Althouse: "Moderate Democrat defeats Bush family surrogate in Virginia."

November 8, 2017

"Moderate Democrat defeats Bush family surrogate in Virginia."

David Blaska puts yesterday in perspective.

19 comments:

mccullough said...: Ann of Althouse? Pretty regal; 11/8/17, 7:27 PM
Mike said...: "David Blaska puts yesterday in perspective."

Yeah ... a warped perspective. How does he explain the absolute shellacking the GOP got in the house races? It was the biggest gain for the Democrats in four decades. And the exit polling showed that Trump was THE biggest reason for it.; 11/8/17, 7:27 PM
Francisco D said...: The title sounds about right. So does his phrase "let's not get carried away."

We know that the MSM will be having premature orgasms over yesterday's voting. Ho Hum!

To paraphrase Instapundit, "Think of them as Democratic operatives with bylines and it all makes sense."; 11/8/17, 7:29 PM
Anonymous said...: Yeah all this excitement about a "referendum". About Trump? If anything POTUS has inspired a defensive reflex in a place where that reminds us why he was elected.; 11/8/17, 7:53 PM
Michael K said...: "And the exit polling showed that Trump was THE biggest reason for it."

I agree. Those swamp dwellers really, really hate him.

Northern Virginia is Deep State Central.

Gillespie gave none of the Trump voters in the rest of the state a reason to vote.; 11/8/17, 7:54 PM
Dr Weevil said...: Exit polling is highly inaccurate. Exit pollers tend to be college kids, and are far more likely to pick out voters of their own age and whichever gender they are interested in. Plenty of us tell exit pollers our political opinions are none of their damned business or just walk on by ignoring them: this skews the results towards the left, where most of the people who are eager to tell you all about their political opinions reside. Worst of all, any Trump voter so disappointed in Gillespie's unTrumpiness that he couldn't be bothered to show up and vote at all could not be exit-polled, because he never made it to the polls.; 11/8/17, 8:11 PM
dreams said...: And as Roger L Simon wrote, Virginia is swampburbia.; 11/8/17, 8:14 PM
Static Ping said...: Same day exit polls are dubious by poll standards. They are basically one step up from self-selected Internet polls. If they do some polling in the upcoming days that might be interesting.

I will admit that I want to read post-mortems that tell me what I want to hear, but I have very much come to conclusion that most political experts do not really know of what they speak and most of them are writing mainly from their own biases which they consider facts. I suppose this article is interesting, mainly because it is bucking the received wisdom of most of the experts out there. It's nice to get a different viewpoint.; 11/8/17, 8:30 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: Cute but not terribly accurate. It has yet to be shown that Trumpism works for anyone other than Trump.; 11/8/17, 8:31 PM
Assistant Village Idiot said...: Trump lost VA by five. Everyone's trying to oversimplify this into a favored narrative at this point. It's clearly not good for Republicans in general, and clearly not bad for Democrats in general. Beyond that, it's hard to see what it means. It is certainly part of the realignment and repackaging of both parties.; 11/8/17, 8:43 PM
LYNNDH said...: The VA win has to be over hyped because of the election losses of a year ago. Having said that, if the Republicans don't deliver then yes the Dems will wind big next year, making it impossible for Trump for the last two years. They might (read that do their damndest) to impeach Trump.; 11/8/17, 9:34 PM
Sebastian said...: O unified the right. Trump is unifying the left.

Thinking that the civil war on the left will undo them is wishful thinking.

The GOP needs to get done what it can now.; 11/8/17, 10:24 PM
Gahrie said...: It has yet to be shown that Trumpism works for anyone other than Trump.

And the U.S. economy....; 11/8/17, 10:28 PM
Gospace said...: Democrat lite lost against real Democrat, an old story that's been repeated many times.
Conservatives need a reason to come out and vote. Gillespie wasn't a reason.; 11/8/17, 10:38 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: The Dems won a few offices last night, good for them. Not to rain on their exuberance, but:

1. Senate 52-48 R
2. House 239-194 R
3. Governors 33-16 R
4. State Legislatures 67-29 R
5. President R
6. Supreme Court 5-4 R

Those are political facts. Sorry.; 11/8/17, 10:46 PM
Hagar said...: I am very sorry that the people who put out that ad won the VA election for governor.; 11/9/17, 7:12 AM
Anonymous said...: I followed the Virginia race only cursorily, but reading the post-mortems, I'm very happy that Bugman Gillespie got schlonged.; 11/9/17, 8:01 AM
Matt Sablan said...: How can we say it was an anti-Trumpist reaction when Northam stopped his bleeding at the polls by accepting a key tenet of Trump's policy by promising not to embrace sanctuary cities?; 11/9/17, 8:44 AM
Matt Sablan said...: How can we say it was an anti-Trumpist reaction when Gillespie was, also, fairly anti-Trump?

I think there's a lot more going on than "Trump Bad, Democrats Good."; 11/9/17, 8:46 AM