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2020 Senate Elections


Patrick Bateman

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I don’t know shit about NC politics or who these dudes are, care to give some cliff’s notes? How did this dude fuck shit up for the Republicans in NC?

He was the governor that supported transgender bathroom bill. That cost him the election and now NC seems to quite like its Democratic governor. Thr governor appoints supreme court justices, and the NC board of elections is composed of three members of the governor's party and two from the opposition.  NC GOP is known nationally for its dirty politics - ridiculous gerrymanders, voter suppression, etc. They'd totally locked a swing state down this way. Everything states like GA, TX, and WI know about this, they learned from the NC GOP.

 

So for the potty bill, which backfired anyway and pissed off voters, he handed Democrats control of the executive branch, probably for eight years, which includes the supreme court appointments and board of elections. Democrats will be very powerful during redistricting now, though thevfeds did force some changes to their congressional districts anyway. He traded the GOP's death grip on the state to govern where people pee.

 

 

 

 

 

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46 minutes ago, gmr548 said:

He was the governor that supported transgender bathroom bill. That cost him the election and now NC seems to quite like its Democratic governor. Thr governor appoints supreme court justices, and the NC board of elections is composed of three members of the governor's party and two from the opposition.  NC GOP is known nationally for its dirty politics - ridiculous gerrymanders, voter suppression, etc. They'd totally locked a swing state down this way. Everything states like GA, TX, and WI know about this, they learned from the NC GOP.

 

So for the potty bill, which backfired anyway and pissed off voters, he handed Democrats control of the executive branch, probably for eight years, which includes the supreme court appointments and board of elections. Democrats will be very powerful during redistricting now, though thevfeds did force some changes to their congressional districts anyway. He traded the GOP's death grip on the state to govern where people pee.

 

 

 

 

 

The thing that pissed people off nationally is North Carolina is a very close state. The outcome is usually decided by a few points in elections. The number of seats should reflect the partisanship of the state.

 

we saw elections in the 2010 decade where the North Carolina Democrats would win over 50% of the statewide vote and republicans would still win 10 out of the states 13 congressional districts.
 

I don’t say this often, but thank god thomas hofeller is dead and his archives got exposed to the world. The man was pure evil. He was a GOP mastermind when it come to rigging elections. His whole purpose was to make voting and American elections as powerless as possible. What do you get when you don’t have to worry about being voted out?  Crazy loons who are obsessed with bathrooms like Dan Patrick.

Edited by Voldemort86
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It should also be known that Thomas hofeller was behind the census question scam. The attempt by the GOP to not count illegals towards redistricting even tho the constitution clearly states that they do count and we’ve been counting them for decades. 
 

thankfully, the Supreme Court voted it down, but that orange fucker in the White House was going to use the census question to rig the maps in the GOP’s favor as much as possible. Fat ass Trump is always looking for ways to cheat while yelling that the other side is cheating without any facts or evidence to support his accusations.

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7 hours ago, Message Board User said:

 

In the same poll, Ernst has a favorable/unfavorable rating of 38/45 and Greenfield is 36/23.  Obviously many Iowans don't know the opponent or have any opinion about her. 

If the GOP has Iowa as their line of defense, they're in trouble.  They need Ernst to win without much national support so they can focus on the other states.

By all measures Ernst should be winning by 10-15 points.  The GOP loves to have a younger, conservative, ex-military woman that won her only senate race by 8. They've promoted her into GOP leadership but she's still on her way to be a one and done senator. They lose her and they're down to a couple senators who are not white men especially if McSally, Loeffler and Collins also lose and Murkowski tells them to f-off.

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1 hour ago, tantric superman said:

MJ and Royce both looked good in the debate just now I thought.

Bless Beto's heart, but you can't win in Texas unless you are moderately friendly to guns, and both of these candidates was clearly steering moderate.

 

Being against guns is a loser issue in Texas. The simple answer to a question is that guns are allowed in the Constitution. Once you're in office, you can expand on that statement to define what you mean as "guns" but going off on long diatribes about taking guns away from people is a waste of breath in Texas.

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1 hour ago, tantric superman said:

MJ and Royce both looked good in the debate just now I thought.

Bless Beto's heart, but you can't win in Texas unless you are moderately friendly to guns, and both of these candidates was clearly steering moderate.

 

Beto ran pretty moderate on guns.. He changed his tune after the EP Walmart shooting.

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1 hour ago, Message Board User said:

 

Not really a good race for more progressive candidates in swing states considering the map.  That written, Schumer is a hack and really sucks at his job.  Doesn't even review getting outflanked in Mass.  The progressive movement has made a lot of headwinds in pushing the dialogue and policies more left of the existing center but it's not necessarily a winning platform in purple states unless a fantastic candidate.  

Hickenlooper has an ethics commission snafu that seems like a clusterfuck but nothing I would think would cost him the nomination nor the election.  Seems like a process nightmare.

 

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I haven't been paying close attention to the Kentucky Senate race, but it seems to be a damn shame that Amy McGrath has been the anointed one to got up against Cocaine Mitch. Everything I've seen from her has been completely unimpressive. 

There seems to be a hard push for Charles Booker lately. He's a progressive and has gotten a lot of attention since the BLM protests. Wish he was given a serious look earlier. 

 

 

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8 hours ago, Hank Kingsley said:

I haven't been paying close attention to the Kentucky Senate race, but it seems to be a damn shame that Amy McGrath has been the anointed one to got up against Cocaine Mitch. Everything I've seen from her has been completely unimpressive. 

There seems to be a hard push for Charles Booker lately. He's a progressive and has gotten a lot of attention since the BLM protests. Wish he was given a serious look earlier. 

 

 

How influential is Bernie in Kentucky?  How was he doing in the state before he retired from the race?  Can't imagine AOC holds much weight but would wonder if Bernie's endorsements means much.  McGrath has a huge money edge I know and I agree she's uninspiring but wonder if this is more about Bernie going against the DSCC more than a true race.

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16 minutes ago, Patrick Bateman said:

How influential is Bernie in Kentucky?  How was he doing in the state before he retired from the race?  Can't imagine AOC holds much weight but would wonder if Bernie's endorsements means much.  McGrath has a huge money edge I know and I agree she's uninspiring but wonder if this is more about Bernie going against the DSCC more than a true race.

Booker has made a name for himself recently, he also is running on M4A and a Green New Deal. Bernie's endorsement makes sense, but I'd be surprised if he has much influence in the state.

I think people are realizing McGrath pretty much sucks (watch her answer above in post #1419 about why she's been absent at Kentucky BLM protests, smh), but I'd guess she still has the best chance to beat McConnell because she is so moderate and been propped up by prominent Democrats. 

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Stumbled across this. I have no idea how legit it is.

 

https://www.termlimits.com/mcgrath/

 

Frankfort, KY – According to a new poll conducted by RMG Group, former Marine Amy McGrath will defeat Mitch McConnell decisively in November; but only if she begins focusing on one key issue: congressional term limits. If McGrath does not stress term limits, the race remains a tossup.

The poll, which was conducted from May 21-24, found that McGrath currently leads McConnell 41% to 40%, which is well within the margin of error. But after voters are told that it is McGrath, not McConnell, who agrees with President Trump on term limiting Congress, she jumps out to a 15-point lead.

When voters are informed that McGrath supports term limits and McConnell opposes it, McGrath’s support among Republicans nearly doubles from 8% to 17%. Among independents, her share rises from 33% to 43%. 

Despite these promising numbers, McGrath has one big problem: the vast majority of Kentuckians are not aware that she supports term limits. While 37% of voters knew that McGrath is pro-term limits and has signed the U.S. Term Limits pledge, 63% either were not aware or incorrectly believed that she opposes term limits. 74% of independent voters are unaware that McGrath supports term limits. 

If McGrath wants to win in November, she will need to do a better job informing voters of her position and the contrast with McConnell’s anti-term limit views

The survey of 500 registered voters in Kentucky was conducted online by RMG Research, Inc. from May 21-24, 2020 using a representative sample to reflect the state’s population of registered voters. It has a margin of error of +/- 4.5 percentage points. RMG Research is owned and operated by Scott Rasmussen.

View the full poll results here.

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10 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

Booker is going to fuck this up. Wouldn't doubt if moscow mitch is back channeling some help his way 

I know McConnell will do anything to win an election, but I just can’t believe he would do something to help a black person

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/gop-senators-disappear-trump-from-2020-ads?ref=home

 

Quote

Four months ago, Sen. Thom Tillis put out an ad defending President Donald Trump from impeachment, boasting about the White House’s trade deals, and triumphantly noting that the president would be on the ballot in November.

This past week, references to the president were entirely absent from the vulnerable North Carolina Republican’s latest campaign spot. In fact, the ad centered on his state’s economic pain at the precise moment that Trump’s re-election campaign was trying to sell a nascent economic recovery that it dubbed the “Great American Comeback.

 

Quote

Tillis’ change in tone underscores a much larger trend that’s taking place among the Senate’s most vulnerable Republican members. While many are happy to tout Trump in email and social media fundraising appeals, the president has all but disappeared from the ads they’re airing in their home states. 

The Daily Beast reviewed 15 publicly available ad spots created since March by Republican Senate campaigns in the competitive states of North Carolina, Maine, Colorado, Arizona, and Montana. Fourteen of them made no mention of Trump. The only one that did, an ad from Tillis’ campaign in late April, simply mentioned that he’d been appointed to a White House coronavirus task force. By contrast, Democrats in a number of competitive Senate contests have used their television ad time to attempt to tie Republican incumbents to the president.

 

Quote

In Colorado, Sen. Cory Gardner unveiled his first TV ad of the cycle just last month highlighting his work securing coronavirus aid for his state. The 30-second spot didn’t mention Trump. But it did plug Gardner’s collaboration with Jared Polis, Colorado’s Democratic governor.

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine has likewise sought to burnish her bipartisan credentials. One recent TV ad from her campaign featured shots of Collins alongside Democratic colleagues including Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. But Trump was nowhere to be found in that spot, or any other her campaign has aired over the last couple months.

 

Spoiler

The economic damage wrought by the coronavirus, which the Federal Reserve said on Wednesday it expects to persist, has coincided with a cratering of Trump’s standing in national polling. And Trump’s conspicuous absence from Senate Republican ads tracks internal tactical advice that the National Republican Senatorial Committee relayed to Senate campaigns in April when it told them to avoid publicly defending White House efforts to combat the coronavirus and instead attack China over its complicity in the virus’ early spread.

That’s a tactic that a number of vulnerable Senate Republicans have embraced. Sen. Martha McSally’s (R-AZ) first ad of the cycle attacked her opponent, Mark Kelly, over his support for impeachment. Her campaign hasn’t mentioned Trump in any of the five ads uploaded to its YouTube page since late April. Instead, she’s plugged her own work securing coronavirus aid for her state and gone after Kelly over his business ties to China. 

Michigan Republican John James, who is hoping to unseat Democrat Sen. Gary Peters and has publicly distanced himself from some of Trump’s more outlandish comments, has also seized on the China angle in advertising surrounding the coronavirus. One of his recent ads hit Petersover his lack of attendance at congressional hearings concerning China. It was one of six video ads produced by the James campaign since March on issues including health care, the coronavirus, the police killing of George Floyd last month, and his own personal biography. None of those ads mentioned Donald Trump.

The ads from Republican Senate candidates this cycle also underscore the difficult task Republican candidates now face on the economic front, in which they appear to be eschewing much of the happy talk coming from the president. 

Despite double-digit employment and estimates of serious long-term job loss, Trump has publicly embraced that idea of a sharp V-shaped recovery. And with the recent jobs numbers coming in well higher than expected—with 2.5 million people gaining employment in May—he’s become even more of a Pollyanna, declaring the country was “well ahead of schedule” when it comes to recovery.

For longtime Trump observers, the posture is on brand for a president who relentlessly touts how great a job he’s doing and lets the facts catch up eventually, if at all. But for political veterans, there’s real risk involved. 

“I think he has to be careful because as much as he wants all that to come true it doesn’t have to for him to be re-elected,” said John Brabender, a longtime GOP operative who ran Rick Santorum’s 2012 campaign. “It has to be that people believe it can come true and that things are moving in the right direction… What he can’t do is try to accelerate the benchmarks to an unrealistic level.” 

The down-ballot Republican Senate candidates seem aware of those risks. In their ads—many of which were released before the most recent jobs report—they often acknowledge the economic hole the country is facing before spotlighting their efforts to help pull their states out of it. In a spot she released earlier this month, Collins called the current situation an “economic crisis” and touted the work she’s done to expand small business loans. In an ad he put out earlier this month, Gardner described the current landscape as “America’s fragile environment” before going through a list of bills he’s helped pass. And in his most recent spot, Tillis explicitly noted that one million North Carolinians are out of work.

“You absolutely need to be careful not to spike the football in the second quarter of the pandemic, with five months and several jobs reports left to go,” said Liam Donovan, a veteran of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “If people need to be convinced of how great things are, the recovery probably hasn't caught up to them yet, so effective messaging has to be more circumspect.”

There is political precedent for politicians being harmed by their failure to maneuver in a damaged but recovering economy. Democrats arguably suffered two massive midterm defeats—in 1994 and 2010—because of it. And several of the party’s top operatives have long warned lawmakers not to come off as too bullish during tough economic times, lest the voters view you as detached. 

Whether Trump is hurting his own chances by showing little to no caution is less predictable, in part because of the nature of the current downturn and in part because of the nature of Trump.

“We now consistently live in a world where I (and everyone else) have never seen this stuff before,” said Bill McInturf, a longtime GOP pollster. But McInturf did note one number that seemed to be a massive red flag for anyone who wanted to campaign on the economy making massive strides—the percentage of respondents rating the economy as“excellent/good” after three major events: 9/11, the Great Recession, and COVID-19.

As measured in either the NBC/WSJ or CNBC polls, there was a 4 percentage point drop in economic confidence in the five months after 9/11; a 19 percentage point drop in economic confidence in the six months after the financial crash; and a 25 percentage point drop in economic confidence in just 24 days around the emergence of coronavirus. 

Now, said McInturf, “you know why I am talking about ‘zero precedent.’”

 

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1 minute ago, Hank Kingsley said:

This is the most interesting primary race right now. 

Here’s McGrath with an extremely condescending cheap shot, and she’s rightfully getting dragged for it. She is literally campaigning as a Trump apologist 

 

She's a gaffe machine..... Not even a good candidate but probably has a more digestible platform for a red state like Kentucky.

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3 hours ago, Hank Kingsley said:

This is the most interesting primary race right now. 

Here’s McGrath with an extremely condescending cheap shot, and she’s rightfully getting dragged for it. She is literally campaigning as a Trump apologist 

 

Came to this thread as soon as I saw this and glad you got here first. She’s gotta go. This is trash.

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/thom-tillis-went-full-trump-now-hes-dcs-most-vulnerable-republican?via=newsletter&source=BI-end-week-digest

 

Quote

Republican Senator Thom Tillis is a loud voice in committee hearings, pushing the Obamagate conspiracy and reading aloud the dictionary definitions of “witch hunt” and “hoax.” 

But that’s not what he talks about at home in North Carolina, running for re-election. His first television ad has him walking through a trailer park recalling his humble roots (the spot is titled “Humble”) and pledging to be a fighter for workers, protecting their jobs as the economy recovers.

 

 

Quote

His family moved around a lot, he was one of six children, and he worked his way through college. Good for him. But he’s been in Washington for six years, and whoever put the ad together probably didn’t notice Tillis is wearing a $110 Tommy Bahama polo shirt. 

 

Spoiler

“He’s trying to reinvent himself right before an election by focusing on his humble roots but he has consistently voted against policies that would help folks move up the economic ladder, move up the education ladder,” says Morgan Jackson, a political strategist in Raleigh. “It’s not just where you came from, it’s what you do with it.”

A second ad, “Pay Day,” has Tillis walking behind the counter of a restaurant with burgers on the grill reminiscing about his days as a short-order cook and saying that he’s fighting for the people “forgotten by our politics.” 

Forgotten by whose politics? Control of the U.S. Senate is at stake, and Tillis is one of the most vulnerable senators. He’s perhaps best known for getting lots of money from big pharma, big oil, big banks and payday lenders, and for pushing their preferred policies. A Morning Consult polllast year had him with the lowest approval rating of any senator, at 34 percent.

His biographical ads are a belated attempt to get voters to like him. But which voters? He’s had a troubled relationship with President Trump, and was twice booed at a Trump rally, most recently in March of this year. 

He had to go full Trump to win his primary on Super Tuesday, and now he’s trying to boost rural turnout by convincing those voters that he’s one of them. 

As Trump’s numbers tank, Tillis is keeping his head down, not taking sides between the governor and the president over holding the GOP Convention in Charlotte, even praising Democratic Governor Roy Cooper for his go-slow approach to opening up the economy. But Tillis can’t escape from his past—or from his present—as an anti-Obamacare Republican who bragged that he “stopped Medicaid cold” when he was speaker of the North Carolina legislature. 

 “When he talks about humble roots and where he comes from, he’s taken more money from the pharmaceutical industry than any other member of Congress,” Morgan Jackson told The Daily Beast, repeating “than any other member of Congress,” and pointing out the implications of that financial backing for where his interests might lie, for example, on lowering the cost of prescription drugs, a major issue for voters, or treating opioid addiction.

As an up-and-coming Republican before Trump, Tillis boasted he was a RINO, recasting the label as Republicans In Need of Outcomes. His outcomes generally favor the well-heeled and corporate interests. Only 7 percent of his first quarter campaign contributions this year came from small donations. He worked to get “struggling” pharmaceutical companies access to taxpayer funds in the CARES Act program, which was meant for small businesses. 

When oil prices dropped, Tillis wrote a letter to the administration urging there be no “oil and gas bias” when distributing economic relief funds. After a White House summit with the industry on April 3, Tillis received over $60,000 in corporate PAC checks from companies that had attended the summit. 

Payday lenders have been a pet project of Tillis’ going back to his days as a state lawmaker. As speaker of the North Carolina House in 2013, he received more than $30,000 from the industry, the most of any legislator in the state. Once in Washington, he continued his alliance with this industry which is always under fire because of its usurious interest rates. In a March 10 Senate Banking committee hearing, Tillis fended off allegations that payday lenders might prey on people hard hit by the coronavirus. “As a kid who grew up on 90-day notes with my dad,” Tillis warned against “overreach” or “painting with a broad brush” an industry he regards as a lifeline. Within days of the hearing, he had received more than $20,000 from four major payday lenders. 

A day after a group of 24 bipartisan attorney generals, including North Carolina AG Josh Stein, wrote a letter opposing a new “Rent-A-Bank” rule that would benefit payday lenders, Tillis received $12,500 from the industry and consumer finance companies confident he will fight their battles in Washington. 

When the big banks were sued by small business owners for prioritizing their corporate clients in granting government relief funds, Tillis took in more than $43,000 from the corporate PACs of the banks named in the lawsuit—Bank Of America, JPMorgan Chase, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo—saying he didn’t see any evidence they were favoring big business over small business.

“This guy is pretty much the epitome of a weather vane,” says Tom Mills, founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com, a website of commentary and analysis. “He got elected as a moderate out of Charlotte to the state legislature in 2006. He’s a cyclist. He was living in Cornelius, a small town, and he ran because he wanted more bike trails, not the typical profile of a Republican legislator.” 

He rose to become speaker in a chamber increasingly dominated by Tea Party Republicans, not an easy fit for the Mister Establishment that Tillis had become. He’d always been better at seeking the next office than knowing what to do once he was there, so he took a flyer and challenged Democrat Kay Hagan in 2014, capitalizing on a late Ebola scare and videos of ISIS members beheading Americans. It was a banner year for Republicans, yet he only won by 1.7 percentage points. 

He wasn’t much of a presence in Washington until he wrote an op-ed in February 2019 that appeared in The Washington Post saying he supported Trump’s border control policies but opposed the president’s national emergency declaration as a way to get money for his wall. Trump trashed Tillis on Twitter and vowed to recruit someone to run against him in the GOP primary. 

In March 2019, 12 Senate Republicans joined the Democrats to block Trump’s emergency declaration. Tillis wasn’t one of them. It was a major capitulation and one of the few things that voters know for sure about Tillis. It would have diverted millions in projects replacing aging infrastructure on the state’s military bases. Politifacts declared it a “Full Flop” on its Flip-O-Meter. 

Jessica Taylor with the Cook Political Report, a bipartisan newsletter, says Tillis’ ads set up a contrast to portray Democratic challenger, Cal Cunningham, a lawyer, former state senator and veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, as “entitled.” Cook rates the race a tossup, and Edwards notes that Tillis could pull fewer votes than Trump. 

North Carolina is the only battleground state with a competitive Senate seat and governor’s race. Cook rates incumbent Roy Cooper’s bid for re-election as leaning Democratic. 

“In a race like this (Tillis v Cunningham), as long as neither side does anything disastrous, it comes down to the political environment,” says Mills. “And if Joe Biden wins North Carolina, Cal Cunningham’s the senator from North Carolina. And if Trump wins by a point, Tillis has a shot. If Trump wins by half a point, then it’s hard to know.” 

 

 

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6 hours ago, Hank Kingsley said:

This is an eye opener.  

We are getting to the point where Dems winning the Senate is a real possibility. LFG. 

 

The GOP keeps trying to deny it, but I think Montana senate is really in play.

 

in 2016, trump and bullock were both on the ballot in Montana. Trump won Montana by 20+ and Bullock won the Montana governor race by 4 or 5 points. 
 

Lots of ticket splitting goes on in that state.

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Just now, Message Board User said:

 

The people of Maine would be crazy to keep her this cycle.  Mitch McConnell has had the senate since 2014 and the GOP has accomplished nothing during his tenure. 
 

the dems might very well need her seat to take control and I hope the people of Maine realize that.

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17 minutes ago, Voldemort86 said:

The people of Maine would be crazy to keep her this cycle.  Mitch McConnell has had the senate since 2014 and the GOP has accomplished nothing during his tenure. 
 

the dems might very well need her seat to take control and I hope the people of Maine realize that.

Moscow Mitch has benefited greatly the past 6 years !

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20 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

Moscow Mitch has benefited greatly the past 6 years !

Everything they’ve accomplished have been party specific goals. They haven’t done anything for the American population at large.

they’ve confirmed judges and created a dead zone for bills passed in the house so large that it probably could fill an entire room by now.

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On 6/9/2020 at 6:59 PM, Patrick Bateman said:

How influential is Bernie in Kentucky?  How was he doing in the state before he retired from the race?  Can't imagine AOC holds much weight but would wonder if Bernie's endorsements means much.  McGrath has a huge money edge I know and I agree she's uninspiring but wonder if this is more about Bernie going against the DSCC more than a true race.

1. I think liberal economic policy has a better chance of doing well in KY than liberal social policies.  That's been Bernie's 50 state plan all along, and I think it has some merit. 

2. Endorsements are way more important for donations than they are for directly influencing voters.  When Bernie and AOC endorse a candidate, they tweet/post/email the endorsement to all of their supporters on their list.  Many of those supporters then follow the link, and contribute, some of them to the max amount.  The candidate then watches their fundraising autocruise for about a week, raising more than they could have from 100 hours of calling potential donors.  I used to think endorsements were no big deal; I was wrong. 

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