Brownback probably wishes he’d never left the Senate, where one can be a cretin and remain popular, since no one has to live with the direct, attributable consequence of your stupidity.
OK, so. Washington State. If we’re gonna call that fascinating, we gotta talk about why.
First, you need to know that while the coastal areas of Washington are where most people live (Hello, Seattle) that tend to vote left and Democrat, there are folks who live in the central and sparsely populated east, and those areas tend to be reliably conservative.
Also to note: Washington does a top two primary system, like California. Everyone’s in the same primary, top two finishers are on the November ballot.
In the 3rd district, Cook has it currently as “Likely Republican”. Jaime Beutler Herrera is the 5-term Republican incumbent. She won the primary with 41%. A Democrat, Carolyn Long, got 37% of the vote. That’s not so Likely Republican anymore. And…across all Democrats, they totalled over 50% of the vote in the district. Look for Cook to re-class this race, perhaps as soon as today.
In the 7th, Cathy McMorris Rodgers is the longest-serving woman in the GOP leadership. It’s a district with a PVI of about +6 Republican, and rated as “Leans Republican” by Cook. Rodgers won there last night by 3 points. This race may soon flip to slight lean or tossup.
Finally, Republican Dave Reichert is retiring, and that opens the seat in the 8th. Cook has this as a toss-up. A Democrat and Republican both emerged as the top two. Dino Rossi got 43% of the vote. More mainstream Democrat, Dr. Kim Schrier, leads further left Democrat Jason Rittereiser by about 1,300 votes, with them still counting. Still, if you aggregate those two with third-place Democrat Shannon Hader’s 12% of the vote, it looks like the three Dems totaled about 48-50% of the vote in the district.
Timex
4071
Nope. It’s bad news, because Trump has shown us that people will vote for the most terrible option out of pure partisanship.
Yes, that never happened before Trump.
It’s not great news either way. Colyer was basically Brownback’s hand-chosen successor, and even though he’d backed off from his disastrous fiscal policies, it was only because of court mandates and a shakeup of the Kansas legislature.
Of course, Kobach is worse in other ways. He’s Mr. Sky-is-falling-illegals-are-voting-everywhere guy.
Timex
4074
That just further reinforces the point. I merely used Trump as the most recent, most terrible example of people cheering a terrible person winning a primary, only to have him then actually win.
Ah yes. Timex’s Famous Dancing Goalposts. We’ve missed them.
KevinC
4076
The goalposts didn’t move. His point is and was that it’s bad news when a cretin wins, because people will vote for them out of partisanship (see Trump). It’s not good news and shouldn’t be cheered (see Trump).
Oh, I’m done with the devil’s bargain of cheering on destructive candidates just because they make for better opponents. In most cases.
In this case, though, I’m not sure there’s a ton of space between what Kobach and Colyer were. As Rock8man points out, the latter, more-electable Colyer is something of a Brownback protege. Perhaps more electable in the general…but kind of not that fundamentally different from Kobach on pretty much everything.
And I guess I’d feel a bit differently if this wasn’t Kansas. Kansans have had a unique facility for shooting themselves in the foot collectively as a state when choosing governors and state legislators. I’m not sure what’s left there for Kobach to fuck up more completely than is already fucked…though as I type that, I realize that he’s likely the dead Obi-wan of fucking things up, and will be able to fuck up things far more powerfully than I can possibly imagine.
orald
4079
Here in Maine we refer to the Green Party as Getting Republicans Elected Every November. Or August in this case.
I think that it is both possible to overstate and understate the whole “blue wave” thing. I think it’ll be uneven across the country, mostly because it’s such weird circumstances.
Still:
JonRowe
4081
I voted for Nader in 2004. Wi was a safe Kerry state anyway, and I really like Ralph Nader.
Some of the Green Party candidates now are just insane. What happened?
Like, seriously, who would have voted for Jill Stein?
Timex
4082
Ya, I agree with this. They’re both terrible.
The only difference is that Kobach is the more “known terrible quantity” than Colyer, at least to me, since I know little about Colyer.
What are: “Questions Robert Mueller is asking right now?”
This is fascinating, thanks. Yeah maybe an uneven wave is a good way of putting it.
Largely disaffected and/or low-information liberals. Oh, and Russians.
I forgive them, its not like they voted for Trump. They had no idea he could win, who did? I can imagine not paying much attention to her campaign but just being a Green voter. No shame in that. I just hope they ARE paying attention this year.
I mean, I originally gave the notion of Jill Stein being assisted (perhaps not knowingly, or at least not super knowingly in a “Man, these Russian people are being REALLY NICE to me. I wonder why? Oh well, best not to look a gift horse in the mouth!” kind of way) by Russian interests to…thinking “Yep, that’s plausible”.
I mean we know they were infiltrating the NRA. We know they’ve infiltrated white evangelist communities. Infiltrating fringe-ish left communities makes sense too.
