A McAuliffe problem, not an Obamacare problem
by David Atkins
I haven't had time to do a full analysis yet--I've had my hands full and then some with local election activities and analysis--but it seems that on the whole, Democrats and progressives had a pretty good night last night. There were a few disappointments--the biggest being in Seattle--but generally speaking Democrats did fairly well. That was reflected in the Ventura city council race as well, where one of our Democrats was the top vote getter ahead of three GOP incumbents, and two of our Democrats defied conventional wisdom to come within 1.5% of unseating two GOP incumbents few believed could be defeated. A bigger win would have been nice, but smashing conventional wisdom was also its own reward. The Democrats' national showing is actually pretty impressive considering that it was a sleepy, very low turnout odd year election cycle.
So what happened in Virginia? First off, Democrats did win, just not by quite the margin many expected. That said, I think it's fairly safe to point out that it was a nasty race that drove down turnout even further, and more importantly that McAuliffe just isn't a terribly attractive candidate.
If the Affordable Care Act were dragging down the Democratic Party and the progressive base at a national level, that didn't seem to be reflected in most of the other races across the country. Whatever weakness there was in Virginia should probably be seen as a local phenomenon relevant to that particular election, rather than as an indictment of the Party and its chances as a whole.
That's not to say that continued problems with ACA implementation won't pose a risk to Democrats as they approach November 2014. But it's not at all clear that those issues had dramatic impacts in November 2013. The purveyors of conventional wisdom will disagree. But then, those purveyors are usually wrong.
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