THIS TIME IS DIFFERENT.THE VIRGINIANS KNOW IT IS ABOUT ISSUES.IT IS ABOUT THE MEN AND WOMEN IN IRAQ,IT IS ABOUT ECONOMY,HEALTH CARE,EDUCATION AND SO ON.THERE IS NO TIME TO GAMBLE OR VOTE CARELESSLY BASED ON RACE OR SYMPATHY OR SENSELESS SUBSTANCES.THEY KNOW IT WILL BE UNWISE NOT TO GIVE OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRATS THE FOUR YEARS NEEDED TO SAVE THE SITUATION AFFECTING THEIR OWN LIVES THAN TO RISK WORSEN THEIR FUTURE IN THE HANDS OF AGING AND CONFUSED McCAIN WHO DOESN´T GET IT ONE BIT!HE WANTS TO BE EDUCATED ON ECONOMY AT THE TIME WE NEED SOMEONE TO FIX IT???TODAY HIS PHIL GRAMM ACCUSED AMERICANS OF WHYNNING AND COMPLAINING!RECENTLY McCAIN SAID AMERICANS ARE BETTER OF ECONOMUCALLY.HE DOESN´T SEEM TO KNOW THAT IF HE AND HIS WIFE OWN MILLIONS,A LOT OF AMERICANS AREN´T.AND THAT ENERGY POLICY, GAS-PRICES AND TRILLIONS OF SPENDING IN IRAQ ARE ALL DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL TO THE ECONOMY!THIS TIME WE SHALL ALL HAVE TO MAKE THE RIGHT HISTORIC DECITION BY GIVING THE DEMOCRATS AND OBAMA A 4 YEAR
CHANCE!
4 YEARS CHANCE
Paint It Blue? Obama’s Trying.
No Democrat has won Virginia since 1964, but he thinks it could be his.
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He could've picked Ohio. Or Florida. Or any one of the dozen or so traditional swing states that have decided American presidential elections since the dawn of time (or at least 1992). But for his first official stop on the trail to November, newly minted Democratic nominee Barack Obama visited a place last week that hasn't voted for a dreaded Democrat since the slightly more Southern Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas triumphed there in 1964. The special state? Virginia.
Sure, Virginia is for lovers. But is it for Obama? If past is prelude, the answer is no. In 2000, George W. Bush beat Al Gore there by 7 points, and four years later, the president expanded his margin, trouncing John Kerry by 8; before LBJ, no Democrat had won the commonwealth since Harry Truman in 1948. But the Obama campaign is confident that it can turn the tide, citing the Old Dominion as part of a new generation of swing states. "We want to campaign here and we want to win here," Gov. Tim Kaine, Obama's top Virginia backer, told the Associated Press. Even John McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, admits the longtime Republican stronghold is now in play. "I think it is a battleground state," he told The Washington Post. "I know they are targeting it, and we are certainly targeting it."
Neither Gore nor Kerry fought hard for Virginia—much like Clinton, Dukakis, Mondale, Carter, McGovern and Humphrey before them. So why the unprecedented push now?
The electorate is diversifying—and it's heading in a Democratic direction. Between 2000 and 2006, northern Virginia's Washington, D.C., suburbs grew 15 percent; they now account for a third of the state's population. Meanwhile, the ring of exurbs farther from the capital has exploded. Thanks to an influx of middle-class, well-educated voters, Loudoun County, for example, is now the fastest-growing swath of the country: since 2000, it's gained more than 100,000 people, a 60 percent increase.
Conveniently for Obama, these transplants tend to vote Dem-ocratic. In 2000, Gore won Arlington with 60 percent of the vote, but lost Fairfax and Loudoun counties with 47 and 41 percent, respectively; four years later, Kerry did better, outperforming Gore by 8 points in Arlington, winning Fairfax 54–46 and inching up to 44 percent in Loudoun. But the real breakthroughs came in 2005 and 2006, when Democrats Tim Kaine (governor) and Jim Webb (senator) captured all three counties, cracking 50 percent in Loudoun, 60 percent in Fairfax and 70 percent in Arlington. Both pols—along with popular former governor and current Senate candidate Mark Warner—campaigned with Obama Thursday in Bristol and Bristow, and they plan to continue through November. If Obama can match the Democrats' 2005–2006 margins in the northern section of the state and sway a significant segment of the 131,000 new voters who've registered this year alone—nearly half of whom are under 25—aides think he can potentially paint it blue. His surprising 30-point win in the February primary wasn't a bad start.
Obama's other secret weapon: African-Americans. In Virginia, they account for 20 percent of the population—and approximately 200,000 aren't registered to vote. With a 50-state registration drive already underway, Team Obama has the vision, organization and resources—an estimated minimum $300 million general-election fund, compared with $85 million for McCain—to make an impact. Consider the math. In 2004, Bush beat Kerry in Virginia by 262,000 votes. Assuming similar turnout, McCain's current one-point lead in polls would translate into a 33,000-vote edge. To close the gap, then, Obama has to turn out only 16.5 percent of unregistered African-Americans.
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