Media Matters
The campaign manager for Mark Herring, the declared winner in the Virginia Attorney General race, says they won the election because they ignored the conventional wisdom typically pushed by media pundits that supporting stronger gun laws is a political liability.
Media pundits often claim that it is electoral suicide for candidates to call for stronger gun laws, suggesting that National Rifle Association has the power to punish candidates who oppose any portion of its absolutist pro-gun agenda. After two Colorado state senators who backed stronger gun laws were unseated in a September recall election, the media hyped this narrative and suggested the Colorado recall served as a warning to politicians who would advocate for stricter gun laws. (MSNBC host Chuck Todd, for example, said the lesson of the recall elections was that "every Democrat south of the Mason-Dixon Line" should stay away from the gun issue.)
I seem to recall the gun control lobby constantly making the claim that the financial backing of the NRA was always the cause of pro gun legislators voting for more and more gun freedoms, yet continuing to be able to stay in office because the financial support was somehow able to cloud voters' minds. (sort of like the shadow)
ReplyDeleteYet when that very same gun control lobby outspends the NRA, it all of a sudden becomes the will of the voters.
As to the claim that the times are a changing, I wonder what has more political value, two state Senators which change the power balance in the legislature? Or a Governor and an Attorney General both of whom cant originate any laws.