Congressional Special Election (last call! unstickied after NY-27 final results)

[Progressive Pessimist]

North Carolina: the other Florida.

[Progressive Pessimist]

North Carolina: the other Florida.

Not quite. Florida fails out of pure incompetence. North Carolina always fails because the NCGOP is cartoonishly evil.

True. And to North Carolina's credit, they managed to at least elect a Democratic Governor.

[Progressive Pessimist]

This also shows how useless voter ID laws are since they do nothing to prevent absentee ballot fraud,  which is where the vast majority of voter fraud (The little of it there is) occurs.

[Progressive Pessimist]

https://mobile.twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1100481952342294528
Apparently he’s running on the platform of getting those Duke boys

His name even sounds like a character from that show. Stony Rushing? Seriously? It also kind of sounds like a porn stage name.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Trump favoring sample or not, this race is lean R. North Carolina is only like .1% less disappointing than Florida when it comes to its recent elections, and that's entirely due to Roy Cooper's victory back in 2016. North Carolina, is simply still a tough nut for Democrats to crack. This goes for Cooper's re-election, unseating Thom Tillis, and even these special elections. I don't see McCready being able to get the Democratic votes that he did in the high turnout (relatively) in the 2018 midterms. It's a consequence of the election do-over. I think it's going to resemble an O'Connor and Tipirneni sort of situation, just in reverse. I just hope he keeps it similarly close enough just so a "Dems in disarray/momentum shifting because of special elections!" media narrative doesn't occur again.

[Progressive Pessimist]

I always said this race would be lean R. North Carolina will be North Carolina.

[Progressive Pessimist]

It's time for a haiku of my own!

Dan Bishop will win
Undecideds will break R
As they always do

[Progressive Pessimist]

Congressman-elect Dan Bishop, everyone! Strong is the R lean with this state.

I'm not putting it past Trump and the GOP to start praising Dorian when this inevitability happens.

[Progressive Pessimist]

This election is getting almost zero attention from national media.

That usually bodes well for the dems. In the "nationalized" special elections last year, they lost.

That's actually a good point.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Regardless of what happens, I wouldn't assume that the results imply anything about 2020. This is a special election that hasn't gotten all that much attention, and a ton can happen in a year and two months.

Even in spite of my pessimistic nature, I can agree with this, regardless of how it turns out. Though Trump will certainly be infuriatingly flabbergasted if McCready wins, and I enjoy his meltdowns. So that would be nice.

[Progressive Pessimist]

It feels awful to be right all along. But I'll accept my accolades now in spite of that. Actually, I'm exaggerating. I kind of feel nothing from this election. That's one benefit of keeping expectations low-I basically insulated myself from disappointment. Enthusiasm can't overcome some factors. McCready was never going to pull a Conor Lamb miracle, or replicate his performance from last year, which probably still would have been a loss even in spite of Harris' shenanigans. However, McCready probably did as well as he possibly could have under the circumstances of a special election with guaranteed decreased Democratic turnout, the aftermath of a hurricane potentially affecting it, and gerrymandering by the always repulsive North Carolina GOP.

McCready has nothing to be ashamed of, and the Democrats as a whole don't either. I still think North Carolina should be renamed "More Republican Florida," but the fact that McCready was still able to come as close as he did to winning what would have been a safe district if Pittenger was still the incumbent, is indeed worth noting. The state is changing, but like with Georgia or Texas, I don't know if it's changing fast enough. I still consider it lean R for the presidential election, though I do wonder what this says about next year's Senate race. Perhaps that is winnable after all, with a little work.

I must admit to some frustration though at the immediate media narrative I have seen from this election. CNN's headline described the election as a "bellwether" for the presidential election. Yeah, to hell with that! In what world is a special election in a Republican gerrymandered district somehow representative of the country as a whole? Maybe if North Carolina somehow becomes the state that decides the election, but that is nearly impossible. This election doesn't really matter much, as do most special elections. It would have been nice to have won and have the Democrats bolster their numbers in the House even slightly, but 2020 will be its own thing independent of this election that is going to fade from memory very quickly.