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

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

Fetterman seems relatively moderate on the environment compared to the standard progressive profile. He opposes the GND (while "supporting parts of it"), principally because of objections to an "unrealistic" five-year energy transition and a fracking ban.

Although he has signed the 'No Fossil Fuel Money' pledge, the differences between him and, say, Lamb are more likely to become apparent on issues like healthcare, housing, etc. I suppose environmental policy could become a key fault line between Fetterman and Kenyatta but I don't think they will end up occupying 1st and 2nd place.

Not supporting the green new deal does not make you moderate.

Quite frankly, saving the environment is not a moderate, or conservative, or liberal issue. Had we done Cap-and-Trade 10 years ago, then maybe we wouldn't need the Green New Deal, but your party blocked it and now we need something very ambitious like the GND to save the planet. This isn't a matter of right or left, it's a matter of doing what's right.

I'm so old I remember when cap and trade was the conservative, market based alternative.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

If the apparatus backs Lamb, it will mark my point of no return with the Democratic Party. Manchinism must be stopped if the party is truly interested in making policy.

At least Manchin consistently overperformed top-of-the-ticket Democrats.

Lamb over-performed quite a bit in both the special and the 2018 GE.  In 2020, unlike most congressional Democrats in tough districts, he matched Biden’s showing IIRC.  Plus, every election he’s run in was a competitive race and he’s currently three for three.  I get not trusting him for ideological reasons - although I don’t think he’d be as bad as Sinema, Manchin, or even Maggie Hassen - and I’d even want him to commit to some things like nuking the filibuster. 

That said, while he’s not a Cartwright-level over-performer, he has an excellent electoral track record and is a good fit for PA.  And I don’t see how one can argue Lamb would be less electable than Fetterman, Kenyatta, or Street.  Maybe we don’t need Lamb to win and it isn’t worth the ideological tradeoff, but he’s definitely the strongest candidate currently running from an electability standpoint.

This is true, but Democrats need to be asking themselves ‘whose the mostreliable vote that can win’ not ‘whose going to win by the most’.

I see no reason to think either Fetterman is weak or Lamb is unrealizable though, so I’m pretty agnostic here.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

Lamb’s alleged moderate heroism seems to be entirely built around a single vote on what is, let’s be honest, a niche issue.

Yeah, I’m not super worried about it.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

Yikes, that’s an awful poll, though hopefully Lamb’s numbers go up when he officially announces. He’s the only candidate that would keep this race a toss-up; the rest of these jokers shift it to Likely R at best.

This is based on what again?

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

Lamb is the most electable. In polls, most Pennsylvania democratic voters consider themselves “moderate”. While that might not mean much, it has implications. More people are going to vote for Lamb in the primary than many might think. Fetterman, while I still think he’s a good candidate and would still probably win, I don’t think moderate/independent turn-out would go to Fetterman as much as it would Lamb.

Questions like that mean almost nothing. Plenty of those ‘moderates’ are just down the line liberals that call themselves moderates because they like to think of themselves as independent thinkers or expect they are really into guns or don’t like abortion or are saying ‘I’m a Democrat but not into this critical race theory stuff I keep hearing about’, not because they are knee-jerk radical centrists that really don’t exist in appreciable numbers out of Washington itself.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

Would Dr Oz be a good candidate? Does anyone know his political stances?

We are talking about a guy that quit being a heart surgeon to sell quack remedies on daytime tv.

I doubt he has any firm beliefs beyond what keeps the grift going.

He's the perfect fit for the party of Donald Trump.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

So do we have any real polling (IE not a DFP SMS survey) saying that this race has closed at all?

Maybe I missed it, but it sure feels like people are just working off of assumptions based on endorsements and other such not actually that determinative factors.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

I'm confused as to those who say Barnette would be a particularly strong candidate for Rs. She def would've been before she went all in crazy nutjob in the primary. She may still be favored just by the nature of the year and turnout differences, but she is very isolating to any who isn't in the Trump cult and it'd be hard for her to go back and moderate at this point, she's already done a lot of damage.

Like in the R debate she was def the most "derailed" of the bunch, not being shy about her idea that the 2020 election including her own (which she lost by 20) were stolen and basically says everything a Trump loyalist wants to hear, and repeatedly attacked the others for not being 100% in on absolutely crazy stuff.

Ig she's black and such, but just by being black doesn't really much for expanding the GOP's coalition unless she seriously makes an effort to reach out to the black community. Same way that John James really didn't do much differently than Trump in heavily black Detroit, no even slightly better.

‘If we get our own black person, they’ll all vote for us’ is the beginning and end of GOP thoughts on outreach.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

https://twitter.com/AdImpact_Pol/status/1524099235263700993?t=QNrvxYhwsNtsPuZSYJ...
Club is such a clownshow with no ideological consistency.. supporting Mandel, Barnette and Masters.. what's the correlation.

CfG is about full on tearing down the government with the most radical Rand sh**t possible. Anyone that will sign onto the Paul Ryan/Rick Scott/etc. plan to defund everything gets their vote and everything else is window dressing.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

https://twitter.com/bresreports/status/1525923204912627715

Oh god damn it

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

Given how rapidly Barnette has surged from nothing to just a hair out of the lead, I have think of her as the favorite.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

Not sure if I'm a fan of Dr. Oz's new campaign slogan: https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1526376138188070913

Sure sounds a bit like a groomer.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

In the first exchange, the Fetterman supporter is the one who comes off as an a**hole, not gonna lie

I would say that everyone involved sucks. The difference is that the Fetterman people don't represent his campaign

Nuh uh

In any given situation, the leftmost person is responsible for everyone that agrees with them on everything. The rightmost party isn’t even responsible for their own words.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

I don’t know how cuddling up to Joe Manchin and calling his opponent a scary socialist didn’t win him a Democratic primary.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

LOL@the brutal ownage of Kenyatta.

Fun fact, he’s winning more counties than Lamb

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

BTW, I'd love to see James Carville right now. He's probably furious

What does Carville have anything to do with this? It seems he lives rent free in your head. Anyways while I supported Lamb too much energy was spent over this race for second place.

right? i've seen many people who were still slamming Lamb even after Fetterman lost... like I don't get what Lamb did to these people to make them so unhinged lmao.

https://twitter.com/ConorLambPA/status/1526770937709965312

Make sure to say something about the stroke at the end. Real class act that guy.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

OK, anyone that seriously votes for Oz over Fetterman because the later has a heart condition is an idiot of the highest caliber.

But I have a bad feeling this will be the EMAILZ of this election.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

OK, anyone that seriously votes for Oz over Fetterman because the later has a heart condition is an idiot of the highest caliber.

But I have a bad feeling this will be the EMAILZ of this election.

There has never been an election where somebody’s health problems hurt them

Not that I can recall, excepting those where a candidate died, but there was also never an election where email server best practices hurt anyone until there was

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

https://twitter.com/NoLieWithBTC/status/1536090139172257793

Presumably the sort of voters that pledging to end illegal immigration appeals to would care…

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

Yeah, I can see Fetterman winning here while Dems lose all the other competitive races, Oz is just not a good candidate and Fetterman is running a great campaign. In fact I hope that happens. Honestly Fetterman is the only Dem I can see winning the electoral college in 2024.

Here’s the thing, the candidates in other competitive races are a clearly brain damaged celebrity athlete, zombie eyed granny starter redux, and an incumbent knee deep in sedition and too stupid to walk and chew gum.

I could definitely see this cycle getting better.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

Vote for the #populist working class everyday man John Fetterman.

Real talk - Fetterman needs to blast ads like this. Brutal.

https://twitter.com/JohnFetterman/status/1542501205351579649

So Oz should be ashamed of the fact that he worked hard and became rich, unlike Fetterman who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and lived with his parents in his 30's?

I’m sorry, but ‘respected heart surgeon gives up medical practice, uses good name to cash in selling miracle cure scams on daytime trash tv’ isn’t exactly an uplifting Horatio Alger story.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

Does anyone not think Trump just sells his endorsements?

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

https://twitter.com/hollyotterbein/status/1553077650176065538?s=20&t=akUCwfD...

Indeed, but Oz losing makes the path to a solid GOP majority much harder. 

If PA flips R-->D, the GOP must win two of AZ/GA/NV to take control of the Senate (we'll discount less likely flips such as NH or CO).  And even then, it'd still be the narrowest of majorities. 

Of course, it's not at all inconceivable that the GOP holds PA and flips AZ/GA/NV to take a more commanding 52-48 majority.  But Oz is a pretty integral part of the GOP Senate machine. 

I have actually had PA as seat number 53 for the GOP for quite some time with this being my ranking:

49: WI
50: NV
51: AZ
52: GA
53: PA


Given it is an open race I dont think the fact the GOP currently holds this seat really means much. Now I think Republicans have the best chance in NV out of these 4 as they actually have a strong candidate in NV, its a state that is trending R , and the Reid Machine was toppled so due to this I think the GOP has the best chance in NV.

So that leaves AZ/GA/PA where Republicans have/likely to nominate flawed candidates so the reason why I think PA is the hardest out of those 3 is:

1. It voted for Biden by the largest margin

2. PA is a state where Republicans rely on low propensity voters turnout more than they do in AZ/GA which are states where Democrats rely on low propensity voters to turnout.

I think you counting is off, shouldn’t WI be 50 and PA be 54?

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

https://twitter.com/hollyotterbein/status/1553077650176065538?s=20&t=akUCwfD...

Indeed, but Oz losing makes the path to a solid GOP majority much harder. 

If PA flips R-->D, the GOP must win two of AZ/GA/NV to take control of the Senate (we'll discount less likely flips such as NH or CO).  And even then, it'd still be the narrowest of majorities. 

Of course, it's not at all inconceivable that the GOP holds PA and flips AZ/GA/NV to take a more commanding 52-48 majority.  But Oz is a pretty integral part of the GOP Senate machine. 

I have actually had PA as seat number 53 for the GOP for quite some time with this being my ranking:

49: WI
50: NV
51: AZ
52: GA
53: PA


Given it is an open race I dont think the fact the GOP currently holds this seat really means much. Now I think Republicans have the best chance in NV out of these 4 as they actually have a strong candidate in NV, its a state that is trending R , and the Reid Machine was toppled so due to this I think the GOP has the best chance in NV.

So that leaves AZ/GA/PA where Republicans have/likely to nominate flawed candidates so the reason why I think PA is the hardest out of those 3 is:

1. It voted for Biden by the largest margin

2. PA is a state where Republicans rely on low propensity voters turnout more than they do in AZ/GA which are states where Democrats rely on low propensity voters to turnout.

I think you counting is off, shouldn’t WI be 50 and PA be 54?

No, he's right (and I agree with his ordering).  The Republicans have 50 now, but that includes WI and PA.  So if they flipped AZ/GA/NV they would have 53.

I’m an idiot who was counting WI as a Dem seat.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

[muh opponent Hitler car]

Fetterman continues to run one of the most pathetic campaigns I've ever seen. Yeesh.

And yet he’s kicking your boy’s ass in a same party midterm