Posted on 11/03/2013 8:09:42 PM PST by Kenny
SPOTSYLVANIA, Va.—In politics, it is generally not a good omen when a candidate’s supporters argue that he still has a chance of victory — if the opponent’s supporters neglect to vote.
But this was Virginia Republican Chairman Pat Mullins’s version of the power of positive thinking in an interview this weekend. The path for star-crossed GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, Mullins said, looks like this: “If turnout is in the 30s, the low 30s, we’re gonna win. If it gets higher up in Fairfax [in Democratic-leaning Northern Virginia], say like 40, it’s likely we won’t. I don’t think it’s going to hit 40 anywhere. I’m looking at 32.”
This valiant effort at optimism is the kind of thing a campaign does in the closing hours when it becomes enveloped with an unmistakable stench of impending doom.
Almost anyone who has been around politics for long in either party knows the feeling. The heart demands a cheerful, resilient sprint to the finish. The brain, which has internalized the polls and analyzed the crowds, knows there is virtually no rational reason for cheer.
Listen to the talking points from the Cuccinelli campaign and its surrogates, and watch their decisions over time and money, and all the signatures of a classic political death march are on bright display.
*The only poll that counts is the one on Election Day. True.
*This election belongs to the people, not the pollsters and pundits. True.
*Politics, like the rest of life, is full of surprises. Supremely true.
But the reality — as the political veterans voicing these talking points know better than anyone — is that surprises like the one Cuccinelli needs are rare indeed. The last top-flight poll that had him ahead came out six months ago, although three outliers in the last week showed the race within the margin of error.
And the same depressing polls Cuccinelli publicly dismisses have driven the candidate’s decisions. His strategy for the past couple weeks has been the equivalent of hospice care for a very sick patient. Real efforts at getting well — such as trying to persuade swing voters in the vote-rich Northern Virginia suburbs— have been all but abandoned. The alternative is palliative care, trying to ease the pain and wait for a miracle by focusing the candidate’s time and message on stimulating turnout among the conservative base that is already with him.
“We don’t need to convince one more Virginian, not one,” Cuccinelli told 150 supporters at a weekend rally here. “We just have got to get the ones who already agree with us about ‘first principles’ to the polls on Tuesday. That’s all we’ve got to do to win.”
This mentality is why he’s wrapping up Monday night with Ron Paul, the former Texas congressman who ran three quixotic bids for president, at a rally in Richmond.
As campaigns always do in these circumstances, they grasp desperately to those polls which show the race tightening – even if one of them was conducted by a club of college students in Massachusetts.
And Cuccinelli’s surrogates have added the local twist that Virginia conservatives have treasured for decades: don’t let the liberal Washington Post try to tell us what to do.
“He can be a great governor, but to win we’ve got to defy the odds,” said Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who flew in for two rallies Saturday. “If you listen to the Washington Post, they want you to just sit down and give it up.”
Walker then assured the crowd that the race is tightening.
“The reason it’s getting close is because the voters are looking beyond … what the Washington Post and what the Washington elites say about this state and about this country,” he said.
The candidate himself has tried to keep the mood light with self-deprecating humor. Democrat Terry McAuliffe and his allied outside groups crushed Cuccinelli and his backers by a factor of 25-to-1 in the air war last week.
“If you own a television, you know that,” Cuccinelli joked to supporters. “If you don’t, my opponent will buy you one if you’ll vote for him.”
“I shaved my horns just for you all,” he deadpanned at another stop later.
While Cuccinelli tries to keep his campaign on life support, many people who were never enthusiastic about nominating a zealous social conservative in an increasingly moderate state have been working for weeks on their unflattering obituaries.
I think we have a very decent chance. Today’s Richmond Times Dispatch does not even mention the election on the cover. I would think they’d be reminding their target audience to vote this Tuesday.
Actually I was being a smart@$$, but it is going to be in the 20s tonight.
I built a fire in the wood cookstove....hmmmm. Think I’ll make some popcorn.
(To be technically correct, they have a story about “whats at stake in an election” but it’s made to look like just a vague filler story.)
I love the cold and have all the windows open. The poor kids are shivering in their sleep, but I like to think it makes them tough.
I admire your passion and hope you inspire others to vote
Knock it off, quit making sense!
Doing my best as a passive aggressive healthcare practitioner. My job, as I see it, is to spread my beliefs in such a way as to have the intended victim not suspect my true motives.
Yeah, I sleep in an unheated bedroom, (with flannel sheets) Now eating aformentioned popcorn.
Air popped popcorn is a dietary free food, and may be used freely while reading the internet. The only problem is getting the fingers dirty while trying to manipulate the mouser.
What southern rats? That’s a bunch of transplant rats from the north.
In the late 1990s, some of McAuliffe’s business ventures came under investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor, which filed suit against two labor-union officials, both of them with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers pension fund, for entering into questionable business arrangements with McAuliffe.
Both officials later agreed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in penalties for their actions, and the union itself had to reimburse its pension fund by nearly $5 million.
In one deal, McAuliffe and the fund officials created a partnership to buy a large block of commercial real estate in Florida. McAuliffe put up $100 for the purchase, while the pension fund put up $39 million. Yet McAuliffe got a 50-percent interest in the deal; he eventually walked away with $2.45 million from his original $100 investment. In another instance, the pension fund loaned McAuliffe more than $6 million for a real-estate development, only to find that McAuliffe was unable to make payments for nearly five years.
In the end, the pension fund lost some of its money, McAuliffe moved on to his next deal, and fund officials found themselves facing the Labor Department’s questions.
...and libertarians are willing to put him in office by siphoning votes from Cuccinelli
Ken Cuccinelli is DOOMED. The e;lection will be rigged—he will lose in any case—they called him a Libertarian! and thats a game changer. He could own slaves or be a Pimp with a large house of ill repute and get more votes than a Liberatian! The sleezy Democrat will win and win big! This is a bell weather vote—this means the Dems will hold the Senate and take back the house in 2014—and Hillary will be president in 2016—Who will the GOP run? McCain again? Maybe another RINO? The election is rigged.
Cuccinelli has been closing in the polls on McCauliffe, who has money to burn and has trotted out the Clintons and today Obama, which shows desperation. I’m hopeful. If McCauliffe wins then Virginia loses.
My wife and I have said, if Virginia is so degraded and decrepit as to elect Terry McAuliffe, the message from the electorate is that it wants to live in a corrupt, liberal hellhole like the states north of here, and we’re not having it. If we wanted to live in Maryland, we would’ve moved there.
Tuesday’s election will tell us whether Maryland moved here. Be that the case, we’ll be out of here at earliest opportunity.
Wimps!
Hope it happens!
The Punk will be VERY bad for Virginia....they will get what they deserve.
I thought the problem was that there is indeed a certified Losertarian on the ballot. A twerp by the name of Sarvis. Who turns out to be no libertarian at all, but just a slightly less obviously corrupt version of McAuliffe. The idea is, clueless (low-information) independents who see commercials about Kuccinelli wanting to ban sodomy are supposed to vote Libertarian on principle, thus giving the race to McAuliffe.
Not going to happen.
Your doubts, valid or invalid, are of zero utility.
Thank you!
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