he is a bit of a dragon slayer having taken out the house majority leader after being outspent 5-1 here. what extent has mr. brat been embraced by tea party factions or larger republican interest groups, or conservative interest groups in virginia. has he been kind of a stand-alone guy, running a stand-alone campaign or part of a larger movement that has embraced him against the republican establishment. he has been embraced by the tea party movement. what s interesting about this is that up until today, every publicly available poll suggested dave brat was going to draw 40%. everybody was saying that that in and of itself would be a victory if he was able to deny eric cantor from the threshold. we have the stunning outcome. not only does he get over 40%. he topples eric cantor by a margin. he has been embraced by the tea
the democrat s name is jack trammel. nominated for the spot on the november ballot by virginia democrats. mr. brat is an economics professor. the author of a 2012 book on slavery in the old confederacy. and he is not a politician. but, very unexpectedly, virginians in the seventh district are going to have a choice between the sociology professor and economics professor, both from the same school, both who they are likely to never have heard of ever. ever before tonight. joining us is a reporter for the virginian pilot newspaper. thank you for joining us. thank you. i have to ask you about the seventh district. the lay of the land there, obviously jack trammel, the democrat in the race thought he would be running against eric cantor essentially as a sacrificial lamb. should be expect this might be a
i don t know what degree that plays a role. that will be fascinating to watch. i was talking to larry and said, look how terrible those primary numbers are. that turnout is awful. he said, that s pretty good. it will be worth seeing how many are democrats. it s always conventions. john warner the republican senator for a long time, was going to lose a convention. his tool to save himself was the primary, yet, that s going to be the thing to take eric cantor out. amazing. steve kornacki, thanks for being here. i appreciate it. we ve got still a lot more to come on this, including information about who the democrat is who is going to be running against david brat for what we thought was eric cantor s congressional seat. we have a live report from virginia on this straight ahead.
themselves into believing they could do what you said. use that machine that always worked, at least since 2011, and generate enough to overcome the brat forces, the tea party forces. i ve got to say, though, this is in this state, as we have seen in mississippi and a lot of other places, this is a party at war with itself. it really is at war with itself. i m old enough to remember when the democratic party was at war with itself in the 60s and 70s. let me ask you one question that seems maybe slightly beside the point at this point, but the democrats when it looked like eric cantor had a tight hold on the seat, didn t necessarily say they were going to run somebody against cantor in november. just a couple days ago, they picked a professor at the same university where david brat is a
the ads eric cantor ran in the race werequetoast things you have seen in your life. most new jobs are created by small business, but too many in washington want to raise their taxes. let s empower people, not government, and we ll kick our economy into gear again. this is eric cantor and i approve this message. that s the ad equivalent of pleated chinos. you see it and it disappears immediately. i want good things, not bad things. join me. you run for office, you pick where you re going to take a risk. eric cantor chose not to take a risk on tape. his campaign videos and campaign ads were the political equivalent of have a nice daise. i m already a congressman. i look like a congressman, send me back there, no harm done. that s one track of how he tried to handle his tea party challenger. the tea party challenger had no money to run his own ads, but when cantor was running them, that s what they looked like.