Virginia voted for Biden by dougle digits. Virginia's political future. (Washington: real estate, 2015)

[16 Acres]

Originally Posted by Ebck120

And look at the margins Charlottsville and Albermale County voted in Bidens favor. Noway is Charlottesville going to join mini West VA.

That's exactly why I stated the 5th District lines could be re-drawn to tweak it. We wouldn't even want Charlottesville.

Originally Posted by Ebck120

At the end of the day, Virginia ain't giving away it's cash cow.

Would love to see it go to a vote. You may be surprised.

Originally Posted by Ebck120

And district 5, 6 and 9 alone would make the newly formed state a very poor one, just becoming another welfare state.

Your opinion and a very low one at that.

[Ebck120]

Originally Posted by 16 Acres

That's exactly why I stated the 5th District lines could be re-drawn to tweak it. We wouldn't even want Charlottesville.



Would love to see it go to a vote. You may be surprised.



Your opinion and a very low one at that.

Good Luck

[manitopiaaa]

Originally Posted by Jupiter1162

I'm guessing you weren't in Richmond during the massive MLK day gun rally this past January.

Have fun getting these people in line with your liberal policies. Do you want Virginia to be a civil war battleground again?

And this statement is why you're losing Virginia. Do you honestly think threatening to murder your political opponents is a winning message?

The GOP has improved slightly in counties that are heavily bleeding population. All of the population centers, however, swung toward the Democrats. And moreso, look at the top half of the State. Ruby red counties like Fauquier, Orange, King George, Frederick, Warren (Front Royal), all trended blue.

The trends are indisputable. The GOP can either drop the violent rhetoric, or it can sit back while the Democrats win supermajorities in the House of Delegates and State Senate in a decade.

I think a responsible center-right party is actually good for democracy. But if the two options are Dem supermajorities or a party that tolerates their right-wing base threatening to kidnap and slaughter liberals, I'll gladly take the former.

[CoogHawk]

Originally Posted by manitopiaaa

It's not a Trump-specific phenomenon. Tim Kaine won by 17% in 2018 and he's on the liberal end in the Senate. Mark Warner won by 12% against a generic Republican. The GOP lost a 66/34 House of Delegates majority in 4 years (now 55/45 Democratic) and lost the Senate (admittedly doing better than expected here due to moderate Republican incumbents). Redistricting and the end of the 2010 GOP gerrymander in the General Assembly will alone shift another 5 seats to the Democrats and 2-3 Senate seats.

Ralph Northam won by 9% against Ed Gillespie, who was considered more "pragmatic" and "moderate" among the GOP.

The problem for the GOP is that the median voter in Virginia these days is a social liberal/economic moderate. The Democrats have been very wise on that front and have governed pragmatically. You've seen no far-left hullabaloo in Richmond and the Nova caucus is not a bunch of AOC bomb-throwers (Lee Carter being the exception). Because of this, they've gained suburbanites who once called themselves moderate Republicans.

In doing so, the remaining Republicans are now further right, and nominate further right-wing candidates like Nick Freitas and E.W. Jackson. This pushes more moderate suburbanites to the Democrats, making the GOP even more radical. It's a death spiral for the GOP right now and until the Party can rein back control from the right-wing (the Appalachia/Liberty University conservatives), it will continue to crater.

And yes, the Virginia GOP Party is atrocious, while the Virginia Democratic Party is very competent, since they're full of Nova technocrats and analysts. That has definitely worsened the problem.

If the GOP couldn't win Virginia in 2014 when they were winning Loudoun County by 0.5% and the Democratic strongholds all had historically low turnout, I don't see how they can ever hope to reclaim power statewide.

Could the Party moderate and staunch the bleeding? Sure, but reading the Virginia right-wing sites, they seem to be following the national party line (Trump was the winner, all Dem votes are fraudulent, conspiracy theories and Pizzagate and QAnon nonsense). It looks like the GOP could actually nominate Amanda Chase for governor next year, another -15% bloodbath for the Republicans. Even if the stench of Trump disappears, the Virginia GOP is now gung-ho on Trumpism, an ideology that has awful appeal in Virginia. Virginia is not a socially conservative, economically populist state. It's the opposite.

I've been predicting the GOP will moderate for 20 years and each year is more crazy-ness. That may play well in Bedford County and Buchanan County. It's not going to help you win statewide when the median voter is now a socially liberal, economically moderate Loudoun County management analyst with a Master's Degree making $100k. I thought the GOP had wised up with Bob McDonnell, and he wound up being a criminal. Now the Republican bench is decimated, recycling Scott Taylor and Cory Stewart and hoping for a bad cycle for the Democrats that never seems to come.

I agree with all of this, but I will defend Bob McConnell in this one instance: it was his wife who was the “criminal”, not him. A former beauty queen who packed on a few and could not accept getting old. It can happen to all of us, but few of us have the means or the will to manipulate or use our spouses political position to do something about it!

[CoogHawk]

I would like to add something that should not be overlooked when discussing VA’s shift politically, at least at the state level.

Comparatively speaking, and if we are all truly being honeys about it, if you look at the last 5 governors of VA, the Dems have done a much better job. I think that has caught on and it’s why the Dem candidate walks into any statewide race as the favorite.

I compare it to MA, a state that is Dem at the federal level but continues to elect GOP governors. The GOP governors have done a better job in general than the Dem governors have (although Deval Patrick was a very good governor, but he is the exception that proves the rule). Fact is, in MA most Dem candidates other than Governor Patrick just want to come in and push all these left wing ideas because they are a Dem super majority in the statehouse. Of course why they don’t realize is many of those Dems are only Dems because of machine politics and would be republicans in most other states. Same thing in VA but in reverse.

[Serious Conversation]

One of the big issues is that the Republicans getting nominated are either Q-Anon style nut jobs, at the extreme end of the spectrum, or completely ineffectual like Morgan Griffith.

If they had someone relatively socially moderate, pro tax cuts, pro business, it would at least be competitive.

[JD984]

The GOP in VA has swung so far right that I don't see them winning anything other than local elections and House seats in the rural part of the state. The fact that they produce candidates for Governor like Amanda Chase, who seems better suited to a state-wide contest in Alabama or Kentucky than Virginia, tells you just about all you need to know for the next few years.

Really, the more interesting thing to watch in VA is going to be whether the Democrats remain center-left or get pushed to the far extreme. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner are Clinton-era Democrats; so, of course, was (and would be, if elected again, Terry McAuliffe). Big counties like Fairfax have been run by business-friendly Democrats like Sharon Bulova and now Jeff McKay. But there are also Democrats who want to nominate far-left candidates in the upcoming races for both Governor and Lt. Governor, and some of the local school boards (in, say, Arlington and Fairfax) now behave like far-left liberals in California and New York, with an overwhelming focus on "equity" and addressing "systemic racism." If those folks start to dominate the upcoming Democratic primaries, they will create a political void, which possibly might create an opening for Republicans to assert themselves again, although the VA GOP has gone so far down the path of Trumpist nativism that it might well be impossible at this point to lure back the more moderate voters in the DC, Richmond, and Tidewater suburbs.

[aquest1]

I'll just leave this here:

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said Monday that he supports the legalization of marijuana, following the release of a study that found Virginia could generate $300 million in taxes from the sale of the substance...Northam (D) plans to work with the General Assembly on legislation during the regular session that convenes in January, although the process could take two years to play out.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...96e_story.html

Honestly, this isn't really a surprise since Virginia was always going to be the first southern state to go full legalization, but it's just representative of the direction of the Commonwealth's politics. This past year, decriminalization was passed.

I know that several of the conservative commenters lament that McDonnell, our last Republican governor and the last Republican elected to statewide office a decade ago, was more moderate but honestly if you hope to win a statewide office again, you're going to have to nominate someone at least as moderate (and probably a candidate from a non-traditional or diverse background). Republicans have done the opposite and they're just not serious about this state. It almost feels like they're retreating into an echo-chamber and Democrats have been able to peel off their more moderate voters. To illustrate, Ed Gillespie wasn't a bad candidate, but as soon as he began listening to the Trumpist wing of the Republican party and ran all those anti-immigrant, MS-13 ads throughout the state, he was done. He's even acknowledged it. And that doesn't work here in Virginia.

[Jupiter1162]

Originally Posted by manitopiaaa

And this statement is why you're losing Virginia. Do you honestly think threatening to murder your political opponents is a winning message?

The GOP has improved slightly in counties that are heavily bleeding population. All of the population centers, however, swung toward the Democrats. And moreso, look at the top half of the State. Ruby red counties like Fauquier, Orange, King George, Frederick, Warren (Front Royal), all trended blue.

The trends are indisputable. The GOP can either drop the violent rhetoric, or it can sit back while the Democrats win supermajorities in the House of Delegates and State Senate in a decade.

I think a responsible center-right party is actually good for democracy. But if the two options are Dem supermajorities or a party that tolerates their right-wing base threatening to kidnap and slaughter liberals, I'll gladly take the former.

Instead of saying things that make you feel good, consider what is probable. If you continue to vote for politicians who wish to strip people away of their legal firearms, what do you think is going to happen? That it will just be a peaceful handover?

I hate war and killing. This is why I am against gun control and more extreme measures aimed at confiscation. No way that could happen peacefully.

Its not just good intentions that matter but results.

[Serious Conversation]

Originally Posted by aquest1

I'll just leave this here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...96e_story.html

Honestly, this isn't really a surprise since Virginia was always going to be the first southern state to go full legalization, but it's just representative of the direction of the Commonwealth's politics. This past year, decriminalization was passed.

I know that several of the conservative commenters lament that McDonnell, our last Republican governor and the last Republican elected to statewide office a decade ago, was more moderate but honestly if you hope to win a statewide office again, you're going to have to nominate someone at least as moderate (and probably a candidate from a non-traditional or diverse background). Republicans have done the opposite and they're just not serious about this state. It almost feels like they're retreating into an echo-chamber and Democrats have been able to peel off their more moderate voters. To illustrate, Ed Gillespie wasn't a bad candidate, but as soon as he began listening to the Trumpist wing of the Republican party and ran all those anti-immigrant, MS-13 ads throughout the state, he was done. He's even acknowledged it. And that doesn't work here in Virginia.

To me, one of the appealing things about VA is that it offers a political alternative in the South from the normal far right politics.

Once marijuana is legalized and there is a retail distribution set up, that will probably be the straw that makes me move from TN to VA, in spite of the increased taxes, if I stay local at all. I'm also going to be considering other parts of VA.

These kinds of decisions will make VA more attractive to people who want to remain "regional," yet want an escape from the extreme conservatism in places like TN, KY, and WV.