UPDATE: Looks like it's time for me to eat crow since Ed Gillespie not only lost decisively, but a blue wave came crashing down of the VA GOP. Congrats to Democrat Ralph Northam on his win.
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It’s Election Day. Virginians are heading to the polls to mark the end of what became a rather nasty race. Democratic candidate Ralph Northam linked Ed Gillespie to white nationalists, but the nadir of this whole race came with that awful Latino Victory Fund ad. It shows a supporter of Republican candidate Ed Gillespie driving a pick-up truck, chasing Asian, black, Hispanic, and Muslim kids. It’s absurd in two aspects. One, it portrays all white people as genocidal maniacs that love the Confederacy and just cannot wait to run down nonwhite kids. Second, it’s obviously meantto scare nonwhite voters in key Democratic bastions to vote today. Seriously—you need to sink to this level of theater to get nonwhites to vote for you? These people care about health care and jobs; they know if Gillespie should win—and it’s possible—every white person in the state isn’t going to be hunting them with their pickup trucks. Also, and this goes without saying, a lot of Democrats in this state probably drive pickup trucks. The ad was a $62,000 media in-kind contribution by the LVF to Northam, who denied that this ad came from his campaign. With this disclosure, Northam had to have signed off on this, or approved of a top aide to give the green light, either way the buck stops with him according to Virginia laws.
There have also been a lot of campaign ads regarding MS-13 and law and order coming from the Gillespie camp. So, who’s going to win? The polls have tightened; you see that with the Real Clear Politics average, which had Northam up six over Gillespie. That dropped to two points over the weekend. Nonwhite voters in voter-rich Northern Virginia did note that two-time Bush voter Northam has been very low energy in areas that he needs to over perform tonight and totally AWOL in other regions (rural Virginia) where the margins could help make up the difference. Yet, for former governors and pundits, it seems they know where the momentum rests—and it’s not with Northam.
On MSNBC’s Morning Joe yesterday, The New York Times’ Nick Confessore, MSNBC political analyst Elise Jordan, MSNBC reporter and legal analyst Ari Melber, and former Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. (D-TN) all either said Northam would lose, or it’s a toss up; Ford was the only one who said the latter. He added that should Northam go down, is it because the Democrats lost on the crime issue. Co-host Mika Brzezinski was dumfounded that the entire panel was quite bearish on Northam’s chances.
Not only is Northam running ads tying Gillespie to Trump on Fox News, our data shows that Fox is a top cable target for Northam ads
— Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) November 3, 2017
If you wanted to GOTV Trump voters, can’t imagine a better way to do it than the last few days of the Northam campaign
— Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) November 3, 2017
Former DNC chair and Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell said that Northam would do better than Terry McAuliffe’s 2013 showing, which saw him win the governorship and he’ll do better in the rural areas of the state. I don’t know which race Ed was watching, but when pressed by MSNBC host Katy Tur on how confident he was with that assessment—he also said suburban voters will come out because they wan to send a message to Trump—the former governor was not confident that an upset wouldn’t occur. That latter point was in reference to the bad blood between the progressive and establishment wings of the Democratic Party during the 2016 primaries. Either way, let’s see what happens tonight. Yet, it’s not the best confidence boost when The New York Times and reporters from MSNBC, whose sole existence is to keep liberals sedated in their fantasy world, saying that Gillespie is probably going to win.