The Gilmore years have faded a good ways into the distance. I bet you that a lot of voters don't quite remember anything about Jim Gilmore at all, except that he was once Governor. Something about being against the car tax, maybe. How many new voters do we have in Virginia who didn't even live here during the Gilmore administration? How many younger voters who weren't really following politics at all before the Bush years?

Against a weak Democratic nominee, this would be helpful to Jim Gilmore. But he's up against easily the most popular political figure in Virginia and pretty well doomed regardless.

Jim Gilmore ran on No Car Tax and he did all that he could to make that happen.  Mark Warner repeatedly said No Tax Increases during his campaign and then he did all that he could to increase taxes.  I have heard Jim Gilmore use the phrase

Promises made are promises kept!

 I suspect the voters of Virginia remember that Jim Gilmore did keep his promise and I am certain that the voters will be reminded of this during the campaign.  Virginians are astute enough to know who they can trust.  I'm betting on Jim Gilmore.

I'm still paying the car tax. Gilmore did NOT keep his promise to get rid of the car tax. Despite his party having monopoly control of the Governor's mansion, the General Assembly and the Senate.

...he nearly bankrupted Virginia while (not) doing so.  Heckuva job!

to remember that Virginia is a purple state

anyone who thinks there will be blowouts is crazy

Kaine and Webb both won with relatively small margins

And even if you add in Potts' numbers to Kilgore's, he still did pretty good.  Jim Webb, well, it's Jim Webb.  He's a great guy with a stellar resume but his campaign was so focused on Northern Virginia that there wasn't nearly the same sort of effort focused on other parts of the state where Kaine did well.  I know a lot of folks think he's some sort of political hero for winning in 2006, but that's based on the premise that a 0.1% plurality victory was the best he could possibly have done against G. Allen.  I'm glad he won, but I submit that we have no reason to believe that's actually true.  It's entirely possible that he underperformed his own potential.

Which isn't to say that Virginia's a blue state or anything like that--only that we have a tremendous opportunity before us if we're willing to work hard.  The difference between Kaine's numbers and Webb's numbers are hard work and organized effort.

...

As far as the penultimate comment, "promises made are promises kept," I'm not going to vote for someone who promises to run the state into the ground, but thanks for trying.  Virginians are astute, but they're astute enough to know that it's not about who blindly puts promises before performance.  Results matter, and Gov. Mark Warner's record speaks for itself as far as turning around the Gilmore administration's sh*t show and transforming the Commonwealth into the best-managed state in the Union.

Tim Kaine was up against an effeminate joke of a candidate in the form of Jerry Kilgore. Kilgore did not have nearly the stature or devoted political base that George Allen enjoyed as an incumbent US Senator, nascent Presidential candidate and former Governor in 2006.

Not that I mean to diminish Tim Kaine's win at all. I'm just saying that Jim Webb had a far tougher fight against George Allen than Kaine had against Kilgore or Mark Warner had against Mark Earley.  

George Allen was an entrenched US Senator who had been Virginia's (popular) governor and who had a huge warchest built up. Jerry Kilgore was a joke. There's absolutely no comparison at all.

Rather I'm looking Webb's performance against Kaine in NOVA versus how they performed against one another in other parts of the state; all things being equal between two sets of opponents, there isn't any statistical reason to think that Webb should have done as well against Kaine's numbers the year before in Northern Virginia but not elsewhere.  Webb ran about a percentage point behind Kaine in the 8th, 10th and 11th districts but 2-4% behind the Gov. elsewhere.  Is it only voters in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th districts that don't care for effeminate-sounding Attorney Generals?  Or who didn't care about the Macacca thing?

I'm not saying that Webb should have also won by six points--far from it--but do you mean to tell me that you don't think with slightly better fundraising up-front and some better organization downstate that Webb couldn't have won a majority by just half a percentage point, 50% to 49.5%?