This race has way more upset potential than many on here seem to think. I'm expecting a low-/mid-single-digit race at this point, and it is winnable for Pressley.
It's funny because I think Beshear is overrated in KY while Pressley is underrated in MS and a KY-R/MS-D split is not completely out of the question.
Pressley is much more palatable to Republican-leaning/culturally conservative voters than Beshear, and Cameron is less tainted than Reeves. Reeves is precisely the kind of politician people will throw out the moment they're actually given an alternative they can stomach.
I do get the sense that Beshear has been behaving too much like Generic D and may have gotten overconfident after the pro-life referendum failed.
Do you think KY is a good bellwether/predictor for the presidential election the year after? Some think it’s just a coincidence, but there are more than a few parallels between Biden and Beshear:
*Both have family names that are more than familiar to voters and used that fact to their advantage in their campaigns.
*Both were fortunate enough to run against unusually incompetent opponents who seemed unwilling/unable to change course and essentially did themselves in.
*Both campaigned as non-partisan moderates above the fray who promised a return to normalcy and a focus on kitchen-table issues while ending up governing more liberally than their campaign rhetoric led people to believe.
*Both won very narrowly.
*Both won with the same coalition. (enough of a rural/small-town overperformance in select parts of the state/country, huge suburban shifts, blowout margins in urban areas)
If Beshear loses and Pressley pulls it off in MS, we’re essentially back to where we were in 2015, just with LA and MS swapped and Pressley being our JBE this time. (FYI: I don’t think there’s any reason to assume that Pressley can’t pull it off when JBE did it by double digits in a super-R-friendly environment with a similar profile against a similarly scandal-plagued opponent. I don’t buy into the "inelastic MS" narrative, or at least I don’t buy it being far more inflexible than LA.)
It does make you wonder when Republicans will actually get all three of LA/KY/MS — it’s never happened before, and there’s always that one race which seems to elude them.
Bevin's campaign had many similarities to Trump's too
- You had a super controversial businessman who defeated the establishment Republican candidates in the primary and then won an upset win over the Democrat
- They won their upset by winning areas that had seemingly been solid Democratic territory in Presidential/Gubernatorial elections for a while(Eastern KY for Bevin, the Rust Belt for Trump)
- Both made repealing their predecessor healthcare law a priority
- Both stayed controversial and divisive as Governor
- Both narrowly lost reelection in a midst of a health crises(Opiods for Bevin and COVID for Trump)
- Both Tried to overturn the election through the courts and legislature but failed.
