It seems odd to analyze things in such a way that you ignore races where we defeated a Republican by more than 4 points.

Why is it that we are still so far back?  Yeah, we took back a few more seats, but we still have quite a disadvantage.

Look at all the purple districts we totally whiffed: Lingamfelter/Day in the 31st (54-46), May/Martinez in the 33rd (59-41), Hugo/Simmons in the 40th (57-43), and Frederick/Brown in the 52nd (59-41). I can't comprehend why we lost all these districts so badly.

We also need to contest more districts. For example, Glenn Oder of Newport News is in a Kaine-won district, but nobody ran against him. And, of course, Dave Albo.

The salary for a House of Delegates member is 17K$.  Not enough to live on, so in reality one needs to be either retired on a pension, or have a day job with hours that are flexible enough to accommodate the needs of the State.

The most obvious candidates would be self-employed people of one sort or another.  Someone who has a regular 9-5 job would have a tough time making it work.

1) I think the Democratic leadership was (rightly) more focused on the State Senate, since this was the last election before redistricting. So, 8 great candidates were recruited and then funded. It really is very bittersweet that at least one more of Oleszek/Pollard/Schultz/Breiner couldn't take it home.

2) In '09, we need to field at least 12 highly competitive Delegate candidates, focusing on Hampton Roads and Fairfax/PWC/Loudoun. I think the 2:1 number is key -- it's so, so hard to win races, so you have to expand the playing field.

Albo, Hugo, Rust, Lingamfelter, Day, Miller, May, Frederick, Poindexter, Marshall appear to be the 10 districts we really need to organize and recruit. We'd need 6/10, so finding 3 to 5 more potential highly competitive districts would also be good.

3) We're getting killed in Fauquier and Stafford. These outer exurbs destroyed both Schultz and Pollard, and none of the delegate races there were even close. The open seat/special election in CD-1 for December and then nutjob Eric Cantor's seat in CD-7 will be very difficult to compete in if we can't find a way to be competitive in these outer exurbs. In contrast, PWC, although dominated by Republican Supervisors/executive officers/delegates, now has all Dem Senators, and Loudoun is trending D hard.

You might want to add Prince William to that list as well

Also, try not to be so nova centric

Pay attention to what Warner does in 2008 hes better in the outer areas and just like when he ran for governor in 2001 he will show the path to victory (we will be watching very closely as well)

Oops I hear my republican masters calling cant give any more advice :-p

Those areas are probably going to stay dark red for the foreseeable future. Of the two I think that Stafford will be more competitive as more suburbanites head that way. Faquier is probably too rural and Republican. Probably in 2011, if the Democrats can gain 1-5% there, it might be enough to win the close races that we lost.

It's great that the Dems took control of the Senate yesterday but I feel a certain level of disapointment as well.  A 21-19 split is not a huge margin, needless to say, so on many issues that will come before the Senate, there are certain Dems who will side with the Repubs on certain issues, making it difficult to pass legislation many of us favor.

And in looking at the results, it appears in many races that the Republicans did a better job on GOTV and absentee ballot programs than we did.  Given the national political environment, Bush's ratings, and a number of state isues, it seems we should have performed better than we did. 

Did we place too much emphasis on the marque races, like the Davis-Peterson race, at the expense of the Albert Pollard or Janet Oleszek?

Our we losing the war on the ground locally due to local Dem committees who are so disorganized and ineffective?

Was the state Democratic Party doing the things they needed to do months ago to prepare for election day?  Were they effective - I say no, just based on some of the lousy mailings they sent out.

In the 1st and 22nd senate districts, if 1400 votes had gone the other way, we would be sitting here this morning with a 21-19 Republican majority in the senate.

And speaking of the 1st district, Miller's small win over Stall was nothing short of shocking.  Ms. Stall is way outside the mainstream, i.e., her views on our public school system, etc., yet she came within 700 votes of winning.  This does not bode well for the special election in the 1st Congressional District next month.

Eric Ferguson losing in the 9th was shocking and very disapointing.  And why was Margie Vanderhyne's race so close?

And perhaps my feelings of disapointment are directly related to blogs like this.  For those of us who particapte in blogs like this one, I think our perceptions of what is going on is jaded.  Perhaps we are so insulated from what is going on in the real world that it clouds our perspective to a degree. 

It's great we won the Senate, don't get me wrong.  We will now have a seat at the redistricting table in 2011.  But I just have this sense that we missed opportunities here to have had a HUGE victory - and I do think it is worthwhile to discuss those factors that prevented a HUGE victory in order to prevent them from occurring in the future.

It did seem that a lot of attention, energy, effort and money was going to help Chap defeat the Davis machine. Yet it seems like everybody was confident he would win and win big. Frankly, he is such a capable candidate, the confidence did not seem all that misplaced to me.

I do feel, however, that Janet needed more help for a variety of reasons, and I don't know that she got it. So dammed close...

As valuable as blogs are, I think we sometimes hype ourselves so much prior to an election, we set ourselves up for disappointment. Some of us (myself included) read every shred of good news on the campaign front and build them into a mental narrative of an impending blowout. Ay any other time, I would be giddy to know we took the state sneate. But to be honest, I was expecting much more. Of course, I tend to glance the headlines and probably miss important information "below the fold". I have to keep reminding myself that this is Virginia we're talking about where not long ago you had two Republican governors, two senators and you once almost elected Olliiver North. You've come a long way but we should be mindful there is still a long road ahead.

Another way to look at things

This is all propably meaingless because next time these Senate districts will be changed but hey political analysis is fun right :-)

The 1st is still Republican.  They chose someone too extreme

The 22nd has the same argument as the first

The 27th is good news if you are a Democrat

The 28th is good news if you are a Democrat but better news if you are a moderate Republican :-p also see house of delegates below

The 37th whichever party finally wakes up and nominates a moderate will win this seat 

The 39th is good news if you are a democrat but see house of delegates below

For the house of delegates a few thoughts from the "other side"

It could be argued house of delegate races had an impact on the 28th and the 39th

The 9th needs to be studied further to see who the independent stole from

The 51st and 83rd were special cases and could easily flip back in 2009

It will be interesting to see what Albo does the next two years

Its way too early but I don't see the math to get 51 in 2009

Finally a tip of the hat especially to the Barker campaign

-novamiddleman

Personally, I'm very happy with the results we got.  Some of the areas where we thought we had a chance are still basically conservative regions where the GOP brand is not as tarnished as we would like to believe.

If Virginia is turning blue, and I think it is, it's because of the Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads and Virginia Beach and Norfolk areas.  And it's because of the more urban parts of those regions, due to the influx of newcomers from other parts of the country, who are bringing a more progressive outlook to Virginia.  It's not because of the SWAC region or other rural areas suddenly waking up and realizing they should really favor progressive policies.

There were a few races in NoVa and in other areas that were closer than they should have been.  That could be because of unexpected candidate weaknesses that weren't apparent at the start of the election cycle.  It could have been because of a weaker ground game or less of an ability to get their message out effectively.  Each race where we didn't meet expectations bears analyzing to see if the disappointment was unique to that campaign or part of a larger pattern we can improve.

But it's also silly to think we can sweep every area.  Even the so-called liberal Northeast has areas, usually rural, that are reliably conservative and Republican.

We need to analyze where our strengths are and what strategies work best in those areas.  We also need to be alert to areas where we have a candidate that might pull off a counter-intuitive upset.  But the one thing we shouldn't do is waste too much time agonizing over the places that are never really ours to take anyway.

On your last point, I think you point to the Democratic Party's current strength.  We play to the needs of urban communities better than Republicans do.  Their caucus, at least in the House, is centered on a style of government suited well for the agrarian based economy that Virginia used to be.  And that is the message that need to be played over and over again in urban districts.  Individual Republicans from urban areas in the state may work well on urban infrastructure issues, but we need to remind voters that they individually are not as important as the people they associate with.

Republicans, in the state for the most part, still revel in coded messages, race-baiting, gay-baiting, and the "Old Dominion."  And that plays well to a provincial crowd that increasingly no longer constitutes the major urban centers of the state.

I personally know three staunch Democrats who refused to vote for Karen Schultz after her negative attack ads on Holtzman Vogel's hubby's work for a pro-immigration firm.

Advice to Dems.  When voters are given a choice between a real Republican and a candidate whom they perceive as Republican-lite, they'll vote for the real McCoy each and every time.

The Schultz ad backfired.  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the Dems voted for the Independent candidate (too lazy to look up his name), which of course made all the difference in this race.

party were stupid. I hope that they enjoy Jill Holtzman-Vogel's four year term. On top of that I'm not sure if all Democrats have the pro-immigration position that you do. And frankly, as this is still very a much a conservative district, I don't think that running on the "Mexican Without Borders Platform" was going to win there.

Nonpartisan redistricting.

are long term trends that run in favor of democratic success in Virginia generally.

But that does not mean that in the short run, success automatically follows success in the state-wide races.

If the Dems get the Presidency, by November 2009 Bush's mess will be OUR mess.

Some of this Democratic success on the state level is attributable to Bush's drag on the Republican Party, and by November 2009, that is not going to be much of a factor anymore.

VA Dems have a need to succeed in governing between now & 11/09 -- and we need to maintain the energy of the grassroots -- or we are unlikely to pick up much more in the legislature then.