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

[pikachu]

People keep saying this race could be like FL-SEN 2018, i.e. defying a wave year otherwise bad for the party that wins in this swing state by the skin of its teeth.

But what if it's more like MI-SEN 2014? Gary Peters outdid his polls and Obama 2012 and won by double digits in an otherwise abysmal year for Democrats. If Oz continues to crash and burn as a candidate, I could see Fetterman winning comfortably being at least as likely as his winning only narrowly. No matter what the overall national environment (which currently looks pretty neutral on the GCB) is like for Democrats.

I don't think PA's electorate (or really any state for that matter) is primed for that kind of massive overperformance of the fundamentals that occurred in MI-SEN 2014 even with a subpar candidate like Oz. Even Peters himself was kept to a close victory in a better cycle in 2020.

GOP also seems to be trying harder here than it was in MI-2014. Weird that this ended up being the case in hindsight with how the rest of the midterms turned out, but everyone viewed that race as over before the summer began.

[pikachu]

https://twitter.com/Blake_Allen13/status/1560776974146195456

Is he taking another vacation?

Regardless, imagine if a Democrat did this. They'd be called "Communist sympathizers." Fetterman ought to tar Oz the same way.

Also, might I add how thematically out-of-touch he is still being by apparently assuming that the average person reading his tweet can just drop everything they're doing on a whim, like him, and just travel halfway across the world.

Even if you have a lot of the same dynamics with diasporic politics, the tenor around US-Vietnam relations is very different from, say, Iran or Cuba, and there's been a bipartisan consensus that stronger relations with Vietnam are necessary since rapprochement 20 years ago. Not that I think voters particularly care, but attacking on this front pretty easily opens you up to counters on "being soft on China" and whatnot.