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Well no, I'm not.
This is what I responded to, what you said:
You also said this:
As I noted in my reply to rugcat, McAuliffe defeated Cuccinelli, not the tea party or "extremism" or anyone else.
For as I also noted in my reply to rugcat, the Republicans held the line in the House of Delegates, maintaining their seat total and control of that body.
What should be troubling for the Dems here--imo--is that McAuliffe eeked out a win that looked in the bag, even though he had all of the money and the support of the Clintons and Obama. Imo, it very clearly suggests that support is not nearly so effective as most assumed.
I get the counter, that McAuliffe is not well-liked. Again, I think he's sleazy and I know I'm not alone in that regard. But the polling data has always had him in the lead in this race. You can talk about it being "all over the place" but there's never been a suggestion that McAuliffe was going to lose.
And that polling data doesn't support the idea that opinions on McAuliffe were volatile while opinions on Cuccinelli were "steady," at all. That's just loopy. The numbers for Cuccinelli fluctuate as much as the ones for McAuliffe. What are you talking about? Really, the numbers aren't even "all over the place." A six to seven point lead is far and away the most common.
That's not really what you were arguing, what I initially replied to. You framed it as a rejection of an ideology, not a person. There's plenty to object to, with regard to Cuccinelli the person, that I would agree with.muravyets said:
So while one can say McAulifje was weak, therefore should have been easy pickins, one can just as easily say the opposite, that Cuccinelli was weak and should have been easy pickins. But again, the issues I raised are more significant here, imo. Two weak candidates, both with baggage. One is funded to the hilt and is heavily supported by the most popular politicians in the country. The other gets abandoned by his national party and gets wildly outspent. The race--predictably--doesn't appear close a few weeks out. But then it suddenly narrows and turns into a nail-biter. Things happened in those two weeks, things that likely impacted the end result. If this was any other race under any other President, I think people would note this with ease. But now, they're fighting it. Hard.
The Obamacare "controversies" cost McAuliffe a lot of votes. And even the Clintons couldn't fully offset this. Which indicates twon things, imo: 1) the Clintons may be losing their touch and 2) as rugcat noted, the ACA is going to have a big effect on the next election cycle, one way or the other.