I would rather see a Schiff/Porter general election, though. The 2016 and 2018 Senate elections in California both had two Democrats in the general election. Schiff wants to avoid that because Porter is a much stronger candidate. I don’t like what he’s doing.
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That’s a sword that cuts both ways, though. I know time is running short, but Porter could turn those tables on Schiff if their positions swap before the primary.
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& @DukeTrout I had forgotten CA does a “jungle primary,” don’t they? It doesn’t have to be R vs D, can be any combination. Yeah, not sure how to work that into the calculation. Schiff would likely make short work of Garvey, but Porter would be a different story.
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Dean Phillips, staying classy
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Let’s be fair, if there wasn’t a strong streak of misogyny still present in the voting public, Porter would annihilate most challengers.
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Lots of Democrats were tickled pink when Trump won the nomination in 2016 because they thought he’d be easy to beat.
These kinds of games are dangerous. Not only because the extremists occasionally win, but also because elevating them to the general election in the first place is enough to shift the Overton window. The Democratic candidate shouldn’t just have to make a case for why they’re better than some crazed MAGA goon, they should be able to make a case for why they’re a better choice than the most reasonable candidate the GOP has to offer.
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Show me a politician who takes the long view at election time. Hell, I’d settle for one who takes the long view any time. Their focus is solely on winning, not on how their strategy will affect the political climate in the future. Ordinarily, that makes me nuts. In our current situation, anything that keeps the fascists further from total control is worth considering. Now, again, given the structure of CA primaries, I need to rethink that for this one, because honestly, taking the MAGAt out before the general election even starts would be a great thing. (Being in VA, all the rethinking in the world will make no difference at all other than the intellectual excercise, of course.)
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You can either try to get your weakest opponent or your strongest.
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Or, alternately, you can focus on your own campaign and try to appeal to voters on your own merits rather than try to “pick your opponent.” Trying to game the system and choose who you’re going to be running against is just as unethical and anti-democratic as gerrymandering districts to choose your own voters. It’s corrosive to the system and doesn’t respect the wishes of voters.
In the context of the California Senate race, Adam Schiff is trying to run against a more horrible GOP opponent in the general election rather than a more moderate Democratic one. So he’s potentially putting the control of the Senate at risk for his own short term political gains.
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Schiff is not a senator. Are you talking about a different race?
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Right, I meant Representative. Schiff is an incumbent rep running against Katie Porter and a GOP candidate who are almost tied with each other for 2nd place.
I mean - who does just one thing?
It may not meet your ethical guidelines; but those are just that - yours.
Nothing is without risk. Especially doing nothing.
And we’re assuming their goals are singular- when they could be considering multiple possibilities.
Getting the candidate you want to run against
Using the more conservative one to tar all conservatives
Getting them to attack each other
Motivating your base
Who knows what else?
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If I learned that there had been a secret DNC effort to help Trump win the Republican primary in 2016 because strategists thought he’d be easier to beat than Ted Cruz my reaction wouldn’t be “oh darn, well I guess it must have seemed like a sensible strategy at the time.”
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But there wasn’t- so it’s a moot point.
You pick different strategies for different situations. And there was a whole roomful of deplorables running- all of which were disastrous- some more competent than the one we got who could have caused more harm.
You play to win - not to not lose. That doesn’t work in a zero sum game.
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I mean, Porter is also an incumbent representative. They are on even footing when it comes to that. I would prefer Porter over Schiff if I was in CA, but it’s tough to beat the PR Schiff got from the T**** impeachment trials.
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I think the Trump administration laid to rest the myth that one needs to be competent to cause great harm, or even that harm is caused in proportion to competence.
Competence is only required to use the mechanisms of a democratic republic, not to destroy them.
There was a myth that you had to be competent to cause damage?
Do tell.
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I don’t know if this belongs here, but why not! The cold open of SNL last night feels like “What if Ruben Bolling wrote for SNL.”
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Let’s just say I don’t agree with the suggestion that Trump’s Republican rivals would have been likely to cause more harm just because they were more competent.
Many of the greatest disasters in the history of governance had at least as much to do with incompetence as malice. Take the millions of starvation victims from Mao’s Great Leap Forward or the body count from Trump’s mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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it does remind of how the us has supported dictators or corruption elsewhere to “stop communism”… and instead made the world objectively a worse place
there might be times when supporting your weakest opponent is a good move, but other times when the unintentional consequences drinks your milkshake
what worries me is nobody can say in advance which is which
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