When Deeds loses, it's going to be important for the left to characterize the loss at Deeds running too hard to the middle and the right - repudiating Health care reform, for example. Deeds runs as an actual Democrat, he might have pulled this thing out. He just read the early issue polls on healthcare and cravenly scurried to the right, only to lose.

Agree about Deeds. As a progressive Virginian, I can say that I'm not that pumped up about him. He ran too far to the right and tried to make his McDonnell seem like a boogey man. It isn't that people love McDonnell, it that they're not excited about Deeds. His refusal to embrace Obama and progressive ideas is losing this for him.

Wrong -- any Republican victory shows that all America hates Obama! Ignore any Dem victory.

And yet, Virginians in the poll prefer McDonnell to Deeds, 55% to 44%.

From way over here on the left coast, Deeds has looked from the beginning like the single most craptacular Democratic candidate for anything since Michael Doo-doo-ca-ca. As David says in post #1, he surrendered to the far right and ran as a halfassed Republican. He deserves to lose and hopefully no one will remember his name again ever a minute after he gives his surrender speech.

polls say my ass itches, 1-0. i guess i better scratch it.

i think virginia tells us what its like to live in virginia, which has a gigantic northern area of washingtonian complexes, and a appalachian and south a'the James River poverty like Afghanistan on tobacco and jeezus.

so the taliban south can always win in virginia...big fuckin' deal... the northern virginian washingtonians also can win on a good day with a good candidate.

pity, the msm spectacle machine will turn it all to propaganda, and the corporate powers twist it and spin it so we are all set up for the fragile Dim losses to the off-year opposition party gains.

Nowadays, this kind of propaganda leads us further towards the crazies on the extreme Repugnant right (as Kristol has warned us today) -- and they'll be waiting, sharpening their knives.

Let the repugs come to the wrong conclusions all they want, I welcome it. If they're trying to create reality by simply declaring their fondest desires to be true, that won't work either. The reality based community is in charge.

I want to meet someone who supports both Obama and McDonnell. I really want to see just what kind of person can rationalize that.

"Wrong -- any Republican victory shows that all America hates Obama! Ignore any Dem victory."

Left something out here Go, Sestak!...any Republican victory OR LOSS shows that all America hates Obama! Rush's reasoning. That's just the way it is - he can't win for losing....

Silly Steve. Don't you know that *everything*, no matter how it looks in reality, can be spun as a repudiation of Obama by the Repubs? Up is down and down is up in Repub-world.

It doesn't have to be a compelling argument. It just has to be repeated over and over and over and OVER.

When Deeds loses it will be because he was a non-starter in Northern Virginia, around the Beltway. He just doesn't have the personality to convince an Arlington fence-sitter that he can get shit done. And with a name like "Creigh..."

Meanwhile, McDonnell has run one nasty-ass campaign, full of snake oil and "lower taxes." Jim Gilmore rode the "lower taxes" ass into Richmond 12 years ago and nearly killed off the state entirely. My prediction is McDonnell will do no better.

We're a purple state. And, man, things get dark in a hurry every time we go red.

For three decades, the party that's won the Presidency lost the VA governor's race the following year. Deeds always had a tough job to beat that, and he's not a good campaigner statewide. Retail, yes; wholesale, he's a disaster. His campaign was exclusively negative for too long. He performed poorly in the debates. And McDonnell is slick. Unfortunately, McDonnell and Cuccinelli are going to make life tougher for a lot of people for the next four years (barring a political miracle). It stinks.

And of course, Obama has nothing to do with it.

"I want to meet someone who supports both Obama and McDonnell. I really want to see just what kind of person can rationalize that."
Posted by: doubtful on October 27, 2009 at 11:20 AM

I mean no disrespect when I remind you (because you clearly know this) that voting for a candidate in no way means you "support" them -- and even if it did, there'd be a conflict in such acts only among people who actually care enough about politics to pay attention, and know how to access news and information that isn't totally filtered thru the 'Publican Ministry of Truth that is our corporate-MSM.
I don't know whether that constitutes just a minority, or a *small* minority, of the electorate. But I'm reasonably confident it doesn't describe a majority in any state.