2022 Congressional & State Elections

[LFC]

Colorado's Republican gubernatorial candidate, who refused to answer if she accepted the outcome of the 2020 election and whine that this was a "divisive question", picks a full blown utter nutter as her running mate.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl announced Monday that she selected former head of Colorado’s Independent Congressional Redistricting Commission Danny Moore as her running mate. Moore was removed from his leading role in the commission over social media posts he made spreading the false claim that widespread voter fraud cost former President Donald Trump a second term.

“Danny is a wonderful addition to our winning team. We share a common vision to lower Colorado’s soaring cost of living, gas prices, crime rates, and a commitment to making our children the priority,” Ganahl said in a statement. “Together we will undo Jared Polis’ far-left policies that continue to make it impossible for hard-working Coloradans to make ends meet. We will unite Colorado behind a vision of prosperity.”

They can't run on anything that doesn't embrace or at least avoid talking about the party's full blown fascist platform anymore.

[LFC]

Republicans may run a white, Christian, racist, fascist to be Maryland attorney general because, you know, that's exactly the kind of person you can trust to follow the law. Note the part about how he used to be fringe. Today? He fits right into the Republican mainstream.

Even though Maryland is a deep blue state, it does have a history of electing more moderate Republicans such as Gov. Larry Hogan.

However, Vice News reports that a prospective GOP nominee for Maryland attorney general does not fit anything close to the Hogan mold.

Specifically, the publication notes that Maryland AG hopeful Michael Peroutka is a former board member of the neo-Confederate League of the South who says he's "still angry" that Maryland was not able to secede during the American Civil War.

Additionally, Peroutka believes that LGBTQ marriage and abortion should be outlawed for going against "God's law," and he has also criticized the entire concept of public education as a communist plot whose goal is to "transform America away from a Christian worldview."

As if that weren't enough, Peroutka has also vowed to investigate Hogan's efforts to limit the spread of COVID-19 over the last two years by implementing mask mandates.

“What happened was so notorious, it was so blatant, so obvious,” he said this past March at an anti-mask rally. “A constitutional God-fearing attorney general of Maryland can do something about that. He can empanel grand juries, he can bring prosecutions against the people who violated your rights.”

Peroutka was once a fringe figure in right-wing politics, but establishment Republicans in Maryland fear that the GOP base has grown so radicalized that it could nominate him for attorney general.

[LFC]

The GOP, where telling the truth gets you primaried and ousted.

It’s Gonna Take A Miracle

Arizona state House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) told NBC News that “it’s going to be a miracle” if he manages to get reelected in his state’s primary after testifying in one of the House Jan. 6 Committee’s public hearings last month.

[pnwguy]

Jul 19, 2022 14:41:48 GMT LFC said:

The GOP, where telling the truth gets you primaried and ousted.

It’s Gonna Take A Miracle

Arizona state House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) told NBC News that “it’s going to be a miracle” if he manages to get reelected in his state’s primary after testifying in one of the House Jan. 6 Committee’s public hearings last month.

[LFC]

Jul 18, 2022 21:54:38 GMT LFC said:

Republicans may run a white, Christian, racist, fascist to be Maryland attorney general because, you know, that's exactly the kind of person you can trust to follow the law. Note the part about how he used to be fringe. Today? He fits right into the Republican mainstream.

Yep, Maryland Republicans chose a literal Confederate to be their candidate for AG.

Confederate Maryland AG Hopeful Wins GOP Primary

Michael Peroutka, the pro-secessionist who once proudly called himself a “true Confederate,” is projected to win the Republican primary for Maryland attorney general against GOP establishment-backed rival Jim Shalleck.

[LFC]

Republicans are more dependent on big money donations this cycle and Democrats are doing very well at the grass roots level.

Democrats across the 10 most competitive Senate races are out-raising Republicans by more than $75 million among small-dollar donors — those giving less than $200 — according to an Axios analysis of Federal Election Commission records.

The big picture: Inflation, Trump-induced donor fatigue and other factors are impacting the GOP grassroots, prompting Republican candidates to rely more heavily on high-dollar donors.

But Trump continues to profit from his grift.

ne Republican seeing huge small-dollar fundraising success is Donald Trump, whose political operation has hoovered up more than $60 million from under-$200 donors this cycle.

• But Trump isn't a 2022 candidate, and he's steered just a tiny portion of his war chest to GOP midterm hopefuls.

[LFC]

TPM readers comment on what's happening in one Arizona primary. Republicans continue to go down the addict route where regular crazy just doesn't produce the high that the base wants. The more insane the candidates get the more wary and fearful independents and even some segment of Republicans become. Sure, it's no problem in deep, deep red districts and states but it will be "interesting" (with all its associated sub-meanings) to see what November brings.

I got this fascinating report from TPM Reader EK about the situation in Arizona’s 2nd district …

I wanted to share a closer look at one House race to get some insight into where Nate may be off.

FiveThirtyEight shows Walt Blackman with an 84% chance of winning over [Democratic] incumbent Tom O’Halleran in Arizona’s new 2nd Congressional District.

First, the Republican primary is in disarray. Blackman has proposed murder charges for women who get abortions. Trump came to Arizona to endorse Ed Crane, who has very few ties to Arizona. Trump was actually booed by the audience because they want Ron Watkins, who had a key role in forming Q Anon.

Attached is a flyer Crane supporters mailed to Republicans attacking Blackman for the Aug. 2 primary.
Blackman had only $197,000 to fight back at last report, and most people have already voted a week before the primary. By the way, Watson had $257,000 on hand and Crane had $217,000 at last report.

O’Halleran is sitting on $2 million, can count on more than 90% support from the many Native Americans in the district, has excellent name recognition and a record of solid achievement for his constituents.

I think the predictions of a GOP landslide are a bit too simplistic.

Follow up email in reply to my questions about Blackman …

Blackman is a candidate who has been elected to the state Legislature as an ultra-Trump crazy. Which by Arizona standards is pretty much the GOP establishment.

A chink in his armor as a fiscal conservative is that he has had five cars repossessed.

I think we are at the point where most or all of the Trumpers are in on the con, but willing to use it to gain fame and fortune. The better-known or better-financed crazies are trying to elbow out the home-grown crazies, arguing they are not nearly crazy enough.

Meanwhile, they are losing a majority of the Independents and even a big chunk of the Republicans. It will be an interesting midterm, especially if we are successful in convincing voters that Roe is on the ballot.

Let’s not focus too deeply about election outcome predictions. Who knows who wins in November. But it’s quite the race and I think some taste of the fluidity of many of these races down at the House level.

[LFC]

Imagine the shrillness of the GOP if Oz was running as a Democrat.

Oz Has Secret Condo In NJ–And It Gets Weirder Than That

The Daily Beast discovered that in addition to his lavish mansion in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, GOP “Pennsylvania” Senate nominee Dr. Mehmet Oz has another property in New Jersey that he hasn’t disclosed: A condo less than 10 minutes away from the mansion.

That on its own is probably not going to help Oz as he tries to convince Pennsylvanians that he definitely isn’t a Jersey carpetbagger who knows he isn’t likely to win a Senate race in his blue home state and is therefore using his in-laws’ address to run in a state where he thinks he’s got a better shot. But then there’s the fact that…

• The people who live in his condo are Turkish nationalists with ties to Armenian genocide denialists, the Daily Beast found. And Oz himself won’t call it “the Armenian genocide.”

[LFC]

Republicans wanted a culture war and now they have one, but not necessarily one that provides a winning hand. With the current state of the economy they might expect to be leading all of the polls by big margins. 

New congressional generic ballot poll: Suffolk, D-44%, R-40%. Meanwhile, the 538 average of these polls is now R+.02.

I looked at the 538 graph and this is the closest it's been November 16, 2021. The Suffolk piece says:

By 47%-42%, voters say they want to elect a Congress that mostly stands up to President Joe Biden rather than one that mostly cooperates with him.

That may be accurate but I think there may be a mixing of views, depending on how the question was asked. Remember how they reported on approval for Obamacare? Straight up approval / disapproval. When you dug in a little a fair chunk of the disapproval was that it didn't go far enough. Biden is very center-left and I think part of that 47% may be very progressive.

[LFC]

Christian nationalist, fascist, all around nutjob, PA gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano finally figured out that being allied with the anti-Semitic founder of Gab didn't play well. Still, he couldn't help but be a bit of an apologist and immediately turn to a pathetic "yeah, but..." moment.

After coming under intense criticism for allying himself with the anti-Semitic founder of the social media platform Gab, and paying Gab $5,000 for “campaign consulting,” Pennsylvania’s far-right gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano tried to distance himself from the site on Thursday.

The Mastriano campaign’s Gab account appeared to have been removed on Thursday. And in a statement, Mastriano said site founder Andrew Torba “doesn’t speak for me” before saying Democrats and the media were using the story as a distraction.

“Andrew Torba doesn’t speak for me or my campaign. I reject anti-Semitism in any form. Recent smears by the Democrats and the the media are blatant attempts to distract Pennsylvanians from suffering inflicted by Democrat policies,” Mastriano wrote.

Then, an odd aside.

“While extremist speech is an unfortunate but inevitable cost of living in a free society, extremist policies are not,” Mastriano said, before attacking his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Josh Shapiro.

The statement didn’t really address some core elements of the story. His campaign paid Gab $5,000 for “campaign consulting” earlier this year, in what HuffPost reported appeared to be an agreement that every new user on the platform would automatically follow the campaign’s account.

For his part, Torba denied in a Gab post Thursday that he was a Mastriano campaign consultant, but confirmed, “The campaign paid Gab as a business for advertising during the primary.”

[LFC]

The actual Confederate running for state AG in Maryland is also a 9/11 truther. I'm shocked, shocked I say.

Confederate Maryland AG Nominee Is A 9/11 Truther

Michael Peroutka, the GOP’s proudly Confederate nominee for Maryland attorney general who believes public education is “the 10th plank in the Communist Manifesto,” argued during a radio show he co-hosted in 2006 that the Sept. 11 attacks were an “inside job” and dear God, the fact that he’s a 9/11 truther almost isn’t a surprise.

• Peroutka suggested that an “elite bureaucrat” had triggered “preset charges” that were installed inside the buildings as explosives, according to audio discovered by CNN.

• Peroutka’s campaign reportedly didn’t address the 9/11 trutherism when CNN asked about it, saying only that the “primary election results demonstrate that Maryland Republicans are dissatisfied with their current leadership.” Cool!

• It might make you feel better to know that Maryland hasn’t had a GOP attorney general since 1952.

[LFC]

Fetterman gets yet another dig into Oz.

Not even a stroke can keep a good troll from doing his thing. John Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor and the Democratic nominee for the state’s open Senate seat, announced Thursday that he would be launching a petition to induct his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, into the New Jersey Hall of Fame. “We all know that Dr. Oz is so proud of being Jersey Strong,” Fetterman said in a video posted to Twitter. “He’s a huge New Jersey celebrity who’s lived there for three decades. Clearly he loves his home state.” It’s the latest in a long line of out-of-state jabs Fetterman has taken at Oz, who only bought a home in Pennsylvania this year. The former celebrity doctor has struggled to keep up with the onslaught of trolling, most recently launching a “John Fetterman Basement Counter” to point out his opponent’s lack of public appearances. Fetterman, who is slowly returning to the campaign trail after spending two months recovering from his stroke, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Wednesday that he was “feeling really good.”

Two things about this little piece.

1) Fetterman's social media attacks might seem trivial in the grand scheme of things but the point is to paint Oz as not being a serious person, something I think it's doing very well. It helps that Oz isn't, in fact, a serious person. If it keeps even a small percentage of voters for pulling the Oz lever out of disgust, even if they're voting for other Republicans, then it's successful.

2) Oz, a medical doctor, is mocking Fetterman's recovery from a stroke. Let that sink in. Fetterman should run with this as well. What real doctor would mock somebody's recovery just because they're running against them? At every turn Oz has proven himself to be current model of a Republican politician. This fits right in there.

[pnwguy]

Aug 1, 2022 19:34:08 GMT LFC said:

Fetterman gets yet another dig into Oz.

Not even a stroke can keep a good troll from doing his thing. John Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor and the Democratic nominee for the state’s open Senate seat, announced Thursday that he would be launching a petition to induct his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, into the New Jersey Hall of Fame. “We all know that Dr. Oz is so proud of being Jersey Strong,” Fetterman said in a video posted to Twitter. “He’s a huge New Jersey celebrity who’s lived there for three decades. Clearly he loves his home state.”

I heard a clever suggestion on a recent podcast, to get Bruce Springsteen to make some commercials about how proud New Jersey is of their citizen celebrity, who represents Jersey values. 

[LFC]

TPM reports on some of utter nutters the GOP will be putting up for election this November.

In AZ they selected a conspiracy theorist liar who gave a shout out to the Great Replacement Theory and is a Peter Thiel acolyte to run for Senate. Oh, yeah. And he wants to privatize Social Security.

Blake Masters won the GOP Senate primary Tuesday in Arizona, and is set to face off against incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ).

Masters beat out businessman Jim Lamon and Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R).

Masters ran a sometimes menacing campaign that leaned hard into conspiracy theories. He made an explicit endorsement of the Great Replacement theory part of his regular campaign fare, while staking out a position in favor of reducing legal immigration.

The former chief operating officer of billionaire investor Peter Thiel’s hedge fund, Masters has been involved with Thiel on more than just the business side. The two are ideologically sympatico, with Masters fusing Thiel’s signature combination of pro-big business libertarianism and America-only nationalism into the core of his campaign.

AZ Republicans also nominated a conspiracy theorist liar to oversee elections.

Republican voters on Tuesday picked a conspiracy theorizing Arizona state representative to become their nominee to oversee the state’s elections.

Mark Finchem (R) is one of the country’s most prominent Big Lie activists. He will now likely run against Adrian Fontes (D), the former Maricopa County recorder.

Finchem, a Trump endorsee and member of the Oath Keepers, is part of a wave of 2022 Republican candidates who’ve carried on the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, and who’ve promised to make sure things turn out differently next time around.

Finchem has spent most of his campaign saying, in many different ways, that he wished he could have helped Trump steal a second term, and that he’d be willing to do so in the future.

Michigan Republicans nominated a Big Lie supporter to run for governor.

Pundit Tudor Dixon has won the Republican nomination to challenge Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D) this fall, capping a chaotic Republican primary season in the state.

Dixon has said the 2020 election was “stolen,” and made headlines last month when she said a hypothetical 14-year-old girl who was raped by her uncle presented a “perfect example” of someone who should be barred from pursuing an abortion.

Dixon had 41 percent of the vote when the Associated Press called the race, with an expected 20 percent of the vote counted.

A former host on the right-wing program America’s Voice Live, Dixon had the serious financial backing of Michigan’s top political bankrollers, the DeVos family, and endorsements began rolling in shortly after a signature fraud imbroglio swept much of the Republican field aside in May. Trump announced his endorsement of Dixon on Friday.

She has also prioritized re-writing the Michigan constitution to allow parents to spend public funds to send their children to private schools.

Missouri at least rejected violent grifter Eric Greitens. The candidate they're putting up for the U.S. Senate is still a piece of work who fought Biden's COVID restrictions but he sounds like he's at least somewhat sane. That's practically being a RINO anymore.

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt easily triumphed over the state’s disgraced former governor, Eric Greitens, and a collection of other challengers Wednesday, winning the Republican Party’s nomination for U.S. senator and closing another dark chapter in Greitens’ political career.

Trump had made a trolling non-endorsement in the race, announcing his support Monday for “Eric” without making clear whether he meant Greitens or Schmitt.

When the Associated Press called the race just after 10 p.m. ET, Schmitt led the field with 45 percent of the vote. Greitens, in third, had 19 percent; second-place finisher Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) had 23 percent. An estimated 41 percent of votes had been tallied.

Also among the two Erics’ 19 opponents for the Senate nomination was the lawyer Mark McCloskey, who infamously menaced Black Lives Matter protesters with a rifle.

Schmitt served as Missouri’s treasurer before becoming state attorney general. In the past year, Schmitt has waged a series of lawsuits against the Biden administration over issues ranging from COVID vaccine mandates to LGBTQ school guidance.

[LFC]

Kari Lake may end up as the AZ GOP's candidate for governor (slightly ahead). She's another Big Lie advocate who wants to ban electronic voting machines.

Kristina Karamo was pretty much selected to be secretary of state back in April but now it's official. She also pushes The Big Lie and has a Satan fetish.

Republicans’ newest statewide nominee isn’t just obsessed with the Big Lie and aligned with QAnon. She also thinks some of pop culture’s biggest stars are actually being used by Satan to destroy America.

Michigan Republicans nominated QAnon-linked Kristina Karamo as their candidate for secretary of state over the weekend. Not long ago, Karamo claimed Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Cardi B, Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, and even yoga are tools of Lucifer.

The comments were made on her podcast in August and September of 2020 and uncovered by the liberal watchdog Media Matters. They come from the woman whom the GOP has nominated to run Michigan’s election system for the 2024 presidential election.

Karamo, a professional Christian apologist and part-time community college professor, won former President Trump’s endorsement for loudly claiming she’d witnessed election fraud in the 2020 election. The GOP followed suit by endorsing her on Saturday.

Here’s a rundown of her Satanic verses.

Read it to believe it.

[LFC]

Kansas Kris Kobach is the pick to be the Republican candidate for state attorney general. Remember that in addition to being a serial liar about voter fraud he also proved himself so inept in court that he was forced by the judge to take remedial legal courses.

Anti-immigration hardliner, voter fraud alarmist and former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach finally broke his losing streak on Tuesday night, winning the Republican primary for Kansas attorney general.

Kobach defeated Kansas state Sen. Kellie Warren (R), his top rival, by a little over four points.

Republicans are really the ultimate in non-discrimination since they don't care if you're even remotely qualified to actually hold the office you want. I also found this interesting.

Ironically, Kobach will have less authority to advance his anti-voter agenda if he wins the general election than he did as secretary of state thanks to a law he’d successfully pushed allowing secretaries of state to bypass the attorney general to independently open the kind of bogus voter fraud investigations that Kobach pursued relentlessly while in office.

[indy]

I think that pretty much every Republican house member on the ballot last night who voted to impeach Trump lost their primary. Doesn't bode too well for Cheney.

[goldenvalley]

Aug 3, 2022 17:52:34 GMT indy said:

I think that pretty much every Republican house member on the ballot last night who voted to impeach Trump lost their primary. Doesn't bode too well for Cheney.

Cheney is probably toast but Valadao in California (in June) plus Jamie Herrera Beutler and Dan Newhouse in Washington won their Republican primaries.  Three out of 10 so far. 

[LFC]

TPM has two paywalled pieces (one and two) on the election trends. Here they are in full.

I consider 538 the canonical average for the congressional generic ballot. Just in the last hour it clicked to dead even after a group of new polls came out showing Democrats in the lead. The RCP average, which benefits from some pro-GOP fiddling, moved to a .3 point GOP advantage. Whichever measure you go by this is a move of between two and three points since the leaked version of Dobbs dropped in May. It is always important to remember that tied isn’t tied. Because of embedded geographical and districting advantages Republicans can win the House handily with a tied generic ballot. I would say you would want to see Democrats ahead on this number by 3 points to have some rough confidence they would hold the House. But the movement is all in the right direction. There’s been a shift of a point or so in just the last week.

We all know that you can’t make too much of a single poll being a point or two one way or another. But it’s important to note that these aren’t single polls. They’re aggregations of lots of polls with lots of different methodologies, house effects and more. When there’s a consistent move like this we can be pretty confident that trend is real and not some statistical artifact.

Now, are the Democrats home free here? Not even close. The House remains a big, big challenge. Indeed, as I told one TPM Reader this afternoon, there’s a very real chance Dems hold and expand their Senate majority and lose control of the House. However, winning the House is definitely possible. It’s not mere theoretical chance or aspiration. It’s in play.

Another probabilistic nugget. As of today, the polls-only version of the 538 Senate forecast has 52 Democratic seats as the most likely outcome of the election. That’s enough to pass a Roe law in January 2023 if Democrats hold the House. The House is almost certainly the bigger challenge at this point. But the two equation is firmly locked together. House candidates need the Senate pledges completely nailed down to run on Roe and Reform in their races, even though the filibuster itself has nothing to do with the House.

Second point: When I write these pieces might aim isn’t to get people to think that sky’s the limit for the Dems or that everything is going perfectly. It remains a big, big challenge. But earlier today when I was explaining this to someone they said, ‘Okay, but the House is clearly gone. So even 52 seats doesn’t really matter.’ Well, that’s the thing. The House is not gone. Republicans certainly still have the advantage. But it’s not done. Not at all. And I don’t mean that simply in the sense that you never give up until the voting is over. There’s been a marked shift in the trajectory of the midterm since mid-May. And the factors that appear to be driving it – Dobbs, a moderate slackening of fuel prices and possible new Democratic legislative achievements – are more likely to continue than not. But many people’s good faith belief that the House is already gone is itself a major problem. Believing something doesn’t make it so. But a team that believes it will lose is certainly more likely to.

So my point in showing you these numbers is to illustrate that the outcome of the 2022 midterm is still to be decided. It’s genuinely in play.

[Art Vandelay]

This is encouraging:  Cook Political Report now rates Bacon-Vargas race a toss-up

LINCOLN — A much-followed national political analyst is now rating Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District matchup between U.S. Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., and Democrat State Sen. Tony Vargas a toss-up.



A column Friday by David Wasserman in the nonpartisan Cook Political Report said it’s clear that this week’s “emphatic” rejection in Kansas of an anti-abortion ballot issue has “swiftly galvanized Democrats.”



Wasserman, who moved the race from “likely Republican” to a “toss-up,” wrote that Bacon’s narrow victories in 2018 and 2020 in the Omaha-based district “are starting to look more like a function of far-left, pro-single payer Democrat Kara Eastman’s limited appeal than his own strength.”



“Multiple private surveys taken by both parties,” according to Wasserman, are now showing Bacon, a retired brigadier general, tied with or trailing a more moderate Democrat, Vargas.

[LFC]

One sane, patriotic Republican won his primary.

Pro-Impeachment GOPer Survives Primary

Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA), one of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump over the Jan. 6 attack, has won his primary.

• It’s too early to tell if Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA), a fellow pro-impeachment Washington Republican, will make it through her primary.

• Rep. ​​Peter Meijer (R-MI), the other pro-impeachment Republican who had a primary on Tuesday, was defeated by election denier John Gibbs.

[LFC]

Josh Marshall discussed how Trump's obsession with The Big Lie is hamstringing the Republicans from winning / stealing future elections. (paywalled)

Democrats are now in a reasonably strong position to hold the Senate and perhaps expand their majority. A major reason for that is that Donald Trump took it upon himself and was largely allowed to pick the candidates. Almost all of them are terrible candidates: Oz, Vance, Masters, Walker. These are simply terrible candidates. They could win. But it will be in spite of their terribleness not because of it. Kelly, Warnock, Fetterman, Ryan are all pretty good candidates. In some cases, in terms of their fit for the state in question, they are near-perfect candidates. Tim Ryan may be the best example of that even though he’s the least likely of the four to win. But all would be in much more challenging contests if they were opposed by even generic, non-crazy-sounding Trumpite Republicans.

Which brings us to the grievance feedback loop.

Donald Trump was in Wisconsin last night, the site of two critical races in November, one for Senate, one for governor. But he spent most of his time picking a fight with Assembly Speaker Robin Vos. I am not a fan of Vos by any stretch of the imagination. But if you were a Republican or a Trump Republican you really would be a fan of his. He’s helped lurch government in the Wisconsin strongly to the right. So why is Trump beating up on him and endorsing his GOP primary opponent? It’s over the Big Lie. Vos isn’t one of those slightly heterodox GOPers who loves Trump but wouldn’t back the Big Lie. He was a strong supporter of it. But Trump is still trying to get Vos to change the results of the 2020 election. In response, Vos has patiently explained that that is neither possible nor legal, even though he’d love to. And that’s where things stand. Now he’s the RINO.

Even though I know the answer sometimes I find myself wanting to ask the big Trumpers why the Big Guy doesn’t try to win an election the old fashioned way: trying to get more people to vote for him. We’re almost two years out and he is literally still trying to get elected officials to try to change the results of the 2020 election. It’s hard to know just what that would even mean right now. Robin Vos can say whatever he wants. Joe Biden isn’t going to stop being President.

We’ve talked about this before. The Big Lie is the best and probably the only strategy for Trump. Without it, he’s just a guy who lost. Grievance has always been the touchstone of Trumpism. But Trump’s maniacal focus on the Big Lie amounts to gunning up ever more anger from a slowly shrinking group of people. It’s not that the public appetite for Trumpite authoritarianism is diminishing. But the appetite for relitigating the 2020 election is. Republicans get a new bite at the apple in just three months. They can try to win or steal that election and maybe they’ll have better results. Trump’s interests and the Trumpite GOP’s are not precisely aligned, even though they both operate within Trumpism.

Trump himself is in a narrow grievance feedback loop. He can’t let go of the last election to the extent it’s complicating efforts to win the next one. For him there’s no other way. But Republicans have other options. So far, he’s blocking them from taking them.

[LFC]

Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA), who voted for impeachment, lost to a candidate tied to the Proud Boys and white supremacy. This is the Republican Party now.

A congressional candidate whose compelling personal story of military valor and unfathomable loss helped him win former President Donald Trump’s support has connections to right-wing extremists, including a campaign consultant who was a member of the Proud Boys.

Republican Joe Kent, who is challenging U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington state in the Aug. 2 primary, has also courted prominent white nationalists and posed recently for a photograph with a media personality who has previously described Adolf Hitler as a “complicated historical figure” who “many people misunderstand.”

Here's the scorecard for the 10 House Republicans who stood up for America and vote to impeach Trump over his attempted  coup.

2: Won
3: Lost
4: Retired
1: TBD (Liz Cheney)

[LFC]

A coup / Big Lie supporter won the nomination for secretary of state in Minnesota.

[LFC]

Interesting, and not at all expected just a few months ago.

I’m not saying I expect to see a new Democratic senator from North Carolina. But the Democrats’ senate map is expanding. There have been four polls of the North Carolina Senate race since mid-June (Budd v Beasley), three of them GOP-funded. Their margins for Democrat Cheri Beasley have been, in order, Beasley – 5, Beasley -3, Beasley +2, Beasley +4. That’s a pretty nice trend for Beasley.

North Carolina has been a heartbreaker for Democrats in recent cycles. I’m not predicting a Democratic pick up. But this is clearly a competitive race. At a minimum Republicans are going to have to fight to hold that seat.