#ScrimshawSix: On Kansas, Michigan, Arizona

On The August 2nd Primaries

The Department of metaphor is currently waiting to take the Alpine seat when Piastri signs for McLaren, so, let’s just get into it.

Kansas Replies: No Thanks

It isn’t that much of a surprise that the GOP took a beating in their attempt to remove abortion protections from their State Constitution yesterday, in that generally speaking changes to the status quo on referendum ballots underrun issue support in the abstract and the GOP are shilling a policy about as popular as drinking one’s own piss, but it’s still gratifying to know that in Kansas there is an electoral penalty for doing unpopular things.

The story of the Kansas referendum is clear – Democrats win on the issue, and they can motivate their voters with abortion. (Also, Michigan Democrats putting this on the ballot in November will likely help them in the three swing Michigan seats, although to what degree is unclear.) Honestly, I’m just really happy for the women of Kansas, and there’s not a lot more to say.

Abortion Gives Democrats A Path Forward …

On the broader question of What It All Means, let’s be very clear – if Democrats are going to pull a Black Swan, 1998/2002 result out of their ass, this will be why. It will be that Democrats changed the issues mix from temporary economic pain to longstanding damage to the social contract. It will be because this took this issue and went all in on it.

A lot of ink has been spilled about 2010 and 2014, but what happened in 2010 was Democrats lost McCain-House Dem voters in places like rural Tennessee, and then in urban areas turnout fell off a cliff. In 2014, turnout fell off another cliff, leading to Democrats outperforming Obama 2012 with white voters but losing because the share of the electorate that was white spiked. (If you’ve ever listened to me doing a podcast, you’ll have heard that factoid a thousand times, exactly that way, I’m sorry.)

Here, I think Kansas makes clear that Dobbs has precluded this outcome, which mostly takes out red wave outcomes (but not R environments – I’m mostly saying R+4 or worse).

But Don’t Confuse The Path Existing With It Being Likely

Let’s also be clear here – I’m not saying Dobbs is going to create a Democratic leaning environment, or that it will be enough to make Democrats House favourites or some shit – that would take a D+2, and on the current data, Biden’s too unpopular to make a D+2 anything more than a probabilistic edge case.

Like, I am trying very hard to be clear about what this means, because I know that if I am vague I’ll have Con ET screaming at me again, but – Democrats have a much broader map in the House and a clearer path to a good night (not winning the House, just a good night) because the GOP did a deeply unpopular thing. It is unsurprising that Democrats face electoral consequences for doing unpopular things – and in the eyes of many, they faced electoral consequences for a position the vast majority of the party didn’t even hold (Defund) – but for some reason, the GOP are going to get off free of consequence? Fuck no.

There’s a path now for Democrats that didn’t exist in May. Whether it’ll last, nobody knows.

Meijer Meets His Maker (Spoiler: It’s Not The DCCC)

Stop. Blaming. Democrats. For. Republican. Voters’. Actions.

If you think that $420k in ad spending lost Peter Meijer his primary, then you’re a damn fucking fool, but more importantly, it’s not the fault of the Democratic Party that they are seeking to maximize the chances of the Democratic Party winning power. It is not on the Democratic Party to fight the battle for democracy in the GOP, and that so many anti-Trump Republicans are losing their minds at Democrats is a sign that they’re unwilling to accept that their fellow party members are overwhelming fascists.

This is your party, guys, and the way I know that it’s your party – and that you know it too – is that when Democrats have a spending advantage in the fall, you’ll all have the GOP winning seats against the tide despite it. If you think $420k flipped this primary, then the logical conclusion is that Democratic money moves so many votes per dollar that they’re favourites to win the House because of their fundraising advantages. Oh, wait, that’s an absurd argument because money isn’t that determinative? Then it wasn’t the fucking DCCC.

Comeback On The Lake

God almighty, last night was stressful for a night where I went 3/3 on my tips for TheLines.

More importantly, though, what happened last night – where the candidate of the Trumpier persuasion, whose voters have been told not to trust Vote By Mail and early voting don’t vote early or by mail – has been happening all election cycle. It was obvious that Robson’s lead was never going to hold on EDay voters, and that’s what happened – and if the media are this useless at reporting this in the fall, when Democrats will take a huge lead in Arizona at 11PM and then see it whittled down all night long, then there will be a lot of needless claims of fraud.

In 2020, Fox getting the Arizona call wrong because they went too early was understandable, given that was the first time we had such a vote by method difference. If the media does it again, it’s malpractice.

Monmouth? Bueller?

We’ll end with a non-August 2nd topic, which is Monmouth coming out with a D+7 Adults, D+3 Registered Voters poll which showed Biden’s approval up 2% in a month and showed a clearly Democratic environment, after a tied national environment in June. If you would like to dismiss this, nothing I say will matter, but I’m going to make one point here that seems relevant: Right now, Democrats are the ones who have the clear and easy arguments at their backs.

It is not always the case that the people who have to make the convoluted, twelve step arguments about how “#actually everything is going fine” are losing, but it is pretty clear that the GOP are having to contort themselves to find a path where they haven’t tossed away a wave election by nominating shit candidates and by overturning Roe.

In 2018, the contortions that Democrats were doing to find a path in the Senate and that Republicans were doing in the House were very good signs for the other side, and in this case, it’s a decent guess that the GOPers who are trying to make it seem like the wave is still coming are in the same camp.

Now, none of this is declarative that a wave isn’t coming, but when Trump’s pollster has Mark Kelly up 5 over Blake Masters, then it’s time to get off your ass and have the intestinal fortitude to say that Kelly is favoured, and that Democrats are unambiguously Senate favourites for November based on the current data. Maybe this will change. Maybe the Dobbs penalty will reverse. But right now, a case that Republicans are favoured to win the Senate in November is the triumph of fear over sense.