Lowell over at Blue Virginia has written an excellent postmortem of last night’s election (from the Democratic perspective):
http://www.bluevirginia.us/2009/11/after-action-review-of-mcdonnells.html
Likewise, Ben Tribbett at Not Larry Sabato has an equally fascinating pre-mortem:
http://notlarrysabato.typepad.com/doh/2009/11/the-democratic-gilmore-repost-from-july-2008.html
As much as I hate to say it, I am not sensing a Creigh Deeds victory in this fall’s gubernatorial election.
Don’t get me wrong—it would be nice to see Deeds win. He is a hard working, mild-mannered state senator who trends liberal on energy, the environment, transportation, and gay rights, while hewing to the right on gun issues. But right now he is suffering from the same condition which felled both of his challengers in the Democratic primary: slamming his opponent on issues of character while failing to identify with the electorate.
Right now, the number of Virginians (which is by no means universal) who know of Deeds probably have two facts stuck in their minds about him: he’s the guy who didn’t write the sexist/homophobic master’s degree thesis twenty years ago; and he’s the guy who doesn’t have a transportation plan. Let’s look at the first point, the McDonnell thesis. The Washington Post has done a dutiful job (though lately, it borders on the partisan) in explaining and measuring the reaction to the thesis among voters. Last week, they even convened a panel of women to discuss what Bob McDonnell wrote.
Accordingly, Deeds has made this a central focus of his campaign. But this is far from a “macaca moment”. In fact, when one looks at McDonnell’s legislative record, it’s not unsurprising at all that he railed against “fornicators” and working-mother households and welfare. So, to some extent, Virginians knew what we were getting with the former attorney general. What is impressive about the episode is how McDonnell handled it: by convening a conference call of reporters and answering questions until there were no more.
Contrast this with the way Deeds handled the other issue surrounding his campaign, that of transportation. His position for several weeks has been that a.) he will not raise taxes to the general fund (schools, public safety, health and human services, etc.); b.) the state needs “new revenue” for transportation; c.) he will sign a bill if elected that will raise said “new revenue”; and d.) he will not use money from the general fund to pay for transportation, as McDonnell’s transportation plan requires.
So, essentially he is saying he wants to see a tax increase for transportation. The problem is, for nearly three painful minutes after a recent debate, he could not bring himself to say that in front of reporters:
This has led Republicans, not unreasonably, to accuse Deeds of not having a plan. In today’s Washington Post, Deeds wrote an opinion piece in which he came as close to being explicit as he has been thus far, writing “I’ll sign a bipartisan bill with a dedicated funding mechanism for transportation—even if it includes new taxes.” The article was entitled “My Transportation Plan,” but unfortunately it was merely a transportation wish list. Deeds wrote that he would like to “expand freight and passenger rail,” “utilize bus rapid transit” and “promote smarter land-use planning.” There are no numbers and no mention of how he would get this done—whom he would work with, where the funding would come from, where this development would occur, how jobs would be created, etc.
Even in a recession, and even in a conservative state like Virginia, I would hope voters would understand that raising taxes to preserve vital government services should not be an automatic campaign killer. As much as I disagree with elements of McDonnell’s plan, the fact is that he has one. And it’s more or less crystal clear. And it’s not that bad—proposing, for example, that thirty percent of sales taxes (actually, it says .30%, which I assume is a typo) in Northern Virginia be retained in that region. I realize that Deeds does not want to box himself into a corner if elected, but there are ways to formulate a plan now while still being open to tweaks or alterations once in office.
There are a lot of factors at play here in the gubernatorial election, not the least of which is Virginia’s trend of favoring a division of power between federal and state governments, and again within the state government. Deeds ought to stop saying that he will be like popular Democratic governors Mark Warner and Tim Kaine and develop a set of policies that will prove it. Because right now, the man who is positioning himself as heir to the business-like approach of the past eight years is Bob McDonnell. And it’s working.
There is nothing un-American about people who are opposed to the healthcare reform legislation. They have a right to be skeptical about how their current coverage will be affected, what the cost of reform will be, and whether they will still get needed treatment. I realize that.
What IS un-American about healthcare opponents is, I believe, summed up in these two sets of video clips. Here is footage from Sen. Claire McCaskill’s (D-Mo.) town hall today. These types of events are less about persuading members of Congress or the general public toward a particular direction on the legislation and more about allowing people who feel that they have no other way of being heard to air their opinions to a captive audience.
But this is not democracy—it’s more state-of-nature than civilization. Whoever has the loudest voice or the biggest sign is in control. Yes, everyone has the right to say what they want, but everyone acknowledges that there are limits to how you say things. People can swear, just not over certain mediums at certain times. Articles can be written about people, they just cannot be libelous. And, of course, there is Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous statement about yelling “fire” in a crowded theater.
Kudos to Sen. McCaskill for standing her ground, for not walking away, and for not giving up on her constituents. The worst experience for any customer service representative is being shouted at by a client who is definitely in the wrong. It doesn’t help that these people are using phrases like “socialism” and “death panels” that trigger a rabid response from the crowd, yet no one fully comprehends what they mean.
The second un-American aspect of the anti-healthcare crowd is the subject of this video. Simply put: why can we not provide regular doctor-patient care for all of our citizens at an affordable price?
The answer is money. Insurance companies and drug companies spend a lot of it to tell us, in essence, how they must continue to make ungodly profits in order for our healthcare to be as good as it is. It’s a form of blackmail: saying, “You think we take you on a ride now? Just wait and see how bad it will be once we’re out of the picture.” And members of Congress apparently see no harm in the correlation between money and influence. Witness Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) when confronted on the amount of campaign contributions she received from the healthcare industry, morphing her response from “that’s impossible”; to “that’s not a lot” of money; to hey, they should be giving that money to “people who have more direct control” of legislation.
People can oppose this legislation, President Obama, and vague notions of socialism all they want. But if money and misinformation are causing people to turn a blind eye to millions of uninsured and underinsured Americans, then this continued resistance to our healthcare crisis is wholly un-American.
Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to HR 3200, the so-called healthcare reform bill.
It is clear that this bill will ( raise taxes / kill jobs / kill puppies ). This bill, which the Democrat majority hopes will move us toward ( socialism / fascism / homosexualism ), is just an effort to make the government take over ( your health / your house / your dreams ). The Democratic agenda has failed us thus far. When we look at the record stimulus passed earlier this year, I ask you, ( Where are the jobs? / Where is the money? / Where is the beef? )
What my colleagues on the other side of the aisle need to understand is that Republicans represent ( small businesses / middle-class families / the insurance conglomerates that finance our campaigns ). They say that we have no solution. Our party does have a solution: ( cut taxes / cut taxes and increase spending / cut taxes, increase spending, and blame any problems on the Clinton administration ).
This health care bill will do one thing only, and that is to enlarge our country’s ( debt / bureaucracy / prostate ). Democrats say that universal healthcare will cost one trillion dollars. One trillion! That is enough to buy ( three F-22s / one unnecessary war in the Middle East / every single member of Congress and their staffs ).
My constituents don’t want a government takeover of healthcare. They don’t want us to turn into ( Canada / Europe / Nazi Germany, circa 1939 ). But that’s right around the corner, folks. I urge my colleagues to vote against this bill, because it is ( too much, too soon / too little, too late / too big to fail ).
Starting in 2006 with the election of Democratic Senator Jim Webb, Virginia has been working to correct its conservative tilt—we can now hold up two Democratic governors, a Democratic state senate, a soon-to-be Democratic second senator, and a soon-to-be Democratic president as products of an evolving Virginia electorate.
Now, even though many Virginia Democrats are more conservative than their counterparts nationwide, this does seem to indicate a noticeable shift in ideology, right? Unfortunately, you would be completely wrong to think so. Such a scenario is not the provenance of “real Virginia,” as John McCain’s spokeswoman Nancy Pfotenhauer pointed out on MSNBC.
No, the liberal Democrat insurgents have forded the Potomac River, invaded Northern Virginia, turned it into “communist country,” and are now seeking to destroy iconic, historic, “real” Virginia. It must really grind the gears of “real” Virginia to look up at Fairfax County, the largest jurisdiction in the D.C.-metro area, and see a population where one-third of residents are non-white; where one-third speak a language other than (or in addition to) English; where the median household income is the highest in the nation; where the public schools are consistently ranked as some of the best nationwide; where the Metro subway system is the second-busiest in the country; where 93 percent of adults have high school degrees and 60 percent have college diplomas. How could anyone look at that hellscape and not see the specter of a Soviet Russia looming on the horizon?
Here is a glimpse of what these imposter Virginians stand for. Is your blood boiling? Does this want to make you go out, buy a gun, hang up an American flag, and spit on a Mexican? Then you might just be a real Virginian.
Source: The Washington Post
Pfotenhauer’s comment may have been offensive to Northern Virginians, but I think it was more offensive to those in the rest of Virginia. This woman seems to have a stereotyped image of Virginia right out of the 19th century: a sharecropping, immigrant-hating, big city-fearing, pickup truck-driving, tobacco-chewing, uneducated populace. One-third of the state’s population resides in Northern Virginia, and for several years the boundaries have crept south into exurban communities whose residents make the arduous commute into the District for their federal jobs. But those people—the ones working to keep the country running—are just the fringe radicals tainting Virginia’s bucolic image.
Perhaps she thinks that “real” Virginia is that embodied by Fifth District Congressman Virgil Goode, who led the fight against Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison from being sworn in on the Koran in 2007. These were his words of foreboding: “I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary.” Fear of the first Muslim (American-born) to be elected to Congress? Maybe that sentiment polls well in “real” Virginia, but I cannot imagine either of the two soon-to-be-outgoing Republican congressmen in Northern Virginia to expect to be reelected with that kind of bigotry.
Or maybe she reasons that the “real” Virginia is that part of the state to which former Senator George Allen welcomed a young Indian-American from Northern Virginia; only it was in the context of calling him “Macaca” (later deemed a racist slur). I wonder what ever happened to that guy….
Northern Virginians at times have mused about the possibility of secession from the rest of Virginia. It should be noted that in 1861 West Virginia separated from Virginia due to unequal legislative influence, as well as differences in economy and communal attachment to the South. Today’s Northern Virginia faces the totally unrelated problems of unequal legislative influence, as well as differences in economy and communal attachment to the South. If John McCain is indicating that he would support admitting the state of North Virginia to the Union so as to keep “real Virginia” in its pristine condition of 1950s-era standards of living, this Northern Virginian thinks that is the change we need.
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