I handed Swamp Rabbit a bucket of epoxy and put him to work fixing a new crack in the shack that’s deep enough to let in plenty of water if there’s a downpour. While he worked I talked politics, I guess because I’m better at talking than fixing leaks.

“Christie won big, but Ken Cuccinelli is done,” I said. “Terry McAuliffe wasn’t the ideal candidate, but at least he’s a Democrat.”

The rabbit flung a dab of epoxy at me and said, “What planet you from, dude? McAuliffe is a house boy for the Clintons. He don’t answer to nobody but millionaires. And he won by a whisker, even though he spent a fortune and the other guy was an knuckle-draggin yahoo who wanted to outlaw oral sex and probe every pregnant girl who didn’t want to — how you say? — carry to term. The Cooch don’t like no cooch, no way.”

The greasy old varmint hopped off the roof and got on the computer and showed me a Washington Post story from last week. Excerpt, with my bolding:

…Tuesday’s vote – which left McAuliffe the victor by less than 2.5 percentage points – revealed potentially important lessons about Virginia’s evolving politics for both parties.

McAuliffe’s victory masked the fact that although Democrats in Virginia can reliably depend on nonwhite and unmarried voters, they seem to lose among whites and married people almost without regard to their candidates’ ideology or personality. Democrats have lost the white vote by 20 or more percentage points in the last four Virginia votes for governor or president, according to survey data.

“Less than 2.5 percentage points!” the rabbit yelled. “They couldn’t have run a slimier candidate, but he still got the white vote, and a lot of that was women.”

“But he lost,” I said. “What’s your point?”

He spit in the swamp and said, “I gotta draw you a picture? Karl Rove and them other sharpies are looking at the presidential election. They know them good ol’ boys down South won’t never vote for no Democrat, even if he put on a Johnny Reb suit and whistled Dixie on Fox News. But they also know most Northerners, even the yahoos, ain’t gonna vote for some Republican whack job who cheers when the federal government shuts down. So they’re gonna pick somebody who’s into union busting and tax cuts for the rich but not into race-baitin’ and cooch-hatin’ and government shutdowns, at least not out loud. Somebody who’s down with states’ rights but don’t wanna bomb Fort Sumter. They’re gonna pick that fat boy in Jersey.”

My rodent friend has seen little of the “civilized” world, but he’s sure the GOP’s big-money boys will annoint Chris Christie king of the yahoos and in this way bolster the sort of backdoor secession that lets the yahoos give the finger to federal laws but still get federal aid when they want it.

It’s the same point I brought up in October, but with the fat boy thrown in. Hard to argue with the rabbit on this one. I’ll find out when it rains again if he can argue and fix leaks at the same time.