Wherein I Avert My Gaze From NC and Look North To PA

Caution may be the wrong message for the Democratic base today.

Looking at you, Cheri Beasley. You're the presumptive Democratic nominee to run for the US Senate this year. Probably against gun dealer Ted Budd. We'll know for sure next Tuesday night about both.

But is Cheri Beasley a fighter? (Because Ted Budd most assuredly will roll in the mud.) I ask for a friend, who's alarmed at the whole Trump ethos that thinks it's necessary to bully -- especially the most vulnerable -- gay and transgender, Black ballot access (and barriers for 20-somethings), and now women's basic equality under the law. Those people are also clearly willing to "just find more votes" when it's necessary to hold power (and wait 'til election authorities in various states are Trump operatives). 

Cheri Beasley's public messaging suggests more a walking-on-eggs tentativeness than a willingness to take that on. I worry.

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Conor Lamb

Compare what's about to happen in the Democratic Senate primary in Pennsylvania, which will also be next Tuesday. I'm forced to know about it because I've been on candidate John Fetterman's email list for months. (Every vaguely progressive candidate in the universe gets my email address from Central Fingering.) The Pa. Senate primary is primarily between Fetterman, the sitting lieutenant governor, and Congressman Conor Lamb, who won his House seat in a special replacement election in a Republican-leaning district early in 2018 (first ripple of the blue wave) and won reelection in 2020. I was enthusiastic about him on this blog even though I knew he was not a progressive (cautious to a fault, prosecutor-cautious). But having him in Congress would be on the whole better than not having him.

Plus Conor Lamb had the looks. Because I'm a shallow person, why wouldn't I be drawn to the photogenic, since all politics are theater? Conor Lamb looks the part, and he's not afraid to call himself a Democrat. And an ex-Marine.

Quite the contrast is Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who looks like a lumberjack auditioning for the lead in a stage production of Shrek. Unconventional, working-class to the bone, with populist instincts, pugilistic, and rough as a cob. The last numbers I saw, Fetterman was leading Lamb in the primary by 30 points (with candidate Malcolm Kenyatta projected as a distant third).

Lt. Gov. John Fetterman

Bald head, goatee, prominent tattoos, often dressed in hoodie and shorts, like he's going to the Saturday morning farmer's market instead of like a supplicant for public approval or like an already prominent member of the elected class. He's a Bernie Sanders economic thinker, totally pragmatic about who and what the enemy is for the laboring class. There's a lot being written about him right now. I found this particularly thorough.

The central dilemma in voting for Fetterman -- and he's predicted to win the primary easily -- is the same question about Cheri Beasley. Can he/she win in November? In Beasley's case, will Ted Budd and the Trumpists roll right over her? In Fetterman's case, is he too out there to get the independents?

Who will Fetterman face in November? Possibly not the Trump-endorsed Mehmet Oz but rather a Black woman, Kathy Barnette, who's coming from nowhere to run dead-even with Oz -- enough so that Trump himself issued a statement denouncing her and reiterating his support for Oz. Trump hilariously said, “She has many things in her past which have not been properly explained or vetted." (These Trumpists are always so comically un-selfaware!) Barnette -- a failed congressional candidate in 2020 and a personality who appears to make her living saying things in public, and who's really every bit as MAGA as Oz or anyone else -- certainly has the looks.

Kathy Barnett

 

The Words, the Attitude, the Hat -- But Is It a Winning Look for 2018?

So far, the Republican candidates trying to out-Trump Trump have not been doing so well with voters. Roy Moore in Alabama wanted to be the Bama Basher in the style of his hero in the White House. Rick Saccone liked to say "I was Trump before Trump was Trump" in his Pennsylvania race for the US House, but he lost badly to Conor Lamb.

They're often Trump's parrots (see below), and often decked out in that scarlet hat and claiming to be more like Twitterman than their Republican opponents. Ex-Massey Energy Co. boss Don Blankenship, once he got out of prison and decided he wanted to be US Senator from West Virginia, became a Twitter sensation himself, emulating his idol (who's endorsed not one but both of the Republicans running against Blankenship in the primary. There's no end to irony).

Todd Rokita (pictured above in his MAGA hat) is running as the trumpster who wants to represent Indiana in the US Senate. "Not to be outdone, one of Mr. Rokita’s opponents, Luke Messer, tarred Mr. Rokita as 'Lyin’ Todd,' an echo of Mr. Trump’s epithet for Senator Ted Cruz, 'Lyin’ Ted.' Mr. Messer’s gripe? Mr. Rokita falsely claimed to have received the president’s endorsement" (Jeremy W. Peters). Rokita got the endorsement not of Corporal Bonespurs but of the corporal's head Indiana campaign persons back in 2016.

The poker bluff of 2018: "I see your strut, and I raise you a fuss."

“We don’t need to investigate our president. We need to arrest Hillary,” thunders Don Blankenship in a campaign ad in West Virginia.

“I proudly stand with our president and Mike Pence to drain the swamp,” declares Rokita in his own TV spot in Indiana.

"Let’s get this ‘@#$% thing’ done,” Martha McSally, candidate for US Senate from Arizona, said at a campaign rally about The Wall, and was quoted in the press.

“Someone told me the other day that I was the first Trump, the Trump for Mississippi,” said Chris McDaniel, a candidate for Senate in Mississippi.

The obvious question: Is any of this strut and fuss playing well beyond his base? And what's his base, anyway? Maybe 35% of the voting public, which is only a fraction of the whole public which can and might actually vote.

Like Twitterman likes to say on all occasions, "We'll see what happens."

Kicking 'em While They're Down

Lunch ladies

Robert Costa writes this morning about the limits of Trumpism, even in the heart of his base among the shuttered steel mills and depressed economy of far southwest Pennsylvania.

Trump went all in for Rick Saccone (on the left in the photo) and even sent Junior to put on funny head-gear and try to seem like a regular guy.

Nothing worked. Not the Great Tax Giveaway of 2018. Not the Spectacular Tariff Bitch-Slap of 2018. Not even a Stupendous Public Rally in District 18.

The Doug Jones win in Alabama was not an anomaly. It was a sign of things to come.

Waiting for that next wave of Republican retirements.

Conor Lamb in the Home Stretch

According to Jonathan Martin, conservative groups have spent $10 million in the 18th Congressional District of Pennsylvania to defeat this man, Democrat Conor Lamb. They're totally freaked that Lamb could win the district in a special election on Tuesday. Trump carried the same district in 2016 by 20 points, and a Dimmycrap wasn't supposed to hunt here.

I've written about Lamb a couple of times before, here and here.

It's not just the crowd appeal of Conor Lamb, though he obviously has that. It's the "Trump effect" -- the growing wave of revulsion over the behavior of a buffoon. If Lamb wins on Tuesday, Joe Biden predicted a whole new wave of Republican retirements from Congress, as the reality of the Trump effect sinks in a little deeper.

You bet we'll be watching election returns Tuesday night.

Why Trump Is Going to Southwestern Pa Today

Take a good look at that map above, a rank example of partisan gerrymandering, the 18th US House District of Pennsylvania, which will be ground zero for electoral politics from now right on through March 13th, when a special election will decide who replaces Republican Rep. Tim Murphy in Congress. Murphy, as I'm sure you remember, resigned after it became known that he had urged his mistress to have an abortion.

The 18th District was gerrymandered in 2013 for a Republican, and up until now it's delivered. The map-drawers deliberately skirted around Pittsburgh, but they managed to include some very affluent suburbs south of Pittsburgh. Hmmm, suburbs.

Congressional Republicans are so worried about the district that they've got Trump going there today to campaign for the Republican, Rick Saccone. And Mike Pence will follow along on Ground Hog Day to campaign for Saccone. Will Pence see his shadow, or will he squeeze his eyes tightly shut in silent prayer? Everyone already knows it's going to be many more weeks of winter for the Party of Trump.

I wrote about the Democratic candidate, Conor Lamb, weeks ago. He's another of those rising stars, a candidate who "fits his district," an assistant US attorney, and an ex-Marine. (Have you noticed how many retired military are now running for office as Democrats?) Lamb has said that he would not support Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House, a position that used to be the kiss of death for party support and a position I happen to agree with. If anything is clear about the BlueWave of 2018, the Democratic party is in need of new, younger leadership.

What's funny is that "a group of well-financed outside Republican groups is planning to unleash a biting advertising campaign against Conor Lamb," claiming he'll be the stooge of Nancy Pelosi. Hahahaha! "We will explain why he is a Nancy Pelosi rubber stamp,” vowed Corry Bliss, who runs the Congressional Leadership Fund. Gosh. With political opponents as dense as that... (you finish the sentence.)

Rick Saccone
Photo Marc Levy, AP

Meanwhile, Republican candidate Rick Saccone looks like day-before-yesterday's politics. Even among Republicans, he's considered "lackluster." Which is why Washington politicians are rushing to prop him up and why Trump will be in the district today and Mike Pence on Ground Hog Day. Saccone is playing his part. He's bragged that "I was Trump before Trump was Trump," whatever the hell that means, but we assume it means he's a fool and an idiot. He was, after all, a public supporter of dearly departed Roy Moore in Alabama.

Saccone was picked in a nominating convention and on the second ballot, apparently because the Republicans in the room were drinking undiluted gall that day and Saccone was the most conservative candidate running. He's a state representative from Allegheny County.

The Next Special Election to Watch: Pennsylvania 18

The congressional seat in the 18th District of Pennsylvania has been vacant since Republican incumbent Tim Murphy was outed for ordering his mistress to have an abortion.

The special election to replace him is coming up on March 13, and it could be a doozy like the Alabama senate race was a doozy. Why? Because a Democratic insurgency might actually win.

The district is largely rural and economically distressed and was gerrymandered for a Republican. It's so Republican that in 2016 the Democrats didn't even field a candidate. They didn't field a candidate in 2014 either. In 2012 a Democrat got 36% of the vote against secret abortion-admirer Murphy.

Conor Lamb
Photo Jeff Swensen, WashPost

In a nominating convention back in November, the Democrats of the 18th CD picked Conor Lamb, a 33-year-old Marine veteran and assistant U.S. attorney, to run in the special election. The Republicans picked a conservative state representative, 59-year-old Rick Saccone, who has boasted that he “was Trump before Trump was Trump.”

Ooo, juicy! It's almost like a mirror image of the Alabama Doug Jones-Roy Moore contest.

According to the indispensable David Weigel, this special election will be "a test that neither party expected: a fight in the sort of rural, conservative district that national Democrats gave up on years ago. Local Democrats, who in 2016 watched their party hunt for votes in more liberal suburbs, want in on the 'resistance' ahead of 2018."

Weigel is also reporting that big Republican PAC money is beginning to pour in for Saccone, but Democrats will be mounting an energetic ground game, where they can win even against big bucks buying TV ads.