PA-SN 2022 megathread: Shrek vs. The Wizard of Oz

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2020 showed that a lot of democratic senate candidates could have benefited from a tough primary- I largely think this is a good thing!

I find this claim intriguing, since every Dem who won a competitive seat in 2020 had cleared the field months beforehand (Hickenlooper, Kelly, Ossoff, Warnock) while the vigorous primaries seats were all lost (Cunningham vs Smith, Greenfield vs Franken, Hegar vs West)

Of 8 competitive seats, only 1 really makes your case (Maine) and Collins' personal brand there make it difficult to infer any course correction for the future.

Actually, the DSCC stacked the deck in favor of people like Gideon, Cunningham, Greenfield, Hegar, McGrath, etc., which gave them inherent advantages over their challengers. Therefore, their primaries weren't actually as competitive as they could have been without establishment intervention.

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I'd bet good money on Conor Lamb voting well to the left of Kyrsten Sinema. I took a good peak at his website and at least it's not full of bipartisanship-for-the-sake-of-bipartisanship BS, and he actually he wants to reform the filibuster. He supports a $15 minimum wage, also.

I'm getting big "We're gonna paint him as the next Manchin" vibes from the Fetterman crowd, despite the same exact people being huge Conor Lamb fans in the past. Atlas loved him during the Blue Wave.

What a lot of people aren't considering is that Lamb ran and maybe occasionally voted like a Blue Dog to appease his district. For progressives, it's arguably easier to vote more in line with the party as a senator for the entire state rather than as a congressman from the Pittsburgh suburbs.

Lamb specifically thanked unions in his speech after beating Saccone, and acknowledged their role in building the state. You can't say the same about Mark Warner or Tim Kaine, both of whom support/supported RTW in Virginia.

I can even see Lamb being another Sherrod Brown, given the fact that he literally represents people who've lost their jobs to Big Tech, and automation, and bad trade policies. And given Sherrod's long-shot chances in 2024, I really, really hope that's what we end up regardless of who's nominated.

Maybe this is all wishful thinking on my part, but it wouldn't be the craziest thing in the world. After all, Bob Casey, Jr. is now pro-choice.

I’m not sure that’s actually so. He did vote for some Trump-era anti-abortion legislation, and AFAIK he hasn’t publicly walked back his support for overturning Roe v. Wade. His pro-choice voting record stems from his support of Planned Parenthood - he feels that it provides other useful services besides abortion and thus doesn’t want those services to go under.

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And this point I’m worried a competitive and expensive primary will cost us this seat (see 2016)

I’m not sure that’s an accurate description of what happened back then. Instead, a more accurate description would be the Democratic establishment spending tons of money to stack the deck in favor of their preferred candidate, who surged ahead after trailing big in early primary polling but later turned out to be a lousy candidate in the general election. Sure, you could say polls were off back then, but if you examined how she behaved on the campaign trail, you can tell she was pretty uninspiring.

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FWIW I still to this day can't see why any democrat thought Katie McGinty was a good choice- she'd never held elected office and her only electoral experience was coming 4th in a primary.  

The Democratic establishment thinks that the candidate who can raise the most money is the best candidate, and they coronated McGinty because of this line of thinking. This is also why they coronated people like Theresa Greenfield, Cal Cunningham, Sara Gideon, Amy McGrath, etc.

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"At least one" credible Republican is considering jumping in to stop Parnell.

I really don't understand why some users on here keep insisting that Parnell is a good candidate.

Certain users think Trump endorsing someone would all but ensure that candidate's victory in both the primary and the general (and these users should look at Luther Strange, among other examples).

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I consider you a friend and I say this with all due respect, but I genuinely have no idea what you’re even talking about.  From everything I’ve read, the Manchin-Lamb comparison makes about as much sense as insisting a cow is really a walnut.  Lamb has been nothing but a team player who has backed progressive policies and moved to the left once he got elected.  He didn’t try to screw us with BBB and while you may prefer Fetterman, Lamb would be a solid addition to the Senate Democratic Caucus in his own right (and a committed vote for abolishing the filibuster).  

Other than not participating in meaningless virtue-signaling over a pot bill that was clearly DOA no matter what he did, I can’t even think of any votes he’s cast that would give progressives a legitimate cause for complaint.  I could be missing something (in which case please fill me in), but otherwise this is pretty silly.  Like, I get that you want Kenyatta or Fetterman, but come on.

I'm diametrically opposed to anyone who's a part of the Problem Solvers Caucus, especially affter the stunt that leadership pulled. He also was one of the most conservative members in Congress in 2018, when he was representinging much redder territory. Sure, that might not be a problem right now, but come 2026 or 2028, when PA starts to get redder, what's stopping him from stepping up and becoming the next Democrats' Lieberman or Manchin?

PA is not getting redder.

While it may not have swung R from 2016 to 2020, it did trend in that direction (there’s a reason why its Cook PVI went from even in 2017 to R+2 in 2021).

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Is there any scenario where this race isn't Fetterman v Parnell?

On the Democratic side, if the DSCC decides to coronate someone other than Fetterman, that individual will probably win the nomination (recall how they coronated Katie McGinty in 2016 over Fetterman and Sestak).

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With the candidates pretty much avoiding going negative up to the point, it will come down to name rec + "likability" which benefits Fetterman two fold. He likely has this primary wrapped up.

This statement does not take into account the possibility of the DSCC and/or other prominent establishment Democratic figures endorsing someone else and elevating that person, right?

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https://twitter.com/ConorLambPA/status/1500259991483256834?t=iynNFdbY28yUc1ezT4h...

Cringe. Matt Cartwright finally takes an L.

Remember that RootsAction pointed out that Cartwright has not supported the Green New Deal, has supported increased military spending, and did not support the Paycheck Recovery Act despite being a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, so it has listed him in the "Dishonorable Mention" section of its PINO (Progressives in Name Only) report.

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Truly amazing stuff folks. The Democrat establishment does a full court press to stop Fetterman, and instead of getting behind the hard-working, gay black progressive grinder, they try to coronate the whitest, most unseasoned chicken ass politician since Kasich.

This is why the Democrat Party establishment is out of touch with its voters.

We should be thankful that the DSCC has (so far) stayed out of this and other key Senate primary contests this election cycle. In the 2016 and 2020 election cycles, they were quick to coronate candidates in just about every key Senate primary contest, and pretty much all of their coronated candidates steamrolled their primary opponents (but most of them lost their general election contests). Had the DSCC gotten involved in this contest like it did in 2016, whichever candidate they endorsed would almost certainly be favored to win the primary right now (but could very well be underwhelming in the GE, just like their 2016 candidate here was).

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It's amusing, to be honest. If Lamb is the best candidate, why isn't he crushing Fetterman in the polls?

This is what happens when you (1) spit on your base and (2) don’t get coronated by the establishment. In past election cycles, he may have been able to get away with this with the help of Chuck Schumer and the DSCC, but they have evidently decided to remain on the sidelines for this primary season (which, to me, is a good thing, since most of their past coronated primary candidates ended up falling short in their respective general election contests).

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More than 343,000 voters had returned their mail ballots, according to the data provided by the Pennsylvania Department of State, which oversees elections. Of those, 268,000 returned ballots came from Democrats and 74,000 came from Republicans.

https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/live/pennsylvania-primary-2022-election-candidates-polls-20220510.html#card-1124223359

Remember that in the 2020 presidential election, Biden won mail-in voters 76-23, while Trump won Election Day voters 65-34. These numbers are simply a continuation of the partisan divide in terms of voting method.

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I wonder if there are any voters who are changing their mind from Fetterman to Lamb post-stroke.

I'm sure such people probably exist, but these people would most likely not be super-committed to supporting any particular candidate, and I'm not sure if they would comprise a big enough chunk of the overall electorate to actually swing the primary from one candidate to another.

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I don’t know how cuddling up to Joe Manchin and calling his opponent a scary socialist didn’t win him a Democratic primary.

Like I said earlier, this is the result of Chuck Schumer and the DSCC deciding not to coronate anyone this election cycle. The last time this seat was up they were quick to coronate a candidate, and that candidate ended up winning the primary in a landslide (but ended up falling short in the general election).

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I was always wondering why the DSCC didn't jump in and try to really boost Lamb, but after seeing Fetterman obliterate Lamb tonight it's obvious it wouldn't have changed the outcome, it just would have been closer

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Carville not uncommonly has nuggets of wisdom and all, but in retrospect it's hard to see how Fetterman could have been stopped. The guy beat Lamb in the primary basically 2-to-1. Doesn't matter if Fetterman is flawed (not saying he is or isn't), but it wouldn't matter either way, if there was no one able to beat him also running.

In past election cycles, the DSCC would have coronated a candidate very early on in the primary campaign, and almost all of those candidates went on to win their respective primary contests. This year, they evidently decided to refrain from doing that for reasons I'm not aware of, but I consider that a good thing, since most of the DSCC's past coronated candidates ended up falling short in their respective general elections. [Yes, I do believe that Lamb (or, for that matter, any other candidate the DSCC decided to endorse) would likely have won if the DSCC decided to endorse him - just look at how the last Democratic primary for this seat played out: the DSCC-endorsed candidate came from behind to win the primary in a landslide.]

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I wonder if Tom Corbett would have been a better bet at this point, lol. This is extremely embarrassing.

Given Corbett's popularity (or lack thereof) during the latter part of his gubernatorial term, I think that he would probably be on track to becoming the Republican version of Ted Strickland if he were the nominee for this office.

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I'm glad the spending is getting some attention, but again, it makes me wonder what the hell national Dems are doing.

Fetterman has more campaign money than Oz, and as far as I can tell, Senate Majority PAC/DSCC were spending $32-35M on this race in the fall, akin to Oz/GOP's $34M. So if anything, Fetterman should still be getting the better deal in the end bc he should have more campaign money then to spend on ads.

They mention that the first week of October, Dems/Fett are spending more than Oz, versus $17M to $24M disparity for September, so maybe Dems are saving some for October? Either way, with all the money Dems have in this race, it's indefensible that Oz is outrunning Fett in ads right now.

However, I will say it seems despite the last few weeks that Dem ads are ramping up. The other day I was at a restaurant that had 6ABC on it, and Fett's ads ran twice and Oz's only once. I have been in that same restaurant before around the same time and have seen as much as 3 Oz ads and 0 Fetterman ones, so it's possible they have finally ramped up the spending.

In terms of what national Democrats are doing, I think it may have something to do with Fetterman not being the type of candidate they would have preferred (they might have been spending more on this race if the nominee were someone like Arkoosh or Lamb or someone similar to them).