Want to Win Elections? Turn Left, Young Dems

In three months, Democratic New Jersey Governor has gone from fighting for his political life, 30 points down to a loyal bushie opponent, to tied and surging. John Nichols at The Nation explains how he did it.

What did Corzine do? Instead of steering to the center, or the Blue Dog right, he turned left.

Looking to rally Democratic voters, he patched up shaky relations with the state's unions and linked his campaign so closely to the president that his billboards now feature images of Obama and Corzine. He ditched plans to pick an insider as his running mate, instead selecting State Senator Loretta Weinberg; this 74-year-old reformer has battled the bosses, championed open government and earned marks as the legislature's progressive champion of civil rights, gay rights and consumer protection.

And as Congressional Democrats wavered on the issue, Corzine made healthcare reform a focus of his campaign, emphasizing his fierce objections to Christie's plan to lift state mandates requiring insurance companies to cover mammograms, pap tests, autism testing for children and forty-eight-hour hospital stays after birth. Christie said he wanted to ease mandates to reduce costs and make insurance more available. But Corzine's support among women spiked when a pull-no-punches advertising campaign, lavishly funded by the wealthy governor (and not above taking cheap shots regarding Christie's weight problems), highlighted devastating videos of the Republican nominee dismissing a breast cancer survivor's heartfelt concern about the danger of eliminating the mammogram mandate.

SNIP

Corzine offers Democrats something more than the potential to spin a result, however. There are important lessons to be learned from his campaign, particularly about energizing the labor and liberal base and highlighting the human side of the healthcare debate. If he can keep a significant number of swing voters, especially women, in the Democratic column, Corzine will win this year. And savvy Democrats will have a strategy to study as they prepare for next year's contests.

Read the whole thing.

Meanwhile, in Virginia, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Creigh Deeds is swirling the bowl in a death spiral of behind-in-polls, act-more-repug, drop-in-polls, act-even-more-repug, drop-even-further-in-polls....