GA-SEN 2020 Class III Megathread: She Who Loeffs Last

[YE]

https://twitter.com/nilesgapol/status/1292498556813803521?s=21

[RussFeingoldWasRobbed]

Keep denouncing him. That is all we can do. Hopefully that will sink his numbers

[Continential]

If Lieberman somehow does well after this, it is clear that GA dems should have got someone else who has campaigned for something before.

I've seen the reviews and even though the reviews were around the time when the book was published, and it doesn't sound racist if you read the amazon reviews though it may have racist tropes. https://www.amazon.com/Lucius-Matthew-Lieberman/dp/1984186523/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

Also, reading the AJC article, it is clear that the GA dems have anointed their candidate even before the book released, as I like this paragraph in the AJC article, "And while Warnock is featured regularly on cable shows and national events — the pastor just helped officiate at John Lewis’ funeral — Lieberman spends his time in relative obscurity. He said he spends hours each day calling donors and introducing himself to activists. His calendar is only now starting to fill up with a handful of virtual gatherings, he said.", even though I support Warnock, the GA Dems are clearly biased for Warnock, you could replace Warnock with Democratic endorsed candidate, and replace Lieberman with the other candidate.

For GA Dems, what do you think will be the political future for Lieberman if he could run for something, as if he runs for something downballot, State Superintendent of Schools or Secretary of State, where his opponent in the primary will be less known and he may have a decent chance of winning the primary, as even Barrow got only 51% and he was a Congressman and the candidate endorsed by almost everyone.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Well, that’s a bummer. Might [inks] this whole thing up.

[Adam Griffin]

Like I said quite awhile ago, this is why all the known commodities wanted to run for the Perdue seat. Not having a primary in a state where your party lacks any real institutional power is a nightmare.

Without the ability to flush out 7-8 no-name Ds + Lieberman, you'd need Democrats to be winning statewide by high single digits to even have a shot at crossing 50 in November (and this is assuming Lieberman is a dud who gets like 2-3%). Since that's not going to happen, hello January runoff. In terms of victory then, that's not going to happen either (maybe if Trump somehow wins re-election).

The fact that DPG is worried about getting locked out is a concern even my pessimistic ass never truly worried about...but maybe the polling is accurate regarding Lieberman. The possibility that he is getting this kind of support isn't completely unfathomable, because, well...re-read the second sentence in this post.

[Continential]

Adam, what do you think will be the final margin, I think that Lieberman will get around 10% and that Warenock will get high 30s. Also, what is your response to my question if you want to answer?

[Adam Griffin]

Adam, what do you think will be the final margin, I think that Lieberman will get around 10% and that Warenock will get high 30s. Also, what is your response to my question if you want to answer?

Really impossible to say. If Lieberman somehow doesn't end up being a dud, then I'd wager that his share of the vote would be around one-third of Warnock's (and that Collins runs ahead of Loeffer, meaning a Collins vs Warnock runoff). The other 7-8 Democratic candidates are still likely to pull anywhere from 0.1% to 1% each in addition, depending. Maybe something like 36% Warnock, 28% Collins, 20% Loeffer, 12% Lieberman in that specific scenario.

Outside of ATL, it seems Warnock and allies have basically been sitting on their laurels (perhaps with some campaign mindset of "Don't you know who I am? I lead MLK's church!" - the reality is that nobody outside of his parishioners, high-info ATL politicos and various activists did in fact know this prior to his entry). In today's political environment, that's honestly fine for a Georgia Democratic primary (see Ossoff) - but this isn't a Democratic primary. Lest we need to look to the recent TN-2020-SEN primary (or its 2014 GOV/SEN, or 2012 SEN), or MS-2015-GOV, or SC-2010-SEN, a lack of outreach can lead to disproportionate support based solely on name rec, alphabetical order, "normal-sounding names" and whatnot among Deep South Democratic (primary) voters. Rurals (white and black alike) who enter the booth without instruction will act accordingly.

It seems like they've just been sitting on their money and/or focusing it on the Atlanta media market alone, but I am not an oracle for the entire state in terms of campaign activity. I do know however that non-ATL D voters will do all sorts of crazy s[inks]t without proper and consistent instruction from disciplined statewide efforts, though. I also know that every other campaign has reached out (multiple times, including Lieberman's) to my region of the state save for his.

I don't think Lieberman has much of a future in GA politics - especially if running against qualified, competent prior elected officials. Name rec goes further here than in most states, but unless he ends up running in some future race where his opposition is inexperienced/lackadaisical, it's not going to go anywhere.  

This reminds me in many ways of Barksdale's 2016 bid, where big promises and potential were made/claimed at the onset, but never actually materialized...

[Continential]

Yeah, it makes sense that nobody knows about Warnock as a decent amount of people likely don't know that the NACCP still exists. I'm pretty sure that before he was thinking about running, most people who knows who the GA candidates are didn't know that he existed.

Why did the GA Dems in 2016 nominate Barksdale instead of running someone who ran for office in Georgia before, I could see the comparison as Warnock and Barksdale don't have electoral experience and that Warnock is likely to return to the ministry after he likely loses the runoff.

Yeah, only focusing on Atlanta may give you weird results, as seen in the GA 2020 Senate primary where someone named Maya Dillard Smith got 9% and someone named James Knox won a county and got 5%.

[Adam Griffin]

Why did the GA Dems in 2016 nominate Barksdale instead of running someone who ran for office in Georgia before

1) Isakson was largely considered unbeatable (given he outperformed Trump by 9 points, accurate)
2) Barksdale pledged to put millions into his campaign at the onset and millions more later (he put $3m in initially, but never followed up with further investment; that pledge also made it more difficult for him to raise money (he raised less than $1m excluding his own contribution) because people knew he had his own and he had pledged to self-fund to a large degree)

[RussFeingoldWasRobbed]

I doubt black people are  voting for lieberman. His supporters are most likely rich suburban voters who are now turned away from him because of this new scandal. Hopefully Warnocks team digs up new stuff

[EastAnglianLefty]

Presumably in rural Georgia a large part of the local Democratic organisation is tied to black churches? If so, that would seem to be a channel Warnock ought to be able to use effectively to mobilise support to prevent a lockout.

[Rookie Yinzer]

Warnock is going to make the run off. Handwringing about him/Dems being locked out is just that.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

I'd been hesitant to jump on the "Warnock is a bad candidate" train, but this might explain why Lieberman isn't yet dead in the water.

https://twitter.com/NilesGApol/status/1295437598111027206

#candidatequality moves less in an extremely polarised state like GA when it comes to a D vs R race, but Warnock's best shot at winning was clearing the field prior to the November election (or getting into a runoff in which Trump had already won the presidency, I suppose).

[wbrocks67]

Is that true though? Warnock's team said they were spending nearly $3M on an ad campaign for August.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Is that true though? Warnock's team said they were spending nearly $3M on an ad campaign for August.

I've seen that in AJC too. Could he have bought ads that haven't aired yet, but will by the end of the month? If so, it's a late start.

[Continential]

Had Lieberman been in Warnock’s place with the money and DSCC support, he would be in second place, not around 20%

[Roronoa D. Law]

Can confirm I haven't seen any ads from Warnock either.

[Adam Griffin]

I doubt black people are  voting for lieberman. His supporters are most likely rich suburban voters who are now turned away from him because of this new scandal. Hopefully Warnocks team digs up new stuff

As much as I tend to consider Southron rich white suburbrons my personal #1 enemy, there simply aren't enough of them in GA to skew polling so substantially in favor of Lieberman. "Historically" (i.e. an average of every GE from 2004-2016), you're basically talking a 60% black, 30% white, 10% other D electorate (I suspect 2020 will be a bit whiter/browner and less black if we win, just like Abrams managed in '18 relative to '16, '14 and '12). Rich white suburbrons wouldn't make up more than 10% of GA's Democrats even with gains among white suburbanites at-large, so they're not to blame. These types tend to be "more tuned in" - which doesn't mean they're necessarily more informed, but alas. They're not going to be committed to voting Lieberman because they saw a few ads.

If we take at face value what the aggregate of polls have shown in terms of overall statewide vote share, then it'd be due to non-ATL and/or rural Democrats (black, white and everybody in between) being surveyed, knowing none of the names, and randomly picking one. When select groups of voters don't know anybody, you can basically divvy their votes up the same way you would probabilities in coin-flips.

I'd been hesitant to jump on the "Warnock is a bad candidate" train, but this might explain why Lieberman isn't yet dead in the water.

https://twitter.com/NilesGApol/status/1295437598111027206

#candidatequality moves less in an extremely polarised state like GA when it comes to a D vs R race, but Warnock's best shot at winning was clearing the field prior to the November election (or getting into a runoff in which Trump had already won the presidency, I suppose).

Can confirm I haven't seen any ads from Warnock either.

Well...at least I no longer feel alone. I went and sat with my mother today during the 6 PM hour; I saw 3 Ossoff ads via the Chattanooga media market. At least one of the Senate candidates is making an effort...

The best-case scenario I can say here is that Warnock's team is hoarding cash for a runoff - which I don't think is ideal. There's no history that says that a Democrat is going to do better in a runoff than in November (including 2018), and certainly no history that says Democrats can expect to do better after winning a landslide presidential election 1-2 months prior.

Who knows what they've been doing or not - personally I'm increasingly just assuming "not much" - but being in such a position, I'd have been doing everything in my personal power to connect with both Lieberman and Tarver in an attempt to "bring them into the fold" and convince them to end their campaigns, with the sole intent of consolidating their vote for November. Sans those 2, a 3-4 point two-party lead would almost certainly be enough to clear 50: while Democrats getting 51.5-52.0% might seem like a reach, I still feel it's less so than thinking you can win a runoff the week after New Year's when the Democratic machine has blown its load and/or Trump is defeated.

[Continential]

Lieberman has no incentive to end his campaign as he doesn't have a political future in Georgia and the only way Tarver could do it is perhaps a second stint as US Attorney of Georgia.


I'd imagine that a significant portion of Lieberman's voting base is uninformed voters, who have never heard of Warnock and I presume are likely black.

I can't wait to see the county maps on the days after election maps.

I swear the guys who manage Warnock's campaign must be secretly working with the GA GOP and that if I'd lived in Georgia, I'd probably vote Lieberman out of spite if the moronic things or the lack of anything that Warnock's campaign has done.

I'd wonder what would GA Dems react to Lieberman getting in.

[Rookie Yinzer]

https://twitter.com/ReverendWarnock/status/1296021588333096960?s=20

[Lognog]

https://twitter.com/ReverendWarnock/status/1296021588333096960?s=20

Finally

[brucejoel99]

> Atlas: *complains about Warnock's lack of TV ad presence*

> Warnock, immediately thereafter: *starts airing first ad*

Ight, which one of you is Rev. Warnock &/or a member of his campaign?

[Adam Griffin]

> Atlas: *complains about Warnock's lack of TV ad presence*

> Warnock, immediately thereafter: *starts airing first ad*

Ight, which one of you is Rev. Warnock &/or a member of his campaign?

Literally just received my first text outreach from the campaign...either today is the day they decided to start doing everything or they're lurking Larry Sabato-style on Atlas, lol.

[Horus]

I just don't understand why he waited so long. The ad is simple, homey and makes him out to be a compassionate moderate. If he'd ran it in April the field would clear. Literally all he had to do was introduce himself, why now?

[Rookie Yinzer]

I just don't understand why he waited so long. The ad is simple, homey and makes him out to be a compassionate moderate. If he'd ran it in April the field would clear. Literally all he had to do was introduce himself, why now?

The pandemic and not wanting to confuse voters with the primary for the other seat going on?

I think they’ve pretty much resigned themselves to a runoff anyway so they’re slow walking it and timing everything just right for a top 2 finish.