Will VA follow CA?

[question everything]

Yesterday, like most young people - we are told - I got my news from the Daily Show.

Found out that both Cuccinelli and McAuliffe are baad..

I did not follow VA besides hoping that, of course, the Democrat will win, especially when as the elections bring an end to the reign of governor ultrasound..

I did not follow the elections in Va except to hear that, as we've seen in 2012, the teabagger beats the more centrist Republican and that this shifted many Republicans to support McAuliffe or, at least, not to vote for Cuccinelli.

And this reminds me of the 90s in California when we lived there. The Republicans were getting extreme candidates (this was before the teabggers emerged) to win the primaries. The elected the ones who "stood on principles" and by the end of the decade, the Republicans lost all state offices. Arnold, really, does not count.

Thus, it will interesting if in Virginia, too, the extreme Republicans will generate a Democratic clean sweep.

[Chan790]

1. Unlikely.

The difference is that the GOP dominates the legislature in VA and controls the drawing of the district lines to insure their continued control meaning that's a slow change. Also, it's basically a coin-flip on the AG race.

The biggest factor in CA wasn't the candidates the GOP ran...it was the change in how you draw districts for state legislature seats and Congressional seats. Change the legislature and it's easy to wipe out a party's viability in statewide races.

[Laelth]

2. +1. n/t

-Laelth

[question everything]

3. Thank you

Of course, there are still Republican in the California Assembly and House, and in Congress. But they lost all the top offices, the last was Secretary of State.

But I can see the differences that you point.

[paulkienitz]

4. CA has always been a leading indicator

and it's been saying moribund GOP for a decade now.

It isn't just teabaggers and the horrors of Bush/Cheney, and it isn't just demographics. I think we've crossed a tipping point where fundamentalists, racists, and other know-nothings are no longer able to successfully propagate their willful ignorance to the next generation. They could do it in the TV era but not in the iPad epoch.

The GOP is going to have to rebuild itself as a libertarian party.

[Retrograde]

5. If you think they had bad candidates in the 90s

they really went off the deep end in the past decade! The last partisan senate primary we had pitted mostly sane Tom Campbell, an old-style Republican, against Carly Fiorina on the I-can-bend-farther-to-the-right-than-you side: she won handily, except in the counties containing and surrounding Silicon Valley, her home, where she is loathed.

Having our last redistricting done by a citizens' panel instead of party horsetraders helped as well.

[Downtown Hound]

7. They went off the deep end in a large part because they're getting more desperate

They feel the world around them changing and it scares the hell out of them. An animal is always the most dangerous when its wounded and afraid.

[JimboBillyBubbaBob]

6. We are working on it,

one vote and one election at a time. Stay tuned!