AZ-SEN 2024: Away we Gallego (3/5 - Sinema OUT)

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Honestly it's a stretch to assume she'd take more votes from the Democratic candidate if there's a 3-way race in 2024....just look at her favorables amongst Democrats and why she had no chance in the primary.

I actually suspect she'll either not run again or drop out after dismal numbers as an independent.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

There were some signs in last few months that something like this would happen. Apparently she didn't even campaign or support most of the Dems running in AZ. She didn't even endorse Hobbs. Kelly was the only person she endorsed.

She is just so weird. It's not like she is popular with Independents in AZ either..she is underwater with them too. Also saw some people complaining that she doesn't even hold townhalls or her office doesn't respond easily. She just has allienated decent chunk of AZ electorate but also has now put Dems in an extremely tough spot. If Sinema runs as an independent and Dems nominate a candidate, there is a good chance Rs win the seat..just a nightmare scenario for AZ Dem party

Why would someone so unpopular with Democrats and independents be a threat to the Democratic candidate?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I'm at a hardcore show now so I'll say more when I get home/sober up but one thing I think is being underdiscussed is who exactly is Sinema going to get her campaign funds from? Corporate PACs aren't enough and probably won't even be interested, they like to back winners. Maybe she can get some hoping to keep influence for the rest of her current Senate term but those can only go so far with fundraising limits. And who is going to go doorknock for her?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Alright so here's my extended thoughts I alluded to:

As you can see in all the polls posted about this, Sinema's general favorability numbers are absolutely wretched and awful across the board. It's not just Democrats who aren't happy she's not progressive enough. Even independents don't like her (amusingly one graph showed Republicans did like her until she voted to convict Trump and then she went underwater with them too.) No one believes that she's "an independent voice for Arizona" or whatever, she's mostly seen as a grandstanding attention grabber by all sides. And furthermore she's also known for being lousy on things like constituent services.

So Sinema is so far underwater that I think as an independent candidate she's basically now in "generic protest vote" territory for who actually does vote for her. And while one might assume that such voters who find both the Democratic and Republican candidates unacceptable might still find the Democrats less bad if the Republican candidate is some loony like Kari Lake, if you look at patterns of them you'll find they're pretty irrational and unpredictable...see the weed parties in MN-Sen 2020 for a great example and the pattern there. So it's a stretch to say she's pulling any consistent Democratic voters. Even the sort of voters who voted for Biden and Hobbs but vote R downballot still won't be voting for her much because they generally aren't the type to vote third-party at all.

Another factor is "anti-partisans", basically people who refuse to ever vote for one of the major parties but aren't completely locked in to voting for their own. My own district provides a great example: in 2020 Ilhan Omar underran Biden more by a massive margin and more than any other Democrat in the country. But if you look at the results you'll see that a majority of the Biden/Not Omar vote actually didn't vote Republican but rather mostly for the weed party candidate. And then this year when it was a two-party race she only underran Walz (who ran about equal with Biden) by about four points. So there's clearly a substantial number of voters who don't like Omar and don't want to vote for her but also refuse to ever vote Republican as well and will hold their nose and vote for her if a Republican is the only other option. In a state like Arizona, there's probably a lot of Republican equivalents, this also explains how Lake ran so well, it was a two-way race. As Nate Silver speculated in a tweet, an independent Sinema would give these type of voters an off-ramp to not have to vote for either the Lake-like crazy or a Democrat.

Probably all moot though because for the reasons covered by me before and Mikado I doubt she even runs.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Sinema won't have near enough money to hit 20% much less 30%. How's she going to fundraise without ActBlue or WinRed? There's only so much legally corporate PACs can give her and would even they be interested in donating to an almost certain loser?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I'm worried about Sinema attacking Gallego more than the republican honestly

Over what? If she attacks him for being too progressive she just makes him look better and herself worse to Democratic voters.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

This underscores things: Sinema is in a very difficult spot. She can theoretically attack Gallego from the right and Lake or whoever the Republican is from the left, but that works to her disadvantage.

First of all very few voters care about the issues where Gallego is notably to her left, especially as he's running as a mainstream Biden-supporting Democrat* instead of Squad-adjacent. How many voters care that Gallego wants to abolish the filibuster for voting rights legislation? How many left-leaning voters will be upset that Gallego wants to raise the minimum wage? All she'd do is just help him with Democratic-leaners while conservatives weren't going to vote for him anyway.

As for the Republican yeah there's plenty she could rip into, she's definitely not in line with Lake on her nonsense or election denialism or Trump loyalism...but how would that help win over voters to her? It seems that voters fleeing the Republican would mostly go to Gallego. At most she could maybe position herself as a "sane" alternative like that she doesn't support the progressive agenda but she's not a batsh!t conspiracy mongering Trump cultist...but that would also turn off Democrats since it just makes her sound like she's trying to run as an Obama-era Republican.

This is of course assuming she even has the money and infrastructure to stage the attacks.

*Side note: This is basically what Fetterman did as well. In 2020 he was the Biden campaign's pointman for anti-"Stop the Steal" efforts and spent his time bashing that. Hence why the notion he'd be weak in the primary for not being a team player or whatever was always stupid and why he wasn't toxic in the general election.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I almost can't believe Sinema running as indie and seeing any "path to victory". There is none. Zero. You must suffer from a special kind of delusion to assume this.

If she wasn't such an attention seeker, she could have been a favorite for reelection by just voting like her colleague Mark Kelly.

Manifold Markets has some weirdos who think she is favored because "muh incumbency" and "muh moderate Republicans" and the notion that she could move left in her voting record this term, when asked if that was her intention why she didn't just stay a Democrat and then start voting like a generic D the argument is basically something about how she could be playing 5-D chess and we don't know what the plans are now. Kind of amusing and a shame the market isn't dealing in real money (and I hardly ever use it anymore anyway.)

What I think people also aren't taking into account is Arizona has a pretty high signature threshold for ballot access and there's no reason to assume that Sinema can even make it, to collect them she'd have to either recruit an army of volunteers except that no one likes her, or hire canvassers except that no one's going to donate to her because: 1-she lacks any party's fundraising apparatus and 2-again no one likes her. And while "corporate PACs" is the stock reply for who would donate to her, they can only donate so much, and might not even be interested because they also think she has no chance and it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. I guess maybe some Twitter-brained people might volunteer because they assume she'd take votes primarily from the other party (notice how Republicans tend to think she'd pull more Democrats and Democrats tend to think she'd pull more Republicans) but you got to wonder how much of any such people exist in the real world and how effective this is (after all Kanye's ballot access strategy was mostly based on Republicans assuming this.)

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Masters seems to have learned from his mistakes. I don’t know if it will be enough to beat Gallego but Lake would be far weaker

Not sure if "mistakes" are the main reason for his defeat, the guy just comes across as an extremely weird creep in a way that isn't easy to rectify. I think it's going to take more than 2 years for him to be seen as something other than a weirdo 4chan poster type.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Masters seems to have learned from his mistakes. I don’t know if it will be enough to beat Gallego but Lake would be far weaker

Not sure if "mistakes" are the main reason for his defeat, the guy just comes across as an extremely weird creep in a way that isn't easy to rectify. I think it's going to take more than 2 years for him to be seen as something other than a weirdo 4chan poster type.

I've heard this often, but what is it about him that gives off that vibe? His face, tone, way he speaks?

That but also his background.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Lake just posted this on Twitter, it appears that IT is happening soon

https://twitter.com/karilake/status/1704301489827827813?s=46&t=XC6qQa4mbo0E2...

Glad to see Lake is touching on the real hot button issues voters deeply care about such as the Senate dress code.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

What an absolute waste of a once promising political career. She could've even remained in the Senate and voted to the right of 90+% of the Senate Democratic caucus and still remained a Democrat and won the primary had she not grandstanded and behaved the way she did. Leaving the party was kind of the official death knell but there was no reason for her to...or even to behave the way she did instead of just being a moderate.

Seriously, I can't think of any other politician that blew up their career so notably and deliberately that didn't involve an actual scandal. It's incredible.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Well Atlas we did it. We found someone on the Internet who actually likes Sinema.