I’m a big fan of “Futurama,” particularly of the character Prof. Hubert Farnsworth, whose catch phrase “good news everyone” is often used to set the stage for the Planet Express crew’s next death-defying adventure.
To my endless amusement, I opened my email yesterday to find an email from Democratic Senate candidate Tim Kaine’s campaign titled “good news.” I could hear the professor’s voice in my head, and immediately wondered whether this email missive would be asking Virginians to saddle-up for a mission to harvest honey from giant space bees.
If only it was so…
Instead, Kaine’s email plays off the tie between himself and George Allen in the Washington Post’s too-early Senate poll. The email’s content has its share of (unintended) laughs. But there’s also a whiff of nostalgia, because it follows the script Kaine used, effectively, in his 2005 gubernatorial run: vague references to well-heeled and possibly unscrupulous opponents, multiple asks for money and a general gauzy tone that makes the reader think Kaine isn’t running for political office, but for “world’s best neighbor.”
Let’s dive in…
A new poll from the Washington Post says the 2012 U.S. Senate race in Virginia is dead even – our campaign 46%, George Allen 46%.
This is good news. We’ve started a campaign from scratch against a candidate who’s been campaigning for some time, and we’re tied after just one month on the trail.
Yes it is good news. It’s also not unexpected news. As I mentioned in my earlier Examiner piece, the faithful have plighted their troths well in advance and the battle now is over the critical remnant. But it will be a perilously long battle. Allen must first survive a primary. He’s the safe bet to win. But he was in July, 2006, too.
And yes, Kaine is starting a campaign from scratch. Sort of. He hasn’t spent the last two years in monkish silence. As DNC chairman, he has been running a near-permanent campaign…just not for himself. If anything, he enters the 2012 senatorial sweepstakes with more infrastructure in place than Mark Warner did in his successful 2008 senatorial bid. For Kaine to say he’s been on the trail for “just one month,” then, is a stretch. He hasn’t been off the trail since 2009.
I’ve never lost a race, but I’ve almost always been behind in polls until just a few weeks before an election. To be tied 18 months out shows us that we can win in Virginia. The poll also shows that, to win, we’ll have to work incredibly hard to convince undecided voters and bring more Virginians our way. If we do that, we’ll win the race.
Yikes. Kaine’s copywriters may have been reading my stuff. Even so, it’s true: Kaine is a proven winner in Virginia. Or at least he is when his name is on the ballot. As DNC chairman…eh, not so much. His one congressional outing in 2010 saw three incumbent Democrats go down to defeat – including rick Boucher, who had been in office longer than many Obama voters have been alive.
But that was just the most recent wreckage. In 2009, even as Kaine was holding down both the DNC slot and serving out his term as Virginia’s governor, Kaine presided over a Democratic rout that saw the party lose all three statewide offices by double digits and six seats in the House of Delegates. So yes, Tim, you personally are a winner. But while at the helm of the national Democratic apparatus, you were a disaster. Blame it on the economy, sunspots or faulty wiring, but the real blame comes down to the man who wanted you to be on the ticket with him in 2008 (until those pesky Russians decided to invade Georgia): Barack Obama. So long as he’s at the top of the 2012 ticket, your Virginia winning streak is at risk.
And it’s not necessarily the undecided voters who mark your greatest challenge. It’s independents. Those elusive voters went for the President in a big way in 2008. A year later, they went strongly for Republicans. In 2010, they helped oust Democratic congressmen. We’ve no idea what they might do in the 2011 legislative elections, but if they side with Republicans again…well, three points make a trend. And that trend away from Democrats doesn’t favor Mr. Kaine.
He knows this. That’s why his message is about creating jobs, “making strategic investments in education,” whatever those may be, and being fiscally responsible. Given Kaine’s full-throated support for Obamacare, the stimulus and so much more, the idea that he is now fiscally responsible strains credulity.
And we must also pretend not to notice the lovely parting gift Kaine presented to the commonwealth in his final budget: reinstating the hated car tax or, if that was too much, a hike in the income tax.
Even the Democrats in the General Assembly were unwilling to swallow that one. Will Virginians willfully ignore all that and embrace Kaine’s 2005-vintage message? Or will they realize that Mr. Kaine is channeling his inner Prof. Farnsworth by asking them to do the impossible?
We’ll have more than enough time to find out.
