The Note, 6/9/2009: Meet Virginia — Dems seek to turn purple into blue in Old Dominion

By RICK KLEIN Can we know what the right direction is before we know what direction Virginia goes? The Democratic gubernatorial contest is one of those delicious races that’s wide open on election day — with enough plots and subplots to make Sarah Palin blush (though not last night).   It pits the national party establishment against a home-bred upstart, electability versus name recognition, and the Democrats against themselves in a state that’s tipping their way (but by no means tipped). It puts Obama-ism on the line, and even mixes in some Clinton drama. Plus, there’s Terry McAuliffe — the former presumptive frontrunner, and never, ever one to give up — to make sure everyone has a good time. Mostly, the Virginia governor’s race an early chance for Democrats to build on their 2006 and 2008 gains — or cede territory to a GOP that will take it where it can find it. Virginia was one of the classic color-shifters that made Democratic control of Washington possible. But purple is not the same as blue, and each candidate shades differently.  Whether voters in the open Democratic Primary choose state senator R. Creigh Deeds, the former DNC chairman McAuliffe, or former state delegate Brian Moran “could chart the course of the Democratic Party in the once solidly conservative state,” Rosalind S. Helderman and Anita Kumar report in The Washington Post.   “With surveys showing remarkable volatility in the race's final days and election officials predicting low turnout, all three campaigns have agreed that victory will come to the candidate whose supporters are energized enough to visit the polls on a muggy and possibly stormy June day.” A shot at how Virginia swings: “A late surge by R. Creigh Deeds again is forcing Terry McAuliffe and Brian J. Moran to attack Deeds over his pro-gun stance, including attempts in 2008 and this year to overturn a veto by departing Gov. Timothy M. Kaine of legislation banning concealed firearms in bars,” Jeff E. Schapiro writes in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.  “The central theme of the race has been whether two local candidates from different parts of the state can beat a well-heeled national figure with statewide name recognition. Polling figures have been back-and-forth, with Mr. Deeds surging in the past several weeks,” Sarah Abruzzese writes in the Washington Times.  “The perception of November electability and the coveted endorsement of The Washington Post — both key in a low-turnout primary dominated by voters who closely follow politics — has propelled Deeds from a distant third place in the polls to prohibitive favorite going into Election Day,” Politico’s Jonathan Martin reports.  “If Deeds hangs on to win, then we'll have another, and somewhat heretical by recent standards, data point in the ancient debate between mobilization and persuasion strategies, and air versus ground spending,” Ed Kilgore writes at FiveThirtyEight.com.   As for the Macker: McAuliffe’s “supercaffeinated style, dependence on out-of-state donors and lack of experience in state politics have undercut his popularity among some voters and undermined his claim that his national stature makes him the man to beat Mr. McDonnell,” Ian Urbina writes in The New York Times.  “McAuliffe continues to make the case that he is the best equipped candidate to keep Virginia in the Democratic column,” ABC’s David Chalian writes. “He has demonstrated an ability to step from the shadows into the political spotlight as a candidate. Now his test is to prove he can be a victorious one.”   “McAuliffe also has high negative ratings from voters who see the first-time candidate as an interloper in a state political culture in which he has never participated,” CQ Politics’ Greg Giroux reports.  Polls in the Old Dominion State opened at 6 am ET and close at 7 pm ET.  Real Clear Politics sees momentum for Deeds among the scattered recent polling.  Republican candidate Bob McDonnell is waiting, the state’s strongest GOP nominee for governor in a couple of election cycles. “As Republicans try to regroup in the face of major losses the last two cycles on all levels of government, it seems they are making their first stand here in Virginia,” Time’s Jay Newton-Small reports.  Big Gitmo news Tuesday: A Guantanamo Bay detainee is headed to trial in federal court, in the kind of transfer we’re going to see a lot more of if President Obama sticks with his plan to close the prison camp by early next year. From the press release: “The Justice Department today announced that Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian national who had been held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility since September 2006, arrived early this morning in the Southern District of New York to face criminal charges stemming from his alleged role in the Aug. 7, 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya.”  Says an administration official: “Today represents a significant step forward in bringing swift and certain justice to the detainees at Guantanamo. And it is a first step. Experienced prosecutors continue to review the status of each detainee at Guantanamo, and there will be more indictments and trials in the weeks to come for those who have committed crimes against the United States or conspired to.” With the Supreme Court tossing out a “don’t ask, don’t tell” challenge, Ana Marie Cox makes her Playboy debut (it’s not like that) to put Obama’s campaign rhetoric back to him: “There are, in all likelihood, no active discussions between Obama and the Joint Chiefs to undo DADT. It is something that ‘doesn’t make us more safe’ (as Obama put it in April 2008), that Obama hasn't changed his mind about, but that he has made a calculated decision not to do anything about. Sometimes I try to imagine how the media might react to the administration taking a similar position on, say, domestic terrorism.” And: “It’s disappointing that a White House run by a former community organizer will need to be prodded by activist pressure simply to do the right thing — particularly when it is also the smart thing.”  How much patience does he have left to burn? The Obama White House wanted the challenge tossed out: “Obama will have to do more than continue to make promises,” The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart writes. “Since the Pentagon isn't ready to do away with the 16-year-old policy on its own, this is going to require leadership — leadership that only Obama can provide. Would that he showed a sign he's willing to exert it.”   “I don’t know what’s in his heart of hearts,” Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., tells GQ’s Lisa DePaulo, on Obama’s views on gay marriage. “I do know that it was…The general view, which I shared, was that no one who wanted to get elected president could have been a supporter of same-sex marriage. On the other hand, things have moved very far since then, and I’m more optimistic about 2012 than I was about same-sex marriage.”  And big Palin news — with more bright shiny things the GOP would rather not have to look at  “Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the keynote speaker for the 2009 Senate-House Dinner, received big cheers Monday night when he thanked Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for taking part in the GOP fundraiser,” ABC’s Elizabeth Gorman reports. “After flip-flopping on whether she would attend the event, it was agreed late Monday that Palin would take her seat at the dinner with approximately 2,000 other guests at the Washington Convention Center.”   Organizers boast of $14.5 million raised; commentators chortle at the prospect of pictures to tell the story of GOP chaos  The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank: “Palin's relationship with her party represents nothing so much as a lovers' quarrel, and the mostly Motown musical selection — ‘Ain't Too Proud to Beg,’ ‘My Girl,’ ‘Baby I Need Your Lovin' ‘ — hit all the right notes: passion, jealousy, love and guilt. In a burst of optimism, organizers allowed two knives to be placed at each of the 2,000 place settings — one, apparently, to stick in the food and one to use on fellow Republicans.”  The scheduling snafu “underscores the tough time the party is having finding national leaders to help them form a message and go head-to-head with President Obama,” per the Washington Times’ Kara Rowland.  “What the entire Palin saga really shows is what a hard time the Republican establishment is having in pleasing its conservative base and trying to expand it,” Time’s Jay Newton-Small writes. “Palin, after all, is at the top of many lists of possible 2012 presidential contenders, and she remains hugely popular with the Republican base. But she'll never get elected without the support of an establishment that still has its doubts about her mainstream viability. These people need each other; if only they could figure out how to break bread with one another.”  When she is allowed to speak: “Sarah Palin said ‘we told ya so’ to President Obama on Monday night, claiming his spending polices to revive the economy were leading America to socialism,” per the New York Daily News’ Leo Standora.  Palin told Sean Hannity: “When you consider that the federal government is about $11 trillion in debt, and we're borrowing more to spend more . . . it defies any sensible economic policy any of us ever learned through college.” “If Americans aren’t paying attention, unfortunately our country could evolve into something that we do not really recognize.” “Socialism?” Hannity asked. “Well, that is where we are headed,” Palin said. The DCCC has some fun with Palin’s RSVP. “Put me down for the moose . . . PS- Newt, can I borrow your speech?” Ari Fleischer wants it all to go away: “Sarah Palin is one of the most exciting people imaginable in politics, but she has a long way to go to prove she’s presidential,” Fleischer said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Tuesday. “I’ve really come to learn in watching her that she has a lot to learn, and a long distance to go before she rises to the level of being a serious presidential candidate. . . . The politics is the easy part for her; the substance has to come first.” And: “Newt is not going to be the next nominee of the Republican Party. . . . The Republican future cannot be back to the future.” Meanwhile, Team Obama hunts for jobs — the spin on the stimulus perhaps just as important as any stimulative effects. “After much criticism that the $787 stimulus bill hasn’t created enough jobs and isn’t being distributed quickly enough with more than $700 billion of it unspent, President Obama and Vice President Biden debuted their new summer mantra: they will, they said, create or save 600,000 jobs in the next 100 days,” ABC’s Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller report. “But their 600,000 figure comes at a time when other numerical projections and claims have been questioned.”  About those questions: “Neither the acceleration nor the jobs goal are new. Both represent a White House repackaging of promises and projects to blunt criticism that the effects haven't been worth the historic price tag. And the job estimate is so murky, it can never be verified,” the AP’s Brett J. Blackledge and Matt Apuzzo report.  “The list of spending plans detailed under the new ‘roadmap’ amounts to little more than a restatement of the plans that were already underway for the coming months, without any explanation of what steps, if any, the White House is taking to accelerate the pace of spending,” The Washington Post’s Alec MacGillis writes. “And the push to spin the package was accompanied by a classic Biden misstatement — a videotaped comment that the money was geared toward ‘make-work projects.’ “  “Results of the stimulus spending are difficult to measure, and so far the promised federal money has been slow in coming. As of May 29, just over 100 days since Obama signed the bill into law, only about 6% of the funds had been spent,” Peter Nicholas reports in the Los Angeles Times. “And on the jobs front, an early target was missed: Two of the president's top economic advisors put out a report Jan. 9 predicting that with the stimulus spending, the U.S. unemployment rate this year would not exceed 8%. It now stands at 9.4%.” Wasn’t this supposed to have been done earlier? “Saying he's not satisfied with the progress, Obama delivered a set of marching orders to his Cabinet: cut red tape and ramp up hundreds of public works and other projects designed to stabilize the economy and reduce unemployment,” The Boston Globe’s Joseph Williams reports.  Rally behind the nominee: At 11 am ET, Vice President Joe Biden hosts the first big event to marshal support for Judge Sonia Sotomayor, with representatives from national law enforcement groups, including New York County District Attorney Robert Morgenthau and Miami Chief of Police John Timoney. Can they make room for David Brooks? “If you look at the whole record, you come away with the impression that Sotomayor is a hard-working, careful-though-unspectacular jurist whose primary commitment is to the law,” Brooks writes in his New York Times column.
“When you read her opinions, race and gender are invisible. I’m obviously not qualified to judge the legal quality of her opinions. But when you read the documents merely as examples of persuasive writing, you find that they are almost entirely impersonal and deracinated.”  Will her cast land in the Smithsonian? “Rushing to make a shuttle flight for meetings with six senators on Capitol Hill, Sotomayor took a minor spill,” The New York Daily News’ James Gordon Meek reports. “Port Authority officials and U.S. Marshals were escorting Sotomayor through the USAirways terminal when she fell walking on a ramp. She complained of ankle pain but refused medical help.”    Tuesday also brings a fiscal discipline event. (Think anyone’s seen those polls that have the president upside-down on fiscal restraint and the budget deficit?) This time, it’s pay-as-you-go budgeting. President Obama has a 1 pm ET event at the White House, with conservative Democrats set to join him. “With the budget deficit soaring toward a record $1.8 trillion, the Obama administration is planning to propose tough new rules that would require lawmakers to pay for new initiatives — including an overhaul of the health system — or face automatic spending cuts,” The Washington Post’s Lori Montgomery reports. “The new rules, which could be rolled out as soon as today, come amid growing anxiety among the nation's foreign creditors and some of its top economic policymakers about the tide of red ink.”  As for that big item to pay for: “Two pressure points are emerging in Congress's rush to pass health-care legislation by the August break: how to pay for the package and whether to create a new public health-insurance plan,” Janet Adamy and Greg Hitt write in The Wall Street Journal.    And Organizing for America is confident: “The level of support we've seen for our health-care effort is far greater than anything we've done up to this point,” says Mitch Stewart, the group's director. (Numbers, anyone?)  Politico’s Martin Kady II: “As rhetorical promises turn to legislative language, everyone is moving in different directions. Once promising business alliances are shaky, Ted Kennedy is absent due to health problems, Republicans are uninvited to meetings and uninterested in a public option, and President Obama is exerting a heavier hand than he has on other legislative initiatives.”    Missing the dealmaker — and the inspiration: “Though [Sen. Ted] Kennedy continues to work closely on the unfolding legislation and is in constant touch with staff members and colleagues, he is not expected to return to the Capitol as formal debate begins this month, either for committee hearings or when the legislation moves to the Senate floor,” David M. Herszenhorn reports in The New York Times. “Mr. Kennedy’s absence has raised alarm among Democrats and Republicans who say that his gravitas and the force of his personality, particularly his ability to usher colleagues past minor disputes in pursuit of larger goals, will be missed as the debate heats up.”    There’s also pure vote-counting: “It's been 15 months since all 100 senators have come to the floor of the chamber for a vote,” Paul Kane reports in The Washington Post.  “Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), 91, has been ensconced in an undisclosed hospital since May 15, initially for a minor infection, but then for a more serious staph infection.  Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), 77, who was diagnosed with brain cancer a year ago, did not return to the Senate last week despite proclamations from colleagues just last month that he would be back in time to lead this summer's health-care debate.”   Do Democrats even want bipartisanship, at this point? “It’s not [about] bipartisanship by itself,” Richard Kirsch of Health Care for America Now said on ABCNews.com’s “Top Line” Monday. “It’s up to Republicans whether they want to get on the healthcare reform bandwagon or not.”    Can they get it, if they want it? “”House Democrats drafting health-care overhaul legislation will lay out proposals today that include creating a government-run program to help cover the uninsured, even as Republicans stiffen their resistance to that idea,” Bloomberg’s Laura Litvan and James Rowley report.  Moving things along: At noon ET Tuesday, the topic is “health disparities, health reform”: “Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Nancy-Ann DeParle, Director of the White House Office of Health Reform and Tina Tchen, Executive Director of the White House Council on Women and Girls will hold a roundtable discussion on health disparities and the importance of health reform. The discussion is part of the administration’s continuing series of White House Stakeholder Discussion Groups,” per the press release. How are Rahm Emanuel’s phone calls coming on this one?   “Paying for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars should be one of the easiest tasks facing the White House and Congress this spring, but partisan politics has stalled the effort, a signal that getting anything done this year won't be easy,” McClatchy’s David Lightman reports.  From the EFCA wars: “Passing the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would result in millions in additional political funds for organized labor over the next 10 years, a business group opposed to the legislation will argue in a report to be released Tuesday,” The Hill’s Michael O'Brien reports. “Unions would stand to gain an additional $320 million more to spend on political activities in the next decade, according to a report put together by the anti-EFCA Workforce Fairness Institute (WFI).”   Coming Tuesday, from the Bipartisan Policy Center: “The National Transportation Policy Project (NTPP), a project of the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), will release its final report entitled ‘Performance Driven: A New Vision for U.S. Transportation Policy’ on Tuesday, June 9, 2009. NTPP, led by its co-chairs former Mayor of Detroit Dennis Archer; former Congressman Sherwood Boehlert; former Senator Slade Gorton and former Congressman Martin Sabo, will issue its recommendations to Congress and the Administration at the Washington Court Hotel in Washington, D.C.” Keynote address: Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. 
The Kicker: “Now we're in a position to really accelerate.” — President Obama, on the stimulus.   “Obviously the results have been abysmal.” — Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., on the stimulus. 
Today on “Top Line,” ABCNews.com’s daily political Webcast: Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill.; and GOP strategist Kevin Madden. Noon ET. Follow The Note on Twitter: http://twitter.com/thenote For up-to-the-minute political updates check out The Note’s blog . . . all day every day: http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/