Let’s hear it for Los Angeles

I just heard on ESPN Radio that the city of Los Angeles will be able to hold a parade for the NBA champion Lakers – with the cost to the city defrayed entirely by private donations.  The taxpayer is on the hook for exactly zero.

Say what you want about Los Angelenos, but this – on top of their willingness to forgo an NFL franchise rather than fund a new stadium with taxes – shows a respect for the taxpayer in this arena that many cities just don’t have.  Kudos to them.

That’s all?

Lowell Field over at Blue VA is highlighting a new poll that gives Creigh Deeds a 4-point lead, replete with bullet points to maximize the impact.  From that angle, it certainly looks wonder for the Democrat.

From another angle (say, mine), it looks very different.  For example:

• The pollster (Anzalone Liszt Research) is an openly Dem firm.
• Deeds’ “lead” (four-points) is not outside the margin of error.  Thus the race is actually a statistical tie (although it’s always better to be on the right side of the tie than the wrong one).
• Deeds’ advantages in SWVA and “working with the other party” is largely due to one issue: gun-rights, on which he has shifted leftward
• Overall, Deeds has one persona in NoVa and an entirely different one in RoVa, an instability which can’t last for very long.

Given all of this, I’d say the poll is far less cheery for Deeds that it appears at first glance.

To borrow from Macleans‘ Paul Wells (what is it with me and Canadian bloggers today?): Deeds nomination means game changer, not game over.

“They kept Virginia fiscally strong despite difficult economic times”

Unashamedly ripping off a method perfected by my Saskatchewan friend Kate McMillan over at Small Dead Animals, now is the time at RWL to juxtapose!

From the woman who would replace Bill Bolling:

When Governor Tim Kaine took office, he named Jody as the Commonwealth’s first female Secretary of Finance. During her tenure, they kept Virginia moving forward by investing in infrastructure while maintaining fiscal discipline and standing up to those who would be reckless with the state’s financial stability. By making hard decisions, they kept Virginia fiscally strong despite difficult economic times. 

From the Associated Press (h/t Mason Conservative):

Virginia’s shaky revenues took a deep dive in May, falling nearly 16 percent from the year before.

That leaves the state about $1.3 billion short of a year-end revenue target that has already been drastically reduced three times this year . . .

And who was one of the state officials most concerned with Tim Kaine and Jody Wagner’s rosy revenue scenarios coming back to bite the Commonwealth?  Funny you should ask.

The Lakers do it

So, after I (and a few other sports pundits who can claim a lot more expertise than I ever could) went and wrote them off at the end of Game 6 of the Western Conference semis, the L.A. Lakers went 9-3, and closed out both the Western Conference Finals and the NBA Finals on the other guys’ floor.

Nicely done to all in the purple and gold.  Kobe has his Shaq-less ring (complete with compliments from the big guy himself – ESPN), and Phil Jackson has his tenth ring.  Unlike most NBA fans, I genuinely believe Jackson earned every one.  In this era, massaging egos is a huge part of the game – and no one’s better at it than Jackson is.

I still feel bad for Patrick Ewing (ex-Knick center and current Magic assistant coach) who was denied a ring once more – although unless I miss my guess, only Larry Bird has come closer to a championship in his post-player career.

Still, today is the Lakers’ day.  They proved a lot of nay-sayers wrong.  Kudos to them.

Khameini puts his finger to the wind

According to the New York Post, Ali Khameini – the fellow who is actually in charge in Iran – is now calling for an investigation into voter fruad allegations from last week’s presidential “election.”  What was supposed to be a staged vote has come dangerously close to becoming a real expression of the people’s will – which is exactly what Khameini et al do not want.

If true (and truth be told, Khameini’s words were quite cryptic), it’s a clear sign that the mullahcracy is desperately trying to head off a genuine revolution by co-opting its leaders (Mir Hossien Mousavi in particular).  The Communists played a similar game in the 1950′s when Poland’s people rallied to the outcast Wladyslaw Gomulka.  After a few tense months, Gomulka was “rehabilitated,” assurances to Moscow were made, and Poland continued its long slide of misery.

Mousavi has a decision to make.  Does he wish to be Iran’s Lech Walesa?  Or its Gomulka?  Only he can answer that one.

As for the Iranian people, I hope they are not swayed by Khameini’s maneuvering, and I doubt they will be.  Whether they’ll ever be able to express that doubt is, of course, a different and more deeply painful question.

Deeds takes the lead

Rasmussen has its first post-primary poll, and it has Creigh Deeds in front.  Compared to April’s Rasmussen poll, that’s quite a shift, but April might as well be 2007 at this point.

The interesting part about this poll is not just that Deeds solidified the Dems (which is to be expected), but that he managed to knock McDonnell’s numbers down a bit.  That means he either flipped some of them or (more likely) moved them to the undecided column.  Rasmussen notes that only 78% of Republicans are backing McDonnell (April’s numbers have no party breakdown).  This is probably why McDonnell is trailing despite being preferred by independents (he leads Deeds by 7 points among that group).

This tells me that Virginians (especially right-of-center Virginians) still see the 2005 Deeds (the largely unknown State Senator who won the NRA endorsement) rather than the 2009 Deeds (one of the biggest tax-hikers in Richmond who has since told the NRA to stuff it – Bearing Drift).

Lest we forget, Creigh Deeds does not get this nomination without the Washington Post, and he doesn’t get the Post endorsement without establishing himself to Moran and T-Mac’s left on taxes and spending.

Deeds the “moderate” is a mirage.  Once voters see the real Creigh Deeds, his newfound lead should disappear quickly.

Creigh Deeds is no moderate

It didn’t take long for the “moderate” label to fall on Creigh Deeds – or, to be more accurate, to be draped over him like a superhero cape (the Washington Post even goes so far as to call him “moderate to conservative.”  Even my good friend Leslie Carbone fell for it (although given the enormous effort she’s put into Slaying the Leviathon Slaying Leviathan: The Moral Case for Tax Reform - whoops!  Sorry Leslie – I’ll just chalk it up to exhaustion).

On the surface, the label appears apt: Deeds is the first gubernatorial candidate nominated by the Democrats without a northern accent since Mary Sue Terry in 1993.  His home county is a place that even leading bloggers in his State Senate District couldn’t find on a map without help (as Dub-J himself admitted).  Finally, there is that NRA endorsement from 2005.

Still, take away the southern drawl and the rural hometown, and what you get is not a moderate (let alone “moderate to conservative”) but a garden-variety leftist Democrat who just happens to be comfortable with firearms.

In other words: Creigh Deeds is Jimmy Carter 2.0.

This will likely come as a surprise to some western readers and bloggers (and a shock to the Democrats among them) in part because the political definitions are so different.  I’ve been harping about the divide between Western and Eastern Virginia for a while now, but there is no better example of that than the career of Creigh Deeds.

Thanks to the overemphasis on social issues in the west, Deeds has been able to use his gun-rights past to camouflage the rest of his record.  Among Democrats, nearly anyone who has ever opposed him as done so on this one issue – and from the left, further embellishing Deeds faux moderate credentials.

However, here in the East, its economic issues that drive the train, and what has aided Democrats over the last eight years has not been their clever campaigns on social issues (Warner 2001 being the classic example), but the Republicans’ weakness on taxes and spending.

Take a look at the two elections again.  Mark Warner had never supported a single tax increase before he ran for Governor in 2001; thus he could claim he wouldn’t raise taxes with a straight face.  Four years later, Tim Kaine – shorn of Warner’s gun-rights-based appeal to the Southwest and running against an actual southwestern candidate – took notice of Jerry Kilgore’s refusal to rule out tax increases and told all of eastern Virginia that he (Kilgore) would raise their taxes if elected.  Kilgore never responded, and the rest is history.

In other words, what has won elections for the Democrats in this state is their ability to peel off low-tax/limited-government supporters who are not happy with the GOP and considered the Dems a decent alternative.

Can Creigh Deeds do that?  No way.  Creigh Deeds has never met a tax he wouldn’t hike.  As I mentioned earlier, the man is one of the most prolific tax-hikers in Richmond.  Again, this might not mean much in western Virginia, but here in the east, it will sink him like a lead balloon.

Yes, I know Deeds came close to winning the AG race four years ago, but that office itself is the most social-issue-heavy of the three.  Moreover, much of Deeds’ tax-hiking record was still in the future in 2005, but it’s all in black and white now (Mason Conservative).

In fact, I would humbly submit it was this tax-hiking record – not the false moderate reputation – that gave Deeds his primary win.  Without the Washington Post endorsement of Deeds, odds are Terry McAuliffe wins this race.  The WaPo endorsement dramatically changed the dynamic.  So why did the paper back him?  Well, read on (WaPo):

Both Mr. Deeds and Mr. Moran supported the plan of Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D), ultimately gutted by the state Supreme Court, to generate millions in transportation funding (RWL Note: that’s HB3202).Last year, however, as both candidates were laying the groundwork for their campaigns, Mr. Deeds courageously voted for a proposal that included raising the state’s gas tax, unchanged since 1986; Mr. Moran helped kill the bill by opposing it in committee. (Mr. McAuliffe says that he’s not opposed to raising revenue for roads, but as with every other state issue, he has no record.)

In other words, Creigh Deeds won the WaPo endorsement, and the momentum it generated, and the nomination the momentum garnered, because he was the biggest tax-and-spend lefty in the field.  That’s how eastern Virginia Democrats saw him.

Once the rest of the east sees that (and with the GOP having recovered from its tax-hike fever) Deeds will be in very big trouble, and the folks who are trumpeting him as a “moderate” will have a lot of egg on their faces (figuratively speaking).

The Democrats have made their choice – and will come to regret it

So Creigh Deeds gets another shot at Bob McDonnell after all.  It will likely go down as one the most memorable primary upsets in Virginia history – although having two Northern Virginians split that region’s vote would have made Deeds a formidable candidate even before he earned the Washington Post‘s endorsement.  Still, Deeds whopping victory surprised nearly everyone (ahem, emphasis on nearly), and he may even get a post-primary boost in the polls (although that’s far from certain given that so few people voted in this primary).

Democrats are gleeful in large part because they remember how close Deeds came to defeating McDonnell in the 2005 Attorney General race.  Normally, yours truly tries to steer Republicans clear of unwarranted optimism, but today it’s the Democrats who will need to prepare themselves for some serious dissapointment.  Here’s why:

Even in 2005, Deeds lost: McDonnell had to fight terrible headwinds – in particular the Kilgore drag at the top of the ticket, an unpopular president in his own party, and the usual boost the party outside of the White House gets in Virginia.  In fact, from 1977 to 2001, the party outside of the White House always won the Governor’s race and one of the two downticket races.  McDonnell and Bill Bolling broke that trend in 2005, and McD was facing a Democrat (Deeds) who was backed by the usually GOP-friendly National Rifle Association.

Since then, Deeds has shifted left substantially: In 2005, Deeds was a gun-rights Democrat who supported the Mark Warner tax increase of 2004, no worse than any Democrat not named Johnny Joannou.  Since then, as Mason Conservative noted, Creigh Deeds has become one of the most prolific tax hikers in Richmond.  His nomination even neutralized Bob McDonnell’s greatest weakness – HB3202.  Deeds not only voted for the version McDonnell defended in court (the Kaine version), but he also voted for the Chichester version (a statewide gas tax hike) earlier.  Hardly anyone could manage to make McDonnell look good by comparison on the 3202 debacle, but Creigh Deeds managed to pull it off.  The State Senator then proceeded to support SB6009 – which had increases in the sales tax, gas tax, and auto tax, plus regional tax increases.  Had the Democrats nominated Terry McAuliffe, McDonnell might have been vulnerable on HB3202; with Deeds, McD might as well be iron-plated.

While Deeds has become a complete disaster for the taxpayer, he hasn’t exactly endeared himself to Virginia independents and Republicans on other issues either (see Tim Watson and the Virginia Shooting Sports Association).

In short, Creigh Deeds is a pale imitation of the guy who still lost to Bob McDonnell despite tremendous statewide advantages for the Dems that no longer exist – and he’s supposed to reverse the 2005 outcome?

I don’t think so.

Cross-posted to Virginia Virtucon

Prediction time

Well, it’s time to embarrass myself yet again and make predictions – this time about the primaries the Democrats will conduct for Governor and Lieutenant Governor.

I’ll start with the easy one – LG.  I don’t see Jody Wagner losing.  She has the regional base and the experience with the Warner and Kaine Administrations.  Unfortunately for the Dems, that experience (as the point person for Governor Kaine’s vastly inflated revenue projections) is almost certain to do her in come November.  For now, however, it means a convincing win: Wagner goes north of 60%.

Now for the Governor’s race.  I think it’s down to McAuliffe and Deeds.  I just don’t see any scenario for Brian Moran to win, and the WaPo endorsement of Deeds just crushed Moran – he’s been on a downward poll spiral since that moment.

It took McAuliffe six months to go after Deeds (last night – TQ), and I think that was waaaay too late.  I’m guessing (and it’s just a guess) a lot of Democrats in Virginia stayed away from Deeds because they didn’t think he had a chance against Moran or McAuliffe.  Once the WaPo basically told them that wasn’t an issue anymore, Deeds was back in the game – which meant he was winning.

Watch for a surprise drop from Moran in Deeds favor, leading to Deeds winning with over 45%, with McAuliffe in the high 20′s and Moran – at best – in the low 20%.  Don’t be surprised if Deeds cracks 50%.

Anyhow, that’s how I see it. Feel free to note how you see it in the comments.

Amid the Deeds hoopla, Bob McDonnell has reason to be happy, too

As one would expect, there has been a lot of commentary on Criegh Deeds’ acceleration into the lead for the Democrats’ nomination over the weekend (Shaun Kenney, Norm at Tertium Quids. Loudoun Insider at Too Conservative).  Particularly telling was a Survey USA poll that zoomed Deeds into a double-digit lead.

However, there was one aspect of the Survey USA poll that was almost entirely ignored (although VA Blogger at TC noticed) – Bob McDonnell either held his own or improved his position against all three Democrats.  In fact, his lead over Deeds went from an insignificant 1 point to a small but non-trivial 4 points – in just one week.

Within nine hours, we’ll know who the Democrats have nominated, even if it is Creigh Deeds, Bob McDonnell is still in good position to return the GOP to power in Richmond.