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

[brucejoel99]

Fetterman raised almost $4 million.

At this rate, he's primed to utterly destroy next year.

And you can ask Senators Harrison/McGrath/Gideon how raising +100M$ is a winning strategy.

Literally everybody you just named won - if not utterly destroyed in - their primaries.

[brucejoel99]

He announced an exploratory committee though.

You're not wrong!  It has however been common knowledge, along the lines of Shapiro running for Governor, that Sharif is running for Senate.  Honestly I think he's waiting to see how well Malcolm and Val Arkoosh do in fundraising before he makes it official.

I am just still shook by the self-comparison to Barack Obama(full disclosure, I got this info from a trusted friend who watched the whole thing, not from my own partial watch of the video), like... who does that?  If anything, Malcolm is the next Barack Obama.

Neither of them's gonna be "the next Barack Obama" if Sharif - despite standing 0 chance of winning - nonetheless pulls enough votes away from Kenyatta to hand the race to Fetterman.

[brucejoel99]

Lamb is likely to run.

Ughhh...

[brucejoel99]

Why are people writing off Parnell? He did well in the district against a well known and well liken incumbent

Because according to the Atlas hive mind anybody who is a "Trumpist" is a bad candidate who cannot do better than Trump himself.

Have you ever written a post making any point other than "Atlas Dems are hacks"?

I'm not even saying you're wrong, just that man, the shtick has to be a little tiring.

I'd actually be surprised if it ever tired him out, given that it's literally his entire personality now.

[brucejoel99]

Houlahan NOT running.

https://twitter.com/jonathantamari/status/1402302144754204677?s=21

Cool. The primary was already a bit crazily sized with Fetterman, Kenyatta, & potentially Lamb.

[brucejoel99]

Why is Ryan Costello listed as the poll option?

The options are from a poll posted back in January that subsequently got merged into the megathread.

[brucejoel99]

ANOTHER WFP socialist who wants to defund the police.
https://mobile.twitter.com/WorkingFamilies/status/1362569864297259010
Safe R.

Look, I’m the guy who called Nina Turner a radical socialist. But Kenyatta isn’t a radical socialist. He’s just a Warren Progressive type

Ah, but you're forgetting that everybody to Tom Cotton's left is inherently a radical socialist Marxist leftist. Checkmate, lib.

[brucejoel99]

Lamb will announce next Friday.

Suppose he runs and discovers that moderate-hero Democrats don't play so well in the PA Senate race, and that nobody needs a third Dem obstructionist in Congress, when is the deadline for him to fall back on his old seat where he's actually useful? March 2022?

Mar. 8th is the deadline to file nominating petitions, but he'd have to have circulated them for the House race too if he chose to jump back down into that race, so a de-facto filing deadline here is when they can start being filed on Feb. 15th.

[brucejoel99]

I think there definitely is warranted skepticism of Fetterman, especially the 'Randy Bryce 2.0' thing. I think he's in a better position than that, but it should be noted of course, as some have already, that Fetterman is still relatively unproven.

Meanwhile, Lamb has the bonafides.

Lamb raised $1M last Q without even jumping in the race, so interested to see his figures this go around.

When operating under the dynamics presented by this particular race, at least, given that the entire reason that Fetterman is even the incumbent L.G. in the first place is because he was able to consolidate WePA against challengers who were all from SePA, whereas Lamb's confirmed presence in this race obviously complicates any potential repeat of such a tactic.

This race really seems like it's gonna manage to be both fascinating & miserable, wherein Lamb is the national establishment's candidate who gets a lot of support from national groups & outside money, whereas Fetterman's advantage - particularly over any other progressives - is that he's a strong progressive who's nevertheless learned how to play the game in Harrisburg for a while now, & has become a genuinely-liked by & team-player within the PA Democratic establishment as a result. It's interesting that other PA Democratic establishment figures like Wolf & Shapiro have - in spite of being close with Fetterman - declined to endorse thus far, which is a further interesting complication for Fetterman.

It seems like the open questions that remain in determining where this all ends up in the end are just can Lamb convert outside funding into actual on-the-ground support (which he may not currently have as much of as Fetterman), does Fetterman's jogging incident hurts him with Black voters &/or progressives (as opposed to is he Randy Bryce 2.0, because the political credibility that he's already managed to develop within the state over the course of his career frankly proves that he's not, & clearly so at that), can Kenyatta - who's not liable to get much, if any national support because most, if not all of that's going to Lamb - actually convince progressives that he's better than Fetterman without Street's presence in the race harming his chances, & will any of the state-level establishment actually come out & vocally support Fetterman?

[brucejoel99]

Almost certain this'll be within 1000 votes, very likely within 500, could even be within 100.

How likely is this being within 10 votes?

I saw someone with a bit of PA info put things at McCormick by around 20 votes based on what has already been tabulated of the same vote baskets in each county. He needs to win what is out by about 7%, not hard given the geography of the outstanding vote, but still a bit of a ask. So nobody can say for certain other than it will be close, and the campaigns are playing as such:

https://twitter.com/JosephSzymanski/status/1527036892755243008

Link please?

[brucejoel99]

How's the vote count coming along, btw?

Oz by 1,240 atm. Here's dave's take:

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1527306642705879042

Love life for giving us a Fetterman win & dragging the GOP primary out for another month or 2, the perfect storm for a flip.

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/natashakorecki/status/1532403880784498689

I see no need for him to be out & about while the GOP primary is still a clown show that hasn't yet proven capable of formally declaring his competition. So long as the GOP's messiness is what everybody's focused on, he can take the good 4 weeks that he needs to recover. There's no reason for him to be parading around in public during recovery right now.

[brucejoel99]

Politicos just acting like ghouls as usual.

Given the explicit mention of looking into state ballot-replacement law, I'd honestly be neither shocked nor surprised if these "PA Dems" & "lot of [them] Democratic Party types" are just Conor Lamb &/or the remnants of his campaign support.

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/christos_ioa/status/1560659245414367232