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Mark Warner could learn a thing or two from his old boss, Terry McAuliffe, about winning elections. For Warner, that may be tougher to take than barely beating Ed Gillespie.

For a second term in the U.S. Senate, Warner eked out a margin of 17,671 votes, just under 1 percentage point. Warner won ugly, saved by his home turf, Fairfax County, the increasingly Democratic Washington suburb. It supplied a cushion of 53,536 votes.

That was more than Gillespie could overcome even with a narrow 500-vote win in Loudoun County, an important D.C. outer suburb, and a uniformly robust performance across the Republican countryside.

Warner’s voter-mobilization effort was anemic, undercut by a campaign narrative that did little to do what McAuliffe emphasized above all else in his 2013 victory for governor: Invigorate the Democratic base of women, students, suburbanites, environmentalists, labor and minorities.

It’s what McAuliffe did before he became a candidate. He managed campaigns for Congress and the presidency. It’s what McAuliffe will do again in 2016 in this competitive swing state, should his friend Hillary Clinton again run for the White House.

This year, energy was missing where a little bit could have gone a long way,