Webb's numbers are similar to other freshmen Sens. Brown & McCaskill. Klobucher's numbers in MN are much better than Coleman's though, good news for Franken.

it took me an hour to drive from Fairfax City to Rosslyn on I-66 today and I left at 9:10 AM which isn't even in the height of rush hour! That's 15 miles and there were no accidents or anything. I know its dumb but sometimes I really do think Northern VA should secede. We have a government that refuses to even invest in our basic infrastructure requirements just because of people downstate who just don't even understand our style of life. Our traffic is unbearable and rush hour is becoming a joke...traffic westbound on 66 stretches till 8 PM sometimes. Therefore, there's nothing to even look forward to, it's just gonna get worse and worse until the Republicans somehow realize that promoting the stagnation of infrastructure upstate will reduce their ability to steal money from NoVA (and Hampton Roads). The rest of the state is just a leach that takes away all our money while simultaneously causing our standard of living to decrease. Most states work together to solve problems, this "commonwealth" simply is a bunch of regions too selfish to address the issues afflicting its various parts. Maybe that's why people up here are mad at Kaine. It's been almost three years and the most our state gov't has been able to produce was a transportation plan which basically got thrown in the trash (and for a good reason too). When people are angry they take it out on the person who is the apparent leader not by focusing at a small group (i.e. the Republicans in the House of Delegates)

it is not their fault northern virginia has allowed growth to spiral out of control. that is only the fault of the local governments in northern virginia. i mean do we really need a panera every 2 miles and thousands upon thousands of new townhouses...not to mention all the added traffic congesting our roads. we really need to make some changes here in terms of smart/slow growth (widening 1-66 is not going to help any in the long run) Prince William and Loudon Counties have added at least 200,000 people since 2000 alone. WTF!
Yes our leaders haven't done the best job of solving the transportation crisis but let's look at the root of the problem (and not blame the rest of the state).

Where are you gonna do smart growth? Fairfax is already basically built out with nearly a million people and Metro is nearing capacity. Those strategies may have helped in the late 90s and early part of this decade but you still have to invest in infrastructure.  Look I love mass transportation but you can't JUST focus on that. For example, traffic is SO much better in the Springfield Interchange now after we spent all that money (which the region deserved). Also, I-66 CAN be widened westbound and it probably would help with traffic in that direction. More than anything, why the hell does our nation's capital only have a 2 lane highway heading westbound from it? That is a national security issue on its own. I am not blaming the rest of the state but it does need to pick up its slack. Northern Virginia is the state's economic powerhouse (and the reason why the state is slowly shifting into the blue column) the rest of the state should at least foster its development by facilitating large scale transportation projects. Yes, transportation projects never are a panacea in the long run but they're still extremely important investments. Would you have liked if 60 years ago the leaders of MD, VA, and DC just said, "Well the Beltway, 66, 395, 270 and the toll road are gonna get really crowded anyway so why don't we just not build them?" Most importantly, our local governments probably would have pitched in in raising taxes and financing stuff if they weren't cut off at the knee by the Dillon Rule.

i wouldn't say that traffic is "SO much better" along 1-95 when it takes several hours drive to get from arlington to fredericksburg on any given day between the hours of 2 and 8.
of course it is too late for smart/slow growth in fairfax county. there are parts of prince william and loudon that aren't overdeveloped yet (believe it or not). how about stafford, spotsylvania, fauquier, and clarke counties that are growing exponentially as well? you know at some point it's time to say enough is enough. there really are some beautiful places left in virginia but they're seriously threatened by the washington suburbs encroaching. are we just going to throw our hands up and say "too late" when we are in gridlock out to winchester and charlottesville and people begin LEAVING virginia??

when it feeds into a bridge?  Can't widen the bridge.  Can't widen what it feeds into on the other side. We've been arguing about this since I was a kid in Fairfax County in the 60s, back when we had horse stables and a peach orchard and large meadows where the Clyde Beatty Circus would set up their tents when they came to town.  Now that area is on the eastern fringes of the massive and undisciplined sprawl we call Tysons Corner, a nightmare of circulatory and ever-jammed roadways.  

There's always someone saying all we need to do is expand the roads' capacity and alleviate the traffic, but what always happens instead is that there is an explosion of development whenever the roads have been improved, which has led to the gridlock we see today.  

...at least not after a few years more sprawl swamps the increased capacity.  Now, fixing interchanges and bridges might be worth it, since those can be dangerous and time-consuming bottlenecks on existing road infrastructure. But building new roads as a solution to sprawl and gridlock?  I bet you won't find too many experts who believe that to be the case.

Why not?  Look at the new Wilson Bridge.

However, I agree that we can't pave our way out of the problem.  Mass transit improvements, telecommuting, live-where-you-work (my personal solution) are as much of the solution as improved road through-put capacity.

Easy enough for us 'younger' singles without families and who make enough to be able to afford Alexandria/Arlington housing prices. But you sure as heck don't get much square footage for the dollar in these locales very near mass transit, so it's tough for families that are looking for homes and yards for multiple children.

I'm looking at new jobs, maybe in the city, maybe in Maryland, who knows? I see the mess that's out there on the roadways, and it's intimidating. Hopefully transit will be an option, especially at these gas prices. But it may not be.

No easy answers in an area as sprawled as NoVa/DC/Maryland -- a metropolis that effectively stretches from Fredericksburg to north of Baltimore these days.  

I moved from Alexandria to Oakton when I retired from the Pentagon and took a job in Herndon.  Since then, I have changed jobs three times in ten years, all for promotions.  However, in each case a critical part of the calculus was the commute.  If a promotion opportunity was in Maryland, in Alexandria or further south in Virginia, or in the District, I discarded it out-of-hand.  In fact, I turned down an huge offer in NYC because the quality of life differential didn't add up.

You have to make choices in life and maximizing your income at the expense of other factors is sub-optimization.  

Take a look at the other side of Memorial and you'll see what I mean.  Heck, take a look at all the DC bridges and you'll see the same problem.  There's no give anywhere on the other side of the river unless you're willing to mess around with the various memorials next to the river.  Even Chain Bridge, which doesn't come out next to any memorials, does not allow for any give because of the C&O Canal on one side of the road and the high bluffs on the other.  The only reason the Wilson Bridge worked is because it's away from the memorials and all the other government/touristy stuff.  Can't move a thing without seriously rearranging the topography of the place.  

G-Town has it about right.  I was born and raised in the Tidewater and have lived in Fairfax County for 15 years.  In between, I have lived in South Carolina, Missouri, and Texas, as well as in Chesterfield County.  Regionalism is something of an issue in every state I have lived in but no where else is it as pronounced as it is in Virginia.  The imbalance of tax dollars that leave NoVa for Richmond versus the amount of Commonwealth spending on NoVa infrastructure is an absolute scandal.  The reason that Virginia was able to balance the budget after the disasterous Gilmore administration was largely due to the tremendous growth of our economy, particularly the "eastern Silicon Valley" of the Dulles Corridor.  That economic expansion couldn't have been possible without jobs creation and hundreds of thousands of new residents moving into the region.  Now, the knuckle-dragging RoVa Republicans can't be bothered to protect the quality of life of the most prosperous region in the Commonwealth. And don't think that the rest of the state doesn't know what's going on.  The RoVa politicians go back to their districts and brag about how they kept the GA from raising taxes "to build more roads for those people up in the Washington suburbs."

One more reason Kaine is not as popular in NoVa:  the Wise County coal power plant.  We are ready live with air quality issues that rest of the state is largely oblivious to.  I think that voters here are more atuned to air pollution problems and expect their elected representatives to be more proactive.  

it was his amendment to the Transportation plan (Regional taxing authorities consisting of both elected and unelected officials as opposed to the Board of Supervisors) which was the key reason for the plan's demise and thus NOVA lost 400 million in potiental revenue

Then again, that is more Connolly's fault as he was the one complaining the most about too much responsibilities on local governments....

Though there was considerable push over the abuser fees issue I think it has wained a bit in terms of mobilization whereas those who tackle the environment debate are passionate and entrenched, expecially in NVA. The recent Wise County plant and the intense focu by many blogs like RK have in my view created the gap in Kaines support. Those pushing for greater environmental action are relentless and it has to be weighing on his approval ratings.

I wonder if any of it has to do with the geographical location of their office. Kaine serves down in Richmond, which is closer to SW Virginia.

Webb and Warner, however, serve in Washington which is closer to NOVA and is the actual city where many residents of NOVA actually work. This could also take into account where people get their news. In NOVA, most people read the washington post or washington times which have more of a national/federal concentration than the Richmond Times and some other news sources. Plus, they watch DC based television channels which means that on many occasions National news is actually local news as well.

But I doubt office location specifically has anything to do with it.  Some of his popularity downstate is due to the hold-over as his popularity when he was mayor of Richmond, and a lot of it is probably that different issues are standing out in people's minds in that area.