The Long Road Back Starts Here?
By: Lowell
Published On: 2/1/2005 2:00:00 AM
In an article out today, Chuck Raasch, political editor for Gannett News Service, writes from Virginia that:
The Democrats' long road back might start here, in a Southern state with a tough governor's election in November. That is, if the Democrats' national message ever catches up with the money machine Terry McAuliffe is leaving them.
Arguing that the Democrats in 2004 were "done in by a lack of message, not resource," Raasch writes about Lt. Governor Tim Kaine's run for VA governor this year:
That's where Virginia in '05 comes in. It's a quintessential red state, Southern and perpetually Republican in presidential elections...Values play big and could be the decisive front in a Virginia governor's race between Kaine and former Republican Attorney General Jerry Kilgore.
A practicing Roman Catholic, Kaine is being touted as a prototypical values Democrat who could win in the South, and elsewhere.
He's pro-business and talks as openly as George W. Bush about his faith. In 1980, he took a year off from Harvard Law School for missionary work in Honduras. He describes politics as "part of the spiritual mission I am on."
Interesting, the guy (Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine) who the Republicans are trying to paint as a typical soft-on-crime, tax-and-spend Lib'rul, is here portrayed as the "prototypical [Southern] values Democrat," the type of person that Howard Dean as DNC Chair will need to court as he does his "fence mending" after he "teed off some Southern Democrats when, as a presidential candidate, he used the pickup-truck, Confederate-flag stereotype to talk about the kinds of voters Democrats needed to go after."
I'm not sure I agree completely with this analysis, but it's interesting nonetheless. Can the unlikely alliance of Tim Kaine, Howard Dean, and Mark Warner lead a southern Democratic resurgence in 2008? Guess we'll just have to stay tuned -- as those of us at RaisingKaine.com are already doing -- and see how this all plays out.
Wouldn't it be ironic, though, if the doctor from Vermont helps discover the cure for what ails the Democrats in the South? Does the secret have something to do with Virginia, a governor's race between Tim Kaine and Jerry "Kill-More" (Kilgore), a run at the nomination by current Governor Mark Warner, and even a possible Mark (Warner)-(Wes)Clark ticket in 2008? As I said, stay tuned, and if you can, help us Raise Kaine here in Virginia this year.
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