VA-GOV 2017: Utter Panic and Doom (General election: Nov 7th)

[Blair]

I first heard about Perriello on the candidate confessional podcast; and he really stood out on there, for the fact that he ran a very principled, and worthy campaign; even thought he lost it's better to lose that way rather than making a complete fool of yourself trying to run away from every position you've held.

[Blair]

'Part of the problem is that we often take this What’s The Matter With Kansas? approach that assumes that people are reactionary and stupid and that we just need to convince them that they’re going to make more money under our plan' Perriello in 2010.

I naturally want to endorse someone who says this- as much as people want to convince themselves it's all economic, it's frankly not

[Blair]

Bernie Sanders endorses Perriello

Interesting but not a shocking move.

Clinton actually unified the Obama wing of the party, with the older and actual centrist DNC wing of the party, so it's a mistake to see as every race as being 'Clinton v Sanders'

[Blair]

I have a feeling that Northam may actually win by a much larger margin, purely because of the amount of favours that he can pick up in Virginia. I mean the endorsement of groups like NARAL+ support from state senators/other local officals carry much more campaigning weight than Elizabeth Warren praising him in an article.

I'm actually starting to sour on Perriello, and I'm beginning to see why someone on here compared him to a Marco Rubio esque figure

[Blair]

https://medium.com/@brendanlilly/heads-up-an-impending-disaster-in-virginia-99a67afaa8a4

Here's the link to the article; which basically says that Northam's campaign has absolutely no message beyond being a 'nice guy who's a doctor' and that he's getting hammered over his record at the state development agency. I did think that at least Perriello had some fight in the primary (and had some decent campaign ads) whilst Northam's seemed to be 'I worked with X democratic interest group'.

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[Blair]

I don't think a lot of people are saying that Gillespie will win, or that the polls are wrong (or at least I'm not) Just from what I've read, the polling, the ads etc I get the sense that the race could be going a lot better for Northam.

I know statewide races are different, and there's a possible danger in making it national (it's Virginia, not New York) but I don't know why Warren/Booker/Harris/Kaine etc aren't campaigning and why national democrats aren't making a lot of noise about this race.

[Blair]

Here we go again

https://amp.thedailybeast.com/democrats-grow-panicked-that-they-could-blow-the-years-biggest-race

That poll the other day was a junk poll according to insiders Northam is barely ahead
Still toss up.

Of course Northam's people are going to paint the picture of a competitive race. After seeing what happened last year when Hillary had a lead in the polls and everyone assuming her victory inevitable, why wouldn't they try to avoid any sense of complacency again? They're not going to come out and say "look at the strong lead we have" and jerk themselves off to that. They're well aware that saying such things would project complacency and possibly demotivate their base. If I was running the Northam campaign, I would even release internal polls showing me up only 1 or even tied. That's the best way to get your base anxious as hell.

There's an element of truth to this; they want every democratic group coming to help, and articles like this do a great deal. There's a reason Obama is going to Virginia rather than New Jersey.

It's not a stretch to say however that democrats are worried about this race; although it appears to be one of those campaigns where you can tell it's not going perfectly, but have no idea how to actually change that.