A few months ago, before things got really ugly in the New Jersey gubernatorial race, Jon Corzine told me he thought this week's election results in Virginia would be more telling about the national mood than those in his own race in New Jersey.
“I think if Tim Kaine wins, that would really spell trouble for the Republicans next year,” he said, acknowledging the assumed political architecture, in which it is much easier for Democrats to win in New Jersey than in Virginia. And many of the analyses of last week's results proceeded along similar lines, embracing the idea that Kaine's decisive win in such a decidedly red state constitutes a sharp repudiation of the president and his party, and that the loss only presages even greater troubles for the GOP next year. That history can be used to argue both sides of the issue only helped to fuel the discussion.
But who this week could argue that Virginia did not spell trouble for Republicans? Bush won the state handily in both 2000 and 2004, with 54 percent of the vote last year, and he landed the big plane in Richmond the night before the Election Day to campaign for the GOP candidate, Jerry Kilgore, the former state attorney general who went on to get stomped.
For national Democrats, there is no denying the energizing effect of winning on such solid GOP turf; it's a little like winning a road game, when one silences the home crowd, at least temporarily. So it is easy to see why the Democrats are exultant about Virginia and hope to replicate that success across red-state America.
The White House, of course, is spinning hard against the idea of any domino theory.
"I think the facts say otherwise,” Scott McClellan assures us. “I don't think any thorough analysis of the election results will show that the elections were decided on anything other than local and state issues and the candidates and their agendas. That's what I think. And I think that if you look at the facts, that bears that out.”
We'll see, for sure. But bluster that looks like self-confidence when you're winning starts to look self-delusional when you're taking a thorough butt-kicking. When, for example, McClellan, as evidence that the president is not a drag on GOP candidates, states that the president will shortly be campaigning for Maryland Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele, who is running for the Senate, he seems to be missing the point. Raising money from GOP donors is not the same as getting regular, aggravated folks to vote for your guy. And if Bush couldn't help Kilgore in magenta red Virginia, what's on the after-dinner menu at the White House that makes him think he can help Steele in Democratic Maryland, which he lost 56-to-43 to John Kerry and 57-to-40 to Al Gore?
“The president's going to be campaigning for Lt. Gov. Steele here in just a short amount of time,” McClellan said Wednesday, “and he looks forward to campaigning for those who share his compassionate conservative agenda for the American people and who share his commitment to keeping America strong and safe and prosperous.”
The problem, of course, is that fewer and fewer people share that agenda, and fewer and fewer candidates are going to want Bush at their sides peddling it.
But repudiation of one set of ideas and candidates does not lead necessarily to the embrace of other candidates. And this is where Democrats must be vigilant, and, indeed, why the New Jersey results may be more crucial than Virginia's in defining their 2006 and 2008 fortunes. Voters angry at one party can just stay home, unless the other side really has something on the table.
Set aside the fact that New Jersey turned into perhaps one of the nastiest political campaigns since Eve got push-polled into eating the apple. The governor's race in New Jersey had more elements likely to be replicated in swing state campaigns next year and in 2008 than the one in Virginia. A debate between two very rich guys finessing their positions on taxes, the right to choose, and stem-cell research is exactly the kind of the debate that the swing voters in the big muddy middle pay attention to. And in New Jersey, Corzine won that fight by being clear about choice and stem cells and by having an equally bad solution on the property tax questions. With that he thumped Forrester, winning 13 of the state's 21 counties, including Bergen County, the state's decisive swing region. New Jersey, like Virginia, does not seem in danger of switching sides in presidential elections anytime soon. But, with his pocketful of political capital, give Corzine credit for knowing something about New Jersey voters.
In our conversation earlier this summer he explained why he would have to work so hard -- and spend so much money -- to win in New Jersey. In a presidential race, he said, “If I were a moderate Republican, New Jersey is one of the places I would focus on.”
Such places are up for grabs. Whoever the GOP presidential nominee is in 2008 will claim to be a moderate Republican. Doug Forrester actually is one, and Corzine cleaned his clock in a place that will warm up to the right GOP candidate when one comes along -- a Christie Todd Whitman or a Tom Kean. Michael Bloomberg would have given Corzine a run for his life on Tuesday. So the senator's big win, with the old Democratic coalition intact and independents flocking to the camp, is very good news for Democrats.
Yes, Virginia was a gift, but Santa Claus may actually be in New Jersey.
Terence Samuel is a political writer in Washington, D.C.
