Last Call For The Cooch

Stuart Rothenberg makes the argument that it wasn't women or black voters that won Virginia for Terry McAulliffe, but Romney voters who lost Virginia for Ken Cuccinelli, and that Virginia isn't blue or even purple, but still red and the GOP's to lose (and apparently they did).

The survey data are pretty clear on why Cuccinelli lost. He lost because he was unable to match Romney’s percentages with key demographic groups that almost always vote Republican. Those voters showed up at the polls, but too many Romney voters crossed over to cast ballots for McAuliffe or Libertarian Robert Sarvis. 

The Republican nominee for governor won a plurality of male voters (48 percent), but well below the 51 percent that Romney won in the state last year. Cuccinelli would have gained an additional 48,000 votes if he had matched Romney’s percentage, much of which would have come from McAuliffe, thereby completely erasing the Democrat’s 55,100 victory margin. (See Virginia’s total vote here.) 

Add in white women (Romney won 59 percent of them in the state in 2012, while Cuccinelli won only 54 percent this year) or wealthy voters (Romney won 51 percent of voters earning at least $100,000 a year in Virginia in 2012, while Cuccinelli drew just 43 percent of them and lost the category to McAuliffe) and the Republican would have had a comfortable victory last week. 

And if you don’t want to focus on gender, the marital status numbers tell the same story. Romney won 55 percent of married voters in Virginia last year, while Cuccinelli won only 50 percent of them this year. That’s about 75,400 fewer married voters than a Romney-like Republican gubernatorial nominee should have drawn. 

Though you hear a lot about the changing face of the electorate, both nationally and in Virginia, that’s not why Cuccinelli lost last week. 

The Virginia election in 2013 was one where the Republican nominee would have won merely by attracting the votes of the same people who voted for Mitt Romney. The party’s candidate for governor did not need to improve his showing among young voters, African-Americans, Hispanics or unmarried women. He just needed to get white guys and their wives. 

That conclusion, which is based on an evaluation of all of the data, not on merely cherry-picking one or two variables, ought to be little comfort for Democratic strategists worrying about the makeup of the midterm electorate.

The real lesson is Cuccinelli was so awful a candidate, he lost Romney voters to Terry McAullffe.  Also, Rothenberg is trying to draw 2014 turnout from 2013 numbers?  Seems bizarre to me.

Personally, drawing too many lessons other than the one major one is pointless: when Dems show up and vote, they win.  When they don't, the GOP does.

Big Dog Tears Up The Furniture Again

The closer we get to a 2016 Hillary Clinton run, the more likely Big Dog Bill seems to take pot shots at President Obama.  This time around it's Obamacare, and of course the former president just has to take a swing at this pinata.

Former President Bill Clinton said in an interview published Tuesday that President Barack Obama should make sure Americans can keep their existing health plans, even if that means tweaking the Affordable Care Act.

"I personally believe, even if it takes a change to the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got," Clinton told the site OZY in a recent interview. 

House Energy and Commerce Chairman Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) has introduced a bill that the House will vote on later this week. It would "grandfather" in all health insurance plans that existed as of Jan. 1, 2013, not March 23, 2010, meaning that insurers could continue to offer a number of plans that they have been forced to cancel under the Affordable Care Act. 

Clinton preceded his comments by telling the story of a man he met last week, who he said doesn't qualify for subsidies because he makes more than 400% above the federal poverty level. He has a wife and two children, and Clinton said his policy was canceled and replaced by one that doubled his premium.

"They are the ones who heard the promise, 'If you like what you've got, you can keep it,'" Clinton said.

Yanno Billy Boy, I distinctly recall you trying to fix the health care system about 20 years back when I was in college, and it blowing up in your face.  Glass presidencies, stones, man.

And people wonder why DEMOCRATS IN DISARRAY is a permanent fixture of our pundit class. Clinton is far from the only Democrat taking pot shots at Obamacare, too, but he's the one who should definitely know better.

Bad Stuff On The Internet Is Obama's Fault Too

The Wall Street Journal's editorial board does its part for fair, levelheaded assessment of the Most Hated Man In The History Of Everything, blaming Obamacare web site phishing scams on the President.

The tech squeeze is apparently so bad that chief U.S. technology officer Todd Park is too busy to testify before Congress. The House Oversight Committee is probing what went wrong in the development process, but Mr. Park can't attend the Wednesday hearing because he's "occupied full time on the critically important work of improving the website," according to a White House letter rebuffing the invitation.

Is Mr. Park personally rewriting code? Chairman Darrell Issa issued a subpoena compelling him to appear, and maybe he can also address the emerging problem of ObamaCare fraud. That includes the way the law was sold and rolled out, but especially the profusion of identity thieves and scam-artist pages that are now pretending to be Healthcare.gov and are tricking people into divulging sensitive information or buying fake products. Important consumer warning: If an insurance shopping website is usable, it's not the federal government's.

Durr hurr Obamacare is fraud!  Duur hurr anyone who got through got scammed!  We're so infinitely clever!

Look guys, what's your big plan to replace Obamacare that's so much better?  Maybe you should devote a few columns to that, instead of this junk.

StupidiNews!

• With the death toll from Haiyan rising into the thousands, stunned survivors in the Philippines try to prepare for the next typhoon, Zoraida.
• Mexican authorities have detained a 32-year old American ex-soldier on suspicion of leading one of northern Mexico's most infamous kidnapping and ransom gangs.
• Gas prices in the US are the lowest in two years and below $3 a gallon in several parts of the country heading into the Thanksgiving travel season.
• The trend towards gluten-free grain products is rapidly growing among America's largest bread and cereal makers, and gluten-free products could be a nearly $7 billion share of the market by 2017.
• Amazon has announced a deal with the US Postal Service for limited Sunday delivery in certain major US cities.