2009: More post-mortems
Posted: Friday, November 06, 2009 9:07 AM by Domenico Montanaro
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2009
In his first interview since being elected, Chris Christie was asked to name the lowest point in the campaign. To which he replied, “One? He then picked the period when the U.S. Attorneys Office, which he led for seven years, became fodder for attack as Democrats questioned whether Christie used his corruption prosecutions to launch a political career. He said he would not be standoffish to his Democratic opponents during his governorship, because, Christie said, it doesn’t make any sense. You won. That’s the ultimate vindication. But when asked whether he would be drafting an enemies list, Christies response was: Please. I wouldn’t have enough paper.
In his column today, Charlie Cook says that Tuesday's elections only confirmed what we already knew. "We already knew that Democrats had big troubles. We knew that for the past five consecutive elections, the party that had won the White House just a year earlier lost the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia—and that the pattern had a good chance of continuing this year. We knew that the young and minority voters who had never cast a ballot before they did for Barack Obama last year were very unlikely to show up at the polls this year or next. And we already knew that the love affair independents had with Democratic candidates in 2006 and 2008 was over. Independents haven’t turned against President Obama. They’ve just stepped back, become more skeptical, and to some extent begun turning on Democrats as a party."
And in his latest National Journal column, Ron Brownstein, notes how young voters, independents, and the suburbs turned away from the Democratic candidates in New Jersey and Virginia. "None of this guarantees Democrats will lose these voters in 2010, but it does suggest they need to mend fences. Economic recovery, of course, would help them everywhere."
