Thoughts And Analysis On The Northam Win
As I predicted, Northam won the Virginia governorship. Some takeaways. Some say it is a referendum on Trump, and that is indeed why Northam won. Obviously, anti-Trump sentiment played a part in that. However, I don't believe Trump himself is necessarily the primary reason that he won because Trump himself lost the state, and this wasn't a Trump guy. Here is some analysis:
1. Trump lost the state of Virginia by 5% points. This was in an election where people stayed home because they weren't enthused about Hillary. Trump's approval rating is very low in Virginia (low 30s). Less Democrats turned out than those who voted for Hillary, but less Republicans turned out than those who voted for Trump. Democrats did turn out in a larger margin relative to Republicans even though the number of votes was less due to it being a midterm:
From ABC:
VIRGINIA – In the bitterly fought Virginia race, 34 percent of voters in the network exit poll said they were voting to express opposition to Trump, vs. 16 percent who said they were voting to show him support. Gillespie prevailed among those who said the president wasn’t a factor, marking the anti-Trump vote as critical to Northam’s victory.
Also helpful to Northam was that, given a list of five issues, Virginia voters by a wide margin picked health care as the top concern in their vote for governor; those who did so favored him by 77-22 percent over Gillespie. Other issues offered were gun policy (the two split voters who called it their top issue), and immigration, taxes and abortion (all wins for Gillespie, but not by enough).
3. Cyclical Politics
From Chris Donovan on Twitter:
Trump is the FIFTH President in a row to have his party lose BOTH the VA & NJ gubernatorial races in his first year in office.
Winners:
2017: Dems Northam/Murphy
2009: GOPers McDonnell/Christie
2001: Dems Warner/McGreevey
1993: GOPers Allen/Whitman
1989: Dems Wilder/Florio
https://twitter.com/chrisdonovan/status/928076257136447489
Politics is often cyclical. One party gets power, and the supporters of the other party often get more motivated. After all, Obama lost over 1,000 seats as President. If Hillary was in office, perhaps Gillespie could have gotten it done because of the trend seen above, because politics is cyclical, and because the party out of power often gets more motivated. The resistance is motivated to vote. However, even when Republicans were, they still couldn't win Virginia. Gillespie couldn't win the Senate seat in Virginia in 2014 - a year when the Democrats lost the Senate and were losing momentum. The Democrat still won.
4. Gillespie is the consummate political insider. His lengthy resume involves lobbying and working for multiple establishment Republicans. Info in italics (from Wiki):
~He worked as telephone solicitor for the Republican National Committee in 1985,
~...and later worked for a decade as a top aide to former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX), and was a principal drafter of the GOP's 1994 "Contract With America."[12][13]
~In 1996 he served as communications director for the RNC.[13]
~In 1999, Gillespie worked as the Press Secretary for the Presidential campaign of John Kasich until his withdrawal from the race and endorsement of George W. Bush.[13]
~In 2000, Gillespie served as senior communications advisor for the presidential campaign of Bush, organizing the party convention program in Philadelphia for Bush's nomination and Bush's inauguration ceremony. He played an aggressive role as spokesman for the Bush campaign during the vote recount in Florida.[13]
~In 2002, he was a strategist for Elizabeth Dole's 2002 Senate campaign.[
~In 2000, Gillespie founded the lobbying firm Quinn Gillespie & Associates with Jack Quinn and within a year had an income of $8.5 million and was eleventh on Fortune's list of the most powerful lobbying firms in the US.
~Gillespie served as Chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia from December 2006 to June 2007. In the 2006 Virginia Senate elections he served as spokesman for defeated Virginia Senator George Allen. He had been tapped by Allen as a political adviser for a possible presidential run in 2008 before that loss.
~In February 2009, Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell announced that Gillespie would serve as general chairman of his campaign for governor. Gillespie has served as an adviser to American Crossroads.[23]
~In late June 2007, President Bush brought Gillespie into the White House on a full-time basis, to replace the departing Counselor to the President Dan Bartlett with the mandate to help raise Bush's flagging popularity ratings. When Karl Rove also departed in August, the Washington Post described Gillespie as stepping up to do part of Karl Rove's job in the White House.[24] A later Post article described Gillespie's role orchestrating a PR unit dedicated to "selling the surge to American voters and the media."[25]
~In 2009, Gillespie was the chairman of Bob McDonnell's successful campaign for governor of Virginia.[27]
~In January 2010, Gillespie was announced in as the national chairman of the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), which helps elect state attorneys general, lieutenant governors, secretaries of state and state house and senate candidates.
~In 2010, together with Republican strategist Karl Rove, Ed Gillespie helped get the Super Pac American Crossroads "off the ground."[29][30] The organization's goal was to supplement campaign spending for Republicans, independently of the Republican party. '"Obama had $1.1 billion in 2008," says Gillespie.."John McCain and his supporters spent $634 million. That's a sizable gap." American Crossroads, he boasts, will be the place where the real money goes to "play."'[31]
~In April 2012, Gillespie became a senior advisor to Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign.[32]
He ran for the Senate in 2014 and ALMOST won but still lost. This is even when turnout is depressed and Obama and the Dems had waning popularity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Gillespie
Obviously, he had a resume of experience, but so did Hillary, although Hillary was corrupt. There is nothing to suggest Gillespie is corrupt, but he was definitely the consummate political insider - the lobbyist that is often called part of the swamp. The fact that he worked with Karl Rove's disastrous American Crossroads PAC cements him firmly with the establishment. He worked for Romney as well, but to my knowledge, he did not work for Trump or endorse him. Did he even vote for Trump? Which takes me to number five.
5. Gillespie ran a primary vs. Corey Stewart (a pro-Trump guy) and almost lost. The margin was very tight. Gillespie ran as the establishment Republican. He did not embrace Trump and in fact staffed his campaign with Nevertrumpers and establishment people per Rush Limbaugh, but he realized obviously as time went on that he would need to get Trump voters on board, so he tried to straddle the fence, but conservatives and Trump voters could probably sense he was pandering. Then there were moderates/independents who saw him reaching out to Trump voters, and it may have pushed some of them away. He was in a tightrope walk that you can't have.
We now know this, though, there were enough Trump voters to put Gillespie over the top IF they came out. If they came out and all the voters who voted for Hillary came out, he would have lost. If they came out and Northam got the same amount of votes that he got, he would have lost by 325,986 votes. Amazing. Granted, we don't know if any of those voters switched over, but I guarantee that it wasn't 325,986 . While Gillespie won with similar margins as Trump as far as percentage, he did not win with numbers like 2016 but neither did Northam. My point is that the votes were out there, and the people didn't turn out. I have seen multiple people say they didn't vote for Gillespie because he's an establishment guy. Perhaps Stewart could have driven them out...probably not that many, but we'll never know. We do know for a fact Stewart would have involved Trump in the race. Trump wouldn't have been at arm's length. He'd have been embraced and campaigning there. The Dems may try to say that over half a million Trump voters sat at home because they don't like Trump, but that wouldn't account for half a million of their voters staying home too.
Time after time the Republicans have tried to use a moderate candidate to attract the middle - John McCain, Mitt Romney, Gillespie, etc. Gillespie didn't have Trump campaign for him - he had George Bush! They think the way to win is to move closer to the left. However, time after time, we often see that this is not the case. People respect people that aren't Democrat lite, that are firm in their ideas, and that have good ideas. Jason Miller of the Trump campaign said that Gillespie was not out there with a positive reason giving people to vote for him. Trump had a platform, while Hillary was negative. The issues were important with the number one issue being healthcare.
6. The Republicans have failed to get things done. Trump had an ambitious platform, and they have failed to accomplish any of it - mucking up areas they tried to touch. When you fail to deliver and attack your President, guess what? You hurt the President and yourselves. Granted, I believe many in the GOP don't care if they hurt Trump or if they are the party in power as long as their seat is safe and politics as usual continues. However, by doing this, they hurt their own establishment guy because - shocker! Attacking Trump doesn't make the establishment popular or help them win votes. If they don't get anything done, wait for the 2018 bloodbath.
Conclusion
All these things lead me to believe that while Trump did act as a motivator, there seem to be more liberals in Virginia. At least, more liberals have turned out in all elections in the past 8 years, but again, had Northam had the numbers he had and all the Trump people had turned out, Gillespie would have won. Gillespie wouldn't have won had all the Hillary people turned out, but they didn't. The trends show that the opposite party of the President always wins in said President's first year. Virginia hasn't lost a stateside race in 8 years. Gillespie lost the Senate even when turnout was lower and motivation was on the side of Republicans. Turnout may have been depressed among Democrats if Hillary won which might have helped Gillespie as well as the trend of the opposite party getting the governorship but maybe not as again, Republicans haven't won a stateside race in 8 years. That said, Gillespie was an establishment politician who tried to play both sides of the aisle, and that didn't help him. Voters like decisiveness. The Republicans need to get things done and show they can govern and do well. This infighting and inaction is huge for Democrats.
The bottom line is, the Democrats had a big night. They picked up some seats. Let's see if they can do it in a red state or state Trump won. That's when I will be very concerned.
2020:
In terms of 2020, can the Democrats win with a "moderate" candidate? We know the Republicans can't usually win with an establishment, Democrat lite. However, I think the Democrats best bet is someone who is more "moderate". The far left will fight through the primaries with an Elizabeth Warren, Sanders type. However, if someone more "moderate" like Northam goes through with a message to the white working class, that will probably be beneficial to Democrats. Democrats might grumble if it's a "moderate", but I think they will be extra motivated to vote against Trump. I put "moderate" in scare quotes because I believe that "moderate" Democrats still want to swing the country to the left and overall believe the same as the Warren/Sanders type, they just want to spoon feed it more slowly. Northam ticks all the liberal boxes sans the sanctuary cities (which he might backtrack on). Trump only won by 70,000 votes, so we should never get cocky.
It's CRUCIAL Trump gets his agenda through. That's the way we win. Results. Trump also said he was going to reach out to minorities during the campaign. If I were him, I'd do it and keep trying. Go to the minority communities and share how his policies will help minorities on an issue like jobs, taxes, immigration, inner cities, etc. This is an opportunity to reach out and possibly change some minds. It would be good to broaden the base.
1. Trump lost the state of Virginia by 5% points. This was in an election where people stayed home because they weren't enthused about Hillary. Trump's approval rating is very low in Virginia (low 30s). Less Democrats turned out than those who voted for Hillary, but less Republicans turned out than those who voted for Trump. Democrats did turn out in a larger margin relative to Republicans even though the number of votes was less due to it being a midterm:
From ABC:
VIRGINIA – In the bitterly fought Virginia race, 34 percent of voters in the network exit poll said they were voting to express opposition to Trump, vs. 16 percent who said they were voting to show him support. Gillespie prevailed among those who said the president wasn’t a factor, marking the anti-Trump vote as critical to Northam’s victory.
Turnout by liberals was up sharply from previous gubernatorial contests, to 28 percent of all Virginia voters, up from 18 percent in the 2009 race and 20 percent in 2013. (It was 26 percent in 2016, when Hillary Clinton notched her only southern-state win here.) Conservatives, at 30 percent of voters, were off their 2013 level, 36 percent, and their 2009 share, 40 percent of voters in the state.
Northam won a remarkable 60 percent of women in the state – an even larger share than Clinton’s a year ago - vs. 48 percent of men. He won even more voters under age 30, 67 percent, as well as six in 10 of those age 30 to 44.
Gillespie won vast support from evangelical and working-class whites. Whites overall accounted for 67 percent of voters, the same as in the 2016 presidential race, and down from their 2013 and 2009 shares. They backed Gillespie by a 15-point margin, while Northam won nonwhites overwhelmingly.
Gillespie prevailed on at least one issue: Virginia voters by 57-39 percent said Confederate statues in the state should e left in place, and he won by a wide margin among those who held that view. But Northam led in trust to handle race relations overall. And, perhaps above, all, the anti-Trump tide turned his way.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/virginia-jersey-exit-poll-analysis/story?id=50993338
Here are the raw numbers (as of now - still changing):
2016
Hillary - 1,916,845
Trump - 1,731,156
2017
Northam - 1,405,170
Gillespie - 1,173,208
A little math shows that the difference in Trump and Gillespie was 557,948. Hillary was at 511,675.
The bottom line - there were enough Trump voters out there who presumably didn't vote. Maybe some swing voters voted for Northam, but not 557,948! That means that there were OVER HALF A MILLION Trump voters Gillespie failed to tap into! Now if everyone who turned out for Hillary turned out, obviously Northam would have won, but if Northam had kept his total and the Trump voters had turned out, Gillespie would have won by 325,986!
Here are the raw numbers (as of now - still changing):
2016
Hillary - 1,916,845
Trump - 1,731,156
2017
Northam - 1,405,170
Gillespie - 1,173,208
A little math shows that the difference in Trump and Gillespie was 557,948. Hillary was at 511,675.
The bottom line - there were enough Trump voters out there who presumably didn't vote. Maybe some swing voters voted for Northam, but not 557,948! That means that there were OVER HALF A MILLION Trump voters Gillespie failed to tap into! Now if everyone who turned out for Hillary turned out, obviously Northam would have won, but if Northam had kept his total and the Trump voters had turned out, Gillespie would have won by 325,986!
Many Trump voters did come out for Gillespie, but as we saw in the general, more liberals came out in terms of who voted. Trump had a killing in the rural areas, but in the suburbs? They went for Northam. Ann Coulter posted a chart which shows the margins were quite similar to the 2016 election. Gillespie actually did a little better with nonwhite voters but slightly worse with white college graduates. He kept the same margins with white people who did not graduate from college. I honestly believe there are more Democrats in Virginia generally which is why Gillespie lost the Senate in 2014 and why Trump lost, but we see that not all of them voted by far to even match the 2016 numbers. A win was possible as the votes were out there. Lower midterm turnout and increased Democrat motivation helped him.
https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter/status/928091418417139713
2. The Democrats haven't lost a stateside race there in 8 years.3. Cyclical Politics
From Chris Donovan on Twitter:
Trump is the FIFTH President in a row to have his party lose BOTH the VA & NJ gubernatorial races in his first year in office.
Winners:
2017: Dems Northam/Murphy
2009: GOPers McDonnell/Christie
2001: Dems Warner/McGreevey
1993: GOPers Allen/Whitman
1989: Dems Wilder/Florio
https://twitter.com/chrisdonovan/status/928076257136447489
Politics is often cyclical. One party gets power, and the supporters of the other party often get more motivated. After all, Obama lost over 1,000 seats as President. If Hillary was in office, perhaps Gillespie could have gotten it done because of the trend seen above, because politics is cyclical, and because the party out of power often gets more motivated. The resistance is motivated to vote. However, even when Republicans were, they still couldn't win Virginia. Gillespie couldn't win the Senate seat in Virginia in 2014 - a year when the Democrats lost the Senate and were losing momentum. The Democrat still won.
4. Gillespie is the consummate political insider. His lengthy resume involves lobbying and working for multiple establishment Republicans. Info in italics (from Wiki):
~He worked as telephone solicitor for the Republican National Committee in 1985,
~...and later worked for a decade as a top aide to former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX), and was a principal drafter of the GOP's 1994 "Contract With America."[12][13]
~In 1996 he served as communications director for the RNC.[13]
~In 1999, Gillespie worked as the Press Secretary for the Presidential campaign of John Kasich until his withdrawal from the race and endorsement of George W. Bush.[13]
~In 2000, Gillespie served as senior communications advisor for the presidential campaign of Bush, organizing the party convention program in Philadelphia for Bush's nomination and Bush's inauguration ceremony. He played an aggressive role as spokesman for the Bush campaign during the vote recount in Florida.[13]
~In 2002, he was a strategist for Elizabeth Dole's 2002 Senate campaign.[
~In 1997, Gillespie joined the lobbying firm, Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, and advised Senate Republicans during the Impeachment of Bill Clinton.[13]
~In 2000, Gillespie founded the lobbying firm Quinn Gillespie & Associates with Jack Quinn and within a year had an income of $8.5 million and was eleventh on Fortune's list of the most powerful lobbying firms in the US.
He lobbied for years with multiple big corporations, not shutting it down until his run for governor. He had over 100 clients in 2007.
~In 2003, Gillespie was selected as Chairman of the RNC, serving in that role through the 2004 elections that saw President Bush win re-election and Republicans retain control of the House and Senate.[11] He did not give up his stake in the lobbying firm when he took that job, which caused controversy.[10]During the campaign, he was regularly referred to as "President Bush's pit bull."[18]
~In 2005 Bush appointed Gillespie to lead the process to nominate a successor to Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court; that process led to the selection and confirmation of Samuel Alito.[19][20][21]
~Gillespie served as Chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia from December 2006 to June 2007. In the 2006 Virginia Senate elections he served as spokesman for defeated Virginia Senator George Allen. He had been tapped by Allen as a political adviser for a possible presidential run in 2008 before that loss.
~In February 2009, Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell announced that Gillespie would serve as general chairman of his campaign for governor. Gillespie has served as an adviser to American Crossroads.[23]
~In late June 2007, President Bush brought Gillespie into the White House on a full-time basis, to replace the departing Counselor to the President Dan Bartlett with the mandate to help raise Bush's flagging popularity ratings. When Karl Rove also departed in August, the Washington Post described Gillespie as stepping up to do part of Karl Rove's job in the White House.[24] A later Post article described Gillespie's role orchestrating a PR unit dedicated to "selling the surge to American voters and the media."[25]
~In 2009, Gillespie was the chairman of Bob McDonnell's successful campaign for governor of Virginia.[27]
~In January 2010, Gillespie was announced in as the national chairman of the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), which helps elect state attorneys general, lieutenant governors, secretaries of state and state house and senate candidates.
~In 2010, together with Republican strategist Karl Rove, Ed Gillespie helped get the Super Pac American Crossroads "off the ground."[29][30] The organization's goal was to supplement campaign spending for Republicans, independently of the Republican party. '"Obama had $1.1 billion in 2008," says Gillespie.."John McCain and his supporters spent $634 million. That's a sizable gap." American Crossroads, he boasts, will be the place where the real money goes to "play."'[31]
~In April 2012, Gillespie became a senior advisor to Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign.[32]
He ran for the Senate in 2014 and ALMOST won but still lost. This is even when turnout is depressed and Obama and the Dems had waning popularity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Gillespie
Obviously, he had a resume of experience, but so did Hillary, although Hillary was corrupt. There is nothing to suggest Gillespie is corrupt, but he was definitely the consummate political insider - the lobbyist that is often called part of the swamp. The fact that he worked with Karl Rove's disastrous American Crossroads PAC cements him firmly with the establishment. He worked for Romney as well, but to my knowledge, he did not work for Trump or endorse him. Did he even vote for Trump? Which takes me to number five.
5. Gillespie ran a primary vs. Corey Stewart (a pro-Trump guy) and almost lost. The margin was very tight. Gillespie ran as the establishment Republican. He did not embrace Trump and in fact staffed his campaign with Nevertrumpers and establishment people per Rush Limbaugh, but he realized obviously as time went on that he would need to get Trump voters on board, so he tried to straddle the fence, but conservatives and Trump voters could probably sense he was pandering. Then there were moderates/independents who saw him reaching out to Trump voters, and it may have pushed some of them away. He was in a tightrope walk that you can't have.
We now know this, though, there were enough Trump voters to put Gillespie over the top IF they came out. If they came out and all the voters who voted for Hillary came out, he would have lost. If they came out and Northam got the same amount of votes that he got, he would have lost by 325,986 votes. Amazing. Granted, we don't know if any of those voters switched over, but I guarantee that it wasn't 325,986 . While Gillespie won with similar margins as Trump as far as percentage, he did not win with numbers like 2016 but neither did Northam. My point is that the votes were out there, and the people didn't turn out. I have seen multiple people say they didn't vote for Gillespie because he's an establishment guy. Perhaps Stewart could have driven them out...probably not that many, but we'll never know. We do know for a fact Stewart would have involved Trump in the race. Trump wouldn't have been at arm's length. He'd have been embraced and campaigning there. The Dems may try to say that over half a million Trump voters sat at home because they don't like Trump, but that wouldn't account for half a million of their voters staying home too.
Time after time the Republicans have tried to use a moderate candidate to attract the middle - John McCain, Mitt Romney, Gillespie, etc. Gillespie didn't have Trump campaign for him - he had George Bush! They think the way to win is to move closer to the left. However, time after time, we often see that this is not the case. People respect people that aren't Democrat lite, that are firm in their ideas, and that have good ideas. Jason Miller of the Trump campaign said that Gillespie was not out there with a positive reason giving people to vote for him. Trump had a platform, while Hillary was negative. The issues were important with the number one issue being healthcare.
6. The Republicans have failed to get things done. Trump had an ambitious platform, and they have failed to accomplish any of it - mucking up areas they tried to touch. When you fail to deliver and attack your President, guess what? You hurt the President and yourselves. Granted, I believe many in the GOP don't care if they hurt Trump or if they are the party in power as long as their seat is safe and politics as usual continues. However, by doing this, they hurt their own establishment guy because - shocker! Attacking Trump doesn't make the establishment popular or help them win votes. If they don't get anything done, wait for the 2018 bloodbath.
Conclusion
All these things lead me to believe that while Trump did act as a motivator, there seem to be more liberals in Virginia. At least, more liberals have turned out in all elections in the past 8 years, but again, had Northam had the numbers he had and all the Trump people had turned out, Gillespie would have won. Gillespie wouldn't have won had all the Hillary people turned out, but they didn't. The trends show that the opposite party of the President always wins in said President's first year. Virginia hasn't lost a stateside race in 8 years. Gillespie lost the Senate even when turnout was lower and motivation was on the side of Republicans. Turnout may have been depressed among Democrats if Hillary won which might have helped Gillespie as well as the trend of the opposite party getting the governorship but maybe not as again, Republicans haven't won a stateside race in 8 years. That said, Gillespie was an establishment politician who tried to play both sides of the aisle, and that didn't help him. Voters like decisiveness. The Republicans need to get things done and show they can govern and do well. This infighting and inaction is huge for Democrats.
The bottom line is, the Democrats had a big night. They picked up some seats. Let's see if they can do it in a red state or state Trump won. That's when I will be very concerned.
2020:
In terms of 2020, can the Democrats win with a "moderate" candidate? We know the Republicans can't usually win with an establishment, Democrat lite. However, I think the Democrats best bet is someone who is more "moderate". The far left will fight through the primaries with an Elizabeth Warren, Sanders type. However, if someone more "moderate" like Northam goes through with a message to the white working class, that will probably be beneficial to Democrats. Democrats might grumble if it's a "moderate", but I think they will be extra motivated to vote against Trump. I put "moderate" in scare quotes because I believe that "moderate" Democrats still want to swing the country to the left and overall believe the same as the Warren/Sanders type, they just want to spoon feed it more slowly. Northam ticks all the liberal boxes sans the sanctuary cities (which he might backtrack on). Trump only won by 70,000 votes, so we should never get cocky.
It's CRUCIAL Trump gets his agenda through. That's the way we win. Results. Trump also said he was going to reach out to minorities during the campaign. If I were him, I'd do it and keep trying. Go to the minority communities and share how his policies will help minorities on an issue like jobs, taxes, immigration, inner cities, etc. This is an opportunity to reach out and possibly change some minds. It would be good to broaden the base.
The Dems will likely run a far leftist in 2020. And why shouldn't they? Secondly, the issue in VA comes down to one word. Immigration.
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