Let's assume that Republicans win the Virginia governor's race, Democrats win New Jersey's gubernatorial race, Democrat Bill Owens wins the special election in New York's 23rd Congressional district, voters approve gay marriage in Maine and turn back domestic partnership benefits in Washington State.
A win, mostly, for Democrats. Republicans will argue that the elections
in NY 23 and in New Jersey aren't really wins because Republicans split
their vote between two candidates, which in and of itself is a good
barometer of the health of the GOP. Republicans will further insist
that Virginia is the real test of the Obama effect -- and, more
importantly, the carry-over effect of the 2008 victory machine. Obama
may not have been rejected, but his brand of Democratic politics have
been rejected. Virginia's not as purple as people think, and many of
Obama's new voters aren't real -- they're like virtual particles,
popping in and out of existence in response to changes in energy. That'll be the argument, especially if Democrats lose the governor's
race, the lieutenant governor's race and the race for attorney general.
Now, Democrats will respond that Bob McDonnell isn't
running as a Republican. He's run as a Virginia Democrat, a bipartisan
figure, talking jobs and education, not abortion and guns, aggressively
reaching out to African Americans, Hispanics, Asians and independents
in Northern Virginia. They'll also use the occasion to bash Creigh
Deeds's campaign and praise McDonnell's NoVA television ads, which have been devastating (and not unfair). To a large extent, the McDonnell profile is a Democratic profile.
More interesting to me is what lessons Republicans take from the
election. Do they see it as a blueprint to run essentially moderate,
temperate, pragmatic, jobs-and-education focused campaigns? Or do they
look to New York 23 and wonder what would have happened if the local
GOP had been brave enough to choose a guy like Doug Hoffman? My guess
is that the party establishment will learn one lesson and activists
will learn another. That's a recipe for more GOP confusion in 2010. It's a warning sign for the future given how the Bachmann-Beck-Palin ticket is pushing the national party. (Remember which gubernatorial candidate canceled a planned Palin campaign appearance?)
BTW: unless GOPers sweep the night, it's going to be hard for any reasonable person to conclude that November 3 was a referendum on the entire Democratic project. Democrats might derive sustenance from that, but they probably shouldn't. Headed in 2010, they still face a structural and temporal enthusiasm gap that will redound to the benefit of Republicans.
My guess is that the party establishment will learn one lesson and activists will learn another.
Quite likely prescient. All Republican losses will be due to insufficient purity, and Rinos.
Quite accurate. In the minds of the teabaggers, the only thing stopping the GOP from controlling every elected seat in the country is the ideological impurity of the GOP. If only they could nominate "true" conservatives who check every single box on Rush Limbaugh's list, they'd win every single time. Well, that's what Hannity tells me, anyway.
OK, you've spun the best-case scenario for the Dems, but what if you consider the more likely scenario: A blowout VA win for Repubs, close win for Repubs in NJ, and a NY race where the Repub/Cons end up getting around 70% of the vote?
Good pre-spin. This whole "purity" thing is very troubling. The Republicans (conservatives) pushing for this won't stop within their party. Their ideology demands they convert the entire populace to their purity -- economically, religiously, socially and foreign policy wise. Make no mistake here about any lessons they will learn. They are on a mission to convert and control the world in order to position themselves for the end-times which they heartily embrace. And that objective will include a massive war against all Muslims.
Years ago, we called them "The Moral Majority." Their numbers were rather small back then but, they have morphed into an even more fundamentalist, radical and powerful group that has infiltrated government at all levels. You can teach them nothing. They will not learn, so narrow and rock-hard is their cult ideology. Perfect examples: Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. A more dangerous threat to American freedom than Al Qaeda.