Victoria Brownworth

The day after any election is always full of spin and today is no different. But spin is in the eye of the spinner.

Here’s my spin on the spin. The Republicans are busy trying to turn yesterday’s election losses for Democrats in New Jersey and Virginia into a referendum on Obama. Newsmax is doing their usual “we nailed him” kind of crowing. Meanwhile across the aisle, ThinkProgress is spinning in a different direction. The White House, in an absurdly defensive move that played right into the Fox news crowd’s spin declared that the two gubernatorial races reflected on local politics and had nothing to with the Obama presidency. (Someone tell the President about protesting too much, please.)

The facts–not the spin–are pretty irrefutable: Virginia was never going to elect a Democrat as governor in this year’s race. Republican Bob McDonnell was running on the economy–his ideology, which is definitely fully Republican (anti-choice, anti-gay marriage, etc.), was not the issue and barely came up. Democrat Creigh Deeds simply couldn’t counter the economic message as well as his opponent. Fully 85 percent of Virginia voters said that their first concern was the economy.

New Jersey has always been tax-crazy. This year’s election was largely a referendum on taxes. Gov. Jon Corzine raised taxes. And was going to raise them more. Chris Christie promised to lower taxes. (Whether he can is moot–he said he would.) Since 90 percent of New Jerseyians said the economy was their primary concern, the tax issue was huge. And so was Corzine’s baggage.

Most New Jerseyians haven’t forgotten that Corzine made his millions at Goldman Sachs. Nor that he bought his way into the Senate by spending more on his campaign than had ever been spent on a senatorial campaign prior to his. New Jerseyians were also turned off by the amount of money Corzine was spending on his re-election campaign. $30 million of his personal money sounds egregious in a recession.

Then there was the Chris Daggett factor. A third party candidate in a close race is always a spoiler. Usually for the incumbent. Would the six percent of the vote that Daggett received have gone to Corzine or Christie? Hard to say. New Jerseyians were fed up with Corzine, who, while not corrupt like his predecessor, had failed to live up to many of his promises. Environmental groups like the Sierra Club even endorsed Christie because they were so outraged over Corzine’s failures.

So President Obama is correct when he says that these two races were very much about local issues–they were. But then why campaign there in the first place? Why insert yourself if it’s local and not national? These were not senate races, after all.  

A few months ago I wrote that that linking himself to these races was not a good move on Obama’s part. Had Obama never campaigned for either candidate, there would be no way to link him to the results the way the right is spinning it now. What’s more, voters in New Jersey at least, were turned off by the President campaigning for Corzine so often and so heavily. Or so said exit polls.

What should be of concern to Obama and to the Democratic leadership in these races is that Independents went solidly for Republicans. And new voter and younger Democrats didn’t bother to vote. These factors absolutely ensured Republican wins in both states.

Of equal concern as these gubernatorial races, but getting next to no media attention were some other votes that should worry the Democratic leadership. In Pennsylvania the voting was all about judges–Supreme Court, Superior Court, Common Pleas and judicial retention. And it all went to the Republicans. Yet Pennsylvania–like New Jersey–has a full 20 percent more registered Democrats than Republicans.

Then there was Maine. In November as well as in the primary caucus, Maine went for Obama. Yet yesterday Maine overturned the same-sex marriage law in a voter referendum that was a landslide victory for the anti-gay marriage contingent.

Obama never went to Maine to support the same-sex marriage law, although Obama has repeatedly said he wants equality under the law for lesbians and gay men. Would Obama’s influence there have made a difference? We’ll never know.

What we do know the day after is that Republicans are gloating, which is one of their two main stances (the other being outrage). In reality, Republicans have no real reason to gloat. They were just in the right place at the right time and they got their people to the polls while Democrats did not. The wins for McDonnell and Christie were more against their opponents than they were for any Republican “vision.”

But the Democrats are wrong to dismiss yesterday’s results as irrelevant. They are quite relevant and the leadership, including Obama, should take note. If Democrats are not going to the polls in states with overwhelmingly Democratic registrations and Republicans are winning handily as a consequence, then 2010 is going to be a worrisome year for the Democrats. It’s time to get the war room ready. And we don’t mean for a troop surge in Afghanistan.—VAB