If Democrat Terry McAuliffe's weak performance in Virginia's primary for governor proves anything, it's that it is a risk for the chairmen of the parties' national committees to get too carried away with their own importance.

McAuliffe had spent most of his adult life as a major support player in national Democratic politics, a mover, shaker and big-time campaign money-raker. He was best known for his longtime alliance with President Bill Clinton -- at whose behest McAuliffe was installed in 2001 as Democratic National Committee chairman, a position he held for four years - and Hillary Rodham Clinton, now secretary of State, whose campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination was chaired by McAuliffe.

McAuliffe's positions, and his extroverted personality, earned him frequent invitations to appear on television news shows.

But all this, according to nearly complete returns Tuesday night, mattered to fewer than 85,000 Virginians -- or a bit more than 26 percent out of more than 300,000 who participated in the low-turnout, three-candidate primary for governor won by state Sen. Creigh Deeds.

Democratic Sen. Christopher J. Dodd is going all high-techie in the discussion of health care reform.

A press release sent out by his office Friday morning announced that Dodd, in his role as a senior member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and chairman of its Subcommittee on Children and Families, "is soliciting feedback from constituents on how best to reform our nation's health care system as part of YouTube's Senator of the Week feature." Dodd "is asking YouTube users from Connecticut and across the country to record their ideas and present them to Congress via the YouTube Senate Hub."

Ah, now, if he had just caught the YouTube bug during his brief, ill-fated campaign for the 2008 presidential campaign. One of the reasons Dodd appears vulnerable in his 2010 re-election campaign is that he spent weeks prior to Iowa's first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses scouring that state -- and even moved his wife and kids to Des Moines for the duration.

Had he communicated with Iowa voters by You Tube, maybe -- just maybe -- he would have kept everyone's nose in joint back home in Connecticut. And it's hard to imagine the outcome being any different, since Dodd earned one out of about 2,500 delegates to the Iowa state convention, based on the caucus voting.

President Obama certainly has policy grounds that justify his cross-aisle nomination of New York Republican Rep. John M. McHugh to be secretary of the Army. McHugh, whose 23rd Congressional District way upstate includes the Army's vast Fort Drum, is now ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, the culmination of more than 16 years in the House focused heavily on military-related issues.

But it's hard not to notice that this is the latest in a series of personnel moves by the White House that have strengthened the Democrats' prospects in future elections.

Although McHugh maintained his strong popularity at home over nine House elections, his district -- like most of the Northeast -- has trended Democratic for president and gave 52 percent of its 2008 votes to Obama. Democratic strategists say they plan to stage a serious takeover bid in the special election that will occur later this year if McHugh, as expected, is confirmed as Army secretary.

After more than 230 years of nationhood, you would think that our politics would have run out of new wrinkles. But listening to Republicans and other critics outraged over Arlen Specter's jump to the Democratic Party, you might conclude that the Pennsylvania senator just invented the idea of party-switching in the service of self-advancement.

Of course, that's not true. Not by a long shot.

One of the most unintentionally funny reactions to Specter's political bombshell came in a fundraising e-mail sent out last week by the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP's campaign arm. The pitch was aimed at raising money to elect more House Republicans to counteract a Democratic-dominated Senate (a missive that also underscored the fact that there is hardly any event, whether good or bad for a party, that cannot be parlayed into a fundraising opportunity).