Ralph Northam defeats Ed Gillespie in race for Va. governor - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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The Washington Post wrote:Ralph Northam defeats Ed Gillespie in race for Va. governor closely watched by national parties

By Gregory S. Schneider, Laura Vozzella and Fenit Nirappil November 8 at 6:23 AM

Democrat Ralph Shearer Northam won a hard-fought race to become Virginia’s 73rd governor, beating Republican Ed Gillespie in an election watched around the nation as a judgment on President Trump and the politics of polarization.

Voters choose Northam, the lieutenant governor, 54 percent to 45 percent over Gillespie as part of a stunning Democratic sweep of statewide offices, including the lieutenant governor and attorney general. There also were widespread Democratic victories in the House of Delegates.

In his victory speech, Northam — a 58-year-old pediatrician and Army veteran — said “Virginia has told us to end the divisiveness, that we will not condone hatred and bigotry, and to end the politics that have torn this country apart.”

The vote had national resonance as well. Democrats — and some moderate Republicans — had rallied behind Northam as a message against the anti-immigrant nativism and angry populism stoked by Trump’s surprise victory last year. Gillespie, in turn, had dipped into Trump’s playbook with strong law-and-order messages, but tried to keep his distance from the president in a state that now leans blue.

Social media reaction Wednesday framed the Virginia governor’s contest as a bellwether race of the sentiments across the country as some people predicted it was also a sign that the GOP faced big troubles. Many voters said they were simply relieved that the election and its ads were over.

One voter, Tina Lee , wrote on Twitter “my weeping with relief after checking my phone this AM to find out what happened in my home state.”

Democrats broke into tears as results came in Tuesday evening to the Northam campaign party in Fairfax City, the outcome beyond what most had dared hope. For all the fury unleashed on the Virginia races by Trump and his followers, who lit up social media and tried to define the contests in terms of Confederate statues and Hispanic street gangs, Northam had seemed an unlikely standard-bearer to fight back.

Even some fellow Democrats had criticized Northam for his low-key campaign style. But in the end he won more votes than any previous Virginia governor, and it was a historic night for the party across many fronts.

Democrat Ralph Northam won the Virginia governor’s race over Republican Ed Gillespie on Nov. 7. Here are some other takeaways from the state’s election. (Video: Amber Ferguson/Photo: Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
Voters energized by last fall’s demoralizing loss by Hillary Clinton came out in large numbers to elect Democrat Justin Fairfax as lieutenant governor over Republican state Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel (Fauquier), making Fairfax the first African American elected to a statewide office in Virginia since L. Douglas Wilder won as governor in 1989.

Democratic Attorney General Mark R. Herring was reelected over Republican challenger John Adams.

And Democrats were poised to pick up at least 14 seats in the House of Delegates after fielding a historic number of challengers, many of them women. Among them is Danica Roem, who defeated longtime Republican incumbent Robert G. Marshall in Prince William County to become the first openly transgender person to serve in the Virginia legislature.

Six more House seats were in play as of late Tuesday, with four of those headed for recounts. The Democrats needed to pick up 17 seats to gain control of the House of Delegates. That would be a stunning turnaround in a body where Republicans had a seemingly insurmountable 66-to-34 advantage. All 100 seats were up for election.

“In Virginia it’s going to take a doctor to heal our differences, to bring unity to our people, and I’m here to let you know that the doctor is in,” Northam said to ecstatic supporters Tuesday night at George Mason University. “We need to close the wounds that divide, and bring unity to Virginia . . . Whether you voted for me or not, we are all Virginians. I hope to earn your confidence and support.”

Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), the ultimate party cheerleader and a patron of Northam’s political career, said he hadn’t expected such a resounding set of victories — especially in the House of Delegates, where the prospect of regaining a majority had seemed out of reach.

“I always say you’re going to get it back because you have to say that politically,” McAuliffe said in an interview, “but in my mind I was thinking six to eight [seats gained] would have been a great night for the Democrats.”

As he has traveled the country, McAuliffe said, the pressure from other Democrats to perform in this election has been enormous. He recalled that people would say to him through gritted teeth, “We need this.”

“This, what a sparkplug,” he said. “This is the revitalization of the Democratic Party in America. This isn’t just about Virginia tonight.”

The victors basked in the idea that they had just shown something to the nation.

“We are so excited tonight to celebrate some incredible victories, not just for the Democratic ticket, not just for the Commonwealth of Virginia, not just the United States but for the world,” Fairfax said to his supporters. “The tide is turning for the political climate in this world . . . We now have a chance to rise to the better angels of our nature, to take our country on a different, more positive course.”

Gillespie, 56, was gracious in defeat, taking to the stage at a hotel outside Richmond to congratulate Northam and pledging to help the new governor in any way he could.

“I want to thank all those who voted today, on both sides,” Gillespie said, his wife, ticketmates and campaign staffers standing beside him. “These million voters [who supported him] and our friends and family love our commonwealth, they love our fellow Virginians, and they love even those who disagree with them.”

Gillespie never mentioned Trump during his concession speech, just as he almost never mentioned him on the campaign trail. But the president was quick to lash out earlier Tuesday as it became clear that Gillespie was losing.

“Ed Gillespie worked hard but did not embrace me or what I stand for,” the president tweeted before the final tally was in, and shortly before addressing the South Korean National Assembly during his trip to Asia.

Only hours earlier, he tweeted support for Gillespie, saying that electing “Ralph Northam will allow crime to be rampant in Virginia.” But if the Republican wins, Trump said, “MS-13 and crime will be gone.” He was referring to the MS-13 street gang, which featured prominently in Gillespie ads raising fears of violence and illegal immigration.

The success of Northam and his ticket was fueled by unprecedented turnout among Democrats and liberals, who traditionally have sat out Virginia elections in nonpresidential years.

Virginia’s uneven recovery mirrors its growing political divide VIEW GRAPHIC
Preliminary exit poll results found 28 percent of voters identifying as liberals, up eight points from the 2013 governor’s race and two points from last year, when Clinton won the state by five points. Democrats composed 41 percent of the electorate, up four points from 2013 and one point from last year.

Republicans were 31 percent of the electorate, a record low in exit polling dating to 1996.

African Americans accounted for 21 percent of voters, according to exit poll results, identical to their share in last year’s presidential election and one point higher than in 2013. In total, nonwhite voters made up 33 percent of the electorate, the same as last year but up from 28 percent in the previous governor’s race.

Black voters favored Northam over Gillespie by a 73-point margin, while Hispanic voters favored Northam by 33 points.

Democrats had worked feverishly in recent weeks to court African American voters, and former president Barack Obama held a rally with the ticket in Richmond last month. Obama also recorded a robo-call that went out Monday and Tuesday to encourage people to vote.

As the national Democratic Party has wrestled with fractures in recent weeks, the Virginia party may have offered a lesson in how to move ahead. After former congressman Tom Perriello mounted a progressive challenge to Northam for the Democratic nomination and lost, he became a foot soldier for Northam in the general election.

Northam also may have benefited from the historic number of Democrats who challenged Republican incumbents in House of Delegates races. Their presence on the ballot helped bring out voters in districts all over the state who otherwise might have had little interest in a nonpresidential election.

Republicans, on the other hand, failed for most of the year to project the same kind of unity. Gillespie ran a restrained primary race and nearly lost to rival Corey Stewart, who fully embraced Trumpian bombast and made defending Confederate statues and fighting illegal immigration into central issues.

After the primary, Stewart refused to endorse Gillespie unless the candidate adopted his hard-right agenda and style. Gillespie gradually leaned in that direction as it became clear that he needed to firm up his base, especially in rural areas, but Stewart never campaigned for him.

Instead, Stewart — who has already said he’ll challenge Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine next year — made late appearances with Vogel and Adams.


The governor’s race had been close in pre-election polling, and Northam had been criticized by some in his party for waging a subdued campaign at a time of high passion and sharp rhetoric. But Virginians turned out in large numbers on a day of patchy rain around the state as Northam and the Democrats relied on an increasingly efficient system for getting voters to the polls, especially in the more-populous parts of the state.

Northam’s victory was propelled by white, college-educated women; voters who are concerned about health care; the robust showing among Democrats; and voters who strongly disapprove of Trump, exit polls indicated.

Gillespie ultimately failed in his attempt to walk a very fine line, working for votes in a state where his party’s president is deeply unpopular. He resisted even talking about the president for much of the race, while Northam called Trump a “narcissistic maniac” and pledged to be a bulwark against his policies in Virginia.

But Gillespie made a late turn toward Trumpian tactics that seemed to energize his campaign, promising to defend Confederate heritage and airing ads that seemed to equate illegal immigrants with violent gangs.

Trump never campaigned in Virginia for Gillespie, though Vice President Pence appeared with him twice.

The Trump factor drove an unusual amount of national attention toward Virginia, whose election was one of only two statewide contests in the country. The other, in New Jersey, wasn’t considered competitive, so Virginia became the proxy for the painful efforts by both major parties to find their way forward in the age of Trump.

Half of the more than $50 million raised by Virginia’s statewide candidates came from outside interest groups, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project.

Pat Sullivan, Sarah Gibson, Rachel Chason, Antonio Olivo, Maria Sacchetti, Julie Zauzmer, Shira Stein, Jenna Portnoy, Scott Clement, Emily Guskin, Dana Hedgpeth and Kristen Griffith contributed to this report.

The Democrats needed this badly, I wonder if it has further implications.
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:lol: There are Democrat victories. Some of them are more ironic than others.

Virginia elects its first openly transgender delegate to state House
Democrat Danica Roem, a former journalist, defeated incumbent Republican candidate Del. Bob Marshall Tuesday to become the first openly transgender elected official in Virginia.

Roem, 33, is now also set to make history as the first openly transgender person to be elected and seated in a state legislature.

Marshall, 73, is a staunch social conservative who has served in Virginia's House of Delegates since 1992.He once referred to himself as the state's "chief homophobe" and introduced a "bathroom bill" earlier this year that would have required people to use the restroom that matches the gender listed on their birth certificate. The bill never made it out of a Republican-led committee.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol ... 842585001/
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Clueless Donald's comment that Gillespie lost because he "Did not embrace me or what I stand for" was typical and, by now predictable.

Get used to it Dick Head. You are going to see a lot more folks not "embracing" your repulsive self. Your base of Clueless Ones of 30% is outnumbered by 2 to 1 and they are pissed off to have an incompetent liar as potus.
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The New York Times wrote:Suburbs Rebel Against Trump, Threatening Republicans in Congress

By ALEXANDER BURNS and JONATHAN MARTIN | NOV. 8, 2017

RICHMOND, Va. — The American suburbs appear to be in revolt against President Trump after a muscular coalition of college-educated voters and racial and ethnic minorities dealt the Republican Party a thumping rejection on Tuesday and propelled a diverse class of Democrats into office.

From the tax-obsessed suburbs of New York City to high-tech neighborhoods outside Seattle to the sprawling, polyglot developments of Fairfax and Prince William County, Va., voters shunned Republicans up and down the ballot in off-year elections. Leaders in both parties said the elections were an unmistakable alarm bell for Republicans ahead of the 2018 campaign, when the party’s grip on the House of Representatives may hinge on the socially moderate, multiethnic communities near major cities.

“Voters are taking their anger out at the president, and the only way they can do that is by going after Republicans on the ballot,” said Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania.

The Democrats’ gains signaled deep alienation from the Republican Party among the sort of upscale moderates who were once central to their coalition.

Democrats not only swept Virginia’s statewide races but neared a majority in the House of Delegates, a legislative chamber that was gerrymandered to make the Republican majority virtually unassailable. They seized county executive offices in Westchester and Nassau Counties, N.Y., and carried bellwether mayoral elections in St. Petersburg, Fla., and Manchester, N.H., all races that appeared to favor Republicans only months ago.

In Washington State, Democrats won a special election to take control of the State Senate, establishing total Democratic dominance of government on the West Coast. Democrats took council seats in vote-rich Delaware County, Pa., in the Philadelphia suburbs, a perennial congressional battleground.

Even in the Deep South, Georgia Democrats captured two State House seats where they previously had not even fielded candidates while snatching a State Senate seat in Buckhead, an upscale area of Atlanta.

Chris Vance, a former chairman of the Washington State Republican Party, placed the blame squarely on Mr. Trump: “Among college-educated suburbanites, he is a pariah.”

Democrats still face formidable obstacles in the 2018 election, including some not at work in this week’s elections. If a suburban insurrection might help Democrats take the House, the Senate seats at stake next year are overwhelmingly in conservative, rural states, where feelings about Mr. Trump range from ambivalent to positive. So far, only two Republican Senate seats are clearly in play: the one in Arizona being vacated by Jeff Flake and Dean Heller’s in Nevada.

In House races, Democratic candidates are likely to face Republican attacks tying them to Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the unpopular Democratic minority leader, and to liberal policies, like single-payer health care, that are causing divisions in the Democratic ranks.

But for Republicans, the bad news was not likely to end with Tuesday’s results.

Congressional Republicans on Wednesday were bracing for a new wave of retirements just one day after another pair of veteran House members, Representative Frank A. LoBiondo of New Jersey and Representative Ted Poe of Texas, declared they would not seek re-election. Already, 29 House Republicans have said they will not run again, while just seven Democrats have announced plans to retire.

Mr. Dent, channeling the exasperation of his colleagues, suggested an exodus might be imminent. “Do they really want to go through another year of this?” said Mr. Dent, a leader of his caucus’s moderate wing, who has announced he will not run again.

In the White House, electoral defeat gave way to a shifting series of explanations: Mr. Trump’s first reaction was to savage Ed Gillespie, the defeated Republican candidate for governor in Virginia, on Twitter. By Wednesday morning, two presidential advisers acknowledged antipathy toward Mr. Trump would probably drive Democratic turnout in 2018.

But by Wednesday afternoon, the story changed again: At a White House briefing, aides dismissed the importance of New Jersey and Virginia in either 2018 or 2020. One White House official blamed congressional Republicans, asserting that swing voters on Tuesday embraced Democrats because they were frustrated that lawmakers had not moved on the president’s agenda.

But some of the most competitive House races of the 2018 midterms will take place in the two states. In New Jersey, Republicans will struggle to retain Mr. LoBiondo’s seat and must protect such imperiled incumbents as Leonard Lance, Tom MacArthur and Rodney Frelinghuysen. In Virginia, the district of Representative Barbara Comstock, a Republican, went 56 percent to 43 percent for Lt. Gov. Ralph S. Northam, the Democrats’ triumphant candidate for governor. Mr. Northam also captured 51 percent of the votes in the district of Representative Scott Taylor, a freshman Republican from Virginia Beach.

You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services.

Democrats were as buoyant as Republicans were dejected. Democratic Party leaders gleefully predicted that the Senate, where Republicans hold a two-seat majority, might now be in play, and they said their fund-raising and candidate recruitment would take off going into the new year.

“We’ll get a lot of candidates who are going to want to run, and I think for donors who have been on the sidelines, dispirited for the last year, I’m telling you, people are jazzed up,” said Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, the ever-upbeat former national Democratic Party chairman.

To many Democrats and some Republicans, Tuesday’s results recalled the last time an unpopular Republican was in the White House and voters vented their frustrations on a Republican-held Congress. In 2005, Democrats rolled to victory in Virginia and New Jersey, presaging an electoral wave in 2006 and inspiring throngs of Democrats to run for office in difficult districts.

Representative Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said he had spent Tuesday evening calling potential House candidates and urging them to watch the returns, telling them, “I just want to encourage you to turn on the television, if it’s not already on.”

“Democrats down there were very aggressive about expanding their map and recruiting strong candidates, even where they were told they couldn’t win,” Mr. Luján said of Virginia. “We’re going to make our Republican colleagues fight for every inch.”

In the Senate, too, Democrats are seeking to expand the map. Facing a narrow path to a majority, they are strenuously wooing Phil Bredesen, a former Tennessee governor, to run for the seat that Senator Bob Corker is vacating. Mr. Bredesen has been courted personally by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, as well as several former governors who now serve in the Senate, including Mark Warner of Virginia, according to Democrats briefed on the overtures. And the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee commissioned a poll aimed at coaxing Mr. Bredesen to run.

Mr. Bredesen is in Washington this week for meetings and is said to be nearing a decision.

Democrats won Tuesday with a historically diverse slate of candidates: Having long struggled to bring diversity to the leadership tier of their party, they elected the first transgender legislator in the country, the first Vietnamese-American legislator in Virginia, the first African-American female mayor of Charlotte, N.C., and the first black statewide officer in Virginia in more than a quarter-century, among other groundbreaking candidates.

Kathy Tran, a Vietnamese-American who was elected to the House of Delegates in a Fairfax-based seat that Republicans previously held, said voters there had mobilized to rebuke Mr. Trump and his brand of politics. She urged national Democrats to follow Virginia’s example by recruiting candidates from many backgrounds for the midterms.

“This was a clear rejection of racism and bigotry and hateful violence,” Ms. Tran said of the elections.

County-level results captured the dizzying scale of the lurch away from Republicans: In Virginia, Mr. Northam captured outer Washington suburbs, including Prince William and Loudoun Counties, by 20 percentage points or more, where other Democrats prevailed by single digits in the recent past. He won Virginia Beach, an area Mr. Trump carried last year, by five percentage points.

In New Jersey, Mr. Murphy carried the densely populated New York and Philadelphia suburbs by staggering margins, including counties that broke for Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, eight years ago. And in Delaware County, Pa., long home to a fearsome Republican machine, Democrats won seats on the county council for the first time since the 1970s thanks to a local campaign that featured yard signs that got straight to the point: “Vote Nov. 7th Against Trump.”

Former Gov. Robert F. McDonnell, the last Republican to win a major office in Virginia, said the enthusiasm of liberal voters simply overwhelmed his party.

“The enthusiastic left showed up tonight in big numbers,” he said, “and really determined the outcome of the election.”

_________

Alexander Burns reported from Richmond, and Jonathan Martin from Washington. Shane Goldmacher, Nicholas Corasaniti and Maggie Haberman contributed reporting from New York.

Sure, swing voters on Tuesday embraced Democrats because they were frustrated that lawmakers had not moved on repealing and replacing Obamacare. :lol:

Also:

The New York Times wrote:After Rough Night, Top Trump Backers Differ on Path Forward

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | NOV. 8, 2017, 10:33 P.M. E.S.T.

DES MOINES, Iowa — Marking a year since President Donald Trump's election, his fiercest advocates offered different approaches Wednesday for the Republican Party's way forward after some tough losses Tuesday.

Appearing in key states Trump carried a year ago, former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel called on Republicans to come together, while former White House strategist Steve Bannon maintained an aggressive tone toward any in the GOP who would stand in the president's way.

Their remarks in Iowa and Michigan underscored the tension bubbling over in Washington.

"Let me tell you, there is a stark difference between the worst Republican and the best Democrat," Spicer said during the Republican Party of Iowa's annual Reagan Dinner in Des Moines.

Spicer lamented Republicans in Virginia who decided not to vote Tuesday for GOP gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie because he didn't pass their "litmus tests."

Bannon, meanwhile, took aim at veteran Republican lawmakers and entrenched party insiders, whom he has pledged to root out of the Senate next year. He grouped Gillespie — a lobbyist, former RNC chairman and adviser to former President George W. Bush — with the GOP forces of old.

Trump needs more outsiders at his side, Bannon said.

"He's had some victories. He's had some defeats," Bannon said of Trump. "Most of the defeats are because the Republican establishment cannot execute on the plan."

Bannon spoke at a Republican dinner in Macomb County, Michigan, a working-class Detroit suburb which former President Barack Obama carried twice but where Trump handily beat Democrat Hillary Clinton last year.

Despite Trump's low approval ratings — 33 percent in a Gallup poll this week, the lowest of his presidency — McDaniel, who also spoke at the Iowa banquet, painted an optimistic picture of the economy, touted record party fundraising and said, "I feel very confident in the candidates I see running across the country."

"I hope we expand our majority in the Senate so we can get more things done," she said.

However, Bannon has pledged to find primary opponents for virtually every Republican senator standing for re-election next year, arguing they have not adequately defended Trump against attacks from within his own party, chiefly by Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker and Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake.

With Corker and Flake having announced plans to not seek re-election, Bannon is gunning for GOP Sen. Dean Heller in Nevada and has even mentioned challenging reliable conservatives such as John Barrasso of Wyoming and Deb Fischer of Nebraska.

One of Bannon's chief goals is ousting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, whom he blames for not following through on long-promised legislation to undo Obama's 2010 health care law.

"They only understand one thing. You cannot be nice to these guys," Bannon said, referring to McConnell. "You have to drop the hammer. That's what he understands."


___

Eggert reported from Warren, Michigan.

Now I wonder if Bannon succeeds in tousling the GOP finally. :excited:

He works very hard on it.
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I'm still lolling at the bathroom bill guy who touted himself as "Virginia's Chief Homophobe" being beaten by a transwoman in a death metal band, who then ice burned the shit out of him:



Also Fox News is spinning this as Gillespie not embracing Trump enough when it seems that his approval started tanking when he went full Trumptard.
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NBC News wrote:There Was Another Winner Tuesday — Obamacare’s Medicaid Expansion

by BENJY SARLIN | NOV 8 2017, 2:07 PM ET

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama may not be running for anything these days, but his signature health care law was a big winner in Tuesday’s elections, as voters rebelled against Republican lawmakers who have blocked Obamacare's Medicaid expansion.

Democrats are hopeful their victories are a harbinger of further gains as they look to capitalize on the law's rising popularity in polls — and repeal legislation's deep unpopularity — with more ballot initiatives, legislative efforts and campaign messages.

In Maine, voters passed a ballot initiative that would expand Medicaid to an estimated 70,000 residents by a margin of 18 points, 59-to-41, doing an end run around Gov. Paul LePage, a Republican who has vetoed five bills to do so.

LePage is already threatening to block the measure unless legislators can find a way to finance it without raising taxes, saying in a statement that "this fiscally irresponsible Medicaid expansion will be ruinous to Maine’s budget."

Jonathan Schleifer, executive director of the Fairness Project, says the Maine initiative is only the start. His group, which helps coordinate progressive ballot initiatives around the country, is looking at putting expansion on the ballot in Utah and Idaho next year and potentially initiatives in Alaska to enshrine some Obamacare features into state law.

"We need to end the conversation around repealing Obamacare and make it very clear, as we did last night, that folks want to expand it," Schleifer said. "We’re not waiting until 2020. We’re going to get as much of this done in 2018 as we can."

The win in Maine came after months of failed attempts by President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress to undo the Medicaid expansion nationally and cut the program further over time. It also comes as the Trump administration is exploring changes that could make Medicaid less accessible, like allowing states to impose work requirements.

Maine wasn't the only place where the results are relevant to Obamacare. The Democratic tsunami in Virginia, led by Gov.-elect Ralph Northam, also has health care implications.

For years, Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, has sought to expand Medicaid but has been stymied by the Republican-controlled legislature. But on Tuesday, Democrats made surprise gains in the House of Delegates, potentially retaking the chamber from Republicans depending on a handful of uncalled elections.

"All the folks who fought me on Medicaid expansion, they all got blown out," McAuliffe told reporters on Tuesday.

The blue shift gives Northam, a pediatrician whose campaign emphasized his opposition to Obamacare repeal, a strong opportunity to renew the Medicaid push.

ImageObama with Northam during a campaign rally in Richmond, Virginia on Oct. 19, 2017. Jim Watson / AFP - Getty Images

There’s evidence that health policy was a major factor in Northam’s victory over Republican opponent Ed Gillespie, whose campaign focused on Confederate statues and undocumented immigrants.

In exit polls, 39 percent of respondents named health care as the issue most important to their vote, far more than topics like immigration and taxes, and these voters backed Northam by a whopping 54 percentage points, 77 to 23.

The results are in line with national polling, where surveys have found deep unease with Republican efforts to replace Obamacare all year. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll last month found just 27 percent of respondents approved of Trump’s handling of health care versus 57 percent who disapproved.

If Virginia ends up passing a Medicaid expansion, it could lend to efforts in other states to expand Medicaid through legislation. One target is Kansas, where an alliance of moderate Republicans and Democrats have passed expansion bills only to face a veto from Gov. Sam Brownback, a conservative Republican.

In Washington, the results in Maine and Virginia could serve as a flashing red light to Republicans as they debate whether to take another stab at dismantling Obamacare. Lawmakers in 33 states and the District of Columbia have already expanded Medicaid, and Republican governors in expansion states like Nevada's Brian Sandoval and Ohio's John Kasich were prominent critics of prior repeal efforts.

Prominent conservatives are pushing to eliminate the law’s individual mandate as part of tax legislation and the White House has taken a variety of steps experts warn could undermine the law, from cutting advertising during open enrollment to halting cost-sharing reduction payments.

"I think successful conservative candidates can't just rely on the 'repeal and replace' slogan," Michael Steel, a Republican strategist and former spokesman for ex-Speaker John Boehner, said in an e-mail. "They will need to talk about the specific and tangible benefits of more consumer-focused and affordable policies."
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SpecialOlympian wrote:I like how Bannon is trying to spin himself as a kingmaker because of Moore. Moore built his own brand of bugnut rightwing Christian fuckery, Bannon is just hitching his wagon to Moore and using Breitbart to downplay all that child rape.

He's also channelling Mercer's money into his campaign fund I guess. ;)
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Rich wrote:I sided with the Guildford 4 and the Birmingham 6 at the time they were convicted of murder. The fact that someone pleads guilty is not proof of guilt in America.


A right winger siding with the Birmingham 6? Pull the other one. :lol:

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