Washington Post Continues to Ignore Public's Mood in Virginia

Is being endorsed by the Washington Post a good thing for a liberal politician looking to win an election in Virginia?

Such is a question gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds (D) has got to be currently asking himself.

Having gotten the Post's blessing before the June primary, Deeds spent the entire summer letting the paper do his dirty work only to find himself losing a race that Democrats should easily have run away with.

In retrospect, Deeds should have smelled a rat in the very endorsement the Post penned in May:

Who is the best candidate for Northern Virginia?... In 18 years in the General Assembly, Mr. Deeds has time and again supported measures that might be unpopular with his rural constituency but that are the right thing to do, for Northern Virginia and the state as a whole.

In other words, in the world of the Post, an out-of-touch official who ignores protests in Richmond to please friends inside the beltway is somehow a good thing.

Unfortunately, rural constituents were not amused.

Shocking, I know, but people in the backwoods of southern Virginia seem to be repelled by elitist politicians. In fact, the more they learned about Deeds, the faster he fell in polls. Small local papers noticed that his platform was too vague.

By August, Deeds was in serious trouble, prompting President Obama to campaign for him. Amazingly ignorant of local public sentiment, Obama was in Virginia - on stage with Deeds - when he told conservative critics to stop talking.

Perhaps he trusted the Post to predict how Virginians would react.

The paper soon realized the election was slipping away, so they jumped in to rescue Deeds.

Did they advise him to make a better platform? Admit he would need conservative votes?

Not so much.

Their strategy was simply to attack Republican contender Bob McDonnell. As NewsBusters reported, the Post launched an all-out assault in September.

Again the Post ignored the will of Virginians, and again it backfired.
 
During a campaign full of economic issues, the Post switched tactics to attack McDonnell's social conservatism. A decades-old college thesis he wrote about feminism became a pressing issue to reporters at the Post.

The "controversy" barely caused a sag in the polls, which the paper promoted in hopes it would continue.

But those darn rural voters could not be swayed.

As Election Day nears, thanks to Democrat elitism and the Post's bumbling assistance to his opponent, McDonnell is on path to steal an unlikely win. Yet despite cheerleading Deeds' popularity, the paper now can't be bothered to give McDonnell the same credit.

If this is the best the Post can do in representing Virginia, it's no wonder they can't keep customers.