About yesterday's elections...

by Jay McDonough

Here's the Washington Post's lead paragraph on yesterday's election results:

Off-year elections can be notoriously unreliable as predictors of the future, but as a window on how the political landscape may have changed in the year since President Obama won the White House, Tuesday's Republican victories in Virginia and New Jersey delivered clear warnings for the Democrats.

In other words, one really shouldn't read too much into off year election results, but we're going to anyway.

There will undoubtedly be bunches of Republican operatives on television today proudly claiming their Party is back from the dead after winning the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey.  They probably won't want to talk much about what happened in the 23rd Congressional District of New York though.  If there's anything very significant that happened yesterday, it's there.

First, the governor races.  In both cases, the GOP candidate had been the expected winner.  Creigh Deeds, the Democratic candidate in Virginia was a terrible, lifeless candidate and ran a lousy campaign.  The Republican candidate, Bob McDonnell ran a competent campaign and appealed to moderate voters for support.  The GOP win in Virginia was almost a foregone conclusion and the Democrats had written it off weeks ago.

In New Jersey, incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine nearly pulled off a re-election win after months and months of 30% approval ratings.  Hardly the rout the Republicans will attempt to spin today.

There may, however, be some lessons the Democrats ought to learn from the governor losses.  The so called Obama Coalition - the young, the black, the activists - were AWOL yesterday.  The voting patterns reverted back to the pre-2008 demographics; older, white voters.  In other words, the Republican base.  It may be a great thing for Democratic candidates to appeal to a big cross-section of demographics, but it's only valuable if those folks actually come out to vote for them.

The bigger lesson should come from the Democrats win in the New York race.  This was all about the so-called new Republicans (Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, et al) trying to exercise their self perceived power, putting their weight behind a nutjob candidate (Doug Hoffman) who didn't live in the district and with a campaign largely funded by out of state contributions. The result; the first win by a Democrat in the district in over one hundred years.

These new Republicans like Palin and Limbaugh aren't known for either their self reflection or their math skills.  But they ought to be wondering today whether they actually have the mojo they think they do and how the hell a candidate with support from only 20% of the electorate can ever win an election.

Comments

[Ron Beasley]

Good analysis Jay. It can't be overemphasized that Corzine was one of the most hated Democrats in the Country. It should also be noted that in Virginia Deeds was running away from Obama and the Democrats and sounded like a Republican. When given a choice between a Democrat that sounds like a Republican and a Republican the Republicans will chose the Republican and the Democrats will stay home. The real news was in NY-23 where the teabaggers snatched defeat from the jaws of victory leading to the Democrats picking up two house seats.