Outside of Mark Warner, Virginians don’t treat statewide losers well the second time around: Deeds follows Dolan, Henry Howell, Marshall Coleman, Jay Katzen, Virgil Goode (I believe the man ran 2 unsuccessful races for Senate as a Democrat) and Wyatt Durette as losers of one statewide campaign who came back and lost their second go-round as well. In a lot of states, the exact opposite is true. You have to run and lose once to build name recognition and a network. In Virginia, our losers are not treated well by voters.

A comment in May sticks in my mind. I talked to a long-time Democrat about the primary. He told me he wouldn’t vote for Deeds in the primary because Deeds had already lost to McDonnell. There was a lot of wisdom in that simple statement that Democrats should have thought about.

This year, however, ALL of the Democrats running state-wide were smashed — beaten by over 10% of the vote. That cannot be put on the candidates alone.

The real lesson of this race, IMHO, is that given the choice between R and R-lite, the voters generally choose the real thing.

And look before you leap: no one said anything about the base not making a decision because of the lack of local volunteers.

The voters who voted chose McDonnell. The issue of this post is why so many Democrats stayed at home.

And I agree on primaries.

Furthermore, there was no primary in the AG race, yet the Republican crushed the Democrat in that race, too.

The real lesson of this race is, in my mind, that when Republicans nominate conservatives, they win.

This has been researched and debated for decades and we always get the same result: Open primaries do receive some participation by a small percentage of those who wish to elect a weaker candidate, but their participation is of minor consequence, or backfires, such as the California Democrats pushing for the election of Ronald Reagan for Governor, because they thought he would be easy to beat.

The case for open primaries is much stronger, since it promotes the election of candidates with a more broad appeal, since open primaries attract all types of voters, albeit in relatively small numbers. The candidates in the primary all most moderate their pitch to appeal to many of the same folks who will vote for them in the general election.

I am not convinced that anyone with a D next to their name could have won last Tuesday, given the general fear and uncertainty among our general population.

I’m convinced that two things contributed to Deeds’ primary win. First, the primary voters themselves. They tend to be older, long-time Democratic voters. They are more likely to be loyal to someone who has served the party for a significant period of time.

Second, the negativity of Moran drove up his negatives as well as those of McAuliffe. So folks felt both of them were damaged goods and shifted their support to Deeds.

I don’t agree with a caucus or a convention. Yes, I know the Rs play in our primaries, but so far, I’ve not seen anything that says they swing the balance.