1. Everyone’s a Pundit
Sabato and Holsworth must have a great gig. Everyone wants in. This week the Obama White House anonymously offered their analysis of the upcoming Virginia Governor’s race in a front page story in The Washington Post. Remarkably, the White House offered a pre-mortem on the Democratic candidate, observing that Deeds refused to follow their advice and all but declaring him dead before a single vote has been cast in Virginia. While the Deeds’ campaign has surely had problems, this was both a counterproductive and cowardly act. As Larry and I both know, if you’re going to commit punditry, you ought put your name behind it.
2. Family Feuds Don’t Help
Deeds supporter and NASCAR Democratic guru Mudcat Saunders responded to the White House pre-mortem with a profanity-sprinkled interview, denouncing the anonymous attack and remarking that it would have been “devastating” for Deeds to link himself too closely to Obama. The anger of Deeds’ supporters at the White House’s effort to deflect attention away from the contribution it may have made to the altered political environment in Virginia is perfectly understandable. But the bottom line is that Deeds still needs Obama to fire up the Democratic base and doesn’t need an ever escalating family feud.
3. NAACP Dings Shannon in Absentia
The bizarre week for the Democrats ended at 8:30 on Friday evening when the moderator at the NAACP candidate forum said that Steve Shannon had called two days prior to say that he could not attend and that he assumed that his GOP opponent, Ken Cuccinelli, would not be attending either. Yet a beaming Cuccinelli was in the front row present and accounted for as the moderator told the audience that Cuccinelli was the first to respond to the invitation and that he did so personally.
4. Where’s Jeff Frederick
When you need him? Compared to the national psychodrama the Democrats are staging, the Republicans have become downright boring. No comparisons of Obama to Osama Bin Laden. No more lecturing of Bill Howell for purportedly abandoning conservative causes. If no one had managed to dig up that 2o year old Master’s Thesis, there would have been barely anything to talk about. The unwritten story of the campaign: How the Republican Party got it together and started minding its P’s and Q’s.
5. GOTV
The Democrat’s final hope. There are Democrats who genuinely believe that the polls are underestimating the party’s turnout advantage. They don’t believe that it will crumble so quickly and the massive amounts of new voters registered in 2008 and the Democrats abiity to identify and mobilize them could still make this a very competitive race.
6. Polls and House Forecasts
The GOP double digit lead in recent poll has dramatically altered the House calculus among the cognoscenti (or at least among those who think they’re the cognoscenti). The conventional wisdom is now shifting from an overall wash to the prospect of a GOP pickup of a number of seats. No one is even mentioning the pssibility of a Democratic takeover. One caution. House incumbents in Virginia are notoriously difficult to defeat. We’ll have to see how this much changes in 2009.
7. Virginia’s Junior Senator
Mark Warner is working hard to make a name for himself in the Senate as a Democratic spokesperson on business issues. Both the national and international media have picked up on a couple of Warner’s ideas and initiatives, but he’s not receiving much attention in the Virginia papers. This is partially the result of how the election dominates the news cycle. But it may also be the consequence of Virginia newspapers effectively shutting down their Washington bureaus. In the new media environment, all of Virginia’s congressional delegation have to be thinking about how they can best inform their constituents of what they’re doing in DC, ways that I ultimately think will rely on far more direct communication with the people.
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