So over the weekend John McCain’s brother, Joe McCain, serving as a surrogate for the presidential candidate, appeared at a rally in Loudoun County. During his remarks, the Post reported that he joked that Arlington and Alexandria were “communist country,” alluding to the fact that Northern Virginia has become increasingly Democratic over the last decade, and that Arlington and Alexandria especially might as well be part of the District of Columbia in terms of their left-leaning politics. He was playing to the Loudoun crowd, and apparently people there laughed. Assuming we shouldn’t just ignore this as mere political gaffe, and considering how important both candidates appear to think Virginia is to their electoral strategies, we’re curious what you Virginia residents think about this. Has the divide between Northern Virginia and the rest of the state grown so wide that the McCain campaign may be on to something by trying to play up those differences in areas like Loudoun County? Or has Loudoun itself sufficiently changed over the last decade that playing up the us vs. them mentality in that part of Virginia might be supremely stupid?

Photo by NCinDC