Alec MacGillis:
Remarkable how little attention VA has gotten. Could decide election, next door to DC! MT @politicalwire 4 VA polls today & O leads in all.
— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) November 5, 2012
I suspect the reason that Virginia gets so much less attention than Ohio as a swing state is that, y'know, the wrong kind of voters will put Obama over the top if he wins Virginia. Ohio is much more interesting to the media because Obama may win the votes of regular people. You know what I mean -- white people.
See also this passage from a Politico story by Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen (hat tip: Josh Marshall):
If President Barack Obama wins, he will be the popular choice of Hispanics, African-Americans, single women and highly educated urban whites. That's what the polling has consistently shown in the final days of the campaign. It looks more likely than not that he will lose independents, and it's possible he will get a lower percentage of white voters than George W. Bush got of Hispanic voters in 2000.Oh, right. Never mind the fact that if you're a successful Republican presidential candidate, you're considered to have a "broad mandate" if you get suburban white voters in Michigan as well as suburban white voters in Mississippi.
A broad mandate this is not.
Also see this tweet from Ana Marie Cox:
Pretty sure that Karl Rove just said that the Dem coalition is "blacks, browns, and angry young people." #IwatchFoxNewsSoYouDontHaveTo
— Ana Marie Cox (@anamariecox) November 5, 2012
That message may become the conventional wisdom if Obama wins a close election: that his coalition has too much melanin (and not enough penises), so Romney sort of really won.
