Annette Taddeo, rising starTuesday was a big day, electorally, for Democrats-- and not because Alabama Republicans nominated a psychotic extremist, Roy Moore, in their primary runoff. (Moore will face off against moderate Democrat, Doug Jones, on December 12; every poll shows Moore winning. Count on Alabama to go for the crazy; they're still fighting the Civil War.
Berniecrat wins in OklahomaLast year, Oklahoma was one of Trump's strongest states. He beat Hillary 949,136 (65.3%) to 420,375 (28.9%). Even Obama had managed to take a third of the vote both times he ran. Like West Virginia, Oklahoma gave Trump every single county in the state. On primary day, though, when Bernie clobbered Clinton by over 10 points, Bernie took 174,228 votes to Trumpanzee's 130,267 votes. Just sayin'.
The final count in the Republican primary in Alabama was 164,524 (38.87%) for crackpot Roy Moore and 138,971 (32.83%) for Trump and McConnell-backed establishment incumbent Luther Strange. Another crackpot, Rep. Mo Brooks took 83,287 votes (19.68%) and a scattering of 7 vanity candidates split another 30-some-odd thousand votes between them. Moore and Strange will face off in a runoff on September 26, the winner of which will then face Democrat Doug Jones, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, who won his 8-person primary with 109,105 votes (66.12%) on December 12.
Alabama is hopelessly red at this point. Trump beat Hillary there 1,318,255 (62%) to 729,547 (34%). Even the one "Democrat" in the congressional delegation, Terri Sewell, is a conservative New Dem with an "F" rating from ProgressivePunch. There'll be a special election December 12 to fill Jeff Sessions' seat but what's important in beet red Alabama is the primary, specifically the Republican primary.
Yep, in Iowa tooThe good news Tuesday night was that Democrat Phil Miller beat Republican Travis Harris for a state House seat that includes Van Buren County, most of Jefferson County and a bit of Davis County (House District 82). The special election was called after Democrat Curt Hanson died in June. It's considered a swing district with 6,611 registered Republicans, 6,257 registered Democrats and 5,738 voters without partisan affiliation.
Today’s the day in GA-06. The most recent poll shows Ossoff up but within the margin of error, as most polls have shown. This one has Ossoff winning with 49.7% to Handel’s 48.0%, despite Ryan and Trump pouting tens of millions of dollars into the race. Many see the race as a referendum on Trump. 91% of Ossoff voters have an unfavorable opinion him and 78% of Handel voters have a favorable opinion.
Thursday one of the Trumpist dark money front groups, America First Policies, dumped another $1,339,990 into GA-06 to smear Ossoff and bolster the failing Republican candidate, Karen Handel, after her stunningly bad debate performance. Republican dark and dirty money groups, like Paul Ryan's shady SuperPAC and America First Policies, have rushed something like $30,000,000 to GA-06 so far-- they will spend much more by Tuesday-- and they have no choice.
The GA-06 special election is June 20th-- three weeks from yesterday. And yesterday was the first day of early voting there. The ad up top was just put up on local TV to the tune of $500,000 by Pelosi's SuperPAC. Or more important, who is it speaking to? Who is it not saying a word to? Patrick Ruffini had an interesting post up yesterday at FiveThirtyEight: Black Voters Aren’t Turning Out For The Post-Obama Democratic Party.
1. Republicans cannot coast to re-election even in districts where they have had big majorities.2. Republicans have a lot of money to spend, and are being forced to spend it in those districts.3. The pressure of unexpected competition, and unwelcome questions about taking healthcare away from low income people, tend to provoke displays of Republicans' dark side.4. The Democratic establishment’s small and late funding of progressive nominees slows and reduces the pressure on Republicans.5. Montana Democratic nominee Rob Quist deserves our thanks for a valiant ef
