Election 2017- America in Caricature, America in Miniature
When comparing, county by county, the results of the 2016 Presidential Election and the 2017 Gubernatorial Election, little change has taken place in Virginia.
No surprise.
Regardless, the 2017 Gubernatorial Election in Virginia casts the Old Dominion as the United States in miniature, revealing the fact of increased political polarization in both the commonwealth and in the nation.
A look at the 2016 U.S. election map shows a vast region of Donald Trump supporters, one that is rarely speckled with Hillary Clinton supporters. On the Pacific coast, along the southwest border and in the urban corridors of the northeast, Clinton support is prevalent, but nowhere else- save for counties along the central Mississippi River, where white voters are in the minority.
Taking a look at the 2016 Virginia election map, a similar trend of political polarization is revealed with vast areas of the state, where voters opted for Donald Trump. In the suburbs of Washington DC, in the heavily academic conclaves of Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia, and in the area of Virginia’s capital, Richmond, heavy support for Hillary Clinton is revealed, along with counties and cities in southeast Virginia where, again, white voters are in the minority.
Comparing the 2016 Virginia map to the 2017 Virginia map shows only two localities switching to benefit Ralph Northam (Chesapeake and Virginia Beach) and one locality switching to the benefit of Ed Gillespie (Bedford County). That aside, there is no change between the two elections.
As much as any Virginian is loath to admit it, the fact of the matter is that the Commonwealth of Virginia depends on federal dollars more than any other state when it comes to employment. Between civilian federal government employees in the Washington DC suburbs, military employment in Hampton Roads, and federally-funded employment in the state’s large universities, the Commonwealth is beholding to federal largesse as no other state in the entire country. Virginians vote where they work, and base their votes on the source of their jobs/benefits.
All of which begs the question, “Will it ever be possible for any of these densely populated regions to vote for a candidate from a party that says it wants to reduce the size of government?”
The same question can be asked of those regions in the country where, year-in and year-out, voters are steadfast in their support of Democrats running for national office. Those “blue” localities are the localities most dependent on federal tax dollars, in terms of both employment and dependency, and just happen to be represented by congressmen and senators most opposed to reforming the U.S tax code, reducing tax rates and repealing/replacing ObamaCare.
Was the 2017 gubernatorial election a rebuke of Trump’s presidency? Hardly.
The truth of the matter is that this is what happens when Republicans nominate an inside-the-beltway, oh-so-moderate, anti-Trump acolyte of both Bush administrations (like perennial loser Ed Gillespie), who distanced himself from Trump, refused to campaign with the president, and was FOR taking down Confederate monuments before he was against taking them down. Gillespie is the ultimate GOP insider, a transplant from New Jersey who, truth be told, never wanted Donald Trump to win the GOP nomination, and surely didn’t want Trump to win the White House, either. The media won’t spin it this way, but it’s the sorry and sad truth about politics in the Old Dominion.
Worse, it also reveals the widening chasm between those localities that feed at the federal trough, and those localities that are forced to fill the federal trough with nary a benefit, in return.
For more than a century, the Democrat Party has been the party of ever-expanding government, higher and higher taxes and the party of greater dependence for those whose votes are secured in precisely this manner. While the Republican Party has supposedly been the party of reducing the size of government, the party of lower taxes and spending, and reducing the number of dependents on the federal trough, they are stymied in the fear that the mainstream media will paint them as uncaring and intolerant. Hence the nomination of milquetoast, spineless, oh-so-moderate, mainstream Republicans whose only talent lies in snatching defeat from the jaws of what otherwise should be easy victory.
Therefore, such Republicans In Name Only (RINOs), like the Bushes, the McCains, and, most recently, the Gillespies, differ from Donald Trump in one way.
Trump is about winning, and these RINOs are not.
-Drew Nickell, 13 October 2017
© 2017 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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