PA GOV 2022: Stick a fork in it

[Burke Bro]

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.

This guy is an outspoken election denialist, helped organize the January 6th protest against the counting of the electoral college, and there’s literal footage of him crossing the police barricades after they were breached by the protestors. Do you think if a Democrat wins this state in 2024, he’s going to be fine with sending Democratic electors to the convening of the electoral college? Do you think he’s not going to try to passing laws that make it harder for would-be democratic voters to vote? This guy is a real threat to the very threads that hold our democracy together.

I say that as someone who thinks that he’s favored to win this race by at least a couple of points. Yes, Democrats have used January 6 to motivate their voters and many have (wrongly) associated those who participated in the riot with the broader Republican electorate. But the republican establishment has refused to expel or at the very least condemn politicians like Mastriano, who have no hesitation to use election denialism to their political advantage. And the Republican electorate, much like the democratic one, still takes cues from their respective establishment. As a result, someone like Mastriano is now a perfectly acceptable, standard Republican candidate. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t a radical.

[Burke Bro]

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.

This guy is an outspoken election denialist, helped organize the January 6th protest against the counting of the electoral college, and there’s literal footage of him crossing the police barricades after they were breached by the protestors. Do you think if a Democrat wins this state in 2024, he’s going to be fine with sending Democratic electors to the convening of the electoral college? Do you think he’s not going to try to passing laws that make it harder for would-be democratic voters to vote? This guy is a real threat to the very threads that hold our democracy together.

I say that as someone who thinks that he’s favored to win this race by at least a couple of points. Yes, Democrats have used January 6 to motivate their voters and many have (wrongly) associated those who participated in the riot with the broader Republican electorate. But the republican establishment has refused to expel or at the very least condemn politicians like Mastriano, who have no hesitation to use election denialism to their political advantage. And the Republican electorate, much like the democratic one, still takes cues from their respective establishment. As a result, someone like Mastriano is now a perfectly acceptable, standard Republican candidate. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t a radical.

The Republican establishment is pretty clearly against Mastriano and were clearly trying to stop him. And all reliable sources indicate that Mastriano loses badly to Shapiro and underperform other Republicans significantly.

Simply saying that Mastriano wasn’t going to be a strong candidate in the general election obviously wasn’t enough to stop him. The establishment should have gone after him harder and called him out for who is: a threat to mutual toleration and someone who disrespects the electoral process, two things that are important to the continual existence of democracy in this country. But they failed to do that.

I’m sorry, but I have to disagree with you. It is very unlikely that Democrats win an open race like this in a national environment that favors republicans. Especially in this era of polarization where split ticket voting is uncommon. If the Republican establishment were truly against Mastriano at this point, then we would see multiple high profile Republican endorsements of Shapiro. But that hasn’t happened yet and likely never will. You would have to be living in a left wing media bubble to believe that Shapiro is somehow the favorite here.

[Burke Bro]

The Republican establishment is pretty clearly against Mastriano and were clearly trying to stop him. And all reliable sources indicate that Mastriano loses badly to Shapiro and underperform other Republicans significantly.

I’m sorry, but I have to disagree with you. It is very unlikely that Democrats win an open race like this in a national environment that favors republicans. Especially in this era of polarization where split ticket voting is uncommon. If the Republican establishment were truly against Mastriano at this point, then we would see multiple high profile Republican endorsements of Shapiro. But that hasn’t happened yet and likely never will. You would have to be living in a left wing media bubble to believe that Shapiro is somehow the favorite here.

Well this aged poorly. I didn’t expect national Republicans to abandon Mastriano so fast and for there to be such a substantial gap in support between Oz and Mastriano. There’s barely enough time between now and Election Day to close the gap and this race is increasingly looking like a missed opportunity. It goes to show that while outsider rhetoric/public perception can matter in a Republican primary where you don’t need a lot of votes to win and can matter slightly in a general election, the true elephant in the room (no pun intended) is wether the party machine is working behind you.

It speaks to the priorities of the Republican Party when one candidate has been on Fox News almost everyday for the past few weeks and the other one hasn’t.