There are a lot of pundits trying to explain the Virginia election using broad, sociological trends peppered with all the current political buzzwords. And I think most of them are empty, bloviating suits. This was a victory for common decency, but it wasn’t inevitable. It was a personal victory for Ralph Northam, and it was more fragile than we admit.
Ralph Northam is Virginia’s new Governor-elect. Thank heavens. If Ed Gillespie’s campaign of horrible, attack-ad nonsense had worked, it would have killed reasoned conversation for a really long time. I still cannot believe Gillespie sunk that low. He’s really not the demagogue all that junk implies, but someone convinced him he had to sell his soul to win.
Living near Virginia, I’ve been washed by attack ads for months. Nameless narrators intone deeply how terrible the other party’s candidate really is — they’re a dishonest, crooked liar! — and how we’ll all die in fire and agony if that traitorous bastard is ever allowed into public service. Lots of scary pictures and ominous music; tattoos figured prominently.
Ralph Northam’s campaign didn’t go anywhere as low. Yes, they ran attacks against Ed Gillespie (Enron, lobbyist). They also ran ads that actually featured the candidate saying what he was for, albeit in vague and empty phrases. It was a better approach, but it wasn’t really working well.
About two weeks before the election, Ralph Northam ran an ad that broke that horrible tradition. It was simple, the candidate talking into the camera. He said that he was a pediatrician, and he would never deliberately hurt children. Yes, he had to say that kind of thing out loud. , and that anyone saying otherwise was wrong, and acting badly.
There was something important about that one commercial. Maybe it was because Northam said out loud what Ed Gillespie’s campaign had been hinting, or maybe Northam’s clearly honest response, or maybe just that what Northam said was so obviously true. Whatever it was, it was a spot of surprising decency in an otherwise miserable, trash-fire campaign. After a few days, the Gillespie campaign started running their own issue ads, cutting back on the worst nonsense, but it was too late. Northam had acted decently first, and he won the prize.
The fragile part is that if the Northam campaign hadn’t run that specific ad, with that simple, disarming message, I don’t know if the Gillespie’s Trump-styled racist demagoguery might have succeeded. It was getting close.
It’s all so surreal, considering the candidates. This was a campaign between two capable, experienced, and almost impossibly boring white men. They invented ‘anodyne’ for these guys. And these two mundane politicians both wanted to become public servants, so they could work in a high-stress, thankless job for middling wages. We should be honoring both men. Sure, I disagree with Ed Gillespie’s positions on lots things, but he’s not a Enron criminal, just like Northam isn’t an MS-13 enabler. To me, Gillespie’s only sin was that he’d bring his corrupt Republican party with him. That was just too much baggage to overcome.
Decency won out; Trump’s racist demagoguery lost. And Ed Gillespie may have lost part of his soul, but I hope he gets it back. He used to be a better man, and I like to hope he can be, again.
