I caught Mudcat being interviewed this morning on MSNBC by Chuck Todd.
The entire interview was not particularly interesting. Todd is a generic television political analyst who tends to base his reporting on the conventional wisdom, occasionally channeling the analysis of the last political operative to plant an idea in his brain (lately, he seems to have developed a good source in the Romney camp, based on his reporting). Both of those skills were on display for the majority of his chat with Mudcat. Meh.
Mudcat did explain that he did not see the Commonwealth as a “purple” state, but rather still as a “red” state, based on the makeup of the General Assembly. At a local state level, he is without doubt correct (and it must look extremely red from his perch down there in Roanoke), but thanks to continuing demographic changes and a growing urban population, particularly in NOVA, the picture is not quite as clear on a statewide basis. It is now possible for Democrats to statewide elections without attracting significant numbers of “independents” to its side.
Indeed, at the very end of the interview, Todd asked about the whether Democrats could offset losing that “independent” vote in the Commonwealth (which Todd sited in the Southern D.C. suburbs, the Northern Neck, and the more rural areas of Hampton Roads), and Mudcat had an interesting response:
There’s something else at work here in Virginia that people don’t talk about. The best GOTV guy in the history of the Commonwealth is Mike Henry, and he’s out there working with Tim Kaine. And I can promise you they are out there. And you’ve got a double GOTV effort going on between Obama and Kaine. And I think they will prevail.
Yep. That’s Mudcat, saying the Democrats will win by turning out Democrats, not by attracting conservatives — er, independents, to their side.
(The full interview can be seen here.)
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