Warner, McAuliffe: Don’t cede territory, and stand for something

The driving force behind this blog is my effort to get my head around what happened in Virginia between 2008 and 2009 that turned the tide from where we saw the Old Dominion give its electoral votes to Democrat Barack Obama in ‘08 and then elected Republicans Bob McDonnell, Bill Bolling and Ken Cuccinelli to state office in ‘09 by eye-popping margins.

I’m having a fun time getting people to talk to me on the record on the topic. I guess I should’ve figured as much. It’s easy to get people to talk when things are looking good. When things are bleak, why have your name associated with what some are likely to refer to as fingerpointing or sour grapes or what-have-you?

I have been able to get two players on the frighteningly short Virginia Democratic bench to weigh in at the outset of this project – Mark Warner and Terry McAuliffe. Warner and McAuliffe might be the party, for all intents and purposes, with questions swirling about whether Jim Webb will run for re-election in 2012, with Tim Kaine in Washington heading up the Democratic National Committee, and every single other Democrat in the state with any degree of name recognition having a big X in the ol’ L column for their most recent election effort.

Link to column on WhenVirginiaWasBlue.com.