Nooo!! This is from FiveThirtyEight, about Wisconsin.
“…Since then, though, we have gotten four new polls that have averaged out to a 1-point Johnson lead. That suggests the race could be shifting in Johnson’s favor, especially since one of the more recent polls came from a pollster — Marquette — that had previously given Barnes a healthy lead. In this case, Marquette found that Johnson had gained 4 points — and Barnes had dropped 4 points — in the span of a month.
That shift could be because Republicans have blanketed television airwaves with attack ads since Barnes won the Democratic primary on Aug. 9. The ads have focused primarily on crime, which according to Marquette is the second-most concerning issue to Wisconsin voters. The ads, which highlight Barnes’s support for ending cash bail and tie him to the “defund the police” movement, have also been criticized for being racist dog whistles.”
Well, to paraphrase one-time Senator Roman Hruska (famous for defending a “mediocre” Supreme Court nominee), why shouldn’t Georgia have a dumbass Senator? There are plenty of dumbass Georgians* who need representation, right?
*the sizable dumbass contingent in Ohio and Pennsylvania also need a fellow dumbass to look out for them. And there’s a made-to-order campaign song.
And remember that the only thing that pisses off the current MAGA base more than Democrats is RINOs. They would much prefer a dumbass Senator that will just do whatever Trump tells him to do than one that actually thinks for himself.
“I’m an idiot football player that will vote with Trump, not a know-it-all Reverend that thinks he’s smarter than you” is actually a very good pitch these days…
The very fact that Walker and Oz are in neck and neck races is so disheartening that is makes me question our form democracy. In the end, we may all reap what the minority sows.
People who pay little attention to politics before October 1st every election year.
I’ll betcha Bolduc focus-grouped and poll-tested some messages for a mix of Republican voters and unattached, unaware and unaffiliated regular voters, and the math works out that he has a better chance to win with a radical change in message.
There seems to be a slight rightward across all senate races in the last week or two. I hope it’s noise or transitory if it’s happening for some reason.
47 days to go.
FWIW, I personally had my hopes set on a small senate gain a bit ago. Now I’m just hoping to hold.
The way I look at it, Democrats have done what they need to do to be competitive. This was always going to be an election very heavily stacked against them, given the historical “midterm curse,” inflation and the aftershocks of COVID. But they’ve nominated quality candidates, they have their fundraising in order, and they’ve got some potent lines of attack around abortion and the Republican threat to democracy.
But there’s no consolation prize in politics, so it doesn’t really matter if they do better than expected but still lose. These last few weeks Democratic campaigns need to go into overdrive on their in-person voter outreach and GOTV efforts (something they notably pulled back on in 2020 due to COVID). It’s gonna be a nailbiter.
The Senate race seems to be tightening in Nevada — dead even, if you average recent polls, whereas the Democrat Cortez Masto had led by a few points over the Republican Laxalt in most previous polls (since early August).
I will say that Nevada is a very tough state to poll, transient with a lot of shift workers and a sparse population outside of the two metro areas.
But it’s also a state that should be a red state based on demographics. The Reid machine and service employee unions help keep it purple.
As of now, I’m not going to blame the DSA takeover of the state Democratic Party. They did some stupid shit early on, but have been invisible lately to my knowledge.
She also keeps sending me fundraising letters, despite my repeatedly using her postage-paid envelopes asking her to stop. Doesn’t fill me with too much confidence as to how well she’d run her Senate office.
North Carolina is also only a few state legislative races away from a Republican supermajority in the General Assembly, which would let them override Roy Cooper’s veto and pass whatever voter suppression and election audit bullshit they want to in advance of the 2024 election. They’re in good position to do so after the last redistricting.
Jesus F Christ, Twitter has been a damn madhouse tonight, what with Herschel’s son, Christian, completely and utterly losing his shit while attacking his father for the betrayal and his lies. He claims that Herschel is abusive, threatened family, and forced them to move 6 times in 6 months as they were “running from (Herschel’s) violence”.
Went ahead and screenshotted these in case he sobers up at 5am and deletes them:
Jack Probescik tried to mediate and got slapped down:
The revelations in Christian’s tweets are new and unreported on. It’s guaranteed that journalists are sending emails and making lists of 8am calls as I type this, so I expect more details will be forthcoming:
In addition, it was reported that Doctor Oz is personally responsible for the deaths of 296 dogs.
It’s literally hard to imagine that the Senate candidate who killed hundreds of dogs isn’t having the worst evening of this group, but Herschel’s son managed to pull it off.
Research? Oz is not in my good graces to say the least. But while I oppose unnecessary vivisection, I am not reflexively anti-vivisection. Animal experimentation should hopefully be declining in use, but it had its place at one time. Barring particularly heinous details, i.e. he violated protocols in any number of ways that increased suffering unnecessarily, I’m not inclined to jump down his throat for that.
There are plenty of other reasons for why he sucks.
