Dems Still Looking Strong in 2 of Top 3 VA races
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When I heard that McAuliffe was the likely Democratic nominee for governor, I said I'd never vote for him, and furthermore, that he could never win...
...then the VA GOP gave the Dems the gift of Ken Cuccinelli, and that was enough to make a liar out of me and lots of other semi-Dems...
Fortunately, McAuliffe's lead remains comfortable, and Northam is going to trounce Jackson. Herring-Obenshain is close, with PPP putting Herring up by 2 (via Blue VA).
Keep your fingers crossed on that last one.
When I heard that McAuliffe was the likely Democratic nominee for governor, I said I'd never vote for him, and furthermore, that he could never win...
...then the VA GOP gave the Dems the gift of Ken Cuccinelli, and that was enough to make a liar out of me and lots of other semi-Dems...
Fortunately, McAuliffe's lead remains comfortable, and Northam is going to trounce Jackson. Herring-Obenshain is close, with PPP putting Herring up by 2 (via Blue VA).
Keep your fingers crossed on that last one.
posted by Winston Smith at
2:25 PM
5 Comments:
You know, McAuliffe doesn't strike me as a very good candidate, but I have to admit that I don't have much in the way of reason for that position. I hear a lot of people express sentiments similar to yours (and mine, to a lesser degree), though. Can you point me in the direction of some good information? What's the deal with him?
And, of course, Cuccinelli is obviously and completely insane and can't be permitted to win, and I can't imagine McAuliffe is worse, but I am interested in the details.
Here's a good place to start:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/11/terry-mcauliffe-governor-virginia
"Terry McAuliffe and I go way back. I first started writing about him in 1997, when Mother Jones assigned me to look into a lawsuit in DC Superior Court in which McAuliffe, the Democrats' super-fundraiser, was being sued by some of his business associates. That story turned into something much bigger. I went down the rabbit hole of McAuliffe's business dealings, probing his relationship with a pension fund run by a union he raised lots of money from—a money trail that ended up making McAuliffe part of my life for over a year. During that time, he never returned one of my phone calls and I never had the opportunity to meet in person the glad-handing, boyish "Macker," who first drew headlines by wrestling an alligator for a political donation. Nonetheless, the time I spent covering McAuliffe—who became head of the Democratic Party during George W. Bush's first term—has left me dumbfounded that he (according to the polls) is poised to become the next governor of Virginia."
Well, the problem for me is that article is pretty characteristic of what I've heard about McAuliffe. It's a lot of kinda-maybe-illegal-ish money-related stuff which seems to be preparing the audience for a whopping punchline that never arrives. There's a lot of "Look at THIS GUY who somethingbadsounding!! HE something MCAULIFFE!!"
I mean, it's not like I read these things and think "I totally want to meet that cool-sounding guy!" or even an apathetic "whatever." I read them, they seem bad-ish, but unfortunately, in the political spectrum, that ain't too bad.
a whopping punchline that never arrives
I dunno, refusing to talk to a reporter directly but using connections at that newspaper to attempt to discredit her seems pretty egregious to me.
I dunno, M, that stuff seems pretty damning to me... There's a lot of room for spin in there, I'll admit ("persuading" the union to invest in crap, etc... That could mean a lot of different things...)
I suppose this guy *could* just be misunderstood...but that seems like wishful thinking to me...
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