As the Titanic goes down ....
[Tom] Davis predicted McCain would ultimately take Virginia because he has appeal to the center-right independents that usually swing statewide races and because Obama is less moderate than such successful Democratic figures as former Gov. Mark Warner and Sen. James Webb."Obama is not a Virginia Democrat," Davis said....
Virginia Republicans all express public optimism that McCain will ultimately pull out a win there.
"I'm very confident that we will win Virginia," said [Eric] Cantor, noting that presidential races bring out a larger turnout than the commonwealth's off-year gubernatorial races.
In this vein, [George] Allen pointed out that the military-heavy state - home to the Pentagon and the world's largest naval base - behaves differently in presidential years.
"They're voting for a commander-in-chief, not a governor," Allen said of the troops, many of whom are deployed and are missed in polling.
It's precisely that element which has kept Virginia in Republican hands every four years, even when Southern Democrats were on the top of the Democratic ticket.
"The disproportionate presence of national security voters among independents in Virginia is what has kept the state in the GOP column in presidential contests even as party fortunes have ebbed and flowed between Republicans and Democrats in state elections," said Frank Atkinson, a longtime Virginia Republican and author of two books on the commonwealth's political history.
I understand that you have to display confidence in your chances in the home stretch. And there is some hedging in the article by some Republicans. But there's some reality here too -- McCain was way behind Obama in field organizing in the Commonwealth. Certainly a sign of the money disparity, but also a sign of that misplaced confidence we saw above given that McCain started to flurry of activity in Virginia by October. For months and months, they simply didn't think they'd lose Virginia.
The Virginia GOP just really didn't know what was about to hit 'em. Again.
Whoops.