Election 2009 (V): Looking Forward

The 2009 election was only the third time in modern two-party history that both Virginia and New Jersey simultaneously switched governors from the party of the president to the opposition party. This possible precursor of change first occurred in 1993, when Republicans in Virginia and New Jersey replaced Democratic governors during Bill Clinton’s first year. A year later, 1994, Republicans swept the mid-term elections, taking over the House for the first time in 42 years, and recapturing the Senate as well.

A similar change occurred in 2001, when Democrats replaced Republican governors in New Jersey and Virginia during Bush 43’s first year. At the time, Bush was preoccupied with the Afghanistan war that had just begun, and with much else relating to the 9.11 attacks eight weeks before. Bush and Karl Rove had by 2002 nationalized that year’s mid-term elections, turning them into a winning referendum on Bush’s response to 9.11, including defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan (the Iraq war had yet to begin).

The 2001 Democratic victories in Virginia and New Jersey provided a very early warning Republicans held an insecure grip on the country. This became clearer after Democrats again elected governors in both states four years later; the 2005 New Jersey and Virginia wins rolled into Democrats’ sweeping recapture of Congress in the 2006 mid-term elections.

It’s hardly inevitable Republicans will make major gains in next year’s mid-terms. Democrats can and should respond to their double loss in New Jersey and Virginia by redoing their playbook, as Bush did after both states went Democratic in 2001.

The economy is nearly the whole game now—it was the leading issue by far in New Jersey, and the biggest issue in Virginia. It will dominate next year’s mid-terms, should unemployment remain around 10% in April (polling shows people’s perception of the economy changes little in the campaign’s final six months—one reason Bush 41 lost to Clinton in 1992 even though the economy was by then improving).

As a Democrat once said, “It’s the economy, stupid.”