Terry McMahon's Awesome Blog

Based off my predictions the other day, you could say I went 7 for 7. I won't say that though, because it was a Team Democrat kind of night, and I'm not going to bet against my own team and still expect to get into the Hall of Fame for it. But pretty much all the races wound up going leaning five points further towards the Democrats than I expected, which is fine by me.

Of course I won't let an Election Day go by without any of my trenchant commentary. For the sake of not having an unbelievably long post, I'm going to break things up by state. First up, the first runner-up for my undergraduate and law school selections: Virginia!

Congrats to everyone who got Tim Kaine the win in the governor's race here. I was never totally convinced that Tim Kaine was that great a candidate, a sentiment that may be implicitly supported in all the morning-after coverage about how Virginia's now a purple state. (Kerry contested it briefly in 2004, and the fast-growing DC suburbs and exurbs are either heavily Democratic or moving in that direction.) This is true especially because outgoing Gov. Mark Warner received a lot of credit, and rightly so, for winning his campaign in 2001 by sponsoring NASCAR cars, playing a bluegrass-flavored theme song for his radio ads, forming a big Sportsmen for Warner group: in other words, doing a better job of appealing to rural voters than pretty much any statewide Democrat in ages. Especially since Mark Warner is a Connecticut-born, DC-suburbs kind of Virginian, it seemed like he had finally found a way for a Democrat to carry the state.

Tim Kaine, on the other hand, ran a much more straightforward progressive campaign. He did talk a lot about his Catholic faith and how it drove him to public office, which I think is smart for all Democrats of faith, but he didn't do as much rural campaigning as Warner (which the results in rural Virginia showed). The crazy thing, though, is that Kaine still won by a bigger margin than Warner did, which I think reflects two facts of Virginia politics. The first is the trend towards Team Democrat that I think will definitely make Virginia competitive in 2008.

The second thing I found interesting is the ridiculous popularity of Mark Warner, whose approval rating is something like 80 percent in a state that hasn't voted Democrat since 1964. I don't have any material with which to back this up, but I suspect Warner's the second example I've noticed of an odd political phenomenon: self-fulfilling popularity. You may recall in the California recall of 2003, political observers first raised the question of whether California's most popular politician, Senator Dianne Feinstein, would run for governor. When she declined to run, her name still came up, because every Democrat considered as a candidate had to be viewed through the lens of not being as popular as California's most popular politician, Dianne Feinstein. By the end of three months of that kind of press coverage, Feinstein, despite having done very little on the public radar in the meantime, had her already high approval ratings go through the roof. I guess if you're wicked popular, it's good to have people compared to you.

I think the same thing happened to Mark Warner here, because I'm pretty sure his approval rating wasn't at 80 percent when this whole campaign started. But one of the overarching themes of this campaign, politically at least, was whether Tim Kaine can take advantage of the fact that Mark Warner is outrageously popular. And, as with the California recall, if so much of the Virginia gubernatorial coverage depends on Mark Warner being considered that popular, people take it for granted that Warner's doing a great job (which he did) and his approval rating only goes up. It's a neat trick, especially it only helps Warner with his "future plans," whatever they "may be."

That said, I still think Mark Warner is a little overrated. He's clearly running for president in 2008 (the invitations to his first New Hampshire event arrived in the mail, of all days, on Tuesdsay), and if he's the Democratic nominee, I will absolutely be thrilled to support him. But let's not call Warner an electoral marvel yet, not least because he's only won one campaign in his life. The difference between Mark Warner and John Edwards on electoral success, though, is in why they didn't run for Senate. John Edwards decided in September 2003 that he had to decide between the presidential campaign and the Senate campaign, and he decided to roll the dice. Mark Warner could have challenged George Allen for Senate in 2006 and still run for president in 2008, but he didn't: if he lost, his presidential hopes would be gone. So Mark Warner took the easy way out and decided he wouldn't run for Senate in 2006. He can do whatever he wants, of course, but keep this in mind when his people go around telling everyone how Mark Warner is a campaign Midas.

Especially since, look, I know I keep saying this, but George Allen sucks. Look at this video (it'll start right away) and tell me this guy deserves to be the overwhelming Beltway favorite to be the next Republican presidential nominee. Besides the fact that I've never heard a good idea out of him, and you will get sick of his football metaphors well in advance of 2008, there is nothing about him that makes him seem presidential. The trick is that the GOP insiders are looking for a guy who will appeal to both social conservatives and fiscal conservatives while having the charm to win over swing voters. That was always Bush's greatest political appeal, and I think it's valuable (yet another reason why I support John Edwards, by the way), but I suspect it works less effectively as the electorate becomes smarter. Thanks to blogs and the internet, people have a better idea of who's playing both sides, and I have a suspicion that if George Allen gets the spotlight in 2008 he'll be seen as a hypocrite if he doesn't choose between conservatism and moderation. I have seen absolutely no indication that he can pull it off.