Do you wish McAuliffe had been nominated instead?

[Lunar]

McAuliffe wouldn't need to get a crap ton of millions of dollars from the DNC like Deeds did.  And he's funnier.  But I don't think the Democrats should really nominate joke candidates just cuz it's funny.

[Lunar]

Nope.
I'm perfectly content with the results. Something crazy could have happened if McAuliffe had been the nominee and he could have won. A gaffe could have occured or something.

One of Deeds problems was that he was too honest.  He wouldn't promise to lower taxes and raise spending all the while lowering the deficit.  Terry would do that in a heartbeat.  

heh

[Lunar]

Would Moran have performed better?

He would have lost by 10% instead of 20.

I have to admit I hadn't paid too much attention to this race.  But I recall being distinctly surprised that Moran didn't win the nomination.  Didn't he have the VADem establishment behind him? 

Just his brother.  The establishment never really coalesed.

And as if it's not frickin' obvious who Kaine, Warner, and Webb wanted, and they're the top three elected officials in the state.  Moran had a solid bit of NoVa establishment behind him at the start, but couldn't build on that as people didn't see him viable.  And of course Terry had a lot of establishment behind him, but the Clinton name doesn't have that much influence in VA outside of African-Americans and the Southwest, and the Deeds campaign did a good job at reaching out to AA's in the primary and of course had the Southwest locked down despite Appalachian Democrats liking the Clinton brand.

But anyway, I'd say if any candidate was the establishment candidate in the primary, it was probably Deeds.  Even Obama probably would have voted for Deeds over Moran if he could have.

I *MAY* ramble about this a lot someday, and I may or may not have a lot I want to say about the subject, but one of the fundamental problems of the Deeds campaign was that they spent way too much time trying to make him into Mark Warner 2.0.  Which, although Ben may disagree, doomed them from the start.

[Lunar]

I *MAY* ramble about this a lot someday, and I may or may not have a lot I want to say about the subject, but one of the fundamental problems of the Deeds campaign was that they spent way too much time trying to make him into Mark Warner 2.0.  Which, although Ben may disagree, doomed them from the start.

I do, naturally.  The Deeds campaign had a lot of issues, but trying to be Mark Warner wasn't one of them.  If anything, they didn't do a good enough job of following Mark Warner's path to victory in 2001.  Warner was able to hold on to NOVA, while at the same time keeping much of Southwest Virginia.  If Deeds had been able to appeal to moderates the way Warner did, and stay positive while doing so, he would have done significantly better.

Yeah, maybe Meg Whitman should copy Arnold's approach to the Hispanic community in California and talk about her experiences as an international bodybuilder moving to a new country without speaking English. 

You can't just sit there and copy campaigns from bygone eras and expect things to work out.

I of course exaggerate the nature of the problem, we're gonna hear a lot more about how inept his campaign was in the coming weeks.  Deeds wasn't exerting enough control and was deferring to authority.  And, of course, his natural hesitance towards 110% sending  his Obama love out publicly was a mistake too.  If you're going to try and nationalize the debate by talking about abortion instead of jobs, might as well bring the president in.  A lot of people who approved of Obama didn't end up voting for Deeds.

[Lunar]

No one could ever accuse Terry of running a negative campaign, at least.  the man oozes positive energy

[Lunar]

No one could ever accuse Terry of running a negative campaign, at least.  the man oozes positive energy

He oozes something, but that's not it.

You can ooze multiple things.  C'mon, you have to give Terry credit, he is INSANELY positive.