A victory and maybe a platform

After a dozen years, Virginia Democrats have taken back the Senate. The decisive issues that carried the day for the Dems appear to have been focus on appropriately funding the Commonwealth dire transportation needs and a general distaste for all things George W. Bush. On the other side of the ledger, in an environment in which they were swimming against a stiff anti-Bush current, the Republican emphasis on illegal immigration seems to have fizzled. Oh happy day!

Putting on my amateur pundit hat, perhaps the national party could take a page from the Virginia Democrats. We know that the GOP candidates are running on fear, “dark skinned terrorists are streaming across our border and if you elect Hillary, all she will do is give them driver’s licenses” or some such nonsense. There is no way that we can out-sabrerattle or out-fearmonger that crowd. I mean really, no one on a Democratic ticket is going to suggest, as Mitt Romney did, that we double the size of Gitmo. That is not our game. But we can it seems run with success on a platform of infrastructure investment. If you offer someone the opportunity to take a train rather than a car, or even knock fifteen minutes off their commute, people will respond positively. I will bet a penny to a pound that Mark Warner is going to hammer that issue like no other in 2008 and I will double down that he wins with it.