Not yet, they haven’t. If the Democrats decided (as they apparently did) that the best chance to oust the Republican was to back an independent, that doesn’t stop there from being a Democratic primary; it just prevents the primary from being meaningful.
I’m curious, if you don’t mind. Did the ticket procurement put $$ in the candidate’s pocket?
If not, I truly respect your empty seat scheme!
Not from me! Free from the website.
But if someone wants to give me cash for said tickets, i will happily accept.
Respect. Great protest!
These things are massively overbooked. I would not be surprised if three tickets are booked for every one who enters. They just set up big screen TV’s and have the Secret Service tell the overflow crowd that they cannot get in because of security, and the crowd either goes home or watches DJT in a parking lot.
ISTM there’s been a shitload of empty seats at recent Trump rallies. It will be interesting to see where this event will be held, and how many butts will be in the seats.
My butt will be elsewhere.
There was a Democratic primary election, yes? And “the Democrats” have not made any such decision. Several individual Democrats have endorsed Bodnar, true.
But the actual Montana Democratic Party has endorsed Bankhead. Not to mention a bunch of others-
Making matters worse is the fact that the damaging revelations aren’t done. The Wall Street Journal reported on “a previously unreported New Year’s Eve 2024 celebration where Paxton partied in Dubai with two fugitives from U.S. justice and a woman who wasn’t his wife.” From the article:… > As fireworks exploded over the Burj Khalifa skyscraper to welcome 2025, Paxton and his girlfriend Tracy Duhon watched from a luxury high-rise balcony full of people, according to a video of the gathering viewed by The Wall Street Journal, details of which were contained in court filings and confirmed by people familiar with the matter.
Among those at the event with Texas’ top law-enforcement official were two Americans who had been indicted months before on federal healthcare-fraud charges but failed to return to the U.S., Anosh Ahmed and Sameer Suhail, according to the court records and people familiar with the matter.
The Journal’s report, which has not been independently verified by MS NOW, added that Ahmed, one of the fugitives, donated $190,000 to Paxton, “including $25,000 days after he was indicted.”
Man, we knew Paxton was a crook and a sleazeball, but things are getting worse.
And yet Talarico is seeing his numbers fall as Paxton gains ground.
Sorry, but I’ve heard for too long “This is the year TX will go Blue!” to buy it will happen this year.
The GOP and Musk are pouring money into the state. Paxton will be in the Senate come January.
The internal polling of Marshall vs. Hamilton must suck for the GOP. I’m in Kansas City, MO and getting buried in “two-faced Adam Hamilton” ads on YouTube. Finally seeing a few from Hamilton on Marshall’s penchant for suing his patients.
And, late breaking, last night I had one of Rand Paul endorsing Hamilton. I guess he’s popular with some subset of the GOP, but I can’t imagine that netting more than 3 votes or so.
Really? I haven’t seen anything from Rand Paul in the Kansas Senate race. That endorsement would be unusual, but, like you, I don’t think it would move the needle at all.
I would be crushed if Paxton wins, yet at the same time I would not be particularly surprised. We’ve gotten our hopes up too many times before in Texas only to have them dashed in the end.
I don’t buy it that Paxton is making any substantive headway. A couple points is messy MOE and LV screen stuff that could just as easily be noise as anything else.
We saw huge moves favoring Republicans in 2022 with Masters, Oz, and Walker ahead in the final polls. We also saw Martha McSally and Dean Heller pull ahead in the polls on 2018. Just last year Mickie Sherrill was “just 3 points” ahead on election eve.
Paxton winning will just be as one with the USA’s current depressing political state. He’s a truly awful candidate and Talarico is a good one, which is the only reason this is even remotely close. But I will be pleasantly surprised (though not shocked) if Talarico wins - I’ve never expected he will and still don’t. Being a pessimist cushions an awful lot of disappointment, even if it doesn’t necessarily eliminate it.
I’ll go a step further and say I’m still not bullish on the Democrats taking the Senate overall. They’re making an impressively strong run at it, but there are far too many races that are close enough that a strong blue wave in the Senate seems an overly rosy prediction. When you have ~7 seats that are tossups the possibility that the Democrats lose ALL of those is not zero. Hope not, but it could happen.
The states aren’t independent of each other with regards to political winds. If there’s a giant wave, historically it will impact all races to varying degrees.
But that’s a big if. It’s possible that there’s some systematic flaw in the polling, and there isn’t a giant blue wave. That’s the flip side of the states being correlated: The correlation could mean they all go our way, but it could also mean they all go the other way.
Historically is the operative word there.
Every election since ~2008 we’ve been charting new waters in terms of having two separate polities who experience two separate versions of the world. A wave in one no longer implies a corresponding trough in the other. It’s two tanks sloshing mostly independently of one another.
And that is especially true of the races other than President where each state (or district) is its own dog. I could easily see reps from red or blue districts winning by historically large margins. So both claiming strong mandates for their side. With little or no net effect on the total balance in Congress.
So one - that varying degree can make a significant difference. A rising tide can still be very choppy waters.
And yeah. A systematic flaw in either direction of up to 3 points is fairly common, and have more commonly been errors underestimating GOP performance than the other way around.
Optimism is justifiable but I’m not sure every egg is for sure going hatch.
This is true with regard to cultural issues, and to some extent for economic issues that primarily affect other people (e.g., most people are not job-searching at any given time, so their perceptions of the job market can vary depending on what news they’re watching). It doesn’t work so well for gas prices and other cost-of-living stuff. Sometimes cold hard reality cuts through.
I think one of the big things about this midterm is there are a lot of indicators outside head to head polling. Republicans operatives are inconsolable, voters are apathetic or furious. Primary turnout is very very democratic. Economic indicators are bad. Trump’s approval is abysmal and falling (he’s under water by double digits in Oklahoma!). GCB is ever widening.
In 2018 when Dems had a +9 election the economy was strong, red states worshipped Trump, and the Kavanaugh hearings had activated a previously listless conservative electorate (that still had much stronger primary turnout than in 2026). This year they couldn’t even be assed to follow through with the semiannual “migrant caravan” canard.
I think what we may not be asking enough is, what if Dems are being under estimated by polling.