A lot of attention is being paid to Tuesday's (3/13) election in Pennsylvania's 18th congressional district. Colin Lamb, the Democratic candidate, looked a long-shot when this special election was called. Now it looks nip and tuck.
Here is a shortish piece about him and the campaign by Eliza Griswold, who among other books, has written about Western Pennsylvania's dying coal and growing gas fracking industry. She describes the kind of voters the Democrats need to win back. Even if Lamb wins, I wonder if they have the brains and insight to go after these kind of voters.
At the New Yorker.
Here's the election take at the NYTimes. Scroll down for a more granular take on the union vote, and divisions among Democratic voters, potential and actual.
UPDATE: Maybe more than you want to know: Here's 538 on PA-18 special election .
Groan:
ReplyDelete"Given the national stakes, the race has turned ugly. On Saturday night, Trump arrived in Moon Township to rally Saccone voters and, touting an idea he claimed was inspired by the Chinese President Xi Jinping, called for drug dealers to face the death penalty."
I'm surprised he didn't give credit to Duterte.
I heard Singapore somewhere. You can get prison for chewing gum there. Wouldn't it be nice if there could be some Democrats who are not Non-Trumps but want to go to Washington to do something wonderful? Used to be some.
DeleteHe doesn't seem typical of the party and other first-time candidates emerging nationwide. But perhaps the Democratic Party needs centrists like him if it hopes to secure a majority in the House.
ReplyDeleteDemocrat Jones who won the Alabama Senate seat in the Fall and Lamb are not carbon copies. But the possibilities for both rest, I think, on their not pushing hot Democratic Party buttons. Contra Trump, I think both are sincere in that.
Delete"Not pushing their Democratic Party buttons"? Because they don't believe in Democratic principles? Because they know there haven't been any Dps since Bill triangulated? Because they just want to get elected and get a good lobbying job after putting up with Ryan for awhile? Just some vanilla ice cream with no particular thing about them to make me get off sofa or write a check? Oh, joy!
DeleteOr maybe they just want to loosen the Rs' death grip on the House. And the Senate. And increase the chances of "anybody but Trump" in 2020. Seems like it'd be a good idea to me.
DeleteTom: I mean The buttons invented in NYC by people who haven't been union knowledgeable since their great-grandfathers dug the subways, if then. And anyone who thinks those gazillions of women running in the 2018 primaries are going to retake the Senate or House doesn't know the depths of disagreement with Emily's List.
DeleteWith friends like Emily's List they don't need any enemies.
DeleteI thought Lamb's comment in the New Yorker article was interesting; “I don’t ask them what they think of the leadership of my party,” he said. “I just say, usually, ‘Look, I’m a Democrat because my grandfather was a Democrat, and he was because F.D.R. was.’ ”
ReplyDeleteHe's appealing to the roots of the Democratic party, perhaps these people's roots, too.
I also see that Jeff Flake of Arizona is advocating for Trump to be challenged for the 2020 nomination by a "conservative like me". Of course he is already taking heat for it. But maybe it is a beginning.
Uncle Joe gets (and I think Bernie got) that 2016 was not about left, right, or center, or about identify politics. It was about a living wage. And 2018 is going to be about making a living wage. And 2020 is going to be about making a living wage. From the New Yorker:
ReplyDeleteHis [Biden's] father was an educator, not a laborer, he said, but Biden’s roots were among people like this. “To hear Barack tell it, I crawled out of a coal mine with a lunch bucket.” The audience roared. Biden’s poking mild fun at his old boss, squarely locating Obama within the liberal élite, served a purpose; this isn’t what being a Democrat meant here, where all people wanted was a government that looked out for working people. “You want a decent sidewalk, hell, you own the sidewalk. You built the sidewalk,” Biden went on.
Associating yourself with your grandfather and F.D.R is a smart move. Last spring when the Democrats here in Lake County held a organizing meeting. People were asked to introduce themselves by naming their favorite President. F.D.R. got about 80% of the votes. Obama about 10%, a scattering for Bill, Hilary, Carter, and a few others including Ike and Reagan.
ReplyDeleteIt is a quick way of reminding the working class of the days when the Democrats were on the side of the working class. I think that basically Bernie is an F.D.R. Democrat who makes himself vulnerable by the socialist rhetoric he absorbed as an undergraduate. The problem is not the Bernie became a socialist but that the Democrats sold out to the rich liberals.
I grew up in Washington County, one of the few national merit finalists ever in a public high school where football reigned and few people looked beyond the steel mills to go for a college education. My adolescent rebellion was entirely against my age peers. The more intelligent faculty were my intellectual peers.
My father, a steelworker was fooled by Reagan whom he despised as a union breaker. Dad also despised JPII for his hypocrisy of being political himself while forbiddening his priests to support Democrats (e.g. he forced Drinan out of office.
As I write this, shortly after midnight Eastern Time, Lamb has claimed victory, Saccone hasn't conceded, and it appears that it's going to come down to absentee ballots to settle it.
ReplyDeleteWent to bed as Wolf Blitzer was cajoling some official to count his absentee ballots.
ReplyDeleteLooks like Lamb claimed victory. Recount? Seems crazy given the redistricting that is likely to wipe out the 18th.
Jim, does Lamb's showing raise questions about the effort in Chicago to dump Daniel Lipinski? His primary opponent has been endorsed by at least two of his Illinois Congressional colleagues. He seems to have something of the same profile as Lamb, except he's been in Congress for a long time, and from cursory reading, it looks like his district has some resemblance to PA 18, except without the coal mines.
ReplyDeleteA poll from last week shows Lipinski with a two-point lead, which almost certainly is within the margin of error.
DeleteYou're right that the scenario is not the same as in PA 18: this is not a special election but rather a primary fight between two Democarats. And as you note, this is an attempt to unseat an incumbent.
My personal take is that the "FDR constituency" probably is aging out, and the younger generations of Democrats may be more aligned to Lipinski's challenger, Newman, who in turn is more aligned with the party's energy this cycle.
A factor that may work against Lipinski is that, in Illinois, a primary voter has to request either a Democratic or Republican ballot, and can't vote in both primaries. This is important in this election because the incumbent GOP governor, Bruce Rauner, is being primaried from the right by a staunchly pro-life opponent, Jeanne Ives. Rauner is a social moderate by whom many Illinois pro-life voters feel betrayed because Rauner broke a campaign promise (from the previous election cycle) by signing some legislation that provided more public funding for abortions. The thought/fear in Lipinski's district is that pro-life Democrats who may be inclined to vote for Lipinski may instead request a Republican ballot in order to punish Rauner by voting for Ives. This would have a double benefit for those Democratic voters: it would allow them to vote their conscience on a life issue; and it may propel Ives to the nomination, which probably would make it a cinch that the Democrats will retake the governor's mansion this fall, as Ives is thought to be too conservative to win a general election in Illinois.
Wow! Complicated.
DeleteBut let me get this straight...you can choose a ballot from either party, instead of being give a ballot for the party in which you're registered (how NY does it).
CNBC says that the 200 absentees are not going to make a difference. Have to say I'm gobsmacked. Truly did not think Dems could pull this off.
ReplyDeleteI am not getting my hopes up for November, though. My guess is that Trumpism still has a pretty tight chokehold in working class white districts. A couple of Democratic off-election wins will likely get them rallied up and registered, especially with the prospect of Nancy Pelosi as speaker.
My favorite for speaker would be "Pocahontas". I don't care if her Cherokee heritage is B.S. or not, which it probably is. I just want her to sink her tomahawk into the face of Wall Street.
DeleteThen I'd know my Democratic Party was on the way back.
DeleteI believe that the PA districts will be redistricted for the fall. Lamb reportedly is planning to run in another district in the fall. The 18th district, in the new configuration, is supposed to be Republican-friendlier.
DeleteHere is Sean Trende on these and a couple of other matters:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/03/14/why_it_doesnt_matter_who_the_winner_is_in_pa-18_136527.html
Last night as Lamb was pulling it off, I wondered if the Chaos Theory of Government (as expressed yesterday in the firing of Tillerson) is getting to the voters, even those who like Trump,
ReplyDeleteAnd I should have added: Did the promotion of Gina Haspel, madame of a torture site, set off bells and whistles? What are her confirmation hearings going to be like?
ReplyDeleteRand Paul is against her. And against Pompeo. Don't know if others will join him. It will be interesting.
DeleteNYTimes editorial: "When it comes to torture, no American officials have been more practiced in those heinous dark arts than the agents and employees of the Central Intelligence Agency who applied it to terrorism suspects after 9/11. Few American officials were so directly involved in that frenzy of abuse, which began under President George W. Bush and was ended by President Barack Obama, as Gina Haspel."
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/13/opinion/cia-torture-gina-haspel.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region
CIA Consensus I was hearing here and there yesterday is that Haspel, in waterboarding, was carrying out orders that she had been told were legal. Nazis were not allowed to use that excuse at Nuremberg; it was flat-out rejected by the Tribunal. But since then just about everybody has gotten away with it in this country. Trump will tell a lot of people his tweets are legal, and nobody between the Blue Coasts seems prepared to doubt him.
DeleteThe fivethirtyeight analysis in in; I think it makes sense in terms of the district.
ReplyDelete"For example, it’s still up for debate which political map represents America’s true baseline: the Obama-era 2012 map or the Trump-remade 2016 map, under which the white, working-class Midwest turned red and well-educated suburbs trended more Democratic. Perhaps counterintuitively, the Pennsylvania special election suggests that the 2016 map has some staying power.
Lamb outperformed Hillary Clinton’s margins by a nearly identical 19 points in white-collar Allegheny County and in Trump-loving, blue-collar Washington and Westmoreland counties. However, Lamb outperformed then-President Obama’s 2012 margin by 23 points in Allegheny while doing so by only 9–12 points in the district’s other three counties.
Perhaps because Lamb assumed some socially conservative positions and cozied up to blue-collar workers, the Pennsylvania 18th is often portrayed as just another Midwestern working-class district. In fact, though, it is both wealthier and better-educated than the nation as a whole. As the numbers show, Lamb won this election not in “Trump country,” but in the Allegheny County suburbs."
This is interesting. Lamb did not have to appeal to the more affluent people in Allegheny county by attacking Trump. He already had them. He wisely did not alienate the Trump voters in Washington and Westmoreland county by sympathizing with their pro-life, guns, and foreign competition to get enough of them.
Jack, I think that this is right. The Country Club Republicans abhor Trump. He is Rodney Dangerfield to their Ted Knight (see "Caddyshack")--loud, flashy, tasteless, and unable to keep his dirty laundry under the bed.
DeleteLamb also seemed to agree with the proposed tariffs and shot off some guns in his ads. Kind of a Joe Manchin Democrat.
I am happy to see more range in the Democratic party, but hope that this will not lead to splits between blue-collar laborite and rich progressive liberal wings of the party.
It will be so nice to have a pro-life, pro-gun and anti-foreigners Democrat in Washington. He will fit right in with Republican voting patterns.
DeleteStill brain dead.