I know that this race is probably the biggest tossup of this cycle, but with Cunningham supposedly being a bad recruit and yet still managing to keep this race competitive, I can't help but wonder if Jeff Jackson (supposedly the best recruit possible) is kicking himself over not running against Tillis instead. If he intends to run for Burr's seat next cycle, that might end up being a bigger gamble, especially if Biden becomes President.
I maintain that - judging from how everyone involved in getting him not to run behaved - Jackson has some sort of really ugly skeletons in his closet. Whatever you think of the folks running the DSCC, they're not stupid and they want to flip the Senate too, so you gotta ask why from their perspective it'd make sense to keep Jackson out in favor of Cunningham. On paper, Jackson's an A-list - or at worst, very strong B-list - recruit and Cunningham is a C-list recruit.
The Democratic Party's donor class wasn't really paying attention to this race at the time and to the extent it did, most of the establishment types seemed to want Jackson (who'd been being billed as a major rising star...talk that seems to be quietly fading somewhat lately, I should add). Maybe I'm missing something, but from what I can see, the only reason that makes sense here is that the opposition research parties generally do before every race on their own candidates to avoid being caught off guard led to the DSCC finding something really bad which made it worth running someone who was a far weaker candidate on paper.
