I Voted For Deeds… And Remain Hopeful
By Danae Jones Aicher | Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 | Catch-AllGov-elect Bob McDonnell should be commended on a solid win, but Republicans shouldn’t get too excited.
Without a doubt, McDonnell and Virginia Republicans have a mandate, a fact to which state Democrats should play close attention. But no one should overestimate exactly what that mandate is. Exit polls show that most Virginia voters approve of President Obama and that he did not factor into their choice. Of the four in ten voters for whom Obama was a factor, only about half of them view the President and the job he’s doing negatively.
Another fact which can’t be ignored is Virginia voters’ trend of electing a governor of the opposite party of the sitting President. Whether conscious or not, this trend may point to voters’ desire for political balance more than anything. Even still, there’s no denying McDonnell’s polished appeal. Nor is there any denying that Deeds’ attacks – deserved or undeserved – on McDonnell for a paper he wrote almost 20 years ago turned many voters’ stomachs. In fact, those attacks may have done Deeds more harm than good.
But all of that is behind us now. What’s ahead is a lot of hard work. And that work cannot be partisan. That’s a message for our Republican lawmakers as well as our Democrat ones. We are facing troubling economic times here in the state (though not as troubling as in many other states, thanks in large part to Sen. Mark Warner’s and Gov. Tim Kaine’s leadership), and traffic here in Hampton Roads and elsewhere continues to be a nightmare. McDonnell seems to think all the problems we face can be fixed without raising new revenue but by trimming fat from the state government’s budget. We should be clear what that means; that services will be cut for someone somewhere. Apparently, for about 60 percent of Virginia voters, that’s okay. We’ll see how it works out.
Problems like transportation have been festering for years and years. The same old partisan politics won’t work to solve that problem. McDonnell will have to stand up, be courageous and possibly consider solutions that go against his party’s mantra. Democrats will have to be as courageous and resist the urge to oppose him at every turn just for the sake of opposition. In doing so, they could show national Republicans what real public service is all about while actually putting Virginians, including those of us who proudly voted for Creigh Deeds, above party politics.
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9 Responses to "I Voted For Deeds… And Remain Hopeful"
Throw the kool-aid away and put down the book about Che Guevera you’re reading and take a look out there. Your state-wide ticket got crushed, you lost a bunch of seats in the HOD, and you’re clinging to ridiculous exit polling data to try to reassure yourself that national politics and the disaster of the Kaine administration had nothing to do with this?
Tell you what. You keep on chugging away with those rose-colored glasses and singing kum-bay-yah loud enough to drown out the thunderous reality you’re so desperately trying to hide from. Yeah, the Commonwealth thinks DNC Chair Kaine is a wonderful guy and Creigh Deeds is Barack Obama’s cousin thrice removed from the hillbilly district of Nigeria. Hope and Change will pull you through! Shout Yes We Can! (go down in flames) a few more times! Keep it up for another year.
And then we can send a whole lot of your fellow travelers back into the private sector to actually work for a living. I can’t wait to take out the trash that represents a sizable portion of our Congressional delegation and watch OFA piss away another few million dollars of Democrat campaign funds with legions of lazy, stupid staffers who all think they’re the campaign manager for King David.
Man, you really made my night. I haven’t laughed this hard in weeks.
Kinda harsh, Greg. I think she’s just saying that now the difficult part starts – putting those happy campaign slogans to work. How to get Rs and Ds in the Va. House and Senate to fix transportation, etc.? She’s hoping McD can find things that enough Ds and Rs can vote “yes” on so that Things Get Done, rather than Things Get Shouted Back and Forth.
If McDonnell has a “mandate,” and certainly the election results would indicate that he should, what’s it a mandate for? Jobs? There’s not much Virginia’s governor, whoever his is, can really do to create jobs. The best he could probably do is get highway construction going, it’s rather unclear how he’s going to do that when he’s promised not to seek new revenues. Unlike the last two big Republican gubernatorial winners, Allen and Gilmore, it’s not really clear what McDonnell was elected to actually do. Given the state’s budget situation there might not be much he CAN do.
“that work can’t be partisan”
Tell Nancy Pelosi
Liberty is to faction, what air is to fire…I kinda like partisanship since it ensures that I have the liberty to live my life the way I want to.
When Democrats win, they have no qualms about passing bills with no Republican input and little support. When Republicans win, they’re supposed to be “bipartisan.” What hypocrisy.
I Love how the partisan hacks are so quick to tout bi-partisanship when their ticket has just been slaughtered. Screw watered down “Bi-Partisan” bills. We Won, We’ll do it our way.
“I (we) Won” – Barack Obama . . . whats good for the goose is good for the gander, read it and weep libs, read it and weep.
I like Mark Warner. I think he has the potential to be a good Senator. It’s nice to have him there since Jim Webb seems lost now that he doesn’t have George Bush to rant about. What has Webb done for Virginia? Warner on the other hand is asking tough questions about how money is being spent.
While Warner’s tax increase was excessive, IMO, he did reduce the size of state government. Few governors, Republicans or Democrats, have the stomach to do that. Warner also proved he could work both sides of the aisle.
Tim Kaine deserves kudos for Chapter 527 – which takes a first step towards getting control of the root cause of Virginia’s transportation mess. But Kaine was as bad of a manager as Warner was a good one. Kaine let state employment jump and undid the effect of all Warner’s cuts. This certainly set the stage for some of Virginia’s current fiscal crisis. And Kaine failed to follow through on his campaign pledge to transportation to land use. He backed down and asked for higher taxes.
What good does higher taxes do unless we also have an adequate public facilities law? Why does dirt have more rights than other property? Why should developers expect others to pay higher taxes so that the former can make higher profits?
A case for higher taxes and fees for transportation can be made. But with higher taxes should come an adequate public facilities law with teeth; elimination of the annual $200 million taxpayer subsidy for overweight trucks; reform of the Commonwealth Transportation Board (force any contacts with the CTB or its staff to be reduced to writing and posted on the Internet); a grand jury investigation into the no-bid contract for Dulles Rail and all of the contacts with the Federal Transit Administration.
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