For Kentucky, he’s practically Noam Chomsky.
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Booker is progressive, I meant the guy in Alaska.
Booker is to the left of like 99% of elected Dems.
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Yes, I was talking about the independent in Alaska not being that progressive.
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Alaska is unique. It’s massive geographically with very few people. It’s a mixture of military, environmentalist/scientist types, Mormons, oil engineers, and sovereign citizen nut jobs. Local politics is so much more important than national politics there. They all get UBI from the feds which has bipartisan support.
Traditional democratic politicians aren’t going to be popular with that crowd
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Well of course she can pay her staff that much when she receives money from super pacs and large corporations. She’s also outspent Booker something like 21 to 1 and she seems to be nervous LOL. It would be amazing if she lost
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I’m not too concerned about KY. Booker would be drawing dead vs Mitch and Amy is an underpair vs top set on the flop drawing to runner runner quads.
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Meant to reply to TrueNorth about him being far left for KY. He’s far left nationally. Both papers endorsing him seems like an accurate reflection of those cities. Just like a lot of the South and Midwest, Kentucky has blue islands trapped inside a sea of rural racist shitbags. If you napalmed everything outside of Lexington and Louisville it would be one of the best states when the grass grew back. Hillary edged out Bernie by 0.4% in 2016 primary and McGrath is way worse than her.
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Right. I’m not saying he’s bad. He’s got tons of VORP. I’ll be thrilled if he wins and if it’s close I might throw a few bucks his way. I’m just saying his politics aren’t like Bernie’s, the only similarity is I who caucuses with D. Angus King would probably be a better comparison for the I (D) situation, but I don’t know a ton about King’s individual positions.
From a very quick glance, Gross’s politics are closer to Pete’s than to Bernie’s. But maybe with better personal character - as in less amoral ambition.
He might be kind of like a center-left Murkowski who’s not as corrupted by the system yet. She can think for herself from time to time and buck the party occasionally, but she’s still corrupted enough by the system to not really be a moderate or as independent as she advertises herself.
In fact, his intro ad is pretty well done and is almost entirely focused on that Alaskan independent streak.
On the topic of Alaskan politics, they remind me of Maine in terms of not being as reliably red/blue as people think they are, and valuing an independent streak. You get a similar independent attitude from a lot of Texas Republicans at the rank and file level, but I think the state is just too big for these types of candidates to overcome the financial disadvantage there on their first run.
BTW, not a big deal obviously, but their UBI is at the state level from a permanent fund that takes in 25% of the state’s revenue from oil drilling rights. It’s actually been very well managed over the years, as they do decrease the UBI payout in years where revenues are down. IMO liberal Dems who support UBI should be screaming from the mountaintops about it - about how successful it is, how Republicans support it there, and about how it decreases property crime by about 8% in the short-term after the payment goes out. (It also increases substance abuse in the short-term, but that can be addressed in other ways.)
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I agree she’s nervous, very nervous. Gun to my head, I want him to win and we’ll roll the dice, but if her win% is even like 5% higher than his, I’d rather have her run. I might take the lesser chances in almost any other state, but toppling McConnell is SOOOOO valuable to Democrats. He’s an evil parliamentary genius who eats the Dems lunch every damn day. Getting him out probably has as much EV for Dems in the Senate as flipping 2 additional non-tipping point seats.
Generally I’d say a progressive has a better chance to beat him, anyway, by registering new voters and winning over poor white voters. But Kentucky is > 85% white, and it’s gotta be way up there in the racism rankings. Contrast that with Alabama (over 25% black) and Mississippi (over 35% black), and I get uneasy.
I hate that it’s that way, but I’m very concerned it is. Also if he beats her and loses, expect to hear about it from eDems for a few years… “McGrath was beating Mitch in the polls and the AOC-wing fucked it all up and lost!”
All that said, from the small amount I’ve seen, Booker is a great candidate and I would love to see him in Congress. Unfortunately, he’d have to primary Yarmuth in KY-03, who seems like a decently progressive politician - he’s co-sponsored single payer bills. He’s also pretty powerful as the chair of the budget committee. He’s also pretty quiet/under the radar. I’d trade him for a young, energetic candidate of color. Any time our caucus gets younger and more diverse, it’s a win.
It’s too bad Booker doesn’t live somewhere else. I would love to see him run in Georgia, North Carolina, or Mississippi. I’d say south Carolina, but Harrison is a pretty decent red state candidate there (Booker would be better though).
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Isn’t McGrath running on being nice to Trump? Fuck that.
He seems like a really smart, accomplished bad-ass who should appeal to rugged Alaskans.
How do people feel about his using the prefix “Dr.” versus just making it clear that he is a physician, as is the case with most other physician-politicians?
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Nah, she’s ahead in the polling and Mitch is very unpopular. If he didn’t have endless piles of money due to his powerful position, she might have 30-35% equity. She’s still gotta have at least 10-15% equity.
In '08 McConnell only won 53-47% after polling in a dead heat in October.
But in '14 he won 56-41 after polling pretty close up until early October, despite a 34% approval rating. In early October, a series of polls had him up 47-41, 45-41, 50-47, 52-44, 45-40, 44-43… But from mid-Oct and on, he consistently polled 6-10 points ahead, and I assume the GOP poured a shit ton of money into the race - it was the most expensive Senate race that year.
Obviously he’ll do that again, but his approval rate in-state is 41% right now. Never the less, McGrath has at least 10-15% equity IMO. If the polling stays close after October 15th, it goes up, if not it crashes to next to nothing.
He’s not too far left to win the Dem primary there, but I think he is drawing damn near dead in the general due to racism.
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Looking at McGrath’s wiki page and like her entire experience in electioral politics is being an aide to a Representative for a year and losing a bid for the US House of Representatives. She’s less qualified to be in politics than AOC, but she flew fighter jets really well so why not nominate her for a high-profile Senate battle.
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Even Kelly calls out Trump.
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Yeah, IMO she’s just playing politics, but still fuck that. Never the less, I’ll take a 10-15% chance of unseating Mitch with a shitty eDem over a 1% chance of unseating Mitch with a great senator.
FWIW her positions aren’t terrible. She’s not Joe Manchin, she seems like a run of the mill eDem.
I assume the consultants put their big brains together and decided that the only way to win Kentucky was with a white candidate who had either a tough on crime or military background, owned guns, and had a cool story/background. Not a whole lot of them holding office in Kentucky, I’d imagine. Probably not a ton of them with decent political positions currently who are willing to risk taking a run at Mitch, either.
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I’m not buying the theory at all that McGrath can find 10%-15% to Booker’s 1% if they’re evens in the primary. Think about what the math has to look like for that to be true. It isn’t even remotely plausible. Like spell out where that massive difference is going to come from.