Why is Kari Lake doing well but Doug Mastriano flopping

[xavier110]

Is Hobbs even campaigning?

My possibly wrong impression is that she's doing more campaigning than the narrative suggests, if not enough or a particularly effective kind. The bigger problem IMO is that said narrative has also fixated on the idea of Lake as an easily beatable Hysterical Woman and not someone who, as it turns out, might have considerable strengths of her own as a candidate.

If you look on Twitter or on AZ Politics on Reddit, you’ll see that Arizonans who lean D are universally annoyed with Hobbs. I agree that the disappointment isn’t around her not campaigning. She’s campaigning.

It’s around how she’s campaigning.

https://mobile.twitter.com/TimJarrellAZ/status/1580980840141463552

I figure someone like the above hasn’t heard from her because she’s being ultra low key and not making news.

The philosophical debate here is do you need to bring the heat when up against a hot head? I think the answer is obviously yes, and it feels like Ds are yearning for someone to fight, especially if Hobbs is going to LEAN INTO rhetoric around Lake being a threat to civil society.

You can’t say that while acting sheepish. It feels like she’s planted absolutely no traps for Lake to walk into.

Lake, meanwhile, despite what every non-AZer here thinks, does conjure up some positive associations for people who’ve watched her for two decades. It’s like if Regis Philbin or, I don’t know, your local newscaster you grew up with suddenly went demented. If she loses, it’s got nothing to do with Hobbs and everything to do with Trump and know-nothingness being radioactive to the middle here.

Hobbs has tried to let her own the space a bit to self-inflict wounds, but it’s also letting Lake set the terms of the debate and make her case against Hobbs.