PA GOV 2022: Stick a fork in it

[Sir Mohamed]

What's the outlook for the state legislature? As far as I have been following PA politics, Wolf actually had an ambitious agenda when he became gov, but was stonewalled by a heavily gerrymandered GOP legislature. Dems won the PV by 10 pts. in 2018 and still were unable to gain control of either chamber. How is that expected to turn out if we assume Shapiro defeats Barletta in a relatively close race?

Btw, I agree Barlatta would be a good candidate from the Dem perspective, but I wouldn't write him off. I expect Shapiro to win by no more than 3-5 pts.

[Sir Mohamed]

Hope we see Shapiro entering soon. He'll be the best Dem candidate who can beat these GOP clowns.

[Sir Mohamed]

Actually Shapiro isn't that late, election cycles have just becomes unnecessary long. I feel like it would be enough to announce in the fall of the year before or even in January/February of the election year, depending on primary date.

Although I backed him from the start, I found it kind of hilarious Gavin Newsom announcing his candidacy for CA-gov in February 2015.

In an environment of permament campaigning, there remains little time for actual governing.

[Sir Mohamed]

I'm not as familiar with this race as the PA posters, but I have the impression Shapiro is running very strong. Hot take: He's more likely to be gov in 2023 than Whitmer and Evers.

[Sir Mohamed]

I'm not as familiar with this race as the PA posters, but I have the impression Shapiro is running very strong. Hot take: He's more likely to be gov in 2023 than Whitmer and Evers.

Not a hot take. Shapiro has a track record of running pretty well statewide.

Sure, though the other 2 are incumbents.

[Sir Mohamed]

Lol how do people think the GOP is substantially favored when the Democrats have a popular outgoing Governor and a statewide official running unopposed in the primary with massive amounts of funding and a crowded GOP field with a capitol rioter frontrunner. 

Yup, the gov race is at least a tossup, if not tilt D. The only question is whether there will be significant ticket splitting, at least in the range of >50k votes. I think the senate is slightly Tilt R due to national environment.

[Sir Mohamed]

Tilt D -> Lean D

[Sir Mohamed]

This forum is really going to delude itself with this race. I will enjoy your conventional wisdom punditry getting smashed to pieces in November.

Why so? Do you think candidate candidate is totally irrelevant here and the red wave is just big enough to carry any far-right lunatic over the finishline in a state that Biden won?

PA already elected a Dem gov in D-midterm as recent as eight years ago.

[Sir Mohamed]

This forum is really going to delude itself with this race. I will enjoy your conventional wisdom punditry getting smashed to pieces in November.

Why so? Do you think candidate candidate is totally irrelevant here and the red wave is just big enough to carry any far-right lunatic over the finishline in a state that Biden won?

PA already elected a Dem gov in D-midterm as recent as eight years ago.

I'm not saying Mastriano will win. But this idea that he's a "far-right lunatic" as you describe him is entirely subjective, and candidate quality is being decided by partisan liberals such as yourself thinking you can neutrally analyze candidates. And this is why you guys keep getting elections so wrong.

It's not subjective. He is. And it's not just partisan liberals. There are people from both sides of the aisle and all over PA who have said as such.

Yup, also I said Lean D, not Safe D, lol. Doesn't mean Shapiro is guaranteed to win, though he's objectively favored for the moment. If h flames out over the campaign, things can change. Could also get worse for Mastriano, if goes full MTG.

Shapiro at least has proven his electability in previous elections and PA is a battleground state. Sure, it's not NY, but also not IN or even TX.

[Sir Mohamed]

Mastriano compares Capitol riot to Reichstag fire.

The Donald Trump-endorsed nominee for governor in Pennsylvania compared the Jan. 6 attack to historical events staged by the Nazis, saying that he saw "parallels" between the criticism of the Jan. 6 attack and the 1933 Reichstag fire, which Hitler used to seize more power.

Doug Mastriano was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

LOL, the dude is such a trainwreck. Hopefully he's rejected by more than a few points.

[Sir Mohamed]

https://twitter.com/letsgomathias/status/1540084673707220993

I dunno, is it just me or does the dude actually look like a neo nazi?

[Sir Mohamed]

https://twitter.com/tripgabriel/status/1541777210553638913

You can just hope PA voters reject this weirdo.

[Sir Mohamed]

Lean R. It is truly astonishing how despite hosting a litany of individuals who either hold degrees in or are academically pursuing philosophy, law, psychology, political science, sociology, or some other liberal arts discipline, this blog cannot quite wrap its head around the historically proven fact that generally speaking, people can accept fascism and chauvinism if the purveyors of such can convince them inflation will go away.

Mastriano hasn't even focused on those issues though? What also could be his downfall of his own making is his OWN focus on issues like abortion, 2020 fraud, re-registered voters, rather than actual kitchen table issues.

I just hope the GOP overreach by focusing on such BS issues and nominating horrible candidates will result in serious underperformance. That's a major contrast to 2018 Dems, when they talked kitchentable issues a lot and tended to nominate candidates that play it safe.

[Sir Mohamed]

https://twitter.com/PhillyInquirer/status/1544632011528323074

Huh, Bob Jubelirer is among this group. One of my government professors in college worked for him and sung his praises constantly. Wonder if he's on the same page as his former boss.

Shows how extreme Mastriano really is. While I consider Shapiro favored, I can't imagine this group matter all that much, if at all. Most voters don't care about these kinds of endorsements.

[Sir Mohamed]

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1551709231488929793?ref_src=twsrc%5Etf...

They're really going off the rails, aren't they?

[Sir Mohamed]

National Republicans pretty much openly admitting that they're surrendering the race to Shapiro.

https://twitter.com/reidepstein/status/1574426706680713217?s=20&t=UoiHzFJSgcRaO7nfjotjvA

Is that the second or third consecutive PA gubernatorial race the National GOP surrenders on? 2014 and 2018 were equally lost causes from early on. Just this time around the race may have been winnable if they didn't nominate a horrible candidate.

[Sir Mohamed]

LOL

https://twitter.com/politico/status/1614651994395779072

I can give them a summary a free, don't have to waste a dime on a post-mortem: Mastriano and many other candidates just sucked. Perhaps nominate sane conservatives with a platform to improve people's life instead of fascists that still whine about 2020.