Lessons for Both Parties in Virginia and New Jersey Elections

In an August Washington Examiner column, I argued that this year's governor elections in New Jersey and Virginia would have little precedential significance, unlike some other off-year elections in those states.

Boiled down, my argument was that in New Jersey you had a governor who could not lose and in Virginia you had two governor candidates who could not win.

Now the results are in, and my predictions were not far off. Republican Chris Christie won 60 percent to 38 percent in heavily Democratic New Jersey.

In Virginia, the state closest to the national average in the last two presidential elections, neither Democrat Terry McAuliffe nor Republican Ken Cuccinelli won 50 percent of the vote. McAuliffe, far ahead in the polls for months, eked out a 48 percent to 45 percent victory.

So, these contests are of limited precedential value. But they do provide some interesting lessons for both parties.

Lesson 1 for Democrats: Obamacare hurts. Two days before Halloween, McAuliffe was leading 47 percent to 37 percent in the Real Clear Politics average of polls. In seven days, his margin melted from 10 percentage points to 2.5 points.

The big news during that period was the rocky Obamacare rollout and stories revealing that Barack Obama's repeated statements that people could keep their insurance or their doctor were either lies or (as many Democrats concede) misleading.

The exit polls showed that 46 percent of Virginia voters favor Obamacare and 52 percent oppose it. In a state Obama carried twice.

Lesson 1 for Republicans: Provocativeness hurts. Cuccinelli's positions on abortion and same-sex marriage are not much different from Christie's or Virginia Republican incumbent Bob McDonnell's. But his tone was, and he lost single women by 42 percentage points.

Lesson 2 for Democrats: Your youth vote is evaporating. McAuliffe carried 18- to 29-year-old voters by only 45 percent to 40 percent; Christie lost them by only 51 percent to 49 percent. Those were in states where Obama in 2008 carried young voters 60-39 percent and 67-31 percent. They may be discovering that Obamacare raises their health insurance premiums enormously.

Lesson 2 for Republicans: Obama can still energize some Democratic base groups. Democrats got high turnout in Virginia from blacks and young singles -- in contrast to 2009. Republicans can't count on these voters staying home.

Lesson 3 for Democrats: You're not doing so well with immigrants. Hispanic and Asian turnout in Virginia was down from 2012. Christie carried Hispanics 51-45 percent in a state where they voted 78-21 percent for Obama in 2008. Polls showed Hispanics souring on Obamacare, and Christie kept showing up in their communities for four years.

Lesson 3 for Republicans: Raise more money. Cuccinelli backers complain that the Republican National Committee kicked in only $3 million, not $9 million as in 2009.

Fair point. But why didn't the Cuccinelli campaign raise more from Tea Partiers across the nation? Why not match the dollars McAuliffe raised from Clinton connections and crony capitalists? Why not raise money rather than whine?

Lesson 4 for Democrats: You can't count on Tea Partiers to shut the government down again. The victory of establishment-oriented Bradley Byrne over a Tea Partier in Alabama's 1st Congressional District runoff election Tuesday suggests that, even in a hyper-conservative district, the impulse among Republican voters for confrontation with Democrats is waning.

Lesson 4 for Republicans: You can't count on Obamacare continuing to implode. It may well do so, but you'd better have alternatives to offer.

Lesson 5 for both parties: Facts on the ground matter -- and can change the political equation.

Ted Cruz and other Obamacare defunders argued that implementing the new health care law would get Americans hooked on subsidies and make the law unrepealable. But the subsidies seem stingy and invisible, while the website remains unusable.

Barack Obama and his administrators believed they could get away with their promise that you can keep your insurance and your doctor. But the avalanche of people who eventually found out they can't was bound to undermine this claim -- and the president's credibility.

The two parties have been closely competitive in six of the 10 congressional elections over the last 20 years. Republicans fell below competitive levels in 2006 and 2008, when they were perceived as incompetent.

Democrats fell below competitive levels in 1994 and 2010, when they seemed guilty of ideological overreach.

During the government shutdown, some Democrats hoped the Republicans would suffer from both incompetence and overreach. Now, as Obamacare founders, there seems more danger that the Democrats will.

I predict the following about Oblahblahcare.

1. The website will NOT be functioning fully by Dec. 1, despite pledges that it would be - more lies.

2. The numbers of those enrolled will be paltry and a huge % will be Medicaid and heavily subsidized qualifiers AND those with pre-existing conditions. (The propaganda will be that this is great - those are the very people who were frozen out of the system before.)

3. The large numbers of young and health subscribers will be pitifully low. (Spin will be that they are waiting until the website is functioning or wait until the last minute, then they will flock to it like crazy. That buys them a few more months - at least with the DBM.)

4. As the deadline approaches (Mar. 15?-can’t recall) and enrollment is still well, well below the target numbers, Oblahblah will make excuses about people not knowing about the deadline, not knowing the website is now functioning, etc. and will propose a huge education push and an extension of the deadline. He will take all the credit for it.

5. The new deadline will be AFTER the Nov. election, allowing vulnerable Rats to claim that they listened to the people and were all on board in delaying the mandate. That buys them a little more time, but I doubt it will work.

6. The number of uninsured will skyrocket because millions whose policies have been canceled will just pay the penalty and the young, healthy people (who still don’t know they have to buy insurance) will opt to pay the penalty as well.

7. If Democrats can hobble together enough positive news about the UCA (Unaffordable Care Act) to get through the election without major damage (doubtful), they will be crucified when the employer mandate kicks in.

8. The horrors of UCA will escalate and be the main focus of the 2016 election.

9. There will be Rats throwing their hats into the 2016 ring who will run against UCA.

Those are some of my predictions and I’m sticking to them.

Lessons for Democrats:

1)Obamacare is the 250,000 volt Third Rail of today’s politics. And your fearless leader is too damn stubborn and stuck on himself to offer you a way out. Be afraid! Be very afraid! Or better yet, start working on a Gang Of deal to repeal or delay this thing.

2) On the other hand, this Julia thing is working for you beyond your WILDEST expectations. Keep it up!

3) Ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage are a slam-dunk winner. Keep pushing these everywhere you have a chance!

4) You should probably ask Obama to stay on the golf course, and to NOT for any reason come and campaign for you.

For Republicans:

1) Chris Christie wins in New Jersey because he is Tony Soprano with a law degree. Neither party should read much more into him than that.

2) Bashing Obamacare is your golden ticket back to a Senate Majority. Cuccinelli closed 11 points out of a 14 point gap in two weeks on that, against a candidate with a 10:1 funding advantage.

3)Based on above, Ted Cruz did you the BIGGEST favor you could have ever received. So get over it and embrace the guy.

Ken’s campaign strategy was to spend the last month on Obamacare, starting when the bad roll-out happened on October 1st (he knew as we all did that it was going to be bad).

However, he was unable to pull that off, as the first 2 weeks of October he had to deal with the government shutdown. His key to victory was to not tank in northern virginia — he actually held a state senate seat there twice, and had some credibility with the federal workforce.

But once the shutdown happened, the democrats all ran ads attacking him for being part of the tea party that was furloughing the workers.

That is when his poll numbers plummeted. As soon as the shutdown ended, the obamacare message started taking hold, and he almost made up the difference, but needed another week or two.

The shutdown may or may not acheive some long-term goal, but it almost certainly cost Ken the election in Virginia.

It made little to no difference. Being underfunded made the difference. We had a similar situation in Tennessee in 2002. An unpopular, outgoing RINO Governor, a political establishment actively undermining the Republican nominee (to the point, they bankrupted him exiting the primary after running a rich establishment RINO against him). He faced an ultra-wealthy Democrat (and former Mayor of Nashville) who spent lavishly (and broke state election laws to do it, with the approval of a corrupt Dem hack AG).

The Dem spent huge amounts of money in heavy GOP areas to lie about his record and drive down turnout for the Republican. Despite the massive outspending, Bredesen, the Democrat, won by a margin not dissimilar to McAuliffe, in this case, an unimpressive 50.6% to 48%. Had Van Hilleary, the Republican, been able to saturate the airwaves with ads and GOTV, the margin would’ve been close to 10% in his favor.

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