@Lauren Egan This op-ed from a lifelong GOP staffer (and former US Senate Sergeant at Arms) endorses Independent Achilles in Idaho. Significant to see an establishment Republican be publicly critical of another Republican & endorse his opponent. Related, the pressure on Roth to drop-out seems to be getting louder. https://www.lmtribune.com/opinion/as-an-idahoan-i-cannot-be-a-go-along-republican-anymore-b17f08ae
The last comment in the article about the super PAC coming in and dropping a bunch of cash is the most consequential. It highlights the significant issue with dark money in politics because you don't readily or easily know where it's coming from or why. I no longer live in my home state of Montana, a lifetime of government service saw to that -- but I will say that I always look at folks who mention their veterans status and try to separate the wheat from the chaff. Bankhead has a lot of chaff; uses a lot of language that implies a lot of things but her actual AFSC (and the fact she was a commissioned officer and not enlisted) doesn't' seem to comport with that.
Democrats won't improve their brand anywhere by running as Independents. They'll improve by doing the hard work of communicating with voters and delivering on promises.
When you are talking about some deep red hell hole I am not sure we have anything to offer people that ignorant. I just hope they are royally hosed by Trump. The only thing I want for them is disaster.
No worries in Oklahoma where the Republicrat supermajority gerrymander makes it virtually impossible for a Demopublican candidate to succeed in statewide races without massive Independent support. My guess is DNC is not going to waste resources here, whether they have a plan or not. The good news is that Oklahoma has absolutely no relevance in national politics-lowest educational attainment in the nation and it shows.
There's strong discontent even among MAGAs about Republican ass kissing of Trump. That should make races more competitive. I'd wager the PAC backing another Democrat came from Republicans, to water down the Democrat votes, assuring a Republican win.
Let me see if I have this right: Democrats will have a better chance of controlling the US Senate if Montana elects an independent who moved to Montana less than 10 years ago, who sys he will caucus with neither party and who is endorsed by former Republican Governor Marc Racicot, who sold Montana out by selling our hydroelectric dams to Northwestern Energy and sent our vert low electricity rates soaring. We had two senators who supposedly caucused with the Democrats but voted with the Republicans, Krysten Sinema and Joe Manchin during the Biden administration. St least they let Democrats organize the Senate; an independent senator has no power—-no committee assignments, no one to push his legislation. Oh and, Northwestern Energy wants to bring data centers to Montana, another semi arid area with frequent droughts; we really need to use our limited water to make billionaires richer and drive up our power bills. Data centers are a hot topic in the low population areas of the West, yet we haven’t heard a word from Seth Bonner about how he will protect our water and keep our power bills where they are. Yet that should be a really hot topic as we head into a drought-ridden summer
Well, you decided preventing trans girls from playing sports was a more important priority than preventing neoliberal wealth extraction. You will now reap the consequences of that decision.
I didn't vote for neoliberal wealth extraction, and sports are stupid. That being said, I benefit greatly from AI, so build baby build. Not gonna happen in my backyard, but will happen in rural areas. That's what they voted for, so they can have it.
Well guess what? We hate you rural f***tards too, you stupid, bigoted, ignorant, utterly deplorable white trash who put the Pedophile-In-Chief in office a second time. And we're no longer gonna protect you from your stupidity. Pull yourselves up by your own bootstraps.
Yes you certainly did vote for data centers. You voted for neoliberal wealth extraction by voting red, which you did due to your ignorant bigotry. So now it's happening to you in the form of data centers. You're finding out the hard way that negative externalities really exist, and just putting more nominal capital somewhere (no matter how much this is praised as InVeStMeNt) doesn't necessarily equate to real capital that produces returns that inure to the community's benefit; in fact, it increases competition for scarce real resources. We "libtards" have been saying this since forever, only to be drowned out by the constant mantra of SoCiAlIsM! You f***tards only care about this now because it's happening to you. Well FAFO.
You're so shortsighted you can only think of AI benefitting people in the terms of share prices. What I meant of course, is that AI benefits me every day in terms of productivity and for this reason it is here to stay. Sure the hype bubble will burst eventually, but just like even though the dot-com bubble burst the Internet is still here, so will AI remain.
And yes, my power bill will go up, although not as much as those who share local grids with AI datacenters. It's more than worth it to me.
First of all, I've done a fuck of a lot more to elect candidates who represent the values you claim to have than you have, for a very long time. (38 years)
Second of all, as someone who grew up in a blue bubble in a blue/purple state (Detroit) and has spent most of his adult life in rural red America, I have insights into this phenomena that you can't access through your patronizing parochial lens.
When the AI bubble collapses, whether it is this year of next, it's going to take large chunks of private credit, venture and equities with it. Because at the moment you think it benefits you because it is subsidized 20:1 (20 dollars of investment in for the 1 dollar you pay). The limited benefit in ease of use is well outweighed by the actual costs of the actual (and very limited) product.
And clearly you don't understand the way grids work. Energy is fungible and any call on power in any of the two major grids effects the costs throughout the grid, not locally, throughout the grid.
Your anger at what you perceive clouds you from receiving or reaching out and trying to persuade the people about the importance of the causes you try to advance.
I'm running as a Democrat in a R+36 seat. You think the calls to cultural affinity are what cloud their judgment. Nothing could be further from the truth.
a) we don't show up
b) we allow them (the right) to distort our positions
c) people like you who don't recognize that insult them
What rural voters really want is a sense of agency. They don't want to feel left behind, and in the vacuum that we leave by not pitching for their vote, we leave the other side to fill the air with lies. You making the argument that they're really just stupid is worse than useless, it's actively harming the people who are doing the work on the ground. So take your sanctimonius bullshit somewhere else, shut the fuck up, and let us do the hard work of arguing for the change you claim to want.
In my opinion, Democratic party candidates aren't winning because their stated policies don't mesh with the needs of voters in that state. Whether you're labelled as a Democrat or Independent, I think candidates need to find out what the majority of likely voters see as important to them; ask themselves to what extent they are willing to modify their talking points to address those needs; think about programs they could support to address those needs, and develop campaigns around those issues, rather than simply trying to convince voters to buy into a standard Democratic agenda.
Amazing then, isn’t it that Democrat Steve Bullock, preceded by Democrat Brian Schweitzer were governors of Montana for the 16 years before the current Republican governor was elected..
What's needed is a voting system that allows voters to cast a vote for a Democrat, but have their preference for an Independent over the Republican count. Instant runoff doesn't cut it. If the Democrat is a non-entity, then the Democrat will be eliminated and the second choice vote will transfer to the Independent. However, if the Democrat gets 40% of the vote, then the Independent will get eliminated, resulting in the preference for the Independent over the Republican being ignored, helping to elect the Republican.
In 2022, the Utah Dems didn't nominate a senate candidate against Mike Lee, but endorsed independent Even Mc Mullin. It didn't work, but McMullin held Lee to 53%, which is better than Democrats had been performing in recent statewide elections.
So now the cringe party has been reduced to deception and ratf*ckery?
No "Democrat" can win Montana, nor should he. Tester was an anomaly, one of the luckiest men in the Senate, living a charmed life since 2006. Bob Casey, Tester, Sherrod Brown - all were elected in the 2006 midterm Dem wave, when the war in Iraq was hugely unpopular, and the electorate turned on George W. Bush. Then, they got to run for re-election in 2012, with Obama on the ballot. Obama turned out minority voters in numbers never seen before or since, nobody on the Right was excited about Mitt Romney, depressing GOP turnout, and they survived for another term. Their next re-election came in 2018, another midterm Dem wave year, when Trump was in office and unpopular.
Finally, in 2024, the clock struck midnight and their luck ran out. They had to run in a presidential election year, where the Dem candidate was hugely unpopular, and Trump turned out his cave dwellers in large margins, especially in red states. All three went down in flames. Good riddance to all of them. Red states should not be represented by Democrats. Their presence was as anomalous as the two years Scott Brown spent representing Massachusetts, or the time we had a GOP Senator from Illinois after Obama went to the White House. Now, how to fix Georgia,...?
Actually, in the original Constitution, Senators were chosen by state legislators. I'd love to go back to that original concept. Then there wouldn't be any gross anomalies, like Scott Brown, Doug Jone, or Joe Manchin. I'd be just fine with that. States should be represented by people who think like, and have the same values as, the majority of their voters.
We also wouldn't have despicable people like Paxton and Platner as likely Senators, because their state legislatures would never sanction it.
I think voters should be represented by the people they chose to elect them. The candidates you are decrying won multiple elections in their states. Once is an anomaly.
What exactly does "fixing" Georgia look like? Putting in a generic Republican who will rubber stamp the current administration's every whim in charge of a swing state? At what point does a purple state get to choose Democrats to represent them?
Georgia should be represented by Republicans in the Senate. Those two Democrats won the runoffs because, and only because, Trump sabotaged them. First, he told his MAGAs to stay home because "everything is rigged!". Then he gave Nancy Pelosi a big juicy talking point by say that the government should be giving people $2,000 instead of the $600 that Mitch's Covid bill included - so the motivating choice became "We can vote for a Democrat and get an additional $1,400 of (someone else's) free money!". Otherwise, I think at least one of the Republicans would have won, and Dems would never have had a Senate majority during Biden's term.
Finally, Georgia is not a purple state, unless you think Nevade and Michigan are. A Democrat won it once in the last 30 years. The entire state government is controlled by the GOP. It's a red state that is somewhat competitive in presidential elections, because there are a lot of black voters who turnout in and around Atlanta. Just like Michigan is a blue state that is somewhat competitive in presidential elections, because rural MAGAs turnout for Trump. That doesn't make either state "purple". When we have two GOP Senators from Michigan, you can have two from Georgia, and I'll have to be OK with it.
I live in Michigan, and we are absolutely a purple state. The big stuff usually leans blue (barely), but at the state level Democrats only have a slight majority that they had to claw back from GOP gerrymandering. "State that is usually won by one party, but can swing in higher turnout elections" seems like a good definition of a purple state. Warnok won reelection in Georgia a few years ago and Ossoff seems like a comfortable favorite in November.
"Unlike in Nebraska, where Democrat Cindy Burbank promised during her primary campaign to drop out of the general to give Osborn a clear shot at Ricketts, there hasn’t been the same level of coordination in other states."
I live in Nebraska in a congressional district that Tim Miller highlighted in a Triad last week as a winnable congressional seat. But this chance at a pick-up is being threatened by a progressive candidate trying to get on the ballot via petition as an Independent. Doubt this candidate will get more than a couple percent, but this is enough to make the hill too steep for the nominated Democrat. Lauren's portrayal of coordination in Nebraska is overstated in that the aforementioned Ms. Burbank has endorsed the Independent candidate in my congressional district.
I would argue that this Independent candidacy is also a grave threat to Dan Osborn's chances in the Senate contest. Osborn has attempted to merge working class vibes with centrist vibes, offering some praise for Trump in his last race. (After all, he needed people who were voting for Trump on the same ballot to vote for him and he succeeded to a degree.) But the Independent House candidacy starts to make it look like there is an Independent ticket, and if Osborn picks up some of the Bernie-Sanders-Socialism odor because of this, it will be the death of his chances.
@Lauren Egan This op-ed from a lifelong GOP staffer (and former US Senate Sergeant at Arms) endorses Independent Achilles in Idaho. Significant to see an establishment Republican be publicly critical of another Republican & endorse his opponent. Related, the pressure on Roth to drop-out seems to be getting louder. https://www.lmtribune.com/opinion/as-an-idahoan-i-cannot-be-a-go-along-republican-anymore-b17f08ae
The last comment in the article about the super PAC coming in and dropping a bunch of cash is the most consequential. It highlights the significant issue with dark money in politics because you don't readily or easily know where it's coming from or why. I no longer live in my home state of Montana, a lifetime of government service saw to that -- but I will say that I always look at folks who mention their veterans status and try to separate the wheat from the chaff. Bankhead has a lot of chaff; uses a lot of language that implies a lot of things but her actual AFSC (and the fact she was a commissioned officer and not enlisted) doesn't' seem to comport with that.
Democrats won't improve their brand anywhere by running as Independents. They'll improve by doing the hard work of communicating with voters and delivering on promises.
exactly. Show up and talk to people, don't play stupid games to try to confuse people.
When you are talking about some deep red hell hole I am not sure we have anything to offer people that ignorant. I just hope they are royally hosed by Trump. The only thing I want for them is disaster.
No worries in Oklahoma where the Republicrat supermajority gerrymander makes it virtually impossible for a Demopublican candidate to succeed in statewide races without massive Independent support. My guess is DNC is not going to waste resources here, whether they have a plan or not. The good news is that Oklahoma has absolutely no relevance in national politics-lowest educational attainment in the nation and it shows.
There's strong discontent even among MAGAs about Republican ass kissing of Trump. That should make races more competitive. I'd wager the PAC backing another Democrat came from Republicans, to water down the Democrat votes, assuring a Republican win.
Let me see if I have this right: Democrats will have a better chance of controlling the US Senate if Montana elects an independent who moved to Montana less than 10 years ago, who sys he will caucus with neither party and who is endorsed by former Republican Governor Marc Racicot, who sold Montana out by selling our hydroelectric dams to Northwestern Energy and sent our vert low electricity rates soaring. We had two senators who supposedly caucused with the Democrats but voted with the Republicans, Krysten Sinema and Joe Manchin during the Biden administration. St least they let Democrats organize the Senate; an independent senator has no power—-no committee assignments, no one to push his legislation. Oh and, Northwestern Energy wants to bring data centers to Montana, another semi arid area with frequent droughts; we really need to use our limited water to make billionaires richer and drive up our power bills. Data centers are a hot topic in the low population areas of the West, yet we haven’t heard a word from Seth Bonner about how he will protect our water and keep our power bills where they are. Yet that should be a really hot topic as we head into a drought-ridden summer
Well, you decided preventing trans girls from playing sports was a more important priority than preventing neoliberal wealth extraction. You will now reap the consequences of that decision.
And so will you.
I didn't vote for neoliberal wealth extraction, and sports are stupid. That being said, I benefit greatly from AI, so build baby build. Not gonna happen in my backyard, but will happen in rural areas. That's what they voted for, so they can have it.
And you wonder why people in flyover country hate you folks.
We didn't vote for data centers,
You don't actually benefit from AI,
You have the illusion that you do because number go up
We'll be hurt a lot less when that bubble bursts,
And, seeing as how you've already established you aren't particularly bright,
Your power bills will go up with everyone else's because the power grid (aside from Texas') is national, not local.
Well guess what? We hate you rural f***tards too, you stupid, bigoted, ignorant, utterly deplorable white trash who put the Pedophile-In-Chief in office a second time. And we're no longer gonna protect you from your stupidity. Pull yourselves up by your own bootstraps.
Yes you certainly did vote for data centers. You voted for neoliberal wealth extraction by voting red, which you did due to your ignorant bigotry. So now it's happening to you in the form of data centers. You're finding out the hard way that negative externalities really exist, and just putting more nominal capital somewhere (no matter how much this is praised as InVeStMeNt) doesn't necessarily equate to real capital that produces returns that inure to the community's benefit; in fact, it increases competition for scarce real resources. We "libtards" have been saying this since forever, only to be drowned out by the constant mantra of SoCiAlIsM! You f***tards only care about this now because it's happening to you. Well FAFO.
You're so shortsighted you can only think of AI benefitting people in the terms of share prices. What I meant of course, is that AI benefits me every day in terms of productivity and for this reason it is here to stay. Sure the hype bubble will burst eventually, but just like even though the dot-com bubble burst the Internet is still here, so will AI remain.
And yes, my power bill will go up, although not as much as those who share local grids with AI datacenters. It's more than worth it to me.
First of all, I've done a fuck of a lot more to elect candidates who represent the values you claim to have than you have, for a very long time. (38 years)
Second of all, as someone who grew up in a blue bubble in a blue/purple state (Detroit) and has spent most of his adult life in rural red America, I have insights into this phenomena that you can't access through your patronizing parochial lens.
When the AI bubble collapses, whether it is this year of next, it's going to take large chunks of private credit, venture and equities with it. Because at the moment you think it benefits you because it is subsidized 20:1 (20 dollars of investment in for the 1 dollar you pay). The limited benefit in ease of use is well outweighed by the actual costs of the actual (and very limited) product.
And clearly you don't understand the way grids work. Energy is fungible and any call on power in any of the two major grids effects the costs throughout the grid, not locally, throughout the grid.
Your anger at what you perceive clouds you from receiving or reaching out and trying to persuade the people about the importance of the causes you try to advance.
I'm running as a Democrat in a R+36 seat. You think the calls to cultural affinity are what cloud their judgment. Nothing could be further from the truth.
a) we don't show up
b) we allow them (the right) to distort our positions
c) people like you who don't recognize that insult them
What rural voters really want is a sense of agency. They don't want to feel left behind, and in the vacuum that we leave by not pitching for their vote, we leave the other side to fill the air with lies. You making the argument that they're really just stupid is worse than useless, it's actively harming the people who are doing the work on the ground. So take your sanctimonius bullshit somewhere else, shut the fuck up, and let us do the hard work of arguing for the change you claim to want.
I really like that you start every one of these with "hi y'all". 😀👍❤️
Democrats remain good at self sabotage.
In my opinion, Democratic party candidates aren't winning because their stated policies don't mesh with the needs of voters in that state. Whether you're labelled as a Democrat or Independent, I think candidates need to find out what the majority of likely voters see as important to them; ask themselves to what extent they are willing to modify their talking points to address those needs; think about programs they could support to address those needs, and develop campaigns around those issues, rather than simply trying to convince voters to buy into a standard Democratic agenda.
Amazing then, isn’t it that Democrat Steve Bullock, preceded by Democrat Brian Schweitzer were governors of Montana for the 16 years before the current Republican governor was elected..
What's needed is a voting system that allows voters to cast a vote for a Democrat, but have their preference for an Independent over the Republican count. Instant runoff doesn't cut it. If the Democrat is a non-entity, then the Democrat will be eliminated and the second choice vote will transfer to the Independent. However, if the Democrat gets 40% of the vote, then the Independent will get eliminated, resulting in the preference for the Independent over the Republican being ignored, helping to elect the Republican.
What will do so is Condorcet voting.
Thanks for the article. Small note. Frank Church was last elected in 1974, not 1968.
In 2022, the Utah Dems didn't nominate a senate candidate against Mike Lee, but endorsed independent Even Mc Mullin. It didn't work, but McMullin held Lee to 53%, which is better than Democrats had been performing in recent statewide elections.
So now the cringe party has been reduced to deception and ratf*ckery?
No "Democrat" can win Montana, nor should he. Tester was an anomaly, one of the luckiest men in the Senate, living a charmed life since 2006. Bob Casey, Tester, Sherrod Brown - all were elected in the 2006 midterm Dem wave, when the war in Iraq was hugely unpopular, and the electorate turned on George W. Bush. Then, they got to run for re-election in 2012, with Obama on the ballot. Obama turned out minority voters in numbers never seen before or since, nobody on the Right was excited about Mitt Romney, depressing GOP turnout, and they survived for another term. Their next re-election came in 2018, another midterm Dem wave year, when Trump was in office and unpopular.
Finally, in 2024, the clock struck midnight and their luck ran out. They had to run in a presidential election year, where the Dem candidate was hugely unpopular, and Trump turned out his cave dwellers in large margins, especially in red states. All three went down in flames. Good riddance to all of them. Red states should not be represented by Democrats. Their presence was as anomalous as the two years Scott Brown spent representing Massachusetts, or the time we had a GOP Senator from Illinois after Obama went to the White House. Now, how to fix Georgia,...?
You seem to think certain states are entitled to having Republican senators even if the voters vote for Democrats? That's not the way this works.
Actually, in the original Constitution, Senators were chosen by state legislators. I'd love to go back to that original concept. Then there wouldn't be any gross anomalies, like Scott Brown, Doug Jone, or Joe Manchin. I'd be just fine with that. States should be represented by people who think like, and have the same values as, the majority of their voters.
We also wouldn't have despicable people like Paxton and Platner as likely Senators, because their state legislatures would never sanction it.
I think voters should be represented by the people they chose to elect them. The candidates you are decrying won multiple elections in their states. Once is an anomaly.
What exactly does "fixing" Georgia look like? Putting in a generic Republican who will rubber stamp the current administration's every whim in charge of a swing state? At what point does a purple state get to choose Democrats to represent them?
Georgia should be represented by Republicans in the Senate. Those two Democrats won the runoffs because, and only because, Trump sabotaged them. First, he told his MAGAs to stay home because "everything is rigged!". Then he gave Nancy Pelosi a big juicy talking point by say that the government should be giving people $2,000 instead of the $600 that Mitch's Covid bill included - so the motivating choice became "We can vote for a Democrat and get an additional $1,400 of (someone else's) free money!". Otherwise, I think at least one of the Republicans would have won, and Dems would never have had a Senate majority during Biden's term.
Finally, Georgia is not a purple state, unless you think Nevade and Michigan are. A Democrat won it once in the last 30 years. The entire state government is controlled by the GOP. It's a red state that is somewhat competitive in presidential elections, because there are a lot of black voters who turnout in and around Atlanta. Just like Michigan is a blue state that is somewhat competitive in presidential elections, because rural MAGAs turnout for Trump. That doesn't make either state "purple". When we have two GOP Senators from Michigan, you can have two from Georgia, and I'll have to be OK with it.
I live in Michigan, and we are absolutely a purple state. The big stuff usually leans blue (barely), but at the state level Democrats only have a slight majority that they had to claw back from GOP gerrymandering. "State that is usually won by one party, but can swing in higher turnout elections" seems like a good definition of a purple state. Warnok won reelection in Georgia a few years ago and Ossoff seems like a comfortable favorite in November.
"Unlike in Nebraska, where Democrat Cindy Burbank promised during her primary campaign to drop out of the general to give Osborn a clear shot at Ricketts, there hasn’t been the same level of coordination in other states."
I live in Nebraska in a congressional district that Tim Miller highlighted in a Triad last week as a winnable congressional seat. But this chance at a pick-up is being threatened by a progressive candidate trying to get on the ballot via petition as an Independent. Doubt this candidate will get more than a couple percent, but this is enough to make the hill too steep for the nominated Democrat. Lauren's portrayal of coordination in Nebraska is overstated in that the aforementioned Ms. Burbank has endorsed the Independent candidate in my congressional district.
I would argue that this Independent candidacy is also a grave threat to Dan Osborn's chances in the Senate contest. Osborn has attempted to merge working class vibes with centrist vibes, offering some praise for Trump in his last race. (After all, he needed people who were voting for Trump on the same ballot to vote for him and he succeeded to a degree.) But the Independent House candidacy starts to make it look like there is an Independent ticket, and if Osborn picks up some of the Bernie-Sanders-Socialism odor because of this, it will be the death of his chances.
Another informative newsletter. Thanks!
Delusional thinking, ego and hubris on the part of a Democratic Party candidate. Now who does that remind me of? Starts with a “B.”