Now that Trump’s proclivities for foot-in-mouth disease have been revealed many of the big GOTP donors have been putting their money into other races where they may still be able to control some part of the federal government. The Senate is the easy place for that; only 33 races and most of them involve incumbent GOPers who don’t have the disadvantage of lack of name recognition. And under current Senate rules it only takes a minority to totally jam up any kind of lawmaking or nominee approving. If they can’t win they can at least gridlock and blame the lack of a functioning government on POTUS like they did with that “sue the Saudis” bill.
Well I suppose in a democracy one could, and I’m just spitballin’ here, have the media point out that Trumps’ policies align 90% of the time with the GOP. But pointing out such facts seems beneath the dignity of a free press, who would much rather spend their time talking about marital infidelities and whether a former Miss Universe really had a sex tape.
“Lechery and wars, wars and lechery, nothing else holds fashion”.
Big conservative donors also began directing money to these races a few months ago. I live in one of the most closely contested states for the Senate and I’ve been surprised at how few ads have directly tied the GOP incumbent to Trump. This is a huge difference from what I saw in 2010 when the Democratic incumbent in my home district was tied to Pelosi about once every 30 minutes in ads.
In Portman’s case, it would seem the punditocracy rather underestimated how terrible a campaigner Strickland has been.
This country is so over.
This is the third campaign with anti-Strickland ads. In 2010 Kasich ran a campaign blaming the Great Recession downturn on Strickland. In 2014 Kasich again ran against Strickland saying he had cleaned up the mess Strickland made. Now for the last year, yes an entire year, there have been pro-Portman PAC ads blaming Strickland for that time you might have gotten a paper cut.
AND Strickland doesn’t seem to get out much anymore.
“Did We Overestimate Donald’s Drag On Republicans In The Senate?”
From the book of Berra:
"You can observe a lot just by watching.
Yogi Berra, Berra's Law"
"It ain’t over 'til it’s over.
Yogi Berra"Once the public was sold on the narrative that “both candidates are equally bad,” the Senate races became less of a threat to Republicans.
I think pundits didn’t consider the fact that many people can not vote for Trump but still support other Republicans and vice versa. There are going to be many Democrats who will not vote for Hillary but turnaround and support down ballot Democrats.
There is a huge dislike for Hillary out there. Huge. YYYYYUUUUGGGGEEEE. As Hillary goes up, she has coat-tails - voters are going to want to keep her from doing stuff. Hence, a huge anti-Hillary vote in the Senate.
Man I hope so!
When is she going to start to go up? The pundits are saying Trump had the worse week in the history of politics, yet this morning the race is essentially at the same place it was at this point last week. All last week did was stop the momentum he had going into the debate, but it sure hasn’t done anything to boost her very much.
The polltracker on TPM had the race at 46.8 to 43.8 at this point last week and today it is 46.9 to 44, essentially no change.
With a stronger candidate at the top of the ticket, one who was balancing attacks on Trump with a more positive vision for the country I think the Senate would be a far safer bet for the Dems. But Hillary has taken the safer choice and doubled down on all negative advertising.
There is a lag in all this poll stuff. This weekend has been a horrible disaster for Trump. We now know that all the shit about “competent bidnessman” is just so much bankrupt shit. Losing a billion dollars in a single year is kind of amazing. Again, attention to detail is important. My guess: Friday polls.
It’s not just that. I understand from reports that Hillary is not passing state money down to state parties. She is not doing as well as she should. Her concern about her own situation does not allow her to create positive coattails, and others are creating negative coattails.
That’s a huge part of it; honestly. Outside of Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois and Pennsylvania, the Democrats haven’t been doing particularly well campaigning. Nevada looks to go Republican thanks to all the money Addleson is pouring into it to try and have a Senator in his pocket. However, New Hampshire is starting to go Hassen’s direction, which is good. So far, Ayotte has run on one issue- the drug problem in the state. Hassen’s been working on a lot of other issues. The big thing is going to be scrapping the voter suppression stuff and getting out the vote. The Dems can still pull New Hampshire and North Carolina into the win columns.
A lot of this has to do with the Democratic party having little to no bench in a lot of states thanks to Midterm Apathy, leading to near-wipeouts of Democrats at the state legislative level via gerrymandering.
The revealed weakness is the Democratic party below the level of the Presidential campaign. It needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. The first order of business would be to announce and commit to core values beyond “get somebody elected.” .Liz Warren and Bernie Sanders are well on the way to re-energizing the Democratic party.
So this story is about your own ineptitude?