big megaphone. I am not sanguine.
Northern Virginia voted its pocketbook. No surprise there. The Federal government is far and away the major source of income up there, and that recession-proof payroll has major spill-over effects.
I lived in Northern Virginia for 17 years. Moved away, then moved back, but to rural Virginia (the “Northern Neck”) four years ago. Northern Virginia is not culturally a part of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Oldflyer:
Read my post above this one today.
The demographic changes have been going on for a long time, but the demographic changes in the last couple of years cannot possibly be large enough to account for the magnitude of the legislative flip between last election and this one, can they?
neo-neocon, 1:50 pm — “the demographic changes in the last couple of years cannot possibly be large enough to account for the magnitude of the legislative flip between last election and this one, can they?”
M J R sez they can.
Combine the snowballing demographic changes already alluded to, with
– Democrat eagerness to get back at Trump, fueled by a rage and hatred bordering on the pathological, and
– widespread Republican distaste for the GOPe (and Gillespie was definitely GOPe rather than Trumpkin),
and voila! you get a decisive Democrat victory in the 2017 gubernatorial plus down-ballot election.
Cheers.
Neo – as just a suggestion, even if the number of Democrats did not change enough in the last few years to overwhelm the Republicans:
if you were a conservative whose livelihood depended on a bureaucrat’s salary (or in jobs-businesses that service those who do), and the GOP administration not only promised to reduce government positions but demonstrably followed through, would you not let your own security overwhelm your conservative principles, so that you vote with the party you KNOW won’t endanger your income?
It’s safe to vote for Republicans when they aren’t going to rock your own boat — which is the same thing we’ve seen in the Congress-persons who voted for repealing the ACA when they knew it wouldn’t happen, but are now more reticent to take that step.
M J R:
But that’s my point. The demographic changes are NOT enough to explain it. The other two factors are a big part of it; we don’t know how big, but I suspect very big, which bodes ill for the 2018 elections nationwide.
The GOP had better produce results, and fast.
Dave Says:
November 8th, 2017 at 12:03 pm
pit student against teachers, fearmongering the student into hating their liberal teachers by promoting this idea that the reason why they are so much into debt of student loan is because their liberal teachers stole all their money paying themselves high salaries and wasting their tuition into doing useless researches while teaching them nothing useful. why can’t conservatives fearmonger like liberals do, we need to win win win i don’t care what dirty tricks we use, principles are useless if upholding them make you lose.
* *
It shouldn’t be necessary to “monger fear” (as was explicitly done by the Environmental AGW activists, who admitted it).
It should be enough to simply state the truth, which is exactly as you have said about educators (and I use that term sarcastically) scamming students for their own gain.
And by “state” I mean do it over and over again in every possible venue, calmly and with evidence.
Some students don’t care so long as they get their “fair share” and never have to pay it back. However, others are beginning to see, but feel powerless to combat it.
The fear of increasing the ranks and unity of the (ahem) “woke” is one of the things driving the attacks on conservatives speaking at colleges. Those numbers are increasing; if they can perceive enough support outside academia to believe that they will get help in improving the situation, and jobs despite their conservative activism, then the students will drive the changes without resorting to panic and hype as does the Left, because it depends on continued concealment of its depredations.
neo-neocon, 2:37 pm — “M J R: But that’s my point.” [etc.]
You and I are in violent agreement. As you wrote in a post from today, “Trump gives the Democrats something to hate, and hatred is a great unifier.”
neo-neocon, 2:37 pm – “The GOP had better produce results, and fast.”
I ain’t optimistic.
Trum finds it more entertaining to poke Republicans, since he was a Democrat a few years ago. Trum finds it easier to trust in the Alt Right and in the Democrats like Mueller.
33% of the Alt Right’s support for Trum came from Democrat voters.
why can’t conservatives fearmonger like liberals do, we need to win win win i don’t care what dirty tricks we use, principles are useless if upholding them make you lose.
Becoming a Demoncrat to win against demons, that sounds workable… not.
An eye for an eye, Fight fire with fire, take a thief to catch a thief, you have never heard of those?
That was Hammurabi’s Code as well as Hebrew human laws. Ever hear of the Sermon on the Mount?
Ever hear about what the Elohim were?
Testament of Dan?
1st Enoch?
Loki being imprisoned until Ragnarok with iron chains, Azarael being imprisoned in the pit of darkness with unbreakable chains?
Evil uses the tactics of Go. It doesn’t matter if you have more white pieces than me, so long as my black pierces convert you to my side.
Ever play Go?
The idea that you can defeat evil or just the Left, by overpowering them and adopting their Alinsky tactics as your own, is human conceit.