thephan wrote:Depends on your beliefs. For VA Cantor's absence has a political tax. He was a power player with senior positions on important committees. Brat or his competitor, will be a freshman congressman with no suction. So that is a bad chess move.

Understand these this: 1) Cantor never, ever did anything positive, or rally nothing at all, for my part of VA. He was pretty much a black hole to NVA, except when pointing a finger at us as what is wrong with the state. Certainly be did not help the economic fall out of our prime employer shutting down and taking private employers to the mat with it. 2) Many of his positions and tactics are not appreciated by my political system believes, so I am no fan.

Now Brat, and people act like Brat has already won (he is to his constituents what a democratic mayoral candidate is to DC - so maybe that is fair), seems to take more extreme positions as his agenda. My take is that he is not talking to the base, but talking to the fringe. He has said that he is essentially unwilling to consider any position other then his agenda (aka Tea Party like), which means that he is for gridlock and opposed to working across the isle. For Cantor's publicly trotted out difficulties in doing this, he did demonstrate a willingness to work together for some thing, Brat seems that he is just for the polar right.

Personally, I do not see any positives in electing people who are committed to a cause without concern with good governance. So, to me, Brat is not a good candidate.

TomatoPie wrote:Apparently Brat's parents gave him everything he wanted, apologized for his tantrums, etc

pacino wrote:at least he appears to be against money in politics

drsmooth wrote:41 doing another birthday skydive today

90 yrs old

the older & crazier he gets, the more likeable he is

drsmooth wrote:Cantor dropping his Congressional seat is pretty amazingly stupid. It's like losing a cushy job because you accidentally dropboxed your porn stash to your contact list.

I mean, how do you explain that to your spouse: "Uhhh, honey, I forgot to campaign this year, so I got #$!&@"

He also asked politicians to refrain from making comments about why rape happened. A senior member of Modi's own party last week said rape was a social issue, and "sometimes right, sometimes wrong."

swishnicholson wrote:Wave of crime against women in Uttar Pradesh

He also asked politicians to refrain from making comments about why rape happened. A senior member of Modi's own party last week said rape was a social issue, and "sometimes right, sometimes wrong."

td11 wrote:misssissippi would be an upgrade. non-stop election fraud, highly conservative views on women/social issues, high rates of domestic abuse, one of the worst illiteracy rates. it's been this way since the 70s/80s

RichmondPhilsFan wrote:

drsmooth wrote:Cantor dropping his Congressional seat is pretty amazingly stupid. It's like losing a cushy job because you accidentally dropboxed your porn stash to your contact list.

I mean, how do you explain that to your spouse: "Uhhh, honey, I forgot to campaign this year, so I got #$!&@"

The national media's coverage of this upset has been extremely disappointing. Cantor DID campaign, that was part of the problem.

Cantor basically had two major mistakes in this election. The first was the one that'd been building up for years... the perception (rightly so) that he was more concerned with national politics than what was best for his constituents. There was no way he'd be able to refute that by working hard for a few months, but he's been successfully fighting that perception since at least 2008 (including defeating a viable challenge from Wayne Powell in 2012 who benefitted from an Obama bump). And let's be honest, it is a House party leader's job to remain focused on national issues... any complaints from 7th District constituents about Cantor being out of touch with them is mostly lunatic fringe type stuff, who are never going to be satisfied unless their guy is a complete parrot of their fringe opinions on every issue.

The second (and much larger IMO) mistake was that Eric Cantor was the one that made David Brat a household name. He started running cartoonishly negative ads against Brat back in early May, during a time in which you NEVER saw Brat signs or ads outside of rural Hanover County (major Tea Party stronghold).

Here was the lowlight:



It's a fundamental rule of campaign strategy that you don't give your opponent name recognition if he doesn't already have it. A lot of you know where I work (hint, I can see the VA Capitol from my window)--even most people I work with had no clue that Cantor had a primary opponent until these ads hit. Mind you, Dave Brat himself did not pay for a single televised campaign ad until the day before the primary.

Cantor never goes negative in reelection campaigns (the last time I can recall it was 2002 against Ben Jones). Granted, he doesn't typically face stiff competition, but I'd argue that Brat wasn't stiff competition until he got name-dropped by Cantor. I can't recall a single time that he's even mentioned his opponent in an ad before this election cycle (and he has been my congressman for over a decade now).

So yeah, Cantor lost this race b/c of people being upset with him, but he mostly lost this race because he announced to people that he had a challenger to be taken seriously.

td11 wrote:fucking disgusting. Uttar Pradesh continues to be the worst state in India by a landslide