MyDD :: An Early Round Up of Lessons Learned

Everyone's talking today about the most important outcomes of yesterday's elections. There will be much more comprehensive post-mortems to come, but these are three key lessons that I'm taking away from the wins in New Jersey and Virginia.

Republican Smear Tactics

In Virginia and New Jersey, the Republicans thought they could Swift Boat Kaine and Corzine right out of the water. The television spots claiming Kaine is soft on murderers and that Corzine is a scumbag for being divorced finally touched the "too far" nerve for voters in both states. Rather than calling into question the morals of the Democrats, the ads backfired spectacularly, calling into question the integrity of the Republicans.

The Democratic responses -- even Kaine's, which many thought was too weak -- were solid answers that effectively changed the subject and played up our positives. Kaine personally opposes the death penalty because he's a good Christian who did missionary work in Central America. Corzine ignored the content of the smear entirely with an ad decrying "Bush-Rove smear tactics" and "the politics of personal destruction" that sought "to stop him from protecting our families and our values."

There was no serious debate about the merits of the charges. The focus was shifted entirely to the 'win at all costs' gutter politics the Republicans were counting on to succeed. Steven Hart at The Opinion Mill called the Democratic wins a rejection of "the Republican sleaze weasels." Sounds about right to me.

The Suburbs and Exurbs

Republican pundits like David Brooks like to think that the natural political lifecycle for middle class Americans is that they start as urban liberal Democrats, become suburban moderates, and then eventually settle in as exurban right wing Republicans. Last night's results are a strong challenge to that CW.

The Washington Post covered a similar story in the Virginia race. The extremism Republicans tried to sell finally scared moderate voters who typically vote Republican right into the Democrats' arms. Northern Virginia's outer suburbs, which typically vote Republican, went hard for Kaine.

Kaine, a Richmond native with no ties to the region, collected a higher percentage of Northern Virginia votes -- nearly six in 10 -- than that compiled by Alexandria resident Warner when he won the governorship.

Meanwhile, several area House of Delegates races that were expected to be close or go to Republicans were instead won easily by Democrats.
. . .
Political observers said the vote totals were a reflection of a changing Northern Virginia, where thousands of new residents are tilting the political landscape to the left.

In New Jersey, much of the early talk on local news stations NJN and News12 was that Corzine was outperforming his Democratic predecessors in New Jersey's suburbs and exurbs. Looking over the numbers, I don't think that's quite accurate. Then again, the Republican ran as a faux liberal and outperformed the candidate who ran in 2001 as a conservative. Without exit polling about voter attitudes though, that's difficult to interpret.

However, there are some examples of the Democrats improving their performance in the outer suburbs. For example, in 2001 during the last Governor's race, the Assembly race in the rapidly growing 25th district went 60%-to-40% for the Republican incumbents. This year, the Democratic challengers still lost, but brought the gap down to 54%-to-46%. The most common criticism of the Republican incumbents was that they lean too far to the right.

Democrats and Faith

Guest-posting at Political Animal, Amy Sullivan writes that part of Tim Kaine's win in Virginia was that he was able to neutralize what has been a Republican advantage on the faith, values, and character issues related to religion. Kaine didn't pander to the religious right (he is a Catholic, after all), but he did hold up his faith as a defense when Kilgore attacked him for being personally anti-death penalty.

Kaine always made it clear that his religious views don't have an undue influence on his political decisions, though. This indicates to me that voters, even in a red state like Virginia, like politicians with religion, but don't buy into the idea that religion should dictate politics. By knocking the religion advantage out of the Republican playbook, Kaine "got to compete on actual issues--whether immigration or education or sprawl or health care." As she writes, "that's good news for Democrats."