Trump's really bad night
What the Democratic wins portend
On election eve in 2005, President George W. Bush spoke to an audience of thousands at the Richmond, Virginia airport. He was there to endorse his party’s candidate for governor: Jerry Kilgore, who the president said, “doesn’t have a lot of fancy airs.”
“I hope you’ll work hard tomorrow to call up your friends and neighbors,” Mr. Bush said. “Tell them if they want good government — good, solid, sound conservative government — to put this good man in the governor’s chair in Richmond.”
Political analysts said Bush’s move was high risk, given his own unpopularity in Virginia. And so it proved, as Virginia’s voters instead elected Democrat Tim Kaine by 6 percentage points.
One year later, Bush’s problems grew much worse when Democrats took 30 House seats away from Republicans in the midterm election and made Nancy Pelosi the speaker.
