Conor Lamb And The Campaign For No One

On A Campaign In Crisis

I want Conor Lamb to be the next US Senator from Pennsylvania.

I badly want him to be the next US Senator from Pennsylvania.

And I’m convinced there’s almost no chance he can be.

…

I’ve written before about the two Lambs – the one who ran a mediocre 2020 campaign and almost got caught by Sean Parnell, and then the talented, genuinely impressive candidate who ran twice in 2018 and won both times, first in a Trumpian district and then in a more suburban one. I wrote off his bad 2020 campaign as an incumbent who thought he was home and dry being cocky and not trying that hard, and in doing so, I made the case that he’s a better general election candidate than John Fetterman, which I still mostly believe. The problem is, his 2022 Senate campaign is a worse imitation of his 2020 performance, and it’s starting to be mildly troubling if your goal is to beat the GOP.

Lamb’s campaign has been weird so far, insofar as it is making a bunch of sharp decisions at a small level that is doing absolutely nothing to boost his stock amongst the primary electorate. He’s done party building events, he’s managed a very impressive list of endorsements from key constituencies in the state, and he’s amassed an impressive voting record in DC, or at least one that can’t earn him much criticism from the overwhelmingly pro-Biden primary electorate.

Attacks on Lamb for being some Manchinite moderate are crap because the dude’s pro-Filibuster abolition, and he would sit down and shut up as directed by Chuck Schumer, which is really all that matters at the end of the day. If you want him to be the nominee, you think he has the political skills to outrun state partisanship in a meaningful and consistent way, and if that’s the case, then you put up with whatever supposed faults he may have a potential legislator. But right now, he’s not showing any indication he’s still the guy he was in 2018.

Lamb is running a campaign designed to win over a closed door meeting of party statesmen who are tasked with choosing a nominee in some backroom with cigars, and not a campaign to win the hearts and minds of the somewhere between 750000 and a million people who will vote in the Democratic Primary this summer. If the party machine really kicks into gear, and DC Dems write a multi-million dollar check, maybe he’s live, but being close to Kenyatta in two recent polls is some real “Fire Everyone” shit, and I’m convinced it’s real.

If Lamb wasn’t close to Kenyatta for 3rd, and he was credible, he’d show it with a primary poll of his own. If you’re at 16% in a Fetterman internal and 15% in a Kenyatta one, you’re in trouble, unless you can show that the polls aren’t actually that bad, and so far he can’t. Maybe something’s coming in the New Year, but given Q4 donation totals are coming due, and will be a huge source for your donors, and for DC, about your viability, if I had proof I wasn’t taking on water, I’d be showing it right now. And they would be too. Their refusal to disprove the notion of a campaign in crisis is further proof of the crisis, because if they could show it to be bullshit they’d be doing it.

Lamb’s campaign has always made a lot of sense on paper, and I’ve written the case for it, but he doesn’t have it right now. He is either reliant on bad staff who are telling him not to peak too soon and that he has plenty of time, or he’s trying to do what they’re advising him and it’s not working. His campaign feels rudderless, mostly because Lamb hasn’t made his campaign about anything except not being Fetterman, which is why he got in the race in the first race. Nobody really wanted Lamb to run, but he was the found anti-Fetterman candidate, as the collective wish of establishment Pennsylvania Democrats to find any non-Fetterman port in the storm was found. His campaign isn’t about anything, and it’s a campaign for no one.

Lamb’s central argument – his electability – is arguable, but I still think reasonably strong, even if the national environment makes it so that he probably loses even if he does run. The problem is electability is a niche argument, in the same way that Canadians overrate the role of tactical voting in our elections. The kinds of people who are Very Online and who read this website know the fine details of his race versus Biden’s result in his district, and they’re the American version of the people who spent all of Canada yelling at me for NDP voters not to split the vote and accidentally elect the Tories, as if yelling at a guy with a Substack could move the results of a federal election (although I appreciate the idea that my readership would be that large). Lamb’s running a campaign for the overly engaged, and that’s why he’s nowhere fast.

I’ve joked before that Fetterman’s poll lead is a function of a large MSNBC viewership, and like, I’m joking, but Fetterman does a lot of TV and he tries hard to put himself out there. Lamb’s running an intentionally quieter campaign, and he’s nowhere fast. Quoting analyses of your work from Twitter analysts (as well-respected as those analysts are) in fundraising emails is just fundamentally not understanding whose votes you need, and it’s this uselessness that I was hoping 2020 had gotten out of Lamb’s system. Clearly not.

This matters because Fetterman is not winning a general election in a red year as the nominee. He just plainly isn’t, and I don’t really give a shit if this brings a bunch of Bernie Bros into my mentions. Democrats win in Pennsylvania now by doing two things – massively outperforming their previous results in the Philly collar, and turning out African-Americans in the city of Philadelphia proper. Fetterman is not going to be a good candidate for the collar for obvious reasons and also the less obvious ones – Democrats with moderate views on taxation are better for rich white social liberals to vote for, and pretentious white social liberals are likely to find Fetterman’s racist act of vigilante justice while Mayor of Buttfuck, PA to be unacceptable. Democrats just won Pennsylvania in no small part because of the votes of white money who find Trump and the GOP writ large unacceptable because of their moral failures. Hard to see how those voters will fall in love with a high tax socialist who almost shot a Black kid for the crime of being Black.

Oh, and the other part of the Democratic coalition in Pennsylvania? Yeah, how is Fetterman going to be the candidate who drives the Black turnout surges we need in Philly to not just win the Senate seat but also protect vulnerable incumbents and maybe even pick off Brian Fitzpatrick? I’m not saying Lamb’s a great candidate for that either, but he’s a lot better than Fetterman. I think Lamb gives us a chance in hell of winning the seat, and Fetterman doesn’t. And that means that Lamb’s singularly horrible campaign is a problem not just for the internal struggle for power inside the Senate caucus, but for the whole of the country.

Lamb needs to show us he can be the charismatic, interesting, captivating candidate who managed to win a Trump +20 seat in a special election just under four years ago. If he cannot do that soon, then he needs to drop out of the race and run home for his House seat. I want Lamb in the Senate as much as anyone else, but his campaign has been nothing short of disastrous so far, and if he cannot pull his head out of his ass, it will hurt everyone who wants a Democratic Senate, and a democratic future.