The GOP remains the stupid party, and other PA 18 observations

The voters have spoken, and by the narrowest of margins, Democrat Conor Lamb will be the next representative from Pennsylvania’s 18th district.

The Democrats’ choice for this special election was a charismatic, photogenic, young, moderate (with hints of conservative) candidate. You’ve got to admit, he’s handsome, in a college-student sort of way.

The Republicans’ choice was someone with the relevant resume but whoo boy, does he sound nutty, at least according to his Wikipedia profile, assuming it wasn’t maliciously tampered with:

He supports large-scale cuts to K-12 education, childhood education programs, public libraries, child welfare, and other state programs in order to pay back the federal government’s debt. Saccone has been described as a patriarchialist by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Saccone’s beliefs are strongly influenced by Christian reconstructionist and author David Barton, who also introduced Saccone’s 2018 special election run.

Now, I’d have said that this is what happens when you have a primary process, and, in the dominant party in the district, so, in this case, the Republicans, the one far-right candidate gets all of the votes of the primary voter who line up that way, and the mainstream candidates split those votes, but in which, on the Democratic side (not qua Democrats, but as the minority party in the district) the party has more ability to groom a candidate, with less competition.

But this wasn’t a primary.  For both Republicans and Democrats, this was a caucus among party leaders, who really should have known better.  Why did the Republicans screw up so badly?  Did they take it for granted that their choice would win the general election in any case, where the Democrats weren’t taking any chances?  Did the Democrats have the advantage in holding their caucus after the GOP, so as to be able to better gauge that the race was contestable?   Or did the nature of the caucus mean that the GOP really didn’t know what they were getting into?  Local reporting at the time says that

conferees focused on North Korea, opioids, the Second Amendment and raising enough money for the upcoming campaign. The meeting was closed to media.

And afterwards, party leaders worried that Saccone was ameteurish and had no ability to fundraise, according to Politico.

Gen X loses again

It’s time for the Baby Boomers to go.

First they paint themselves as wiser than their elders and models of social justice because they protested the Vietnam War, and tried to take credit for the Civil Rights movement which was fought while they were, mostly, still in school.  Then they decide that their elders are not so bad after all — well, their parents’ generation, which they dub the Greatest Generation, but not that of their older brothers or sisters or younger aunts and uncles, which gets the label “Silent Generation.”  Then they deem those younger than them, that is, the “Baby Bust”/Gen X, as slackers and of no value, but have recently decided to rehabilitate their progeny, the Millennials, who are no longer deemed useless snowflakes but have now been labeled as a new “Greatest Generation,” while everyone engages in a collective pile-on of the newest named generation, the so-called iGen (for the record, my son objects to that name).

And here we have, again, a Millennial in Congress, whom everyone ooohs and aaahs over even though, let’s face it, the chances of a 33 year old having the skill set and experience set to actually succeed in making a difference, as opposed to putting his name on legislation others have developed, are slim.  His name is Conor, for crying out loud.  And, also, get off my lawn.

It’s the turnout, stupid

Reports are that Democratic turnout was far stronger in this election than historically, and I’m not even interested in getting into the factors behind it so much as to observe that there’s a big difference between getting people to pull the lever you want them to pull, once in the voting booth, and actually caring enough to go there.

Here in Illinois, I am extremely curious as to how Governor Rauner fares in our own primary, coming up next Tuesday, for this very reason.  There may be plenty of Republicans who might say, all things considered, Rauner is the better choice than Ives, and who would, in the general election, prefer to vote for Rauner over the Democratic candidate.  But Rauner doesn’t, so far as I can tell, have particularly many people who are enthusiastic about him, so much as votes that he’ll get from people who vote on Tuesday because they believe it’s a civic obligation to cast their ballot, and Ives will get the votes of people who care.

Image:  own photo.