Special Election megathread (4/30: NY-26)

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DNS registrations indicating former State Representative John Barnes plans to enter the race for OH-11 have popped up. Barnes was a DINO in the legislature, never formally caucusing with the Republicans, but he might as well have. Barnes is essentially Cleveland's Ruben Diaz Sr. and won't win over any establishment support in the primary. Still, he has a loyal following that never bucked him despite multiple attempts to have him primaried by more liberal, mainstream Democrats.

Turner endorsed by a transphobe:

https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1339321772638867457?s=20

She also endorsed Joe Biden back in March. Didn't see any concern trolling then.

Tulsi hadn't outed herself as a pro-life TERF in March.

She's neither, as far as I can tell.

She's pro life but the terf label is not fair.

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If nothing else, I would really love to see donut twitter/KHive completely lose it and donate tons of money to whatever Republican grifter opposes her.

Obsessed. Kamala is VP and some of y'all still bring these people up no matter how irrelevant they are to the topic at hand.

While I like Harris fine she has the second most toxic Twitter fanbase after Trump.

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https://twitter.com/ninaturner/status/1374737867847704581

Nina Turner endorsed by CPC. Not particularly surprising, I guess, but it is notable that Turner seems to be getting support even from mainstream progressives.

That's because the left wing version of the tea party has taken over the Democratic Party.

It has not. It's less than 10% of the Dem caucus.

It has, however, essentially blunted the rise of Warren/Porter like progressives in favor of the Sanders/Corbyn wing.

You have an unhealthy and sightly bizarre obsession with Jeremy Corbyn.

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Is Nina Turner actually behaving better now though? She was totally Susan Sarandon far left nonsense before this year.

"Behaving better..." I don't even get why you would care or be involved in politics if you're number one issue is a candidate's tone lol

Turner's entire persona is being an obnoxious, conspiracy-addled asshole though.  If you take that away (her "tone") what does she bring to the table?

People like her because she's obnoxious and rude to people they dislike, and because she says crazy
 things that validate their conspiratorial belief system.  That's really all there is to it.

You totally would've voted for Trump if Bernie had won the nomination lol. Just sad.

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Turner is gonna win with over 50% of the vote. And it will be well deserved. Hillary, as always, has terrible political instincts and terrible views.

Go Nina!

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This won't matter, but it's funny to see Turner supports on Twitter talk about Hillary's endorsement being "the kiss of death" when Hillary handily beat Sanders in OH-11 in the 2016 primary.

And absolutely nothing has happened since then.

It's still ridiculous to act like this endorsement will harm Brown. Of course it's not 2016 anymore, but I have no reason to believe that a significant number of Hillary's supporters in the 2016 primary have turned against her in the last five years. And as far as everyone wants to make this race and the 2016 primary proxies for the broader moderate-progressive conflict, the 2020 presidential primary certainly was a resounding win for the moderate side, including in the Midwest.

I would probably rather have Turner in Congress, so I'm not endorsing Hillary's endorsement, I'm just saying that Hillary is still a well-liked figure among most Democrats and thus calling her endorsement "the kiss of death" is laughable.

I agree with you that "kiss of death" is a bit extreme, but it's also likely more tongue-in-cheek than it is a serious statement. Like you say, this will have absolutely no impact on the race. Still, this endorsement reeks of yet another stab at a Bernie acolyte for the sake of doing so. Did she ever endorse a primary challenge to Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, etc?

I'm amazed at how she manages to consistently throw her support behind the most incompetent politicians possible. It's different from picking someone like Henry Cuellar to own the bros. Her congressional endorsements since her loss have been:

* Donna Shalala (lazy, dog**** campaigner, from the Clinton/Feinstein school of thought where their experience entitles them to power)
* Eliot Engel (got caught in 4k, constantly fueled the narrative that he was out of touch with his district)
* Shontel Brown (Has been an absolute trainwreck running the CCDP, can't even lock down her own machine. Probably the most incompetent congressional candidate I've seen in my lifetime.)

1 for 4 still isn't a very good track record, but you are conveniently omitting Haley Stevens.

Who won by less than Elissa Slotkin in a bluer district and also seems a tad unstable.

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I don't know why people are talking about Hillary endorsing people who lost primaries like it's some kind of own.  Usually non-competitive primary candidates don't need endorsements, so naturally you're going to endorse candidates in competitive races who have a good chance of losing.

At least Hillary endorsed normal candidates who ended up losing.  Bernie Sanders endorsed the likes of Cenk Uygur, Tim Canova, and Sarah Iannarone, that's way more embarrassing than endorsing Eliot Engel.

I doubt this will move the needle, the only hope I have is that it finally gets people to think "why is Hillary endorsing Shontel Brown?"  Nine has been running one of the most duplicitous campaigns I've ever seen -- she's literally presenting herself as the opposite of her actual self and running against herself -- and it's working because she has absolutely titanic amounts of money coming in through the Bernie machine, so she's drowning OH-11 in ads and intimidating all the local officials into getting behind her inevitable candidacy.  Maybe a Hillary endorsement of her opponent will shake that inevitability.

Someone is scared of the strong Black woman who dares to speak out against the neolib "consensus."

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I don't know why people are talking about Hillary endorsing people who lost primaries like it's some kind of own.  Usually non-competitive primary candidates don't need endorsements, so naturally you're going to endorse candidates in competitive races who have a good chance of losing.

At least Hillary endorsed normal candidates who ended up losing.  Bernie Sanders endorsed the likes of Cenk Uygur, Tim Canova, and Sarah Iannarone, that's way more embarrassing than endorsing Eliot Engel.

I doubt this will move the needle, the only hope I have is that it finally gets people to think "why is Hillary endorsing Shontel Brown?"  Nine has been running one of the most duplicitous campaigns I've ever seen -- she's literally presenting herself as the opposite of her actual self and running against herself -- and it's working because she has absolutely titanic amounts of money coming in through the Bernie machine, so she's drowning OH-11 in ads and intimidating all the local officials into getting behind her inevitable candidacy.  Maybe a Hillary endorsement of her opponent will shake that inevitability.

Someone is scared of the strong Black woman who dares to speak out against the neolib "consensus."

Why is everything always about race? Address the points

His post wasn't worth an issue based response because it contained a blatant lie about Turner "intimidating all the local officials."

And who are you to tell anyone how to respond to anything? You're like the epitome of a white noise poster. Who are you again? lmao

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Shontel Brown is a sub par, boring candidate and Turner is clearly the better option, but that wasn't transphobic. False accusations such as this are why people have a hard time taking certain parts of the left seriously. Somehow literally EVERYTHING gets related back to trans issues with these people.

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We're all for second chances. We just don't think people who are attracted to first graders deserve one.

You know, like normal people.

It's funny that we finally find a position where I'm more left than you.  I've always felt that the sex offender registry should be eliminated.  Why are you still punished for your crime after leaving prison?  If you've completed your sentence, you've completed your sentence.  If the government doesn't feel you're ready to safely re-enter society, you shouldn't be in that society.  Let's get rid of this grey zone, especially when it's basically a scarlet letter for life that makes it difficult to find employment or build a social network, greatly increasing the chance that you rescind.

I feel this way about all crimes -- make criminal records private, give ex-felons full civil rights, get rid of the criminal history form on employment applications -- but the sex offender one is a particularly strange case because it only exists for one subset of crimes.  If you killed fifty people, you get out of prison and are considered rehabilitated, but if you raped a 17 year old decades ago, you still have to walk around the neighborhood and tell everyone the day you move in.

Anyway, this isn't the Individual Politics board.  I just think it's pretty desperate and disgusting to try and attack Shontel because she let this guy get involved in community event organizing 15 years after he completed his sentence.

If you killed 50 people you're never getting out of prison. This isn't Norway.

The sex offender registry should definitely exist for those who committed a crime with someone under the age of 16. Above that I'm inclined to agree.

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Boom:

https://twitter.com/EvilChristos/status/1422732300824064007

Girrrrl.

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Good to have a Marianne supporter in Congress.

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Meanwhile, 50K votes in NY-23 and Pia is still up.... where is this likely to end up?

All of Tompkins looks in so Della Pia won't win, but he's doing somewhat better than anyone expected.

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The GOP is stuck in a nasty place. They can't moderate on Dobbs much because as we saw tonight turnout is already sub par in the most conservative areas and that'll turn the base off, but the ruling is absolutely toxic to suburbanites and an enormous motivating factor for women. What do they do?