- Moderator
- #81
Ah, here you betray your total ignorance to national politics.
The network of governors is essential to a national compaign. Governors in fact often have more sway with the White House than that state's respective Senators and certainly far more than each state's respective Congressmen/women. (unless it is a long-term Congressperson - then the power balance can shift a bit) An effective governor already has an established party machine in place for their respective state, which then is of great aid to a presidential candidate.
The loss of both Virginia and New Jersey to Republican governors was a huge blow to the Democrats. As for NY23 - that will go back to the 'pubs in 2010 - and mark my words, it will be a far more openly conservative Republican that time around...
I don't think so. A lot of brouhahaha is being made by both parties and even more, by the media about these off year elections. They aren't referendums on Obama or either party really - they are predominately oriented on local politics.
NJ's Christie won 49% to Corzine's 45% but it's amazing Corzine got even that much as he's been associated with corruption and his poll ratings have been very low. Christie also ran on an anti-corruption, small government and lower taxes (in a state with the highest tax rate in the nation) but social conservative issues were notably absent. He won by running as a moderate in a largely democratic state.
Virginia is more significant because it was not only the Governor but the Lt. Governer and Attorney General but here again - the platform is significant. McDonnell is a strong conservative candidate but he carefully downplayed his social conservative credentials and stuck to the small government and fiscal conservative platform and as they applied to local issues.
In both those states exit polls continued to show Obama to be very popular, and voters stated Obama was not an issue in their voting choice. In both those states the winners stuck carefully to local politics. So was this election a referendum on Obama or a green light for a strong conservative agenda? It does not seem that way. In order the keep NJ, the Governor will have to be rather centrist. Virginia too, I suspect.
The NY race was wildly strange - a Democrat should not have won it and the fact that one did says more about the mishandling of the election by the Republicans then it does about any demographic change.
All 3 state-wide winners are very conservative in VA. The crap the media is saying is completely wrong. McDonnell campaigned like Reagan circa 1980. So if that is moderate, so be it. But I don't think so.
McDonnell didn't focus on social issues. The focus was economic, transportation, funding, off-shore drilling. Deeds tried to make hay out of a paper McDonnell had written 20 years ago, but McDonnell did a good job of shooting that down.
Perhaps moderate is the wrong word to use - what I meant was that he deliberately downplayed his social conservative credentials and focused on fiscal issues and I think he did that because the demographics of Virginia in regards to social conservativism have been undergoing a lot of change with increased suburban populations voting.
Christie is probably a centrist though.
Ya, I think so too.