I completely agree. Look at what Cynthia Nixon is doing to Cuomo in my home state. She’s forced him to reverse his position on numerous issues and is controlling the debate. Is she going to “go down in flames” as well? Can she claim no victories even if she loses by a wide margin? The purpose of primaries in not just to pick candidates, but to hammer our policy platforms. TPM needs to quit acting like a lame sports mag. I expect more from this source. If they continue to agitate and instigate with click-bait headlines, I’ll cancel my Prime subscription and move on.
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Have Bernie Sanders and Nina Turner blamed Debbie Wasserman-Schulz and started encouraging Dems to stay home in November yet?
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I agree with almost all of this smart analysis, except the one line at the end – your characterization of the Omaha race (Kara Eastman) as one in which the Democrats “tossed away a winnable seat.” That race is still winnable, even if a little more uphill than before. It’s important for national Democrats and progressive donors not to abandon Kara Eastman. She’s a serious candidate, not a fringe candidate. I agree that she is not the super-compelling-story-you-couldn’t-make-up-if-you-tried-and-a-great-voice-to-tell-it candidate that Amy McGrath (in Kentucky) is. But she’s a solid candidate and has a serious chance.
On the whole your analysis is exactly right, and I’d generalize it in the following way: There are two different axes, centrist vs progressive, and high-chance-of-winning vs low-chance-of-winning. Sometimes they go together, and moderate Democrats maybe assume they always go together. With Fletcher vs Moser for instance, they went together. But sometimes they come apart. With the Kentucky race, McGrath vs Gray, the more progressive candidate won, but honestly the two probably had about equal chances of winning in the general. McGrath’s chances might even be higher.
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What an impressive crop of high-powered ex-military women the Dems are nominating this week:
- Amy McGrath (KY) (Marine fighter pilot, flew combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan)
- MJ Hegar (TX) (Air Force helicopter pilot, flew combat search & rescue and medevac missions in Afghanistan)
- Gina Ortiz Jones (TX) (Air Force intelligence officer, deployed in Iraq).
All three of these women are awesome candidates in winnable districts.
EDIT: And plus, next month in New Jersey, a former Navy helicopter pilot, Mikie Sherrill, is a very impressive candidate in a highly winnable and high-profile open seat race, NJ-11. How great would it be to send all these women to join Tammy Duckworth & conduct congressional oversight of an administration led by a Vietnam-age dude who had some very well-timed bone spurs?
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Sounds like a good result. We need the right candidate for each district. Push for progressives in bluer districts.
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Very true,
Moser didn’t just lose—she got trounced 3 to 1.
She may be a good progressive, but she was a shitty candidate in general and especially for that House seat.
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Clinton would have won if Bernie gave her 100%.
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Thinly-veiled anti-communist comments are apparently welcomed on TPM.
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Dems hating Dems is no way to win in November. How 'bout keeping our powder dry for the REAL enemy?
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If Ms Fletcher looked more than the moment it took to take that picture above like that I am not surprised she lost. She looks downtrodden, tired, defeated and lost.She needs someone to polish her image, a good haircut dewy skin, sparkling eyes and a tiny promising smile and the occasional full throated laughter.
She didn’t say it about where she lived, she said it about a place way out in the sticks where she used to live that’s over 100 miles from her current district.
Well, there’s always reducing the power of fascism, as opposed to bitching while watching it grow.
(I don’t like this fight. I wasn’t going to join in, but damn! “Why fucking bother?” Seriously?
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They ARE the Democratic party, Snookums.
Get over yourself.
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So you’re pro-communist then?
And @Ottnot’s comment wasn’t thinly-veiled—it was full-fledged out-in-the-open snark aimed at an ignorant comment that deserves to be laughed at.
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The header was a bit of click-bait, but not egregious–TPM knows its readers are agog about the prog/prag debate and 68/32 is kinda a flameout . . . Also, @nemo, the piece does report that Moser had (at that point) virtually conceded and urged her supporters to vote for Fletcher.
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Is a RepibliDem the same as a Neoliberal? Are these terms sticks, or are they stones?
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If you have to explain it, it’s losing.
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I’d like this twice if I could
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I believe for the Country it is necessary to have a few “reasonable” republicans in office. It should temper them from inside. Hurd is one of the few who is both somewhat reasonable and unwilling to just go along (another who is leaving is Ross-Latham, R-Miami). However at this point, with an existential threat to the entire country I want every single republican to lose. There are no good republicans if they vote to support a republican speaker and keep clowns like Devin Nunes around.
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The most important line in this article was the last one:
Moser essentially conceded the race in a Tuesday night speech, urging her supporters to back Fletcher if the results held.
Eyes on the prize. Forward, together.
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