The Mandela effect must have hit me particularly hard in my recollection of how that race went down.
That is absolutely amazing. In 1955 my family moved from Philly to Delco. In those days the political power in a county government was a 3 man (okay, person, but they were all men) commission and each party was allowed to put up only two candidates. This guaranteed a minority voice on the commission, right? Not exactly. The Republican majority in Delco was so large that they could afford to have 15,000 Republicans register as Democrats and get to vote in Democratic primary for a DINO who was really a Republican and so there were never any real Dems on it. So now Delco is entirely Democrat and I think that’s amazing.
I just googled it and discovered that the county chose this form of a 5 person council, the first county in PA to do so.
Even more to that point … I went to see how 2015 went down, hoping to see that at least the Ds had lost those races by smaller margins this time. Oops. Ds had won KY AG and SoS in 2015. Treasurer they lost by fewer … so on. I’m having to conclude that this was more about a confluence of Bevin’s unpopularity and Beshear’s strength there. Yeah McConnell is similarly unpopular but is his competition as known and liked as Beshear is?
I have a question about what the Dems in VA will do after the census. Will they simply gerrymander the state to their own advantage, saying turnabout is fair play? What I hope they do is get together with the other party and amend the state constitution to ban the gerrymander. Although it sounds hard, PA apparently has something in its constitution that the state courts decided outlaws gerrymandering and the court actually had to redistrict since the Rep-controlled legislature was unable to do so.
And this reminds the rest of us why Whataboutism is the last refuge of those who cannot make a substantive contribution.
They can’t just decide to do it; the Sec of State is a Democrat, and a tie-breaker, and has already suggested Bevin should concede.
A reminder of why “little” elections like Sec of State actually do matter.
Apparently the Philadelphia city council has a seat reserved for a minority party. That minority party has been the Republicans for 70 years. In yesterday’s election, the seat went to the Working Families Party.
A follow up…
I may be wrong (not familiar with KY law) but apparently Bevin believes he can kick it to the legislature if he can establish voter fraud or some cause. I think it still typically goes to the Sec of State, but what happens of the legislature refuses to accept certification, I don’t know.
Hamilton was clearly a Never Trumper, and probably never was able to pork Cheryl Tiegs. Sad. People are saying that he was not that great.
Should the result hold up, the impact of Bashear getting elected may be fairly limited. The legislature is still held by Republicans, and I read that the Governor’s veto can be overturned by a simply majority of legislators. I assume that the Kentucky legislature will follow the example of North Carolina when Roy Cooper was elected Governor and strip his office of as much power as they can.
With compromise the new order of the day, perhaps they’ll strip him of just 90% as much power as they can.
I don’t feel so. Trump’s base may be loud but I don’t feel they control the nuts and bolts of the party organization. Let’s face it; most of them aren’t smart enough to run a complex organization like a national party.
The people who are running the day-to-day operations of the Republican Party aren’t married to Trump. They’re in it for the long run; they’ve been around for thirty years and plan on being around for decades into the future. As far as Trump’s people are concerned, the world ends in 2024.
Yes, they’re working with Trump now. He’s a Republican and he won the election. But they’d be happier working with somebody like Pence or Romney or McConnell or Ryan; one of their own.
So when some mainstream conservative Republican faces a primary challenge from some fire-breathing Trumphead and the GOP leaders think the Trumphead will lose the general election to the Democrat, they’ll quietly step in. The Trumphead will be out on the streets screaming about how people need to keep their faith in Beloved Leader. But then suddenly he’ll notice he isn’t on the primary ballot and the mainstream conservative is running unopposed. And the Republican leadership will say “Oh, gee, did nobody remind you that you needed to have your special eligibility request documentation Form-R1098 submitted ninety business days before the primary? I guess we forgot to mention that and you weren’t aware of the proper procedure. That’s too bad.”
I hope that you are more right than I am. My fear is that those currently in the Donald Cult are in it for the long run. Long after he has left the stage, they are going to look for the candidate in the primary who exhibits the most white nationalism and the most contempt for the poor. Suppose that a post-presidential Donald decides that he is going to be the kingmaker. He’d still hold his massive rallies of the faithful, instructing them who to support. Even after death, his sons would pick up the torch and continue his mission- not because they believe in it, but because the rubes are easy marks for buying merchandise. The Wall Street Republicans may not like it, but their party may have been permanently taken over by the white nationalists.
You know what Republicans should do? They should propose an election system where citizens get to rank their choices while voting.
Yes. There are probably better systems available to us – and they’re almost all better than first past the post – but RCV is a good first step.
Approval voting, for example, would be a sensible way for a major political party to apply to its primary systems. Now, there are lots of obstacles to doing that, most notably that states control their own processes, but we’ll never do anything smart if we don’t start trying to at some point.
In a way, I kinda wouldn’t mind seeing the KY legislature steal the election from the Dems. It would be wildly unpopular and put all kinds of attention on the Republican party, which is really what needs to happen instead of fixating outrage on individuals. It’s the entire party that’s rotten to the core. Pulling that kind of stunt is only going to harden the resolve of Dems to bring more people out to the polls next time.
Help me out, please - how, hypothetically, could the KY Legislature overturn the election results? 
From the link above:
Until we get cocky or overconfident.
I can see Texas and Georgia flipping
And THAT is how you lose a thin majority in the Virginia Senate. We won some of those seats by pretty slim margins.
If you want to advance a progressive agenda, wait until after the redistricting passes muster.