So it’s been a little over a week since we Democrats suffered sobering defeats at the polls in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere. Ever since, conservative spinmasters from Pat Buchanan to Charles Krauthammer to Glenn Beck have been mercilessly proliferating the airwaves, forecasting, as usual, Democratic political doom in 2010 and the death of Barack Obama’s purportedly “socialist agenda.”

Not so fast.

The reality is, we lost a news cycle. Get over it. Isolated state races are hardly a referendum on national policymaking. Corzine was a poor chief executive who failed to contain rampant corruption in the Garden State. No amount of Wall Street money is going to change that (though it did significantly narrow Christie’s lead in the polls). Corzine was essentially brought into Trenton in 2005 as a technocrat: politically saavy, fiscally competent, and able to manage a state that falls out of control. He failed miserably.

No party wins an election without good, inspiring candidates. In these governor’s races, we failed miserably. Creigh Deeds’ inability to solidify the party base and bring minority voters in Virginia into the democratic fold, the key factors in Barack Obama’s seven-point victory over John McCain in the state nearly a year ago, were telling notions underlying our party’s defeat here.

Political gravity, as most party politicians find out, is a very difficult force to resist. Weariness with Democratic rule, in these isolated incidences, clearly played a role. Both offices had been occupied by Democrats for more than a term. If anything, the congressional races in New York’s 23^rd District and California’s 10^th District were referendums on Democratic rule, and our party once again passed with flying colors.

I am not arguing that resisting this force will not be a challenge in 2010 and beyond. It will be. But still, Democrats, I think we can look towards our political futures with some optimism. As the economy continues to recover, and job losses creep out of the red, Republicans will be forced to provide answers for what they’ve done to advance our collective fortunes, as a nation, since 2008. I wish them good luck. Certainly on the issues of Health Care Reform and Stimulus funds they were an entirely uncooperative bunch, and demonstrated a tendency to place short-term party political goals over long-term economic security for the American people.

It seems to me as if the Republicans have done little so far, in this congress, to reverse the shift in political gravity. The Bush legacy is evaporating, leaving party “leaders” such as Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal, Charlie Crist, and Sarah Palin to re-evaluate the schizophrenic chrysalis of the party in town hall meetings across the country.

At the end of the day, Americans vote on results. It seems as if Healthcare is bound to pass this year, and cap and trade may soon follow. What have the Republicans been up to, anyway?

Hello, everybody,

I’m Chris Z., a GW freshman. Starting tonight, I’ll be toiling in order to make at least one blog posting per week–my posts may all-in-all be multifarious in nature, with no specific interconnection amongst them.

So, tonight is of course election night. In just twenty-one minutes, the polls will be closing across the Potomac in the Commonwealth of Virginia, where voters all day have been casting their ballots in one of this year’s most influential and foreshadowing political races.

Let’s make some quick analyses based upon data and the factors that may serve as indications of tonight’s results:

Despite:

1. Explosive population growth in Northern Virginia that–with such an educated, affluent, and politically liberal to moderate populace–has favored Democratic candidates, particularly in Arlington, Alexandria, and Fairfax County’s inner suburbs;

2. President Obama’s public support of Deed’s gubernatorial candidacy in Virginia;

3. President Obama’s recent visits to Virginia’s Virginia Beach/Hampton Roads area, Virginia’s swing area in last year’s election;

4. Bob McDonnell’s contentious graduate school thesis paper that highlighted the incompatibility of working women and a productive world, which marginalized suburban Washingtonian women from his campaign,

and

5. Virginia’s trending towards the Democrats in all recent statewide elections, particularly because of the explosive growth of NOVA,

McDonnell has consistently (in fact, has always, in terms of the trendline) polled ahead of Deeds according to Pollster’s posted statistics.

According to Nate Silver at http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/, McDonnell has a 98% chance of winning.

With only 21 1 (less than!) minute until Virginia’s poll stations close, I’m predicting that Deeds will lose and McDonnell will emerge as the race’s victor.

For moderate conservatives, the Special Election in New York’s 23rd district has certainly been a harrowing experience. Dede Scozzafava, the decidedly moderate Republican candidate in the district, was pushed out of the race by the dominant arch-conservative wing of the party, led in this instance by the ex-Alaska Governor and politically “rogue” hockey mom who poisoned the 2008 Republican ticket, also known as Sarah Palin. They instead favored the “Conservative Party” candidate Doug Hoffman, who serves the more popular hard-line brand that has characterized the Republican Party, in which moderacy is no longer tolerated. (more…)