Remind me again, what is the California GOP’s record on nominating and electing unqualified celebrities? I’ve never seen Schiff’s ad, am from a different state, and a Democrat. The only three names I recognize on that ballot are Schiff, Garvey and Porter, and I only know Porter because I am an amateur politics nerd. The majority of R voters were going to vote for Garvey on celebrity name recognition alone.
So the only argument that Schiff’s underhanded tactic actually worked to push Garvey through is that it served as a “get out the vote” ad for the GOP in general. But the numbers don’t support that - about as many GOP voters showed up as the last Senate primary. It’s more viable to posit that Schiff’s dirty pool served to keep Dem voters home.
He was a former Dodger who retired in the 1980s, he wasn’t exactly an A-lister like Schwarzenegger. I used to live in L.A. and I couldn’t have told you who he was.
Garvey was the frontrunner in the GOP field, but poll trackers showed his share of the overall GOP vote rising in the months after Schiff started running his campaign. We’ll never know for sure what would have happened if Schiff hadn’t given him that boost but either way the intent was the same.
I’m from Michigan, so I’m looking at this from an outsider’s viewpoint, but I see this:
Given the “top two” nature of the primary, that race could have been a safely Democratic seat. Given how tight margins are in Congress, keeping that district blue is therefore theoretically pretty darn important. But Schiff wanted the seat for himself so much that he chose to sandbag his fellow Democrats, he chose to spend money boosting his Republican opponent, and now there’s a non-zero chance the Democrats may lose that race, lose the district, lose power in Congress…
Make that make sense. Because the only way I can manage it is: one person’s pride and lust for power working against everything they claim to stand for. And this, folks, is the reasoning of one of the most powerful people in the Democratic Party.
There are reasons I don’t speak up much in political threads any more. Things like this are one of them. I’m sickened by seeing power and money take priority over peoples’ needs, over people themselves, every goddamn time, even among those who claim to care.
I have no answers, and I’m not looking for lectures or vote-shaming or whatever. This is merely an expression of distress, dismay, frustration, and exhaustion.
Political threads are like microscopes looking at the contents of a sausage that nobody really likes, well, except for hardcore wonky types. Iron stomachs and all.
IMHO, with a few exceptions, this is the formula for most politicians in general. Some may be more on the left, some more on the right, but in the end, most want their personal power and glory above all. I very much wish it were different, but it is not. And yeah, me too…
You got it exactly right. This is why I’ve been fuming at Schiff for months and don’t care for the excuses people keep making for Schiff even though I plan to vote for him in the general election.
Great! The way to get two Dems on the general ballot was to get better than 20% voter turnout. That’s the main rationale for an open primary, to get higher voter participation because the primary actually matters. Dems weren’t able to successfully get out the vote for the primary, making their chances of getting two Dems out of the primary much, much lower. Depending on the GOP to trip over their own feet is not a strong strategy. This was poor execution.
Neither is spending tens of millions of dollars to assist them in coalescing around a single GOP frontrunner, which is precisely what Schiff did.
Do you really not see a fundamental difference between some democratic candidates perhaps hoping that the GOP doesn’t get their act together vs a Democratic candidate spending tens of millions to prop up a GOP candidate who can’t even afford to run his own TV spots? Because one of those strategies makes me much angrier than the other.
I agree. Nonetheless, there isn’t really evidence to point to that Schiff caused this result. The best way to avoid this result was to do a better job of getting out Dem voters.
But that’s just it; like @Nightflyer says Schiff wasn’t working to get two Democrats on the ballot for the general election. He was working to insure that didn’t happen.
Seth Meyers nailed his intro of Trump on A Closer Look last night. This should be mandatory on all election reporting that mentions Trump. Tighten up, mainstream media.
