The Washington Post is busy helping the antis drive the perception that gun control won them Virginia, or at the least didn’t hurt them. In politics, perception is just as important as reality, so as long as they can make the powers that be believe what they say is true, it doesn’t honestly matter if it’s not. Did Al Gore really lose over his position on gun control? That’s the perception. It doesn’t matter if it was true or not. I think often time our side sees the lie and assumes everyone else will see it too. Here’s the spin the Post is offering:
The National Rifle Association ran commercials against Herring, but its messages were directed at voters who our own polling showed were never accessible to Herring. The NRA avoided the largest concentrations of swing voters in the Northern Virginia, Norfolk and Richmond markets. That is not a recipe for growth or success.
What they are arguing, essentially, is that the gun vote are already baked into the GOP numbers. In other words, the Democrat has nothing to fear on gun rights, because those votes were never really up for grabs anyway. As someone who has pulled the D lever before, in order to punish the GOP for their stances on certain issues, I can at least personally say that’s not true for me. I might be willing to vote for a pro-gun Democrat against Corbett, who seems to be just about as good at raising my taxes as Ed Rendell was. But the gun issue will likely keep me in Corbett’s corner in 2014.
The other side is now driving the perception that gun control is a winning issue for Democrats, whereas up until very recently, it was seen as a toxic issue. This is not a good place to be in, if they are successful. We will lose our rights if we remain here, because you can’t count on one party to control everything all of the time, and it will only be a matter of time before the GOP realizes they can, once again, get away with just not being as bad as the other guy. The Democrats have to be punished severely in 2014 for their stance in favor of gun control. This should lock them out of certain states and regions.
“In politics, perception is just as important as reality. . .”
In my limited experience hobnobbing with “real” politicos, perceptions behind closed doors are often quite different from perceptions being reported for public consumption. I am saying that optimistically, meaning that if it is true that the Virginia Democrats’ anti-gun position actually hurt them, the people that count probably know that much better and more assuredly than we do.
“The National Rifle Association ran commercials against Herring, but its messages were directed at voters who our own polling showed were never accessible to Herring.”
If that is true, it suggests the commercials were more for the purpose of delighting the troops than for actually winning an election; and delighted troops are the ones that keep them dimes and nickels rolling in, after the (lost) election is over.
And our narrative is that gun control is what forced the colorado politicians out. True? Probably.
So continues the political shell game…
And the examples in CO are more potent than the VA race- especially where the AG barely one.
The great thing about the CO recalls was that every other issue was off the table. They got ousted because of their votes on gun control. That’s reality rather than perception. The other side can hew and haw all they want about the turnout, but the fact is that gun people turned out, and they couldn’t turn out enough voters in favor of those who voted for gun control to save them. Giron especially was a strong message to the Democratic Party, but are they listening?
I don’t think they are listening, nor do they want to. Look how tone deaf they have become to other issues including the “Affordable Care Act.” If they had any notion of reality, they would have dropped the “affordable” part of that a while ago. If anything, the lies coming out of the WH and backed up by the party will come to haunt them. The problem is you can’t tie every Dem Senator to gun control since the Democrat party limp wristed it in the Senate with a few notable exceptions.
What I have yet to read is a thorough analysis as to how Cooch closed the supposed 10 point gap and why the AG race was much closer than the governor’s race. Granted, neither won, but it also was nothing like how the media predicted. Seeing as how the NRA really isn’t even responding to this, I doubt they see it as a long term threat considering their HQ is there.
I can attest that there were no NRA ads, or any mention of guns at all, in the Northern VA market. The message was clear – that none of the Republican candidates cared in the least about gun owners.
I believe what happened in Virginia was very simple. The shutdown hurt Cuccinelli badly, and the disaster of the obamacare rollout nearly pulled his fat out of the fire. No more complicated than that in my opinion.
I think that perception can be a double-edged sword. If Democrats convince themselves that gin control is a winning issue, when it will really hurt them, then convincing themselves that it’s a winning issue will backfire: they will lose elections, and they will do so wondering why, when they think they are doing everything right.
This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be on guard, though, because anti gun folk will certainly do their best to push their version of reality to their advantage…but if they really think this is a willing issue, then we need to do put best to make sure that we come out in full force and show that it’s not. Particularly on the primaries, where possible, so that we could make this a party-neutral issue.