How The Va. Primary Will Affect The 2016 Presidential Race

Not really.

But we, the political cognoscenti, have this ingrained and annoying habit of over-interpreting elections. That's especially true of off-year elections, like this year's gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, or special elections, like the one earlier this year in New York's 20th CD to replace Kirsten Gillibrand.

Sometimes what happens does have repercussions. In 1991, for example, Harris Wofford (D) upset former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh (R) in the special Pennsylvania Senate election following the death of incumbent Republican John Heinz. Wofford was appointed to fill the seat, but few thought he could beat Thornburgh, who had been a popular two-term governor. But Wofford, with the help of Dem strategists James Carville and Paul Begala, effectively used the issue of health care to upset Thornburgh. The following year, Bill Clinton used health care as one of his issues to win the White House.

In the off-year elections of 1993, it was a clean sweep for the GOP. Republicans took governorships in New Jersey, where Christie Whitman ousted Gov. Jim Florio, and Virginia, where George Allen won easily. Rudy Giuliani was elected mayor of New York City, hardly a bastion of Republicanism, and they kept a congressional seat on Staten Island. The following year, Republicans won control of both houses of Congress for the first time since 1952.

So sometimes we do learn something in these isolated elections. But for the most part, attempts at reading tea leaves and extrapolating results into a BIG MESSAGE are often just silly.

The best piece I've seen on this theme is in today's Salon, written by Mike Madden, titled, "Five Things the Virginia Election Results Don't Mean."

The first is, "If Terry McAuliffe loses, Virginia has finally rejected Clintonism."

Sorry, Virginia, but Virginia never had much use for Clintonism in the first place. (At least, white Virginia didn't.) Bill Clinton lost the state twice, and Obama blew Hillary Clinton out of the water in last year's presidential primary. Former Clinton-family acolyte [Terry] McAuliffe is trying to reinvent himself as Barack Obama to appeal to the black voters and new voters that powered Obama's victory last fall. But McAuliffe is also happy to deploy Bill Clinton throughout the campaign, especially to try to appeal to the state's significant black population. Does that make his electoral fortunes a referendum on Clinton or Obama?

They are actually a referendum on Terry McAuliffe. His poll numbers are now collapsing under a heavy assault from rival Brian Moran. ... State Sen. Creigh Deeds, the only one of the three candidates who isn't from the D.C. suburbs, seems to have seized the momentum. At this point it looks as though if McAuliffe loses, it'll be because voters snapped out of the name-I.D.-induced trance that powered his way into front-runner status in the spring, and thought a little more carefully about whether running the state should really be someone's first job in elected office in the midst of a recession bad enough that even [former state Attorney General Bob] McDonnell -- the Republican candidate -- is making jobs the main issue.

The second is, "Republican victories show the GOP is poised for a comeback."

The GOP thinks that it can knock off [NJ Gov. Jon] Corzine and that McDonnell can win in Virginia, giving the party a shot of much-needed good press at a time when Obama still enjoys nearly 60 percent job approval ratings. No matter how things turn out in Virginia this week, the spin for November is already set. Win both states, the GOP message goes, and it'll prove the party's back in business with nothing wrong. ...

But allies of the White House also point to the serious advantages that the GOP has in each state. In Virginia, the Democratic primary has turned out to be fairly bloody, while McDonnell cruised to the Republican nomination unchallenged. ... In New Jersey, the economy is a wreck, Corzine is unpopular, and his Goldman Sachs experience, once touted as a benefit, no longer looks so good. All of that is true, yes. But bringing it to the attention of reporters shows that Democrats are playing the expectations game as much as Republicans.

The third: "Democratic victories show the GOP is in hopeless shape."

Just as a GOP sweep in the fall wouldn't mean that things were bright and sunny in Republicanland, so Democrats shouldn't take their own victories as proof that a new era of Democratic dominance had arrived. As strategists in both parties noted, governors' races in particular tend to hinge on local -- not federal -- issues. In New Jersey, part of the reason Corzine is in trouble is discontent over the state's high property tax rate, which doesn't have anything to do with Obama. In Virginia, the candidates are focusing on detailed, very state-specific economic proposals.

You can read the entire article here. Also, here are links to my Thursday and Monday analyses of the Virgina primary.

Polls in Virginia close at 7 p.m. ET.