15 takeaways from the Virginia election

The Virginian-Pilot ^ | November 10, 2017 | Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post

[2ndDivisionVet]

THE VIRGINIA ELECTIONS will send analysts and candidates scurrying to fine tune their messages and expectations for 2018. Let’s look at 15 of them:

• Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe was able to hand over the governorship to a fellow Democrat, Gov.-elect Ralph Northam. McAuliffe’s approval rating in exit polls was 14 points higher than President Donald Trump’s. McAuliffe surely will be considering a 2020 presidential run. As a major fundraiser, he will suck up a lot of support and money from other potential moderate candidates. But it’s far from clear that Democrats would want as their presidential nominee the politician most closely associated with Hillary Clinton.

• Democrats can do well in middle-class and affluent suburbs. They can do really well running against Trump. Northam won by huge margins in Loudon (20 points), Fairfax (more than 35 percent) and Arlington (78 to 20 percent) counties. These professional and college-educated voters, rather than non-college educated white working-class voters, may be the key to Democrats winning back the House majority in 2018.

• The huge turnout and sweep, including a raft of delegate wins (as many as 16, with recounts surely to come), bode extremely well for Democrats in House seats, especially the Virginia 10th District, currently held by Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock.

• The victory up and down the ballot suggests we will see more retirements after the two (U.S. Reps. Ted Poe of Texas and Frank LoBiondo of New Jersey) announced Tuesday before the polls closed....

[2ndDivisionVet]

Queen of the Neocons.

[Forgotten Amendments]

You’ll never convince me that she & David Frum are different people.

[TBP]

From a friend’s Facebook page. (He’s a political media guy.)

Four years ago, 34 Virginia HOD “Republicans” voted for the McDonnell tax hike while 31 voted “No.”
Of the 34 Yes votes, 22 ran again in 2017. 15 won, 7 lost.
Of the 31 No votes, 25 ran again in 2017. 22 won, 3 lost.
Of the 6 No votes who did not run again in 2017, two are currently serving in Congress.
Of the 12 Yes votes who did not run again in 2017, two were defeated by anti-tax opponents in the primary.

[Taxman]

This is my take on why Gillespie lost: 596,234 Virginians that voted for Donald Trump last year DID NOT VOTE this year!

Had Gillespie gone “All In” for the Trump message and allowed President Trump to campaign for/with him, the Trump voters would have turned out, and he’d have kicked Northram’s ass!

Northram only won by 321,966.

Here is the point: If Republicans want to maintain the House and Senate next year, they need to go “All In” for Trump. Wishy-washy, middle of the road GOP “establishment” politics will not carry the day!

BTW, I checked the number of votes that President Trump received in New Jersey, also; had the same people who voted for President Trump voted for Ms. Guadagno, she would have won, easily.

My takeaway? Republicans screwed up BIG TIME! By not going all-in for Trump in VA and NJ!

I sure hope the lesson that Republicans [should have] learned in 2016 and 2017 carry forward in 2018 - TRUMP WINS!

And that the would-be local, state and national politicos who run for office in 2018 fully embrace President Trump’s program. They will lose if they don’t!

What is worse, the American people will lose!

[KevinB]

I stopped reading at “Jennifer Rubin”.

[x]

But Clinton beat Trump in that state last time. So even if all the Trump voters turned out, the Republican would still be likely to lose.

In Virginia the Democrats nominated a guy (Northam) who voted for Bush twice. If the Democrat voters were all right with that, the nominee stood a fairly good chance of winning over moderates and Republican defectors and carrying the state.

That's because Virginia's already become a Democrat state. Put together all the Democrats with upscale voters who might have voted for Bush but not Trump, and the downscale voters who voted for Bush, but then Obama (but not Trump) and Northam's on his way to winning.

The irony, though, is that if Virginia were a even more Democrat state and had more liberals, some of them would have stayed home or voted for third parties, and Gillespie might have won in spite of himself. But Virginia Democrats really wanted to give the Republicans a black eye -- and so many of them already work for the government that they weren't going to waste their votes on a third party.

[Taxman]

Here are the numbers:

2016 Trump 1,769,443
2017 Gillespie 1,173,326

2016 Clinton 1,981,473
2017 Northam 1,405,041

If ALL of the Trump voters had turned out for Gillespie in 2017, and the same number of voters turned out for Northam, Gillespie wins by 364,402!

My point is that by going all-in for Trump and working diligently to turn out the Trump voters, Gillespie could have won.

Instead of embracing President Trump and asking for his help, Gillespie chose to distance himself, and lost, BIG TIME!

As a native Virginian, I am embarrassed that the LIEberals have taken over!

Do you think that the Republicans will learn this lesson: “Embrace Trump and win?” Or not?

If the Republicans lose in 2018, we can kiss America good by!