Creigh Deeds To Change His Name; Amanda Carpenter to Blog from Jail

This week "This Inside Story" with Ana Marie Cox takes you behind the scenes of Washington with former Representative from Virginia, Tom Davis.  Davis was chair of the Republican Campaign Committee during the 2000 and 2002 election cycles, and is on this week to discuss the Virginia Gubernatorial election and midterm strategies in general.  His analysis: "If you want to redo the Obama coalition, you don't diss Obama."

Also, this election is going be all about turnout and the crowd showing up at the polls, Davis predicts, will be a McCain crowd rather than an Obama crowd.  Why did things turned out this way?  Davis and Cox discuss the implications of a hotly contested Democratic primary in which Deeds succeed by coming off as the nice guy, compared the Republican convention wherein McDonnell sealed up the nomination by making a deal with the Lieutenant Governor and was thus able to start running in the statewide election sooner and with more money.

What lessons can we learn from this and other upcoming elections?  Davis says the real lessons will come after election day.  That said, every race has national and local components.  Local components in Virginia include: it's close to Washington D.C., Virginians likes sending messages (Davis: "that's what they do.") In terms of pattern recognition, if McDonnell wins, it will be the ninth straight time the state has elected a Governor from the party opposite the one in the White House.  More broadly, the two biggest issues for voters in the midterm elections, according to Davis, will be Afghanistan and Jobs (not health care or cap and trade).  Why did Davis say that about Afghanistan?  Well it's unpopular, necessary, and not going very well for our side.      

Perennial Panelist favorites, Chris Hayes and Amanda Carpenter are are back this week to share their analysis.  First order of business is Joe Lieberman - what will happen to him is one question, but Chris's answer to what should happen to him involves the Gulag (not that we should joke about the Gulag).  Realistic problem is that there isn't much leverage to use against him other than his Homeland Security Committee chairmanship.  There is, of course, the need to discuss actual policy proposals like the "robust opt-out plan" and Amanda's plan to start a blog from jail.

In the final segment of this week's show, Carpenter, Cox and Hayes try to answer the question: does the President hate women as much as remixed interview suggest, and to what extent does the gender of Obama's athletic associates offer any insight whatsoever?  Cox and Carpenter decline to be outraged but Hayes is  willing call Obama on his Feminine Mystake.  Ultimately, there are three ways to evaluate this issue: how does the President spend is his private time, what policies has he supported, and how does he act in the briefing room? Final election day predictions: McDonnell wins; Creigh changes his name to something more phonetic. 


Amanda Carpenter writes for The Washington Times
Chris Hayes  is the DC editor of the Nation