2009 Virginia Election: A Race in Obama's Shadow

I book marked this article by E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post a few days ago and wanted to discuss it because the topic covered - the way in which President Obama's failure to deliver on campaign promises - continues to be relevant. Indeed, a few days ago when I poke to a campaign worker for one of the Democrat statewide campaigns the field worker was complaining about the constant litany heard from those who had supported Obama yet had seen nothing he promised implemented to date. While the Bob McDonnell thesis set to has enlivened Democrats and some moderates as to the need to shift into high gear to defeat the GOP slate - perhaps the most reactionary and far right in 30 years - Obama's continued failure to exercise forceful leadership and idiotic efforts to appease the GOP remains a significant drag on Virginia's Democrat ticket. If the Democrats are defeated, blame will surely be thrown at Obama by both the GOP - which will cite it as a rejection of Obama's policies - and Democrats who will be questioning themselves as to why they bothered to support Obama. Here are highlights from Dionne's column:

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Will the bitter, smoldering feelings let loose by Washington's health-care fight ricochet across the Potomac River and decide Virginia's race for governor? Will a Republican be able to escape his right-wing record and his incendiary past writings to rebrand himself as a pragmatist?

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Virginia results are typically dissected with the kind of passion that readers bring to sorting through the arcane symbols in Dan Brown's novels. This time, all the symbology, to use one of Brown's favorite words, may be justified. President Obama was the first Democrat to win Virginia's electoral votes since 1964, and his drop in the polls has already influenced the direction of this year's contest.

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As Obama's numbers fell among independents, so did those of R. Creigh Deeds, the Democratic nominee whose chances of victory now depend in part on the president's ability to stabilize his own standing.
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"Right now," said one Democratic adviser, "this is a race between Barack Obama's spending and Bob McDonnell's thesis." Deeds's summer polling doldrums reflected a campaign that was not prepared for battle after its runaway victory in the June Democratic primary. McDonnell, meanwhile, was busily recasting himself as a problem-solver who cared primarily about jobs and economic growth.

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But Deeds (along with just about every other Democrat in the state) was also hurt by Obama's falling popularity among independents worried about federal spending. And rank-and-file Democrats who adored Obama last year were puzzled and demobilized by the president's lack of fight as the health-care debate droned on.

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Deeds wants the debate to focus on Virginia -- above all, the staple issues of roads and schools that powered the victories of Mark Warner, the former governor elected to the U.S. Senate last year, and incumbent Tim Kaine. Deeds also hopes voters will look past McDonnell's new image to the culture warrior whose emphatic social conservatism would make him unacceptable to the state's legions of suburban voters, particularly women.

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Yet there will be no escaping the Obama effect, which will come in three parts. First, Obama's health-care speech last week began a rehabilitation process that is already altering the political mood, to Deeds's advantage. A lethargic Democratic base has flocked to Deeds, pushed by the thesis and a renewed confidence in their president.

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If the Democrat can convince Virginians that McDonnell is no moderate and get them thinking about clogged highways and the public schools they value, he wins. Doing that will be easier if Obama can change the political winds, even just a little.