Virginia Governor's Race and US Election 2017 - America Fights Back?

I’m not so sure about your analysis. They didn’t just vote for him, they voted for Democrats everywhere with a wide variety of platforms and a wide range of experience.

To me, this suggests that these victories were driven neither by the platforms nor by the experience. They were driven by personalities, just as in 1992, 2008, and 2016. But unlike in most previous years, people were inspired to vote against a personality rather than inspired to vote for one.

@Tin_Wisdom — thank you for the story, the funny pic, and your service!

True. And yet, the GOP Congress will likely push ahead with further cuts to healthcare and tax cuts for the very wealthy. Their donors demand it.

https://twitter.com/thehill/status/927939475262656513

If they do continue down the Mr Potter path, I wonder if the wag-the-dog culture war on immigrants, gays, browns etc will continue to give them political cover. When you’re not running against Hillary, are shared hatreds enough to keep the GOP base united and enthused?

I guess we disagree on what that means.

Trump drove votes in Virginia…but even if we allow for some shading from people not willing to tell an exit poller that they HATED Trump, and that’s why they were voting, the single biggest issue – by far – in Virginia was Healthcare.

In Maine, voters voted themselves Medicaid expansion by 20 points.

To me, this seems like an awful lot of voters who either stayed home or cast unenthusiastic protest votes in 2016 going “Oh shit, I take it back. Please give us back the boring, uninspiring policy dorks who at least don’t pose an existential threat to my life.”

Whiz Kid Harry Enten sees that as a problem for Republicans.

Yah, I dunno how well this pretending like Clinton and Obama still run things is really going to work out for them.

I mean, I know she’s the shadow president and all…

I mean I can pretty safely say there is some truth to that. And it all depends on the question phrasing. If it was:

Is the ACA your preferred legislative healthcare initiative? I would solidly say no.

If it was: would you prefers to leave the ACA as is, or repeal and return to pre ACA healthcare? I’d tell the questioner what orafice they should introduce my metatarsals to.

Basically many of us think it doesn’t go far enough, but very strongly support it over the previous status quo. Unfortunately our preferred options are not on the table right now, so WOO Obamacare!

NoVa represent!

And this is the horrible, rotten, no-good math facing the GOP heading into 2018.

Democrats are energized. They’re running great candidates on a bunch of slates, expanding the map. Quality of candidates is hugely important and often overlooked. If you want the most obvious effect of Trumpism on Democrats, that might be it: a lot of very qualified, compelling potential candidates have declared to run for offices.

So there’s that.

And then there’s the 18-months and counting embrace of Trumpism by sitting Republicans. Turns out, Trump isn’t real super popular. Who knew?

And finally, there’s the “These guys have both houses of congress and the Presidency, and they’re not doing shit” aspect. That tends to keep formerly enthusiastic Trumpists at home.

I worry that he’s gonna start a war to address this before the midterms.

Yeah, north south is…

Well let’s just say that when I get back to the states I have a 50 mile each way commute straight north up 294.

I’m planning on leaving at 5:30.

I’ll start at 9.

Fuck me.

It means that if Pence were president with an otherwise identical House and Senate, I believe that we wouldn’t have seen such a widespread refutation of the GOP.

I don’t believe that Trump was considered an “issue” for the purposes of that question.

Other responses suggested about two thirds of Democratic voters were voting to express disapproval of Trump.

In Ohio news, Issue 2 was utterly demolished with about 80% voting it down. The biggest complaint I’ve seen is that the bill was confusing. Part of that can be attributed to poor messaging but a lot of it is the FUD and threats of higher costs spread by the pharma lobby. And of course, now they need to recoup the $60 million they dropped on keeping their profits up. Sorry, not all rainbows and sunshine out of yesterday.

Perhaps not to that extent, but still based on healthcare, a wave.

Yes, yes.

HUG THE TRUMP. That will get 'er done!

Bannon rallies. That’s what would’ve won Virginia!

(Please oh please let them actually do this in 2018.)

I don’t know from waves and I don’t understand the ins-and-outs of all the political inside baseball, but I will say that while I find yesterday’s turnout very heartening, I don’t it’s all that surprising. I see it as a refutation of the “nothing matters” mindset, for one. It was understandable, given what’s happened over the past year, but as I tell my 5-year-old son, you have to be really careful with saying “I can’t” because if you say it enough times you’ll start to believe it, and that will make it true. This was people deciding not to believe it, and exercising the power they had. The fact that it aggregated to a massive wave is evidence enough that the Republican party in general and Trump specifically are not speaking for most of us. And since that changing would require Trump himself to change, I don’t see this train going off the tracks. We all may have taken our eye off the ball in 2016, but I think we know better now.

Healthcare certainly drove some people to vote, as did anti-Trumpism. We can disagree about their relative impact. But my point is that either way, this doesn’t vindicate people who think Democrats need to nominate more people like Northam.

Northam didn’t win because he was pro-science, respected people with disabilities, had a jobs policy, etc. He won because people are angry and he let people channel their anger by voting for him. Just like all the other Democrats who won. If that anger subsides, Democrats will need a new plan.