All politics is local - wrap up of yesterday's primaries

[pdq]

The news seems to be painting things as a win for Trump...which I think will turn into several wins for the Dems this fall.

I'll start with my home state:

We won't have Tim Pawlenty to kick around any more

Even though the big money interests and some of the media like to characterize TPaw as "popular", no one really likes him. His presidential ambitions crashed and burned in record time, in a neighboring state (the Iowa caucuses in 2015), and now the MN GOP turned him down in favor of their losing gubernatorial candidate last cycle (Jeff Johnson). Pawlenty attracts money and wishful thinking, not votes.

Poor baby. Looks like he'll have to return to his juicy fat lobbying gig out in terrible, horrible DC.

Walzing to victory?

In a three way race, the Dems went with Tim Walz, former teacher and US Rep from outstate. His running mate, Peggy Flanagan, is a member of the White Earth Nation of Ojibwe and an inspiring success story. In the faceoff between Walz and Johnson, I expect Walz to easily take the metro and at least half of outstate, leaving Trumpkin Johnson with angry white guys in the suburbs. If I had to guess now, it'll be Walz by 10%.

Musical chairs make for historic candidates

The current MN AG retired to run for guv and lost. Keith Ellison, the only (edit: first, now not only!) Muslim in Congress, then stepped into the AG race and won the Dem primary last night. And for Ellison's former seat, the Dem primary winner last night was Ilhan Omar, who is likely to become the first Somali American in Congress in the fall (and, with Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), one of the first two Muslim women in Congress).



...and another historic win in VT:

Christine Hallquist, a Democrat, made history of her own. She became the first transgender candidate to be nominated for a governorship by a major party, beating three other candidates in Vermont’s Democratic primary.

The general against the Republican incumbent could be tough, but stranger things have happened.

Cheers!

[mattkime]

I think the results in WI is a bit more muddled. I'm still trying to figure out why WI is having trouble fielding strong dems. Well, there's Feingold as an example. Don't think I haven't had fantasies about running. Currently seems like WI wants its politics bland.

[pdq]

Well, it's early, but you may know that RealClearPolitics has Evers as a 5.4% favorite in polling so far, which is pretty remarkable, considering he's trying to unseat an incumbent and the polls were before the primary, where his support could have been split.

Don't know much about Evers, other than he has a strong education background, and people seem to like him.

[cbelt3]

faux News said "All Trump's picks won". that tells me that the Teapublicans are still in power. :barf:

[pdq]

cbelt3 wrote:
faux News said "All Trump's picks won". that tells me that the Teapublicans are still in power. :barf:

Teapublicans and Trump'ers are definitely still in control of the Republican party.

S'okay with me. This fall we can decide if that still translates into GOP victory generally.

[pdq]

BTW, to return to TPaw for a moment, back when everyone was sure that Clinton was going to win and Trump was leading the GOP to defeat, TPaw came out and said very publicly that Trump was "unhinged and unfit".

This might have been considered a mark of honor by some, but when the worm turned and Trump took over the GOP, TPaw backpedalled by saying "Well, I voted for Trump [via absentee ballot] before I publicly called him unfit".

:ROTFL:

...which is perfectly Republican behavior in my experience. You may recognize, quite accurately, that your party's candidate is "unhinged and unfit", but of course you'll still vote for him.

[deckeda]

The Republican Party is Trump’s now. No one dares go against him.