Bob McDonnell has defeated Creigh Deeds for the vacant gubernatorial spot of Virginia and Chris Christie has defeated incumbant governor Jon Corzine in New Jersey. I know the conservative pundits are going to claim a great victory today but I see today as something both sides can and should take from. I'm going to explain this further.

In McDonnell vs. Deeds, I feel that the superior candidate won. I do not feel that this is a referendum on anybody, considering that both Obama and outgoing democratic governor Tim Kaine still have very high favorability among Virginians. Deeds was a very weak candidate and McDonnell (and ku dos to him) ran a very honorable and poiniant campaign. 

In Christie vs. Corzine, this was almost definitely a referendum on the incumbant Corzine. When Corzine was elected governor 4 years ago, he asked people to hold him accountable. Today they did. Corzine has been a disaster, quite frankly. His state has the highest taxes in the country and the unemployment is outrageous. I don't think that Christie was elected because the people of New Jersey thought he was a fantastic option. The fact that the election was even close was mind boggling to me. Either way, I don't know too much about him but I hope he does well for those poor people in New Jersey.

The 23rd District in New york was the big lesson on both sides. I believe that if the republicans would have just stuck with Dede Scozzafava, a moderate, they would have held onto the district. Prominent national republicans, however, chose to endorse the Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman. Because of the of the pressure placed upon her by these national republicans, Ms. Scozzafava had basically no shot to win so she dropped out. Also, she found that she had profound differences with what Mr. Hoffman, so much so that she chose to throw her full support behind the Democratic candidate Bill Owens, who gave the democrats their first victory in the district since the Civil War.

I believe lessons from can be learned from both sides. First off, the republicans can take from this that people still think they are relevant. They can also see a blueprint for more success from the McDonnell campaign and that it isn't turning into Rush Limbaugh's ideal politician. The democrat beat the conservative in a conservative bastian. For this reason the democrats, and the Obama administration, can learn a couple lessons. First of all, the ideals that swept the nation last year have not necessarily changed. The problem was the lack of fresh thinking and change. Nothing has happend so far and people are not happy. That does not mean that the country is any less to the left then they were when they destroyed the republicans last year. They are just tired of politics as usual and they want change. Deeds was not an agent of change and Corzine didn't deliver on change. If Obama doesn't start delivering the change he promised, he'll be next.