This week Governor Tim Kaine offerd his post-mortem on the Deeds campaign.
He basically agreed with critics who argued that Deeds’ fundamental error was distancing himself from Obama and not mobilizing Democrats who had turned out in large numbers to support the President last year.
The Governor maintained that the state’s basic political orientation had changed and implied that Deeds ran a campaign more fitting for the old Virginia than the new Virginia.
I think that Kaine is partially right.
But only partially.
The Deeds’ campaign inability to excite almost every element of the party’s base- young voters, the NOVA beltway, and African-Americans- is already well documented. This failure undoubtedly contributed significantly to the landslide margin of defeat.
Moreover, I think that progressive bloggers such as Lowell Feld and Ben Tribbett were on target during the primary season when they argued, against conventional wisdom at the time, that Deeds would not be the strongest Democratic candidate of those running in the primaries.
Yet I think that the Governor underplays the manner in which the political landscape has changed in 2009, changed in ways that won’t be remedied simply by firing up the base.
A couple of points.
First, Obama in 2009 is different from Obama 2008.
His overall approval rating is barely positive (depending on the poll you cite).
While many Obama voters surely stayed home in 2009, there has been a meaningful expression of buyer’s remorse, especially among independent voters.
Not all Obama voters are still Obama supporters.
Second, the public is increasingly skeptical of the policy agenda of the entire Democratic apparatus in Washington.
For example, all the energy and effort put into health care reform has failed, according to Gallup, to convince most Americans that their own health care would actually improve.
Perhaps more ominously, independent voters are rapidly moving into the GOP camp, worried that the federal government is moving too fast, too expensively, and on too many fronts.
Here in Virginia, when Deeds said that the first thing he would do as Governor would be to raise taxes to pay for transportation improvements (even during a recession), independents abandoned the Democrats in droves.
Even while he may have been distancing himself from Obama, Deeds was starting to resemble the kind of congressional Democrat that the public is rejecting, not the fiscally responsible version that wins gubernatorial elections in Virginia.
The problem for Democrats is twofold.
They do have to energize their base.
But this is not enough.
They also have to reverse the exodus that is occurring among independents.
The Democrats have to accomplish both tasks if they are going to win.
Simultaneously.
This might be a daunting challenge in today’s environment.
But it’s one that the Democrats will have to confront honestly and head-on if they hope not to experience an even more smashing defeat in 201o.
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