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

[Blair]

Obviously not sure how much is going on behind the scenes (or went on) but it's interesting to see if this freezes the field quickly; you'd expect this to be a seat a lot of democrats want...

[Blair]

I'd also be interested to see how much the election delay helped his exposure

[Blair]

Wasn't Lamb's house seat closer than people expected?

He's also of the age where he could easily jump to another state wide office later on, or just retire and wait for it to come up...

[Blair]

I'm curious- do people think a primary would be a tough primary would be a good thing?

I do wonder if the democrats problem is that we haven't really had a close senate primary for an open seat for a while & as a result some rather untested campaigners have gone through un-checked?

[Blair]

Yeah this is also absolute rubbish when you look at the jobs he took after college.

Most of the actual phonies (see Ted Cruz) go to Harvard, clerk for a Surpeme Court Justice, get some low-level job in the federal government or a campaign and then return to where they were born and talk about their childhood when they want to run for office.

[Blair]

Ok what prevents the republican from sticking that messaging to him, run ads about his wealthy background and about his left-wing policies, how will he respond to the ads calling him a phony ?

He didn’t have a “wealthy” background. He grew up middle class and has always been middle class. He can respond by saying it was easier for a kid like him to get into Harvard back in the 80s because he didn’t have to worry about going into extreme debt or choosing between college and supporting his family because college has become prohibitively expensive for kids without actually rich parents. He can even talk about the white privilege afforded to kids who grow up middle class who can go to good schools but not minority students because of systemic racism. There, I just knocked out 2 of his main campaign talking points in response to one (dumb) attack ad.

yeah because mentioning white privilege is going to go down so well in the WWC areas he's strong in.

Also, like the man literally did not have an income while being mayor of Braddock and was entirely supported by family money.  Imagine the ads accusing him of being a trust-fund baby, let alone attacks on him creating a welfare state in Braddock by giving away houses and a whisper campagin against his wife for being an undocumented immigrant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gisele_Barreto_Fetterman
https://www.post-gazette.com/local/east/2015/12/18/Fetterman-s-finances-attract-attention/stories/201512180168

Not true according to his wikipedia.

As the part-time mayor, Fetterman earned $110.22 a month in 2007. His full-time job, directing the Out-Of-School-Youth program, paid around $30,000 annually.

[Blair]

for all the Fetterman fans, explain the thought process of somebody who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 but is likley to support Fetterman ?. Preferably without claiming they're low information or #populists.

I'm not trying to be a dick but a few pages back you were making false claims about Fetterman, got called out for it & then ignored it.

[Blair]

Republicans are always going to be deploy bad faith attacks against democrats!

They accused Mark Kelly of lobbying for China, they accused Connor Lamb of being weak on sex offenders & they accused Raphael Warnock of overseeing abuse at a church camp! All three still won!

Picking democrats on the basis of republican attacks has a rich history of leading to even more useless people running for the democrats!

[Blair]

FWIW it's no surprise that there's a huge rush of state-wide people wanting this seat; with the Governorship likely to be tied up for at least 4 years & Casey Jnr going no-where this is one of the best chances they'll have.

[Blair]

what has Fetterman done that is pissing people off/getting people worried?

[Blair]

I'm aware this must be a dumb take but how much is the geographic divide an issue?

I'd always assume that a well funded frontrunner with endorsements (see Lamb or Fetterman) can basically overperform? 

[Blair]

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

[Blair]

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.

Yeah as TML said not only did Greenfield & Cunningham have DSCC support but they also faced rather weak opponents in the primary.

It's a rather cliché example but Obama has frequently said that running against Clinton helped him; it showed he could respond when his campaign faltered & showed he could kill issues like Jeremiah Wright.

As much as I like Fetterman he needs to be tested so he doesn't just get to the general and then proceed to collapse.

[Blair]

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

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.

I don't think it's a similar situation though- the worse ones are always the above where an extremely weak candidate who is favoured by those in D.C is pushed and saved with SUPER-PAC money (see Luther Strange etc) when there's a stronger candidate in the field.

Both Lamb & Fetterman will have enough money to run strong campaigns & will get tested enough to prove they can win-including from the other candidates.   

[Blair]

The GOP have been very lucky in either having sitting senators or popular statewide figures run in close races in the last three cycles.

That seems to be changing.

[Blair]

I’m surprised no one has mentioned that both Tester and Manchin used the message to death in 2018- they were smaller states with identities where it might matter more but it worked.

If there’s a bruise punch it!

Besides his social media is clearly better than the last decade of ‘we need a fighter in D.C’  and other vague vague sloganeering we get from campaigns.

[Blair]

Something I've learnt from politics; when people make digs about their opponent spending their whole time on twitter it basically means 'I'm getting angry that you are tweeting about me/attacking my campaign.'

[Blair]

It also smells desperate & will get written up as being 'failing campaign falls back to attacks on his health.'

[Blair]

Only politico would interview people as a Trump rally and write it up as a win that Oz was winning them over.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/03/oz-seeks-to-win-over-the-maga-faithful-00054772

[Blair]

But Conor Lamb!!

We all get election takes hilariously wrong- I just hope that some people on this thread will reflect and use this result as a time to learn that they might not always know everything.