Gillespie And Trump Are Both Embarrassed Of Each Other! Who Could Blame Them?

Trump's approval ratings might get better-- but that's unlikely. They just keep sinking... and they are, as Jonathan Bernstein explained for Bloomberg readers, really, really bad already. Señor Trumpanzee is, in short, being judged to be the worst president in modern history. He's "back in last place in approval ratings at this number of days after being sworn in of any president in the polling era. And his 'net' approval (subtracting disapproval) has been the worst among those 13 presidents every day of his presidency, and it's never been particularly close. Currently he's within a single percentage point of same-day Gerald Ford in approval, but at -18.3, his net approval is 9 percentage points worse than Ford's, and every other president was in positive territory at this point. All of that with the more-or-less peace and something very close to prosperity-- the two things that generally drive whether U.S. citizens like their presidents or not."

As you probably know, on November 7 Virginians will be electing a new governor and their entire House of Delegates. Democrat Ralph Northam is about as conservative as you can be and still be a Democrat and Republican Ed Gillespie doesn't stand for anything at all other than personal ambition. It's a pretty putrid race. There are plenty of House seats being decided that are far more important to progressives (as long as Gillespie is defeated). Every single poll since early June shows Northam ahead, with the exception of one outlier last month predicting a tie. The most recent poll, last week, by Emerson College has Northam leading 49-44%.

So why doesn't Trump get his fat, sagging ass down to Virginia to campaign for Gillespie (who he did endorse in a weird tweet a couple weeks ago)?I t's a reasonable-- if inelegantly phrased-- question-- and Jonathan Martin explored it yesterday for the NY Times. Gillespie and Trump are dancing around each other warily. Remember, Virginia was the only state that joined the Confederacy that Trump, the improbable Confederate candidate, lost last year.

Gillespie wants the Trump supporters to turn out for him of course-- Trump lost to Hillary last year 49.73% to 44.41% (virtually identical to the gubernatorial polling numbers last week)-- but there were still 1,769,443 Virginians willing to debase themselves and their country by voting for Trump. But Gillespie doesn't want the negatives around Trump to influence independent voters in their gubernatorial decision.

And meanwhile Trump is a little gun-shy too. He's embarrassed that his candidate, Senator Luther Strange, who he backed so strongly, lost so badly. And, like Strange, Gillespie is a swamp-dwelling part of the Republican Party establishment. He founded one of DC's sleaziest lobbying firms, Quinn Gillespie & Associates, whose marquee client was Enron. He was also chair of the RNC, which is a pretty swampy position in the minds of many hardcore Trump voters. But, more than anything, Trump doesn't want to deal with the stench of another ego-damaging electoral defeat.

Martin wrote that Trumpanzee "has so overwhelmed a campaign waged by a pair of bland candidates lacking signature proposals that, much the same way he does across the Potomac, he has made himself and his incendiary style of politics the central issue." For Gillespie there is also the little matter of how Trump's mental health would impact him, especially if there's a rally like the insane one Trump did for Luther Strange a few days before the Alabama election.

“There is so much focus on the activity and the machinations in Washington,” said George Allen, the former Republican governor and senator who ran statewide four times. “With President Trump, whatever he tweets becomes the news till whatever he tweets next.”

With the president rampaging through news cycles seemingly every day, the biggest question looming before Mr. Gillespie is whether it is worth the risk of trying to harness Mr. Trump’s total-eclipse-of-the-sun attention-getting skills to rouse conservative voters.

His campaign and the Republican Governor’s Association signaled to the White House at a meeting this spring that they preferred the reliable hand of Vice President Mike Pence, who campaigned with Mr. Gillespie on Saturday, over Mr. Trump in a state where the president is loathed in the vote-rich population centers but well-liked in many rural areas.

But trailing in every public poll, Mr. Gillespie is now engaged in a robust debate with his advisers about whether he should ask the president to stump with him, according to multiple Republican officials familiar with the conversations.

Those in favor of bringing Mr. Trump in for a rally argue that Mr. Gillespie will be linked to Mr. Trump regardless and, in a state where turnout plummets in nonpresidential years, that the president can jolt his supporters who may have been indifferent about the race or uneasy with an establishment-aligned candidate such as Mr. Gillespie, a former George W. Bush adviser and Republican National Committee chairman.

But the camp urging Mr. Gillespie to keep his distance from Mr. Trump counters that it would be malpractice to embrace a polarizing president who failed to win even 30 percent of the vote in Fairfax County, the most populous jurisdiction in the state and once a suburban battleground.

As they consider their options, Gillespie supporters have an object lesson: Mr. Trump’s ill-fated rally for Senator Luther Strange in Alabama, where he could not resist veering off-message. At that rally, Mr. Trump started his feud with the N.F.L. while offering a backhanded endorsement of Mr. Strange’s rival, Roy Moore.

“Having watched what a great job he did for Luther Strange, I’m not sure I’d want that,” said Ken Cuccinelli, a former state attorney general, suggesting that the president could bring up the bloodshed in Charlottesville with little warning. “Trump rallies are about Trump.”

Then there is the president’s calculation: Would he even want to risk attaching himself to a potential loser so soon after the Alabama race, in which he felt burned, according to White House officials. West Wing advisers say Mr. Trump is willing to record automated calls for Mr. Gillespie but is not clamoring to fire up Air Force One for the trip to Roanoke.

Mr. Trump has tweeted twice about the Virginia race, including on Saturday night, when he wrote that “Democrats in the Southwest part of Virginia have been abandoned by their Party,” as Mr. Pence was on the way to the region.

Yet whether Mr. Trump sets foot here or not, his success at motivating voters with culturally and racially tinged appeals has worn off on Mr. Gillespie. Once one of the loudest voices in his party for an inclusive message, Mr. Gillespie is now assailing Mr. Northam over the Democrat’s opposition to a state measure that would have banned “sanctuary cities” and targeting him for supporting the removal of the state’s many Confederate statues.

The Republican chafes at questions over whether he is adopting a Trumpian message and forgoing his own advice in 2006 that Republicans should resist the “siren song” of anti-immigration rhetoric, insisting he is running as “who I am and what I believe in.”

“The great thing about a governor’s race in Virginia is the people who vote in it are focused on roads and schools and jobs and the opioid and heroin epidemic,” Mr. Gillespie said.

But his advertising reflects what he thinks will actually move the electorate: He is spending the bulk of his money on commercials focused on the statues, which make no mention of his view that the South was “on the wrong side of history,” and illegal immigrants. One of his immigration ads features amply tattooed Salvadoran prisoners meant to be members of the menacing gang MS-13, a target of the president’s.

Asked if he still supported a pathway to legal status for illegal immigrants, which he once vocally championed, Mr. Gillespie unenthusiastically confirmed that he did, deflating his answer by noting that “the debate is 10 years old from my perspective.” (He did more readily note that he supported “accommodating those who were brought here as children illegally,” the so-called Dreamers.)

This week, Northam is enthusiastically campaigning with Obama, who won Virginia both times he ran (53-46% against McCain and 51-47% against Romney). In the end, Trumpanzee will probably be too embarrassed to stay away and will, in all likelihood, waddle down to Roanoke, which is pretty safe territory for him. He lost Roanoke City (56.1% to 38.5%) But he won Roanoke County 61.5% to 33.5%. If Trump does one of his crazy rallies they can bus rubes in from Franklin, Botetourt, Bedford, Craig, Henry, Floyd, and Giles counties, all blood red and filled with Trumpist crackpots addicted to Fox News, Hate Talk Radio and opioids. That way Trump can claim even though Gillespie lost the state, at least he won the backward area Trump campaigned in. Just watch.

Virginia's General Election Is Next Month-- And It Is REALLY Important

Aaron Blake had a wake-up call for Democrats this morning in his Washington Post column and thishock of glancing at those two maps above sum it right up. Democrats, he wrote, need to give up their 2016 comfort blanket-- Hillary won by 3 million votes-- because if the two campaign were based on winning the electoral college rather than the popular vote, they both would have used different strategies and there's no telling who would have won.

[I]t's totally unknowable whether Clinton actually would have won if our system went by the popular vote. That's because the campaigns were run according to the system we have-- the electoral college-- and were focused heavily on the handful of states where those votes were actually at-stake. If we had the popular vote, both sides would have campaigned in and tailored their messages to the three-fourths of the country that they barely acknowledged:

An electoral-college election involves making explicit appeals to and advertising in around 10 or 12 out of the 50 states. It means Trump didn't campaign or advertise in California or Massachusetts or Washington state and that Clinton didn't campaign in Oklahoma or even Texas (despite polling within single digits there). They knew it would be wasted effort to try to turn a 30-point loss in those states into a 22-point loss, or a 14-point loss into an eight-point loss.

For example, if Trump shaved 10 points off his 30-point loss in California, turned his 22-point loss in New York into a 15-point loss, and added just six points to his nine-point win in Texas, he'd have won the popular vote. And that's just three really populous states out of the many in which neither side really tried.

Does it seem unlikely Trump would have won a popular-vote race? Perhaps. But it's impossible to know, because the campaign would have been run completely differently. We simply don't even know that Clinton would have won if our system was the popular vote, because it's a massive hypothetical.

The most important thing for Democrats, though, is not to believe that all is well and that they were simply robbed by a bad system or a fluke. That's because they are currently in their worst position since the Great Depression in state legislatures and governor's seats. There are more than twice as many Republican governors as Democratic ones, and there are more than four times as many states with total GOP control (26) as total Democratic control (6).

The maps for regaining House and Senate majorities are also both pretty daunting-- in the Senate because 30 out of 50 states are red, and in the House because of natural sorting and GOP-controlled gerrymandering. All the GOP has to do in each chamber is hold states and districts that clearly favor them.

If Democrats don't win back state legislatures or some key governor's mansions in 2018, they'll again be shut out of the redistricting process after the 2020 election, and they'll face another decade of really tough state legislative and congressional maps. And even if they do get a seat at the table, the country has sorted itself in a way that's more conducive to Republican control.

Democrats are two election cycles away from another potential post-census disaster, but the popular vote is telling them that they really, actually won in 2016-- that they're really, actually the majority party in the United States. That's highly deceptive at best, and dangerously comforting at worst.

Virginia will be electing a new governor on November 7-- just over a month from now. Also up for election: all 100 seats in the state's House of Delegates. Right now there are 66 Republicans and 34 Democrats in that body. The Democrats need a net of 17 seats to win. And you know how many GOP-held districts voted for Hillary last year? 17. How many Democrat-held districts voted for Señor Trumpanzee? ZERO. And some of the Democrats running are decent progressives, like Danica Roem, Chris Hurst, Kimberly Anne Tucker, Hala Ayala, David Reid, Jennifer Foy, Lee Carter, Elizabeth Guzman, Bill Bunch, Angela Lynn, Flo Ketner, Steve McBride, Stephanie Cook, Cheryl Turpin, Djuna Osborne, Natalie Short, Tracy Carver and Kathy Tran (NOT Kellen Squire). When Jacqueline Smith won the election for Prince William County Clerk in June, Republicans started freaking out that they could lose a substantial number of seats. Polling in the gubernatorial race bodes well for Democrats holding onto the governor's mansion. The most recent poll-- last week from the Washington Post-- shows Democrat Ralph Northam considerably ahead of Republican Ed Gillespie-- 53-40% among likely voters and 48-38% among registered voters.

And right after the poll was released, Gillespie got a big wet kiss-- a kiss of death from Señor Trumpanzee. "[H]e has now roiled the race by jumping in directly and attacking the Democratic nominee through his preferred method: a nighttime tweet." Unhinged!

Coming four weeks before Election Day, it marked the president’s first foray into the race, which is the nation’s marquee statewide election this year and is being closely watched by the national parties as a hint of what may come in the 2018 midterms.

While Trump has endorsed other candidates in special elections this year, none of those endorsements has taken place in a true swing state that could test the president’s political strength or his effect on the GOP agenda on the state level.

Virginia has posed a particularly tricky challenge for Gillespie, who has struggled to energize Trump supporters without alienating moderates and independents. He needs those voters to overcome a Democratic base that is united behind their candidate, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, and motivated to vote on Nov. 7.

Trump is deeply unpopular in Virginia, the only Southern state that Hillary Clinton won last year.

The president’s tweet immediately set off speculation about whether Gillespie, a longtime establishment Republican who ran the Republican National Committee and worked for President George W. Bush, had turned to the man who has upended the traditional GOP for help.

Gillespie said he neither sought the president’s endorsement nor asked him to tweet on his behalf.

“I’m not going into conversations between the White House and the campaign or the RNC and the campaign,” Gillespie said during an interview with The Washington Post on Friday. “We talk to folks all the time. But we did not request a tweet, and I didn’t know a tweet was coming. It came as a surprise to me.”

But then, potentially concerned he might be seen as repudiating Trump, he added: “Just to be clear, again, I didn’t ask him not to endorse. I assumed that given that I’m the Republican nominee and he’s the Republican president, that he was endorsing me.”

Northam's campaign generated over $100,000 in small dollar donations within 24 hours of the Trump-tweet. Gillespie immediately dove under his bed and tried to make believe the whole thing never happened. Tomorrow morning, we're going to look at another crucial gubernatorial race, the primary to determine which Democrat-- and which kind of Democrat-- takes on Republican billionaire Bruce Rauner in Illinois next year.

More Anti-Choice Democrats Sneaking Under The Flaps Of The Big Tent

Svaty and Perriello-- women aren't safe

Many progressives were upset the Tom Perriello lost the Virginia gubernatorial nomination— and pretty handily-- to Lt. Governor Ralph Northam, 276,734 (55.5%) to 221,777 (44.5%). During the primary campaign, Northam raised $6,465,581.36 and Perriello raised $4,089,566.22. Northam is a pretty standard conservative Southern Democrat but claims too have moved left in recent years. I can’t vouch for that; never met the guy and his record is not the record of anyone I’d ever vote for. Perriello I know better. He played the role of progressive during the primary-- and even had support from Bernie and from a gaggle of progressive groups. But not from Blue America. We learned out lesson long ago. We were one of the first organizations to endorse him when he ran for Congress in 2008. It didn’t take long before we were very sorry we did.

It turned out to be pretty weak in the knees and often buckled to vote for conservative positions that were at odds with what he had told us during the endorsement process. He ran up a mediocre voting record and proven himself to be a shady politician with an insupportable character. The breaking point came when he went back on a very specific pledge he made to us about never voting to restrict a women’s right to choice. He voted with the Republicans to do just that.

When Perriello first solicited an endorsement from Blue America, we were very wary because it had been pointed out that he opposed women's right to Choice. He insisted his position had been misrepresented. He kept calling and calling and then visited my house. On February 27, 2008, Tom did a guest post here at DWT and he addressed concerns about Choice head-on:

Confusion ...[about] my position on abortion may stem either from my public association with Catholicism as co-founder of the progressive Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good or from being badly misquoted in a New York Times article following the 2004 election. I firmly believe that abortion should not be criminalized, nor can we allow any action that seeks to coerce women by reducing access to care or making the process less safe.

The emphasis is mine. But that is exactly what the Stupak-Pitts amendment he voted for did, and quite intentionally, and Perriello was well aware of that. So we didn’t endorse him for the gubernatorial race and none of his weeped when he lost to Northam. Honesty, integrity and character are important-- more important than a label claiming “progressivism,” especially when Perriello’s actual voting record is at odds with superficial reporters claiming he’s a progressive without digging around at all. It would have been hard to imagine getting behind Perriello, not because Northam is any better on the issues-- they’re probably about the same-- but because he doesn’t smell trustworthy to me. As for Bernie, he should have known better.

And that brings us to Josh Svaty, an overtly anti-choice Democrat in Kansas is running for governor in another contested primary. Erin Heger filed a report for Rewire this week. “Former Kansas legislator Josh Svaty,” she wrote, “supported the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which defines life beginning at fertilization. He made ten anti-choice votes during his time in the Kansas house from 2003 to 2009, including voting for a bill allowing an abortion patient’s family member or partner to sue a doctor or support staff to prevent the patient from having an abortion. That measure passed but was vetoed by then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D).”

“Kansas is the wrong place for any candidate like Svaty who has consistently voted against one of the loudest majorities PPGPV has seen in its fight for sexual and reproductive health care,” Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes (PPGPV) President and CEO Laura McQuade said in a blog post.

This is the second time this year an anti-choice Kansas Democrat has sought the party’s nomination. Dennis McKinney, a Democrat who has long opposed abortion rights and drawn support from the anti-choice group Kansans for Life, sought the Democratic nomination for the Fourth Congressional District special election in April. After outcry from activists, pro-choice Democrat James Thompson secured the nomination. While Thompson ended up losing to Republican Ron Estes, the narrow seven point margin of victory in an overwhelmingly red district demonstrates the progress reproductive rights activists have made in Kansas.

“Planned Parenthood has more than 44,000 highly engaged supporters in Kansas,” McQuade said in an email statement. “Access to safe, legal abortion is the will of the majority and a movement that represents a future our country desires. A candidate’s open embrace of abortion rights and support of Planned Parenthood is an asset, not a detriment in the state of Kansas.”

Kansas’ GOP-dominated legislature has enacted 30 abortion restrictions since 2010, when anti-choice Gov. Sam Brownback (R) took office. Kansans for Life in 2012 helped oust many rank-and-file Republicans in primary elections with aggressive campaign tactics, ensuring the legislature would be stocked with virulently anti-choice GOP legislators.

“You find more pro-life Democratic candidates in Kansas than you would perhaps other places,” said Alesha Doan, associate professor in the School of Public Affairs and Administration at the University of Kansas. “It’s not completely unique; there are pro-life Democrats elsewhere and there always have been. But in Kansas, running away from openly supporting reproductive rights is in part political strategy and survival.”

Anti-choice campaign and lobbying tactics, including flyers with vivid imagery and inflammatory language, along with the power and influence of Kansans for Life in the statehouse, have had an impact on how abortion rights are framed in Kansas. Even progressive candidates are sometimes unwilling to support reproductive rights because of this framing, Doan said.

“There’s a tremendous amount of fear because the tactics are really aggressive, and they are more so in Kansas than in other places. As a politician, it’s embarrassing and scary to deal with neighbors receiving awful flyers and your kids being asked questions at school. That kind of harassment has a really big impact on people,” Doan said. “The access anti-choice interest groups have to the governor and legislators also emboldens those groups. But an interest group is only as influential as politicians allow it to be.”

To combat this level of fear, Doan said people should talk more openly about abortion care and reproductive health and separate the stigma and shame associated with these issues.

“Women used to talk about abortion and reproductive health in the 70s and 80s much more openly than they do now, and a big part of that is connecting abortion to shame.” Doan said. “There’s a tremendous amount of silence that has fallen over this issue and as a result you hear one particular narrative.”

Although the Kansas Democratic Party platform includes support for reproductive rights, Svaty told the Kansas City Star in May that he believes he is “like many Kansans” in being “right down the middle on this issue.” However, a majority of Kansans support keeping abortion safe and legal, according to a poll conducted last fall by Public Policy Polling.

For Democrats in Kansas who hold reproductive rights as core values, the primary election is an opportunity to demonstrate what kind of candidate they want, said Burdett Loomis a political science professor at the University of Kansas.

“Svaty’s position is a very difficult one to sell among Democratic voters,” Loomis told Rewire. “Some people might look at this and say the fact that we’re talking about abortion as an election issue for Democrats is kind of unusual. That’s why you have primary elections. Kansas Democrats can express themselves and I think that primary is very much worth having.”

Two-term Democratic Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer is also running for governor, and while he hasn’t officially filed, Kansas House Minority Leader Jim Ward has also expressed interest in running. Ward has a pro-choice voting record. Brewer has not publicly stated his position on abortion rights.

“Reproductive rights are fundamental to the progress of women in Kansas... To treat the issue as anything less is to tell women they aren’t important to the [Democratic] party,” McQuade said. “Moreover, race, gender, and economic status are tied together. We would never dream of sidelining racial justice nor economic justice in our progressive movement, and neither should we marginalize reproductive rights.”

If people who are anti-Choice (or anti-gay or anti-Semitic or racist or whatever) feel for some crazy reason they’d rather be in the Democratic Party than the Republican Party, that doesn’t bother me all that much-- as long as they’re not put forward as party leaders and wind up in a position too further muddy the very muddied Democratic Party brand.

Tonight's Election Results

The race most people were most interested in today was the lesser-of-two evils gubernatorial election in Virginia. As expected, the lesser of two evils, Clinton bagman Terry McAuliffe, won. The exit polls looked bad for conservatives in Virginia even before voting was finished. Democrats were voting in greater numbers than expected and Republicans were voting in smaller numbers. Pro-Choice voters vastly outnumbered anti-Choice voters, a sure death knell for Cuccinelli and his crackpot War on Women team. The good news: far right extremist Ken Cuccinelli has been thoroughly rejected by Virginia voters. The bad news: Virginia voters just saddled themselves with a corrupt hack as their next governor, likely to not be much of an improvement over the departing corrupt hack-- other than on social issues. At least the war against women, war against immigrants and the anti-gay hysteria won't have a friend in Richmond's Executive Mansion any longer. McAuliffe won a narrow victory 47.9% to 45.5% (with Libertarian Robert Sarvis taking 6.6%). Democratic state Senator Ralph Northam beat far right lunatic E.W. Jackson to become Lieutenant Governor by about 11 points. Cuccinelli had never stopped claiming that the election was a referendum on ObamaCare but it was probably more a referendum on the GOP government shutdown and the Tea Party. Democrats also picked up 2 House seats in the legislature, a disappointment and, an even bigger disappointment very narrowly lost the Attorney General race. Mark Obenshain, a fringe nut is up 1,095,565 over Mark Herring at 1,094,787. There are still some absentees and a few votes to count in blue precincts. This should be argued over for a few days.

Tragically, professional Democrats abandoned their best candidate for anything-- New Jersey state Senator Barbara Buono-- in her quixotic run against political machine hack Chris Christie. New Jersey has definitely been going for entertainment and celebrity over substance lately. At least New Jersey voters passed the new minimum wage increase sy a substantial margin. And, as expected, Bill de Blasio became the first Democratic mayor of New York City in 2 decades, and by a landslide, something over 70% of the votes. The first big Democratic win tonight, though was in St. Petersburg, Florida where progressive Democrat Rick Kriseman beat Republican Bill Foster by 12 points. (Six months ago Foster led in the polls 49-12%.) St. Pete also elected a nicely progressive city council while they were at it. This is all great news for FL-13 Democratic special election candidate Alex Sink.

But it was Rachel Maddow, in her on-going coverage of the Republican Party civil war (above), who explained my favorite contest today. It was in, of all places, southwestern Alabama, including Mobile and the whole of Alabama's coast. It's a hopelessly red district with a PVI of R+15. Last year, President Obama scored 37% against Romney, his best result among Alabama's 6 white congressional districts, most of the state's African-Americans having been gerrymandered into one mostly black district (AL-07), which gave Obama a 73-27% victory against Romney. Back to AL-01; longtime incumbent, Jo Bonner, decided to retire. He had no general election opponent last time he ran for reelection-- nor the time before that and the time before that. A Boehner puppet, tea baggers have tried, unsuccessfully, to beat him in primaries, including teabagger Dean Young. This was their chance-- and Young's chance-- to win the seat. By there's no prize for almost.

Former Democrat and former state Senator Bradley Byrne was the Boehner/Cantor candidate and was endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce and by Bonner. Byrne has raised close to $700,000, mostly in special interest money, and came in first in the crowded primary, with 34.57% of the vote to runner-up Dean Young's 22.95%. Like I said, Young is the Tea Party candidate and he's raised about a third of what Byrne did. Young wants to go to Washington to impeach President Obama, wage war against gays, immigrants and women and vote against Boehner for Speaker. The last poll before today showed him leading Byrne 43.2-40.2%. Young is batshitcrazy and described his supporters as "pitchfork people." Today the pitchfork people were overwhelmed by the city slickers in Mobile, who pushed the contest decisively in Byrne's direction, much to the relief of Boehner and Cantor. Until the Mobile precincts started coming in, Young was in the lead all night. With almost all precincts counted, Byrne had 52.5% to Young's 47.5%. The sigh of relief from the House Republican leadership could be heard coast-to-coast.

I'll update this post in the morning with final results, including how the northern Colorado secession movement fared and how the minimum wage vote in Washington went; it's currently ahead. Seattle did elect its first openly gay mayor, Ed Murray over progressive incumbent Mike McGinn. Here's the final, somewhat misleading Bradley Byrne ad:

UPDATES

In Virginia the attorney general’s race between state Senator Mark Herring (D) and GOP crackpot Mark Obenshain is still far from determined but as more votes come in, it keeps looking better. Technically, it's still a dead heat and will certainly go for a recount. Herring has a 541-vote lead over the psychopath with over 2.2 million ballots cast.

6 of the 11 counties asking their citizens about seceding from Colorado and trying to start a right-wing state voted yes. The only county with more people than cattle, Weld County, voted no, taking the steam out of the whole project. In Weld County, which had more voters against it than all the other counties combined had voting in both directions combined, it failed 57.1% to 42.8%. The worst county-- which Colorado should expel-- was Yuma, where 57 people voted to secede (81.4%). Yuma voted 77% for Romney last year and 84% for crackpot right-wing congressman, Cory Gardner.

Portland, Maine voters overwhelmingly approved Question 1 (70%), allowing for marijuana possession.

I Would Crawl Over Glass On My Hands And Knees To Vote For Barbara Buono Tuesday

Today everyone thinks it's wonderful that the Clinton's corrupt bagman, Terry McAuliffe, is going to win the Virginia governorship. Even I can admit that he's probably better than the Republican alternative, Ken Cuccinelli, an extreme right-wing ideologue and crazy-eyed fanatic. But what a heartbreak that election is! It's the ultimate "lesser-of-two-evils" choice. In New Jersey, the election is anything but that-- a Republican that hides his Cuccinelli side and poses as a "moderate" and one of the best candidates the Democrats have put up for any election, anywhere. Barbara Buono is an ideal candidate and she scared the hell out of the corrupt New Jersey political machines-- not just the GOP machine, but the Democratic one as well. Her campaign has been about the other New Jersey, the one Christie and his coterie have forgotten about. Her appeal has been to working families, the LGBT community, over 400,000 unemployed people, people struggling to make ends meet on minimum wage jobs, New Jersey educators and small businessmen and women. The New Jersey Establishment, as always is a self-serving scam. The bosses, regardless of party, are happy as can be with Chris Christie as governor. He's their kind of politician.

I meet a lot of candidates for office. I rarely meet any as dedicated, clear-headed and inspiring as Barbara Buono. I envy people in New Jersey today because they have the right to vote for her. It's unimaginable to me that any Democrat or independent who's been awake for the last 4 years could vote for Chris Christie.



UPDATE: POLLS ARE OPEN

Rep. Frank Pallone, at 6 this morning as the polls opened in New Jersey: "Today, I ask you to please go out and vote for Barbara Buono for Governor. Barbara is a progressive reformer looking to bring real change to New Jersey. She is a proven champion of working families, who will work to create good, living wage jobs, strengthening our middle class, fight for better education for all of our children, and be a steward of our environment.

"If you need help finding your polling location, this website can assist you. Remember to remind your friends, family, and coworkers that today is Election Day. Tell them Barbara Buono is the right choice for Governor, and remind them to vote for the entire Democratic team."

If Christie wins today, I'll need this photo to defend the country when he runs for president in 2016

Boehner Says There Aren't Enough Republicans To Pass A Clean CR And Dems Say There Are. Who's Right?

Democrats, from President Obama (who has no relation with House Republicans and doesn't know much more about it than any of us do) to Nancy Pelosi, say there are enough Republicans and Democrats-- 217-- to pass a clean CR. Long Island Republican Peter King agrees. Let's say that the 5 right-wing Democrats who refused to sign Pelosi's letter to Boehner calling for a clean CR-- John Barrow (New Dem-GA), Mike McIntyre (New Dem-NC), Jim Cooper (New Dem-TN), Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT) and Ron Kind (New Dem-WI)-- can be persuaded to vote for it, a reasonable, though not iron-clad assumption. Monday a member of the Democratic House leadership, no doubt hoping to incite me, e-mailed me that these are the 5 worst Democrats in the House and pointed out that Cooper and Kind are in D+5 districts. I mentioned to him that his buddy Steve Israel keeps Barrow, McIntyre and Matheson in Congress with massive DCCC spending and that all 3 would lose without DCCC money, giving the leadership leverage they never use. But for the sake of this argument we're assuming that, for whatever reason, the 5 bad Democrats vote for the Clean CR.

That means 17 Republicans are needed. There have been public statements that 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, and 24 Republicans have committed. Last night Rachel read some of the statements on her show (above). She read statements and showed some of the tweets from these galoots:

• Pat Meehan (R-PA)
• Scott Rigell (R-VA)
• Jon Runyan (R-VA)
• Mike Fitzpatrick (R-PA)
• Lou Barletta (R-PA)
• Peter King (R-NY)
• Charlie Dent (R-PA)
• Frank Wolf (R-VA)
• Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm (R-NY)
• Erik Paulsen (R-MN)
• Rob Wittman (R-VA)
• Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ)
• Randy Forbes (R-VA)
• Jim Gerlach (R-PA)
• Leonard Lance (R-NJ)
• Mike Simpson (R-ID)
• Bill Young (R-FL)
• Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL)
• Richard Hanna (R-NY)
• Tim Griffin (R-AR)
• Don Young (R-AK)
• Dennis Ross (R-FL)

The bolded names belong to congressmen whose districts Obama won in 2008 and/or 2012. Rachel says, definitively that "the votes are there?" But are they really? I don't think so. She goes on to say that "Unless these Members of Congress are telling their local press, telling their constituents and tweeting and putting out press releases saying they're going to do something that they're not actually going to do, the votes are there. And we know who they are. It's not a mysterious, esoteric, ascribing of votes to people who we think might be there; it's Members of Congress, by name committing to do it. It's called arithmetic… the votes are there. Math will not lead you astray; it works every time.

At the same time Rachel was reading her list on MSNBC, ABC was reporting that some of the Republicans had already changed their minds. "Four other GOP members-- Reps. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, Leonard Lance, R-N.J., and Randy Forbes, R-Va.-- had previously been on record in support of a clean CR, but said today either their previous positions were misconstrued or they had changed their minds." Nunes, the guy who called his Tea Party colleagues "lemmings with suicide vests" and who wants to run for statewide office in California, would rather snipe from the sidelines than do anything to fix the problem. He's not about arithmetic; he's about political cowardice. His Central Valley district has a PVI of R+10 and the only challenge he could conceive of to dislodge him from Congress would be from a teabagger. Simpson, Leonard and Forbes are also in red districts that Obama lost in both 2008 and 2012 and all fear primaries from the right. The good news from ABC, backed up my own supposition, above, that the 5 renegade right-wing Democrats will actually vote for a Clean CR.

If you're wondering why so many Virginians are on these lists, it's because the upcoming gubernatorial election has roiled the politics of the state. Ted Cruz has been there campaigning for Cuccinelli and the Cooch's already failing campaign started sinking even more as Cruz made speeches and appearances on his behalf.

Both McAuliffe and Cuccinelli have spoken out against the shutdown. The Democrat has run ads tying Cuccinelli to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the so-called defund Obamacare champion, while Cuccinelli has accused McAuliffe of risking a shutdown in Richmond with his give-no-quarter support for Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act.

They have good reason to run in that direction: A full 62 percent of poll respondents said they oppose the government “shutting down over funding for the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.” Thirty-one percent said they support the shutdown.

Of the Virginia voters who oppose the shutdown, nearly two-thirds-- 64 percent-- support McAuliffe while 16 percent support Cuccinelli, and 12 percent back Sarvis. Shutdown supporters prefer Cuccinelli over McAuliffe, 73 percent to 10 percent with 11 percent for Sarvis.

National Republicans take the greater share of blame from Virginians for the lights-out moment in Washington: Fifty percent of respondents said they blame Republicans in Congress most for the shutdown while 35 percent said they primarily blame President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats. Fifteen percent of likely voters in the poll said they blame both sides equally.

Democratic and Republican voters largely pin the blame on the other party, but independent voters blame congressional Republicans over Obama and Senate Democrats, 48 percent to 33 percent.

…Cruz, who boosted Cuccinelli at a conservative event in Richmond last weekend, is an unpopular figure in Virginia. He was viewed unfavorably by 45 percent of poll respondents while 26 percent had a favorable opinion of the Texas Republican.

Anyone surprised by this, doesn't pay much attention

If Boehner puts a Clean CR vote up today and he and Cantor whip against it, I doubt it would pass. If the Democrats manage to come up with a way to get it to the floor despite Boehner's control of the floor-- they've failed so far but have two more aces up their sleeves-- I think it would also fail. Republicans, other than Peter King, will not break ranks with their party, no matter what Rachel's math says. That's not how they operate. I can't talk about one of the aces yet but everyone knows about Chris Van Hollen's discharge petition already. It will probably fail, but it's still worth doing, as Greg Sargent pointed out:

“The local press will be asking them whether they will sign this discharge, and if not, why not,” Van Hollen says. “You’re gonna see an effort to get local media to hold them accountable.”

Pressed on whether Dems can really get the 18 or 20 House Republicans they need to sign the discharge petition, Van Hollen said: “If every member who has said they’d vote for a clean CR signs it, then we get to 218. If we can build the pressure, we can get there, but it will require an organized effort.”

“This is an opportunity to get all the folks who have publicly stated they want to vote now to put their signatures where their mouths are,” Van Hollen added. And he said that history showed that Speakers can sometimes find themselves forced to act if the numbers on such a petition are mounting-- whether or not they get up to 218.

“A discharge petition is a clear signal a Speaker has lost control of the floor,” he said. “It forces them to take action. You can’t hide from a discharge petition.” However, today, one moderate Republican who has said he wants a vote on a clean CR clarified he would not sign a discharge petition.

And from the never-helpful DCCC:

Women Have Achieved Equality In Some States But Are Still Second Class Citizens In Others-- Take Virginia

In a comprehensive new study of the state of women in America, the Center for American Progress gets into great depth about how women are faring in terms of economic security, leadership and health. The differences between the states are startling. Less startling is how badly women fare in Republican-controlled states.

There are 10 states that were ranked "F," 3 ranked "D-" and 3 ranked "D." I'm sure it won't surprise any DWT readers that all 16 of those states voted for Mitt Romney last year (as did the 4 states with scores of "D"). The failed states, from bad to worse, ranked by how badly women are treated are:

• Missouri- D+
• Kentucky- D+
• Montana- D+
• Nebraska- D+
• South Carolina- D
• Idaho- D
• North Dakota- D
• Kansas- D-
• North Carolina- D-
• Tennessee- D-
• Georgia- F
• Indiana- F
• South Dakota- F
• Arkansas- F
• Texas- F
• Mississippi- F
• Alabama- F
• Oklahoma- F
• Utah- F
• Louisiana- F

And, of course, the 10 states ranked "A" or "A-" are all blue states: Maryland, Hawaii, Vermont, California, Delaware, Connecticut, Colorado, New York, New Jersey, and Washington. Virginia used to be a red state but has been trending blue. It's a classic purple state. The situation for women, statewide has improved and is much better than it is in any other state that was part of the Old Confederacy. The overall score is C+ and the state ranks 23rd best for women in America. Wednesday night the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Terry McAuliffe went after Virginia's misogynistic Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, the GOP candidate, on women's issues.

Democrat Terry McAuliffe sought to hone in on issues that might widen the polling gap between him and his opponent, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R), among women voters, during a gubernatorial debate on Wednesday night.

During multiple questions by moderator and MSNBC host Chuck Todd, McAuliffe tried to paint Cuccinelli as a conservative extremist who's out of touch on women's issues and gay rights.

"He sponsored personhood legislation that would outlaw most forms of contraception, would make the pill illegal," McAuliffe said. "He's referred to gay Virginians as self-destructive and soulless human beings. He was one of only three attorney generals when the Violence Against Women's was being reauthorized in the United States Congress-- 47 attorney generals signed the letter-- violence against women, not controversial. He is one of three that refused to sign it. It has been a pattern."

McAuliffe then linked Cuccinelli's stances on these issues as harmful to Virginia's economy, pointing in particular to a large government contracting company Northrop Grumman Corporation, which employs more than 40,000 employees in the Washington, D.C. area.

And that polling gap referred to above... as Rachel explained in her MSNBC piece up top, women voters "prefer McAuliffe by a 24-point margin over Cuccinelli... The challenge for Cuccinelli is stark: Nearly half of all voters view him unfavorably, and they trust his opponent as much as or more than the Republican on every major issue in the race, according to the poll. On trust to handle issues of special concern to women, McAuliffe leads Cuccinelli by 23 points."

Do VA Dems grasp now why they needed a decent gubernatorial candidate to go up against "Cuckoo Ken" Cuccinelli?

No, this isn't a recent photo. This is back in May that dreadful Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe was smiling that, er, creepy smile.

by Ken

The last time I wrote derisively about the appalling Terry "The Bagman" McAuliffe as the best Virginia Democrats could come up with to succeed downward-spiraling Gov. Bob McDonnell, a commenter noted that McAuliffe in fact has a good chance of winning. Even if I believed that, my point would be, "So what?" Yes, better that he should be elected than the unspeakable right-wing-crazed Cuckoo Ken, but that's the only standard by which there's anything positive to say about Terry M. After all, principal, if not only, qualification for electoral politics is his experience shoving enormous sums of cash through the Democratic electoral pipes -- hence the nickname.

So to recap:

* The worst outcome of the race is that Cuckoo Ken becomes governor of Virginia.

* The second-worst outcome is that Terry the Bagman becomes governor.

I suppose I should be concentrating on figuring out the exact difference between the worst and second-worst outcomes, to try to figure out how much to care, or worry, about the outcome.

Only now, as you may have heard, Complications Have Arisen. It seems the Bagman is under investigation by the SEC. As the Washngton Post's Tom Hamburger rehashed it in a follow-up story, "McAuliffe says he didn’t know SEC was investigating his former company": "The documents [concerning the investigation into McAuliffe's former company, GreenTech Automotive] show that the SEC is examining the way in which the car company and a sister firm, Gulf Coast Funds Management, solicited the participation of foreign investors, mostly Chinese citizens seeking to enter the United States."

So what, you're asking, does the candidate have to say about the investigation story? Here's the opening of Tom Hamburger's report:

Terry McAuliffe, the Virginia gubernatorial candidate, issued a statement Saturday saying he had no prior knowledge of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation of his former company, GreenTech Automotive — and he criticized a Republican senator who has focused on the firm.

The statement is the first formal comment directly from McAuliffe about the inquiry since The Washington Post learned of it last week while reviewing hundreds of documents obtained by congressional investigators.

Want more? Here's our Terry:

“I left GreenTech in early December of 2012 to focus full time on running for Governor,” McAuliffe said. “The first I learned of this investigation was earlier this week when the Washington Post reached out to my campaign.”

And then there's this. (What you need to know here: "GreenTech has sought overseas investors through the federal EB-5 Visa Program, which allows foreign nationals to enter the United States if they agree to invest at least $500,000 to create jobs." The program has had strong bipartisan support for two decades, but "in recent years, the SEC and other government agencies have stepped up oversight of the investment for visas plan.")

I find it unfortunate that a Republican Senator from Iowa -- who has a long history of support for the EB-5 program -- selectively released information for the purpose of partisan attacks instead of getting facts.

The senator from Iowa is Chuck Grassley, who mumbles about "whistleblowers," having suddenly become a great fan of whistleblowers, provided they're blowing the whistle on behalf of right-wing or right-wing-compatible crusades. You can read about the details for yourself.

Let me stress that I'm making no attempt to judge the rights and wrongs here. I'm just saying that Virginia Dems are stuck with a candidate whose principal professional credential is financial finagling. What on God's green earth did they expect this campaign to be like?

Meanwhile, Cuckoo Ken still has his wee gift-acceptance problem to swat down, but that's going to be a lot easier than it was before. What's more, Cuckoo Ken, a former prosecutor, is up on all sorts of state issues that I doubt the Bagman knows anything about. I take for granted that down the line Cuckoo Ken's take is cracked. But he may not sound so cracked, especially measured against an opponent who is being successfully made to look crooked.

As of today, I'm measuring that difference between the worst and second-worst election outcomes at 12. I don't know 12 what?. Just 12.

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For a "Sunday Classics" fix anytime, visit the stand-alone "Sunday Classics with Ken."

Which Politicians Will Be Burned Worst By Sequestration?

As we mentioned yesterday, Republican governors are bringing real pressure to bear on the ideology-driven congressmembers from safely gerrymandered districts in their states to compromise with Obama on Sequestration. Governors will have to face devastating consequences to their state's fragile economies if the Boehner plan goes through. In Ryan Lizza's New Yorker report on a disintegrating Republican Party, The House of Pain, he quotes former NRCC Chair Tom Cole (R-OK), "leader of a large faction of House Republicans who believe that the Tea Party-inspired congressmen are dooming the Party," on the current makeup of the GOP House caucus: “It will do things that it knows are politically not in its interest... If this were football, some of these guys would know only one play, and that’s to throw deep every time. They don’t understand winning incrementally or winning first downs. I admire the zeal, because we have to have that, but it needs to be tempered with a little bit of experience... These guys have no endgame. I mean, they just are so desperate to do something that they don’t think past their nose. And that’s the dangerous part of this. I saw one of them on television who said, ‘Well, Obama will cave.’ Really? With all the polls running in his direction, his popularity moving up, ours in the tank? He’s not going to cave. Some of these guys will hold a political gun to their head and threaten the President: ‘Do what I want or I’ll pull the trigger!’ Like he cares?”

I suspect many Americans would like to watch that in real time on TV. People are fed up with the nihilists and obstructionists who have taken over the GOP. And the Republican governors are among them. It may be too little, too late and Boehner probably doesn't have the political strength inside his own caucus to put on the brakes now, but here are worried quotes from some worried GOP governors.

• Bob McDonnell (R-VA): “They need to stop having press conferences and start meeting. The time for shows is over. We’ve had 18 months.”

• Gary Herbert (R-UT): “I think there’s a lack of leadership, period. And there’s enough lack of leadership blame to go around. The president needs to step up with his proposals. Speaker Boehner needs to come to the table with his proposals... They all need to step up."

• Tom Corbett (R-PA): “Frankly, I think the Hill ought to be saying, ‘We’re ready to sit down and work on a budget right now, and we will go through it line by line.’ That’s what you’ve got to do. That’s what we do as governors... I’m going to object [to National Guard furloughs] We have enough time that we can give them the savings that they want by not hiring for the vacancies that we have. [But] my understanding is that my adjutant general is being told they can’t do that. They’ve got to furlough.”

The Hill posits that the Sequester battle is going to play very heavily in elections this year and particularly points out the Virginia governor's race (in November) and the House race to replace Tim Scott in South Carolina's first congressional district. With the GOP losing the public relations battle badly, Democratic candidates look to benefit from what is being seen as Republican Party ritualized obstructionism.

No one really imagined a Democratic win in SC-01, a district where Romney beat Obama 58.3-40.2% and where Tim Scott was just reelected with 62%, but with disgraced ex-Governor Mark Sanford the likely Republican nominee against Stephen Colbert's sister, Elizabeth Colbert Busch, we'll see if a deep red district is open to sending the GOP the ultimate message about obstruction and nihilism.

The district is rooted in Charleston, an area that remains heavily dependent on military and defense jobs-- the Charleston Joint Air Force Base and the defense contractor hub at the Charleston Naval Weapons Station could both severely feel its impact.

Many military veterans have also retired along the coast, near Myrtle Beach and Beaufort. It’s no wonder why Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of sequestration’s most vocal critics, hails from the state.

The timing of the race could also put it in the spotlight. Military furloughs are set to kick in on April 1, the day before the GOP primary runoff election will be held, and the general election will be held shortly after that on May 7.

If Colbert's sister wins this one, expect to see unprecedented Republican Party panic in Congress as obstructionists in "safe" red seats start realizing there aren't enough K Street lobbyist positions open for everyone likely to go down in 2014. And in Virginia, Sequestration, shepherded through Congress by their own Eric Cantor, will be more devastating than to most states.

The state relies heavily on federal government spending, with a high number of military bases, a federal shipyard in the Tidewater region and defense contractors all over Northern Virginia.

Virginia could lose 200,000 Virginia jobs if the full 10-year sequester takes place, according to one study. Mitt Romney, 2012 Senate candidate George Allen (R) and Rep. Eric Cantor’s (R-Va.) Democratic opponent all focused on it in their Virginia campaigns.

Terry McAuliffe, Democrats’ likely gubernatorial nominee, ripped the plan.

"Sequestration is an unbelievable drag on Virginia’s economy that is already being felt because politicians in Washington can’t come together to find a solution,” he said in a statement to The Hill.

“Extreme politicians who oppose compromise are threatening Virginia’s economy with continued gridlock. It is time for mainstream leaders of both parties to come together and find a common sense solution. We simply can not afford any more rigid ideological posturing when hundreds of thousands of Virginia jobs are on the line."

GOP nominee and Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) told The Hill last week that sequestration was “not a policy,” but didn’t weigh in on whether or not it should be averted or replaced by other cuts. He did say that the government had to eventually “spend within its means and Virginia, no doubt, with one third of its economy based on federal jobs, will take a hit on that.”

With Republicans still playing "chicken" and strutting around saying they're ready to call Obama's "bluff" the magnitude of the mindless chopping of programs is starting to sink in with voters.

Republicans questioned whether the sequester would be as harmful as the White House predicted and worked on a proposal that could preserve the cuts while giving the administration more discretion to choose how to implement them. Democrats expressed worry that they might be forced to accept the cuts if the public outcry is not loud enough in coming weeks.

Seeking to raise alarm among a public that has not paid much attention to the issue, the White House on Sunday released 51 fact sheets describing what would happen over the next seven months if the cuts go into effect.

...The sequester-- worth $1.2 trillion over 10 years-- effectively orders the administration to make across-the-board, indiscriminate cuts to agency programs, sparing only some mandatory programs such as Medicaid and food stamps. It is the result of a 2011 deal forged by the White House and Congress to reduce federal borrowing. It was intended as a draconian measure so blunt that it would force lawmakers to find alternative means of reducing the budget deficit. But while Republicans and Democrats have both made suggestions for how to do so, no plan has gotten enough support to pass Congress.

On Sunday, White House officials painted an ominous picture of cuts affecting a wide range of government services if the sequester takes effect-- and spotlighted the impact in states that are politically important to Republicans.

Hundreds of teachers could lose their jobs in Ohio, home to House Speaker John A. Boehner (R), officials said, and thousands of children may not get necessary vaccines in conservative Georgia.

Obama’s aides said they would seek to make clear that Republicans are choosing to allow the cuts to go forward instead of agreeing to reduce the deficit by scaling back tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy.

“It’s important to understand why the sequester is going to go into effect,” said Dan Pfeiffer, an Obama senior adviser. “The Republicans are making a policy choice that these cuts are better for the economy than eliminating loopholes that benefit the wealthy.”

“The American people overwhelmingly disagree with that choice,” he added. “But in a constitutional government where Republicans control the House, if they want to force that choice on the American people, they have the right to do that.”

...While every other fiscal showdown of the past 21 / 2 years has been resolved at the last minute, there’s little reason to expect that to happen this time.

Obama and congressional leaders have had no face-to-face talks about avoiding the spending cuts. The White House has been pressing liberal allies in the past 10 days to sound the alarm to ratchet up pressure on Republicans, with an eye on making them fold by the late March deadline.

The House returns Monday evening to approve several non-controversial bills-- including naming a California space research center after Neil Armstrong-- with the latter part of the week devoted to passing its version of a reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.

The Senate also returns Monday evening, first considering a non-controversial judicial nominee and then dedicating Tuesday to the expected confirmation of Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense.

Neither the House nor the Senate is planning to be in session when the sequester hits on Friday.

In Virginia, could Deeds have stopped the theocratic McDonnell by branding him as "Pat Robertson's Manchurian Candidate"?

Plus: The NJ gov race goes down to the wire

Virginia gubernatorial candidates Creigh Deeds (D) and Bob
McDonnell (R, "Pat Robertson's Manchurian Candidate")
before their first campaign debate, in Roanoke last night

“There are other opportunities out there. But what I can do now is be the best attorney general I can be. If I do that, the Lord will open other doors for me.”

-- Virginia AG Bob McDonnell, in 2007, to his patron Pat Robertson, as recalled yesterday by Max Blumenthal in a Daily Beast post

by Ken

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and pundits gotta, well, do what they do, and in our present fraught and confused political climate, this can be dangerous. We have. as you know, precious little happening electorally this year of plausible national significance, but since those pundits have to earn their table scraps from the media moguls, this means that for better or worse the two gubernatorial races are going to be subjected to a great deal of highly cockamamie analysis.

IN NJ: CAN CORZINE PULL IT OUT?

Again as we all know, with the economies of all the states in turmoil, this is certainly not a year when any sitting governor would wish to have to face the voters. The only poor sod who has to do so is New Jersey's Jon Corzine, who has the additional -- or perhaps more basic? -- problem that by and large his state's voters don't much like him. Nevertheless, over the summer his reelection prospects have brightened considerably since I last wrote about this race, in August, thanks to a relentlessly negative campaign against Republican former U.S. attorney Chris Christie. Christie, fortunately, is a candidate born, or should I say self-invented, to be the object of a negative campaign, being a proud exemplar of the Bush-DeLay-Rove culture of political corruption. As U.S. attorney, he was the very model of the partisan hack who had nothing to fear from the Rove purge. It was hard to believe that sustained attention to his record wouldn't cause him serious poll slippage.

The wild card here is the presence of a third candidate. Yesterday the Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey Poll, which in August had Christie up by 14 points, released its latest results, showing Corzine and Christie at 39 percent each, with independent Chris Daggett, who seems to be the beneficiary of a sizable "plague on both your houses" vote, at 14 percent. Do I have to tell you that in a race this close a third candidate polling at that level makes the whole thing up for grabs, and wholly unpredictable?

If Christie does win, he may have the distinction of being a governor already under criminal investigation as he's being inaugurated. Prospective Christie voters might want to bone up on the state's gubernatorial succession rules as they go to the polls.

MEANWHILE IN VIRGINIA . . .

With incumbent Gov. Tim Kaine term-limited out of running again (not much of a loss!), it's déjà vu all over again, with a replay of the 2005 race in which Republican Bob McDonnell defeated Democrat Creigh Deeds by 323 votes out of some 1.9 million cast. And as Max Blumenthal suggested in a Daily Beast post yesterday, if McDonnell wins, as is appearing increasingly likely, the punditocracy is all but assured of misdiagnosing what happened, which is that an ultra-right-wing candidate succeeded in masquerading as a moderate, and his opponent was too gutless or dim or just plain ill-advised to let him get away with it.

"Pat Robertson's Manchurian Candidate," Max dubbed McDonnell, describing him as a "Christian-right darling" who "is likely to become Virginia’s next governor -- and more extreme candidates could win on his coattails." If Deeds indeed goes down to defeat, it won't be, Max reports, because he was entirely ill-advised:

Last summer, after Virginia state Senator Creigh Deeds crushed his rivals in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, a veteran Democratic consultant named Lowell Feld offered the Deeds campaign some advice. Feld told me he urged Deeds to immediately launch an attack campaign painting his Republican rival, state Attorney General Bob McDonnell, as “Pat Robertson’s Manchurian Candidate.” If Deeds wavered, Feld was convinced McDonnell could make inroads in the liberal-leaning but fiercely competitive suburbs of Northern Virginia.

While many Republican candidates pander to the Christian right to win elections in evangelical-heavy states, McDonnell has done exactly the opposite in the Virginia governor’s race: He's appealing to the sensibilities of comparatively moderate Northern Virginian voters. But that’s not because he’s a moderate. In fact, McDonnell is a consummate culture warrior; a graduate of Pat Robertson’s law school, Regent University, and a personal friend of the far-right televangelist, who donated heavily to his past campaigns.

During an appearance on Robertson’s 700 Club in 2007, McDonnell said his four years at Regent “gave me the insight about what our Founders believed about government and about their view of the Constitution that I’ve been carrying with me on the job today.”

Do I have to tell you that the Deeds campaign didn't take Feld’s advice? "By the time Deeds engaged McDonnell on abortion in August -- the Republican has opposed the practice even in cases of rape and incest -- the smooth-talking, telegenic McDonnell was already scoring big with swing voters on transportation and economic issues."

Unlike many Christian-right candidates, his image is easily relatable to suburban independents. During his appearance on the 700 Club, McDonnell revealed himself as a stealth candidate who learned through Robertson’s mentoring to conceal his hard-right ideology behind a moderate veneer. “[Regent] taught me the real importance of being a Christian elected official,” he remarked. “It’s not just what you say but it’s also the style of how you say it and acting in a degree of civility . . . without compromising principle.”

According to Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, McDonnell has successfully exploited his genial image to outmaneuver Deeds in the state’s key swing districts. “Virginian independents vote on who holds a drink better, who can converse with a wide variety of people in a clever way,” Sabato told me. “So whoever passes what I call the suburban cocktail party test usually wins. And McDonnell passes with flying colors.”

“I have known Creigh for a long time," Sabato told Max, "and I like him. But he is not terribly articulate and frankly, his performance has been embarrassing. Voters make split-second decisions based on sound bites and they have reacted negatively to Deeds.”

McDonnell has even survived the embarrassment of public attention to his graduate thesis.

The candidate himself, perhaps in a moment of pride, mentioned it in passing to a Washington Post reporter, a foolish mistake that sparked her curiosity. Voters were thus exposed to an impassioned manifesto that read like a manual for implementing theocracy. In the 93-page document, McDonnell denounced working women as “detrimental for the family,” called on the government to favor married couples over “cohabitators, homosexuals, or fornicators,” and attacked a Supreme Court decision legalizing birth control for married couples. [W]hen the exercise of liberty takes the shape of pornography, drug abuse, or homosexuality,” McDonnell proclaimed, “the government must restrain, punish, and deter.”

And the bad news doesn't end there. With McDonnell and Deeds at the top of their respective tickets, there are scary prospects down the ballot.

[M]any local Democratic insiders have all but given up on [Deeds]. They worry that if he loses by more than three points, hard-right Republican candidates will dominate down-ticket races. Among the new crop of right-wing upstarts is Barbara Comstock, a conservative flack running for the House of Delegates. While in Washington, Comstock helped run Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s defense fund and served as the communications director for George W. Bush’s Department of Justice, working with Regent University graduate Monica Goodling to install political cadres as U.S. attornies throughout the department.

“Comstock is bringing tons of money in,” Feld said, “and if Deeds gets his ass kicked, she is very likely to win.”

Even more worrisome for Virginia Democrats is the prospect of Ken Cuccinelli winning the attorney general’s race. Cuccinelli is a Catholic traditionalist who has accused pro-choice advocates of “killing…the children.” He recently boasted that he is the most conservative candidate to run for statewide office in his lifetime. An outspoken ally of the Tea Party Patriots, Cuccinelli has announced he was “considering” not getting Social Security numbers for his eight children because the government program “is being used to track you.”

“If McDonnell wins big,” Sabato stated, “Cuccinelli gets in on his coattails.”

I might add that Comstock's name in particular is a red flag to my better-informed progressive friends and colleagues. Her résumé marks her as one of the sleaziest and most ruthless GOP hatchetpersons of all time.

Max concluded with the 2007 quote McDonnell-to-Pat Robertson quote at the top of this post. "Whatever the margin of victory is on November 3," Max says, "McDonnell is likely to interpret a victory as a blessing from heaven -- and set his sights on higher office."

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