lol āmetoo accusationsā is a gr8 and not at all disingenuous way to describe punching a woman in the face
I know slow vote counts are irritating, but not sure it rises to being a major concern. Itās not like representatives, with the exception of special elections, are seated the day after the election.
I donāt care if close races in California take weeks this autumn, as long as the Democrat ultimately comes out on top.
You know the Russians are going to do all they can to protect their biggest supporter/stooge in the House.
Of course, even if Rohrabacher loses, theyāll still have their stooge in the White House.
Great! Now vote that Russian Rohrabacher out!
I am still not in love with National Democrats sticking their noses into primaries, but alas they seem to be intent on doing so.
Glad Rouda won. I think his innovative real estate/tech entrepreneur background fits very well with this district and will help him pull a lot of independent and moderate Republicans over. I think he beats Rohrabacher by a clear margin.
Sort of off topic but still on topic, the podcast and NPR show This American Life had a really good episode Sunday about the struggles to be truly progressive in a world where electability is almost totally based on how much money you can raise. I thought it did a fair job of examining multiple viewpoints sympathetically including how the DCCC seems to be operating. At the end all I could think was how many great candidates are laying lifeless by the roadside because of the poisonous grip of money in all aspects of American politics. Not to mention how many great ideas we are never going to try for the same reason.
Facts are stuborn things. Had the dncc not dropped several million into this race, the republicans would have gotten both spots and it would have been a lock out. While the electoral conditions may, and hopefully do, change before November, we are right on the edge of taking, not taking the House.
A lock out here would have really hurt. The district is +4 R pvi, and keirstead would have had a hard time. Allegations of abuse in his past (denied, but would have been a major issue) along with him being much more progressive in the wealthiest and in some ways most conservative of the winnable OC districts. Ronda is a better fit for the district, and my guess is that this switches to a lean R district with rounda. Iām not saying keirstead would have lost, but it would have been a hard race.
At this point, I just want to win. We all owe the dncc a big thanks.
I may be mistaken here, but I think the āprogressiveā was a very wealthy researcher who was mostly self funding. This is not a race where some little old bernie sanders supporter got run over by dncc $$$. While āprogressivesā whine, the ability to self fund is very important, and has to be taken into account unless we want Kevin McCarthy and mich McConnell to run the house and senate for 2 more years. Reality sucks, but it does not make it any less real.
The concern trolls in the MSM and out have to get their licks in. If the DNCC had not intervened it would have been āDems too disorganized to save seatā. Notice they made sure to include the dire warnings of disaster even when reporting a win. I voted for Harley and think he can beat Rohrabacher.
Yes, you are mistaken. The progressive was a guy currently teaching high school. Like I also said, I thought the piece was fair to the issues of needing to be able to self fund.
The issue I was trying to address in my post, however, was that the need to be able to self fund is one of the toxic elements that determines who we end up getting to choose between. I vote straight Dem and always have, but a lot of the people getting chosen in this system end up there because they are independently wealthy and have those good old connections. I canāt believe anyone thinks that is going to get us the best candidate every time. Each time someone points out that money and ward heeling politics almost always gets us the lesser of two evils instead of someone who really speaks to their needs, they are accused of āwhiningā by people who are, I guess, āin the knowā. So yeah, I am a whiny bed-wetting progressive who is barely surviving and I do want single payer, better SS benefits, yatayataya, and every time I see a multimillionaire businessman who made his money sucking me dry running as my Democratic representative I do get pretty queasy - but I still pull the lever for him. I am not stupid - I am just 66 and they still havenāt screwed the idealism out of me yet.
The extremely strong support for Rohrabacher, in spite of all the negative press he has received in the last few years, was shocking. Similarly, I predict that Duncan D. Hunter will also be re-elected. These dudes will be in Congress until the DOJ sends them to one of their special facilities, which they both richly deserve.
Donāt forget, even if/when Blue Wave sweeps the Congress, they still have to January 2019 to damage the country.
It is like the ācivil warā stories we keep getting about how the moderates and progressives are at war. While there are a few noisy exceptions, the actual voters are (imho the one exception being NB-2) selecting the more winable candidate.
My politics and belief in the power of understanding the hard work necessary to get the right message out, and your voters to the polls was cememted in 1988 when I had lunch with my old professor Nelson polsby from cal. One of my fellow classmates mentioned how great it was that susan estrich a real āliberalā had been appointed as dukakasās campaign manager. Nelson said she was an egghead and that Atwater would just run her and dukekas over. He said that no high minded academic should ever be let near a campaign.
That message, that winning in politics requires grit, and a willingness to be nasty, or be prepared to respond to nasty, has stuck with me.
The key issue will be how many of the plentiful primary voters who didnāt support Rouda or Rohrabacher will vote on party lines in November. Iām hoping that CA Democrats up their game. Unless Iām mistaken, more Republicans turned out than Dems.
Natāl Dems Get The Person Who Won The Primary Against Rohrabacher After Lengthy Count
Fixed.
The national Dem attacks on Baugh were fairly risk-free, and if they helped push him down into 4th place then this was very helpful. While I am not generally a fan of the national party intervening in primaries, this āJungle Primaryā thing is more like a mini-general-election, as it includes both Ds and Rs (and others).
I think Rouda sounds like a strong candidate and Iām glad Keirstead is backing him in the general. I didnāt have enough direct knowledge about these candidates or this district to have a strong opinion as to which of them would be the stronger candidate against Rohrabacher, but if the #MeToo accusations against Keirstead have any validity (and perhaps even if they donāt) it sounds like Rouda may be in better shape to win in November. So, Iām plenty satisfied with the outcome.
I would just note that attempting to boost one Dem over the other in this scenario was risky in that if Keirstead was significantly ahead of Rouda before the national Dem intervention, and that intervention encouraged Dem voters to switch to Rouda, that could actually have led to the Democratic candidates splitting the Dem vote more evenly, making it less likely that either of the Dems made the runoff. And the problem is, polling isnāt perfect, so in a fairly close race you wouldnāt really know for sure whether you might be tearing down the Dem frontrunner, potentially to the benefit of a Republican who might then be able to make the second-place slot and thus the runoff.
And of course thereās also the possibility that the national Dem effort to boost Rouda actually backfired, and he would have beaten Keirstead by even more if the national party had stayed out of it. So thereās a risk in that direction too.
Again, in this case it all worked out, and the decision to put a bunch of resources into trying drive down support for Baugh seems like it was a safe, smart strategy.
So my take-away from this episode is that I think the national Dem party played a useful role here in terms of driving down support for Baugh, but played a very risky game by trying to boost Rouda over Keirstead. Although it all worked out o.k. in this case, I would be very careful about that approach.
TL;DR: If national Democratic party groups want to intervene in āJungle Primaries,ā probably the best role for them is strategic attacks on one or more of the Republicans in the race, as they did here with Baugh. Taking sides among the Democratic candidates is risky and could easily backfire, though luckily that didnāt happen in this case.