biochem wrote:Daryl wrote:I'm wondering how in the Virginia election Ed Gillespie went from being Trump's best buddy and highly regarded to a useless bum who didn't follow the Great Leader closely enough, all in a day?
Trump's gigantic ego at work. The problem in Virginia is that it has become a blue state. The suburbs outside of Washington DC are Democrat and have grown to be so heavily populated that they are dominating the Virginia electoral process. This ticks off the rest of Virginia but the newcomers outnumber them. Given the population differential and Democratic population, it should have been a huge Democratic victory, instead it was a close victory due to the Democratic cantidate's lousy campaign.
Yeah right.
Nobody thought that making up the GOP advantage in the state house was even a possibility this election. NOBODY. Because Virginia is one of the most biased gerrymandered states there are.
The last two elections for the state house went like this:
2013: GOP 67 seats, Dem 33 seats
2015: GOP 66 seats: Dem 34 seats
Democrats didn't even bother contesting 44 of the 100 districts in the last election they were so freaking rigged. They just gave up 44% of the state house out of the gate because there was nobody they could field who could take the seat anyway. So don't give us this "oh it's such a heavily democratic state they should have done so much better but they suck at campaigning" bull. Any claim that anyone thought the Dems should have walked away with the state house this time because of whatever claimed demographic shifts occurred in the last *2 years* is laughably absurd.
This was a seismic shift in Virginia state voting. And it was all about Trump and the crap he's pulling. Especially with health care. He brought pissed off candidates out of the woodwork to challenge all these seats in red districts. No name nobodies taking out incumbent politicians.
(Of course, NOW Virginia is going to go a lot more heavily blue since at the very least they just guaranteed the next redistricting will happen with a Dem governor, who can veto any highly biased gerrymandered maps. Which is how the GOP was keeping control of the state house in the first place.)
Trump would love to have it be all about him but although he came up as an issue but it was more about demographic shifts than anything else. Also affected the legislature, those growing suburbs swallowed up some formerly Republican seats and the newcomers turned those blue as well. Trump just can't stand to have anything be about anything but himself.
The LAST thing Trump wants is for people to see this gigantic loss as "all about him" which is why he tried to pin it on Gillespie as soon as he figured out what a disaster it was last night.