MT-SEN 2020: Time for Bullock?

[Zaybay]

Anyway, Ill make a take, since its all the rage.

MT is a special state in the Mountain West, having an odd Democratic statewide tradition that has lasted until now. The D candidate in question is Steve Bullock, the incredibly popular current governor of MT. The Republican is Steve Daines, moderately unpopular, but not much else. The race would be held during the presidential race, and that could severely influence results.

Anyway, Bullock has the advantages of being both popular and a current governor, a combo that is rather deadly in electoral politics(Angus King, Rick Scott, Joe Manchin, and Maggie Hassan can attest to this) and MT's willingness to vote D, more than other states gives a clear advantage. And while polarization is a major factor these days, popularity appears to be more so, as it was the only factor that was able to accurately predict the winners of each race(all Ds with a negative approval lost in 2018, for example, and overpreformances in SD and KS, and underpreformances in OK were closely tied to the popularity of both the R and the D, not to mention house races). But Polarization must still be taken into account, and unless MT swings to R+5-10, its going to take a lot to get the state Blue. We also have no idea what 2020 will be like, and if polarization that held in 2016-2018 is the new norm, or just the effect of having an excellent economy.

Overall, I would say lean R, with a wide range of possibilities.

[Zaybay]

Only one of those people lost in a landslide though, which was exactly my point. As opposed to those three Democrats who just lost in a landslide in the deepest of blue states in a blue wave a month ago.

I thought you'd have gotten over your PTSD about red states electing Democrats after Bredesen, Heitkamp, and Edmondson got destroyed, Espy, McCaskill, Donnelly, Sutton, Hubbell, and Cordray got thumped, and Manchin and Tester had close calls and probably would've lost too if the GOP was more competent. And all this brutal carnage in the midst of a D+9 Democratic wave. Won't be satisfied until there's not a single red state Democrat left, huh?

Who cares by how much they lost, it’s totally irrelevant. The mere fact that these Democrats managed to win in Trump +40, Trump +28, Trump +20, etc. states despite "polarization being at a historic high" or whatever is telling in and of itself. McCaskill and Heitkamp are pretty bad examples because they were extremely weak and unpopular incumbents who ran godawful campaigns which essentially threw away two very winnable races, and if anything they should have lost by more than 11 and 5 points, respectively. Sutton certainly didn’t get "thumped", in fact I don’t remember the last time a Democrat came within 3 points of winning a gubernatorial race in SD (the state hasn’t elected a Democratic governor since 1974, the longest-running streak of GOP governors in the country). Espy getting "thumped" is also news to me (and most other posters, I would assume) since pretty much everyone except you would agree that he did a lot better than he should have done, and Hubbell literally only lost by 3%, lol. Donnelly's 5-point loss was a little more surprising, but let’s not forget that he actually did 13 points than his party's last presidential candidate. When was the last time a blue state Republican did that well? Yeah.. exactly. Any Republican incumbent in a Clinton +18 state would have been DOA and headed for a 12+ point loss from day one, even in a GOP wave.

Also, comparing Senate (Tester, Manchin, etc.) with gubernatorial races (Baker, Hogan, etc.) is a disingenuous and deliberately misleading apples to oranges comparison. Baker and Hogan would have lost by 25+ points if they had run for Senate in 2018 (or any other year, really), and you know it.

Maybe Atlas is right and Daines is really heavily favored and I know nothing about my state's politics, but given this forum's (poor) track record when it comes to predicting Montana elections I’ll happily stick with my prediction. Underestimate Bullock/MT Dems to your heart's content, Republicans, but don’t say you weren’t warned when the first poll of this race shows Bullock up by 8 points or something like that.

Couldnt have said it better myself. It seems that people on Atlas only see the Win/Lose, and derive a conclusion from that, instead of, you know, actually critically thinking about these races. Though as I said earlier, I personally stand on the "lean R" side, I can see the argument you are making for tossup/tilt D.

[Zaybay]

Polarization is high, but Montana isn't quite comparable to North Dakota or Tennessee, since it's much less red, and is even more competitive at the statewide level. Assuming Bullock is in, this is definitely a race to watch and certainly has potential to flip, but I think calling it more likely to flip than AZ/NC might be jumping the gun a bit, since Trump could lose both of those states (or even conceivably GA or *IOWA*, yes, I went there ) if he's having a bad night, but there's no way he's going to come close to losing Montana even in a Democratic wave. So Bullock still has to win over a significant number of Trump voters, which is increasingly hard to do.

This is what I think as well. Trump losing nationally by 6-8 points could easily gain us states like GA/NC/AZ and possibly IA while Bullock still comes up just short.

Dems need to go where the most persuadable voters are first.

MT has a large amount of persuadable voters.....


Anyway, MT, if Bullock runs, should certainly be on the map, and Bullock has a lot of advantages, but its still MT in a prez year.

 If MT 2018 is the new MT, then taking its congressional result, R+4.7, and adding the national house result, D+8.5, the state voted to the right by 13.2 points on the congressional level. Its really going to depend on the national environment and if MT shifts Left due to the Blueing of the Western 1/2 of the state, along with how much the unpopular Daines underpreforms, whether Bullock can make MT Blue again, or falls just like the others.

Though MT should be a top target, no matter what, especially with how cheap the state is.

[Zaybay]

MT has a large amount of persuadable voters.....

The future of the Democratic Party are educated suburbanites, not rural white trash kiddo.

Call me when the hipsters turn Montana into another Colorado.

...You do know what Western MT is like, right? Its made up of some rurals, with very few people in them, but is mostly the cities of Missoula, Great Falls, and Helena. These areas have been trending slightly D for a while, but they went heavily D in 2018, wheras the farming rurals in the East went strongly R. Even Yellowstone, the most populous county and a very R county in the East, trended D.

As I said, a lot of persuadable voters in MT, ones that can determine who represents.

[Zaybay]

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Bullock should keep a senate run as his "reserve option" if he can't make it to the presidential nomination. He's probably the strongest Democrat to challenge Daines. However, he's one of the best candidates to beat Trump.

Well, he isnt getting the presidential nomination, so that "reserve" option is looking like the "only" option.

[Zaybay]

I don't know why so many folks think he has no chance to get the nomination. The list of pros for a Bullock nomination is far longer than the cons, even from a neutral perspective. Because he is a white male? Wouldn't this be the very definition of identity politics? Sure, he's from a state with just a million people, but it's not that only large state governors have ended up in the Oval Office. In early 1976, nobody knew who Jimmy Carter was for example.

Because people want someone progressive and they think montana is a rural hicks state so Bullock is John bell edwards

Well, it's not that Steve Bullock is a conservative Democrat as some people think. He's socially as liberal as you can get in Montana (pro-choice, unlike JBE) and implemented campaign finance reform, which is an important issue for progressives. He also supports labor unions and has moved to the left on gun control.

I see no problem with his candidacy, I made sure not to call him a bad candidate or weak. Bullock is a pretty great candidate for the presidency, and he is more Progressive than people would initially think. What I did say was that he cannot win the primary, and thats where his overall weakness lies. He cant win it. He doesnt have a natural base, he has no clout, no nothing really.

[Zaybay]

I've actually reconciled myself to conceding that IceSpear et al. are entirely correct about the key facts of the urban/rural polarization going on. My opposition to "the 'racist hicks' narrative" is basically a tone argument combined with a desire not to see this realignment carried to its logical extreme if that's possible to avoid any more. It's foolish to deny that non-metropolitan parts of the country in general are becoming rabidly partisan Republican strongholds, and only marginally less foolish to deny that this is due in large part to "identity" issues.

My problem is that its basically a blanket statement that doesnt, at all, apply to the whole of the US. Rural areas went R this year, but not all of them. The North East Rurals trended D, along with rural areas in KS, SD, NJ(yes they have those), NY, the whole of New England, IA, and the West Coast, to name a few. In fact, a good amount of rurals did trend D when accounting for the D+8.5 wave, its just that rurals in states with unpopular senators for reelection(IN, MO, and ND) didnt see a significant trend towards them, or a trend in the opposite direction, and faltered.

It should also be noted that there seems to be a "If you didnt win, you dont exist" sort of dilemma going on here. Some rural areas swung dramatically, by large amounts to the Ds, but because the D didnt win, suddenly that rural shift is ignored. WV-03 is a good example of that. Then again, this also applies to suburban districts that didnt flip, but still saw a D swing, such as the WOW suburbs, yet have been completely written off as Safe R till the end of time.

Basically, I think its too broad, misses too many important data points that counter its claim, and is frankly seemingly being applied to states that didnt even have this phenomenon to begin with(AL, MS).

[Zaybay]

I think you missed the point of the Racist Hick comments. I'm simply pointing out facts, not celebrating it. I supported Bredesen, Edmondson, Heitkamp, etc. MT Treasurer hates most red state Democrats but still tends to overestimate them, I guess to keep his expectations low because Republicans were burnt so many times in red states in the past. But it's pretty obvious at this point that things have changed considering the slaughterfest 2018 was for red state Democrats even in a D+9 Democratic wave.

I think you were the one that missed my point? I obviously know that you, as a fairly partisan Democrat, support these candidates. And I'm well aware that you believe that your "hicks" narrative is a fact. I'm simply saying it's not a fact. Let's not forget how you so adamantly denied the possibility of a Senator Doug Jones until the last moment.

And in regards to the bolded, no, that was not clear at all. Bredesen was running in a better environment against a weaker candidate but in a far more hostile state. The latter won out, which was always a very strong possibility.

I should have worded that differently. Bredesen was running a stronger campaign, which is what I meant. It was due to the fact that he was running in TN, a far more hostile state than IN for Dems, that didn't make his position better than Bayh's, which is why I thought Blackburn would win back then.

Oh, how could I forget Alabama? A literal pedophile losing by 1 point isn't exactly a strong rebuttal to the theory. I mean, it was a literal pedophile...and he only lost by 1 point. Because it was a psychotically partisan red state. So if anything it adds to the polarization/Racist Hick narrative, not takes away from it. The only error was that my theory was a tiny bit too aggressive in the case of truly exceptional circumstances, otherwise it was pretty much spot on. Luckily, unlike many people here, I can learn from my mistakes. Which is why my upgraded mind model now takes into account pedophilia if it is present (except in Oklahoma, where the Republican would win even if they were a pedophile.)

In short, if your argument for why red states aren't extremely partisan and polarized is "a pedophile Republican lost by 1 point in a red state", well...all I can say is I rest my case.

Come on Icespear, you and me both know that AL has absolutely nothing to do with the R rural trends, and that AL is one of the most inelastic, and Republican states in the union. Thats just lazy.

[Zaybay]

That's why I'm saying "in general". I live in Franklin County; I'm well aware that there are rural areas that buck these trends, just as there are metropolitan areas, like South Florida, that had anemic Democratic results or even trended Republican this year. (Or, to use an example from a previous realignment, just as there were always Catholics and Jews who voted Republican in the days of the New Deal coalition).

And thats my main problem, is that its now being applied to everything, any R state or rural area is now Solid R because Rural Trends. Its a blanket statement that is frankly poorly sourced and lazy.

[Zaybay]

I think you missed the point of the Racist Hick comments. I'm simply pointing out facts, not celebrating it. I supported Bredesen, Edmondson, Heitkamp, etc. MT Treasurer hates most red state Democrats but still tends to overestimate them, I guess to keep his expectations low because Republicans were burnt so many times in red states in the past. But it's pretty obvious at this point that things have changed considering the slaughterfest 2018 was for red state Democrats even in a D+9 Democratic wave.

I think you were the one that missed my point? I obviously know that you, as a fairly partisan Democrat, support these candidates. And I'm well aware that you believe that your "hicks" narrative is a fact. I'm simply saying it's not a fact. Let's not forget how you so adamantly denied the possibility of a Senator Doug Jones until the last moment.

And in regards to the bolded, no, that was not clear at all. Bredesen was running in a better environment against a weaker candidate but in a far more hostile state. The latter won out, which was always a very strong possibility.

I should have worded that differently. Bredesen was running a stronger campaign, which is what I meant. It was due to the fact that he was running in TN, a far more hostile state than IN for Dems, that didn't make his position better than Bayh's, which is why I thought Blackburn would win back then.

Oh, how could I forget Alabama? A literal pedophile losing by 1 point isn't exactly a strong rebuttal to the theory. I mean, it was a literal pedophile...and he only lost by 1 point. Because it was a psychotically partisan red state. So if anything it adds to the polarization/Racist Hick narrative, not takes away from it. The only error was that my theory was a tiny bit too aggressive in the case of truly exceptional circumstances, otherwise it was pretty much spot on. Luckily, unlike many people here, I can learn from my mistakes. Which is why my upgraded mind model now takes into account pedophilia if it is present (except in Oklahoma, where the Republican would win even if they were a pedophile.)

In short, if your argument for why red states aren't extremely partisan and polarized is "a pedophile Republican lost by 1 point in a red state", well...all I can say is I rest my case.

Come on Icespear, you and me both know that AL has absolutely nothing to do with the R rural trends, and that AL is one of the most inelastic, and Republican states in the union. Thats just lazy.

Okay, what about OK-Gov, TN-Sen, and ND-Sen, all of which you were hilariously convinced were "toss ups."

...... I didnt have any of those as tossups. I never rated OK gov as D favored, ever. And I was one of the people saying TN would surge R late at the end, and low and behold, it did. ND, I saw it being closer, but R favored.
Edit: Im guessing that you are talking about my predictions? I like to be broad on tossups on that thing. I was going to rate FL as a tossup, but I thought it wouldnt happen. Shame I didnt .

Nice Pivot, BTW. Doesnt cancel the fact that your use of AL is pretty lazy and doesnt even help your argument(in fact, it kinda hurts it that, in such polarized times, the state would do such a thing as elect from the other party).

[Zaybay]

little too much to quote

Ill just sort through this.

1.Yeah, I usually rate as much as possible for my maps as tossups before the final day, when I make final predictions. I was late for the election results, so I had no time to update them. And by the time I got back, I was captivated by FL's incredible close result. Thats just what I usually do, and I actually did pretty well this year, got the exact house changeover, 40 seats, and 97% of seats called correctly (took me a long time to make, so it was done 3 days before election day)

2. For the WV thing, you have to have some good old context to understand my thought process. That post is from when the only poll we had was Ojeda+6, and Manchin was comfortably in the lead by large leads, so I took a gamble. Of course, my final prediction had it not flipping, as by then, we had enough information to put an accurate picture together.

3. Seriously, you have been going into my post history, you should have seen by now that I have never thought Bredesen would win(perhaps when he announced, but definitely not past July).


4. As I said before, you cant blanket the entire thing, there are exceptions. Even if you account for the D wave, the areas I listed did trend leftward compared to 2016(key word there, 2016, Im not comparing to 2012, or 2008). Context is really important for these kinds of things as well.

 For example, ME-02. You are correct that Golden won by only 1%, and Mills lost it by less than 1%, but that ignores 2016, where, in an R+1 environment, it voted R+1,(or, if you lose Clinton's margin, 12 points). By calculating it based on that, the district moved Left by 2-5 points(again, based on if you use CPV, or PPV). There is clearly increasing polarization, you would have to be a moron not to see that, as ME-02 didnt swing 20 points back to 2012 levels, and can also be exemplified in states like ND, MO, and TN,  but that doesnt mean that exceptions dont exist, which is all I was trying to say.

The Rural/Urban divide clearly exists, that is unquestionable, and irrefutable, in fact, along with personal popularity, it was one of the better predictors for 2018. What is irrefutable is all Rurals are trending R, and all Urban/Suburban areas are trending D, which is what I have a problem with.


5. Seriously, most of the forum thinks Jones will be DOA, including me.

6. The reason I brought up AL is that the argument of polarization and rural trends is rather weak for the state, because its always polarized. Before the Reagan Revolution, the state only had 2 Republican Senators, during reconstruction, and the state only voted for 1 R before the Reagan Revolution, also during reconstruction. To suggest that there is something new in the state having a hard time voting for the other party, even when their party's candidate is truly disgusting and terrible is not at all new.

I think I addressed all of it, though you have to understand, it was a lot to read.

[Zaybay]

again, way too long, not polluting this thread

Yes, I was referring to congressional results, its usually the best way to gauge a state out of the three (congressional, senatorial, gubernatorial, in that order) because its the least likely to be affected by candidates.

[Zaybay]

stuff

more stuff

Then Im not sure why you are arguing against what I said. I mean, this whole thing started because I said that AL wasnt a good example of your polarization argument, as it was already polarized to start with for most of its history(a better example would have been a state like ND, which regularly elected D senators).I already said back in another post that I had no real problem with the theory, only when its applied in blanket terms to everything(which some posters, not you, have taken up to doing). And then you inquired why I had some states as tossups, and...well, now we are here.