While we’re just barely through the 2022 elections, I thought I’d take a very early look at the 2024 national landscape.

Candidates do matter… but only to a limited extent.  There are many races across the board that simply won’t be competitive – regardless of the candidates.  Indeed, a majority of the 2024 races won’t be competitive.  That’s just the way it is.

I’ll revisit all of this at a much later date, but here’s my current take:

President

When discussing the proposed changes to the Democratic Primary Calendar, I briefly hit on the 2024 Electoral College landscape.  Here it is again, along with a 2024 Electoral College heat map:

As previously noted, there are only ten states that are likely to be at all in-play in 2024, representing a total of only 120 out of 538 Electoral votes.  Thus, a majority of the 2024 Presidential results are already in!  As of right now, here’s the Electoral breakdown as I see it:Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Virginia Lean D; Georgia and North Carolina Lean R; Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin are true Toss-Ups.

Republicans have more Solid Electoral votes; Democrats have more Solid + Lean Electoral votes.  Both parties will need at least one or two of the Toss-Up states to win.  (As a reminder, a Presidential “win” is 270 Electoral votes.)

The bottom line here is that Democrats need to build a Presidential ticket that can guarantee a win in the Lean D states and win at least some of the Toss-Up states.  The ticket should not be AT ALL concerned about winning any Solid D state and should not bother even trying to win any Solid R state.  Democrats need to learn that the popular vote JUST DOESN’T MATTER!!

I don’t care how well a ticket might do in California – the ticket will win that state and all of their Electoral votes.  I don’t care how well a ticket might do in Florida – the ticket will lose that state and all of their Electoral votes.  The magical Democratic ticket might well be Biden/Harris; it might not be.  It’s just too early to tell.  Personally, I don’t really care.  I just want to win.  Period.

U.S. Senate

One reason (of many) for the importance of the 2024 Presidency is the 2024 Senate.  Republicans are heavy favorites in this playground.  In this visual summary, the green states don’t have Senators up for election; the dark red and dark blue states are in the bag for the Republicans and Democrats candidates, respectively; the light blue and pink states Lean D and Lean R, respectively; the grey states are true Toss-Ups.

Of the 34 Senates seats up for election in 2024, 13 are Solid D and 10 are Solid R.  That’s the good news.

The bad news is that six Senate seats currently held by Democrats are only Lean D and only one seat currently held by a Republican is Lean R.  [ The lone Lean R is admittedly wishful thinking on my part.  As a Texan, I’d dearly love to believe that Ted Cruz is beatable; As a data analyst, however, I just don’t see it happening. ]

The worse news is that all four of the Toss-Up Senate seats are currently held by Democrats.

The bottom line here is that Republicans have a MUCH better chance of flipping D seats than Democrats have of flipping R seats.  Democrats will be stuck playing defense; Republicans will be playing offense.  At the moment, the odds definitely favor Republicans taking control of the Senate in 2024.

U.S. House

The House is much tougher to handicap this far in advance.  However, since the incoming Republican majority will be paper-thin, the House will definitely be up for grabs in 2024.  While the vast majority of House seats will be Solid D or Solid R, there is a small middle ground where either party could win a given race in the right environment.

The bottom line here is that House candidates will matter and the top of the ticket will matter.  In particular, Democrats will likely focus on the seats they lost in New York and California in 2022.

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Democrats will be focused on winning the White House and the House in 2024.  Senate Democrats will sadly be reduced to limiting the damage, trying their best not to give Senate Republicans a super-majority.

The Rules and Bylaws Committee of the Democratic National Committee recently approved President Biden’s proposed changes to the 2024 primary calendar.  Their intention was to favor the Democratic party’s current demographics, rearranging state primaries so that the party faithful have more of a voice in selecting a candidate.  Here’s a comparison of the first month of primaries in 2020 vs. the 2024 proposal:The 2024 proposal:

• Increases the February states from four to five.
• Elevates South Carolina to hold the first-in-the-nation primary.
• Demotes New Hampshire out of its traditional first-in-the-nation spot.
• Elevates Georgia and Michigan into February.
• Demotes the Iowa caucuses entirely out of February.

While the new calendar would be very Biden-friendly, it could actually be meaningless if Biden ends up running unopposed in 2024.  Furthermore, even if the broader DNC formally approves the changes (which seems likely), it’s unclear whether all of the changes will actually happen:

• Some states (e.g. Iowa & New Hampshire) that would lose their historic influence might well decide to jump the line, in spite of the DNC’s calendar.  While the DNC could certainly penalize those states – with the nuclear option being to not count those states’ votes at the nominating convention – that internal conflict wouldn’t play well on national TV.
• Some states (e.g. Georgia) might not be willing to hold the two primary elections on different dates – since the Republican Party isn’t yet planning any changes to their primary calendar.

So would the change be a good idea?  And why should you care?

The proposed calendar would likely increase the influence of younger, more racially diverse, and more moderate Democratic voters.  That’s a good thing.  I also argued back in early 2019 that Iowa was an abysmal choice to lead the parade and, since it’s no longer even a swing state, its exclusion is a good thing  The remaining states that had early dates in 2020 would still have early dates in 2024.

Thus, the new calendar is an improvement.  It just doesn’t go far enough.

For years, I’ve made no secret of my utter disdain for the Electoral College.  However, it is the game we’re playing.  With the rules of that game in the current political environment, I count only ten states where Presidential votes will matter AT ALL in the 2024 Presidential election.  I’ll revisit this at a later date, but for now, here’s my interpretation of the current 2024 Electoral landscape:

The dark red and dark blue states are in the bag for whoever the two parties nominate in 2024 .  (And, yes, I’m aware that I’m ignoring the split Electoral votes in NE and ME – which is fine for my current purposes.)

While some candidates would certainly make a much better showing than others in many of these states, a majority of voters in these states will vote for their party’s 2024 candidate regardless of who it is.  Given our winner-take-all approach to state primaries, even a thin majority gives a candidate ALL of each state’s Electoral votes.

As such, these states simply aren’t variables and there is no reason for either party to care which primary candidates their voters prefer.  I don’t like it, but that’s the way it is.

That leaves the other ten states as possible swing states.  Depending on who the final candidates are, two states that lean Republican “could” vote for the Democrat and five states that lean Democratic “could” vote for the Republican.  Only three states are true toss-ups.

Democrats should indeed change their primary calendar, but they should change it to optimize for a general election win.  Nothing else matters.  Since winning these ten swing states is the goal of the game, the primary calendar should exclusively prioritize these states so that they have the most say in selecting the Democratic candidate.

Four of the five states in the proposed Democratic calendar are potential swing states, with the outlier being South Carolina.  While I understand the related desire to increase the influence of black voters in the nominating process, there were better choices.  South Carolina has the fifth highest percentage of black voters in the U.S. but that state is not going to cast its Electoral votes for the Democratic candidate whoever it is.  Georgia has the third highest percentage of black voters and Virginia has the ninth highest.  Both are potential swing states and either would be a better choice to satisfy that need.

Personally, I’d compress the 2024 calendar to hold Democratic primaries for all ten swing states within the six weeks between February 3 and March 16.  The proposed early primaries for Nevada, New Hampshire, Georgia, and Michigan are great, but Arizona, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina should also hold early primaries.  The order would be less important in a compressed calendar since it would decrease the media attention given to the early winners.  However, I would group the primaries geographically to lessen the travel expenses for candidates campaigning in multiple states at once.

All that said, if further tweaks are too big of an ask, the proposed calendar changes are at least a minor improvement.

While it would be logical to assume that the daily barrage of negative stories about Hershel Walker would be impacting the Georgia Senate race, I wanted to see if any available data would back up that assumption.

So, I took a quick peek today at the data gathered by TargetEarly for the Georgia Senate runoff election.

As I discussed on the day of the general election, TargetEarly analyzes publicly available early voter data and individual voter profiles to produce a fairly accurate picture of the state of an election during the early voting period.

Warnock ended up with 49.4% of the 2022 general election vote and TargetEarly’s model estimated that he won 50.8% of the total early votes.  Five days prior to the general election, TargetEarly modeled Democratic early voters at 48.8%.

At five days prior to the runoff election, TargetEarly models early Democratic voters at 54.1%.

In short, Warnock appears to be beating his early voting performance in the general election.  While that snapshot model is certainly no guarantee of a final result, it’s still good news.

The 2022 elections aren’t quite finalized yet, but I thought I’d go ahead and post a quick post-mortem – summarizing the winners & losers in addition to evaluating my own projections as reflected in my Final 2022 Election Analysis post.

U.S. House

My projection:  “While I don’t see as massive of a ‘red wave’ as others, the GOP will end up with a solid majority in this chamber.”

There certainly was not a red wave.  The GOP will likely end up about four seats north of the 218 necessary to own the chamber.  While that’s a pretty thin margin, 218 was all they needed to fully control the agenda and the committees.  Kevin McCarthy will have a tough time managing the various factions of his party – assuming he even gets the final nod as Speaker.  The coming dysfunction will be fascinating… in a train wreck sort of way.

I’m hopeful that the imminent flood of revenge-driven investigations and impeachment votes will go largely unreported in the media and that everyone will eventually at least try to provide reasonable oversight and address some real problems.

I’m also shadowing a leprechaun that I spotted yesterday and I’m hopeful that he’ll lead me to his pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

U.S. Senate

My contrarian data-intensive projection:  “I still think Democrats have a very slight advantage here.”

My model was quite accurate here, with all of my Likely R/D and Lean R/D projections being correct.  Of my three Toss-Ups, there’s been one D win, one R win, and one that’s still a Toss-Up.  Here’s a color-coded version of my projection table:

Democrats will retain control of the Senate with either a 50 or 51 seat majority – hopefully the latter, with Warnock winning the Georgia Senate runoff.

State Legislatures

My admittedly data-free projection:  “my rough guess at the moment is that this cycle will see no major flips in the control of state legislatures for either party.”

I was a bit off here, but not by a lot.  The number of flips were minimal, but the overall Democratic performance was still impressive.

Over the past 120 years, an average of 12 state chambers have flipped party control after each election cycle.  This year, only four chambers flipped… and all flipped from red to blue.  Democrats lost no legislative chamber that they previously controlled – a feat that the president’s party hasn’t accomplished in a mid-term election since 1934.

Democrats made some significant gains:

• Michigan:  Democrats won control of both chambers. (Republicans previously controlled both chambers).
• Pennsylvania:  Democrats won control of the State House. (Republicans previously controlled both chambers).
• Minnesota:  Democrats won control of both chambers. (Republicans previously controlled the State House).
• Vermont:  Democrats won a super-majority in both chambers, allowing them to override the Republican Governor’s veto.  (Democrats previously held only a House super-majority.)

On the other hand, Republicans tightened their grip on a few state chambers that they already controlled:

• Florida:  Republicans won super-majorities in both chambers.
• Iowa: Republicans won a super-majority in the State Senate.
• South Carolina:  Republicans won a super-majority in the State House.
• North Carolina:  Republicans won a super-majority in the State Senate.  (However, Republicans failed to win a super-majority in the State House which would have allowed the GOP to override the Democratic Governor’s veto.)
• Wisconsin:  Republicans won a super-majority in the State Senate.  (However, Republicans failed to win a super-majority in the State House which would have allowed the GOP to override the Democratic Governor’s veto.)

There are also a couple of outstanding state legislative results:

• New Hampshire:  Republicans are likely to retain control of both state legislative chambers.  However, there are 28 (!) ongoing recounts after which the State House could conceivably flip to Democratic control.
• Alaska:  Control of the State House is still in question as votes are still being counted.  Republicans & Democrats currently share control of the chamber.

Governors

My contrarian data-intensive projection:  “definitely a mixed bag but not necessarily the absolute disaster we’re being led to believe.”

My model was fairly accurate here, with a slight over-performance by Democrats.  All of my Likely R/D & Lean D projections were correct, but one of my Lean R projections was won by the Democrat.  Of my five Toss-Ups, there were four D wins and one R win.  Here’s a color-coded version of my projection table:

As for the interesting state trifectas (Governor + State Senate + State House):  The Democratic wins in Maryland and Massachusetts gave both states Democratic trifectas. The Democratic wins in Michigan and Minnesota (plus the state legislative flips) gave both states a Democratic trifecta.  Democrats also kept their existing trifectas in Maine, New Mexico, and Colorado.

The Democratic win in Arizona broke the existing GOP trifecta.  The Republican win in Nevada broke the existing Democratic trifecta.

Secretaries of State

Given the lack of publicly available data in these races, I didn’t even attempt SoS projections and simply noted the important races that I was following.  Here’s a color-coded version of that table:

The very good news is that most of the 2020 election-denying idiots lost their SoS races.

Bottom Lines

Democrats did significantly better than most pundits predicted.  Democrats even slightly out-performed my own projections.

The primary Democratic loss was control of the U.S. House.  Democrats did better than expected.  But they still lost.  However, without partisan gerrymanders, Democrats could well have held the chamber.  While both parties are guilty of gerrymandering, Republicans are much better at it.  The GOP gained numerous seats in Florida, Texas, Georgia, and Ohio by aggressively redrawing district maps in their favor, which were then backed by sympathetic state courts.  Democrats gained a few seats in New Mexico, Oregon, and Maryland but, to their naive credit, had passed anti-gerrymandering reform measures in many large Democratic states such as California, New Jersey, Washington, Colorado, and Virginia.  Democrats did try to gerrymander New York, but that map was struck down by a state judge as too partisan and replaced with one that favored Republicans.  Well done, guys.

Pre-election, I was profoundly worried about state-level GOP officials or GOP-controlled legislatures having both the power and desire to curtail voting rights and/or overturn the results of the 2024 general election in their respective states.  While it’s tough at this point to declare which states might be in-play in 2024, here’s a list of possibilities along with a party control summary for the state-level election power centers.  I’m also including my own current level of concern, based on the players and their histories:

In short, while I remain cautious about election integrity in some states, there are no in-play states that currently rise to a “High” level of concern in my book.  And that’s great news for democracy.

In premature anticipation of Georgia once again being the deciding factor in party control of the Senate, I’d started writing down my thoughts on the 12/6 runoff between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker.

However, with the win in Nevada by Catherine Cortez Masto over Adam Laxalt, Democrats will retain control of the Senate even without Georgia!  I am absolutely thrilled that my NV fears proved to be unfounded.  While Democrats still need to fight hard to win in Georgia, the Georgia Senate race is no longer the doorway between Good and Evil.  (And that’s only a slight exaggeration.)

Thus, although I fully intended to seriously edit and mold this disjoint collection of Peach State musings into a shorter, more coherent, and moderately well-structured post, that’s just not happening now.  You’re getting my fairly raw, stream-of-consciousness notes.  Live with it.

Runoff Importance

Democrats will maintain their Senate majority with or without the Georgia Senate seat.  That does not, however, mean that the race is unimportant.

In addition to padding their majority so that no one Democratic Senator can dictate policy (ala Joe Manchin), there is a major structural advantage to having 51 seats as opposed to 50.  In the latter case, the VP can break a tie on the floor of the Senate – and was often called upon to do so.  However, seats on Senate committees are not distributed using the VP’s vote.  Currently, the seats on all Senate committees are evenly split between both parties.  This has resulted in the committees being largely hamstrung with tie votes.  In turn, many things that could have been resolved in committees required action on the Senate floor – an inevitable, but time-consuming process that Republicans have used to significantly delay progress.

That one extra vote could make things a whole lot easier for Senate Democrats over the next two years.

Georgia Politics

Despite the fact that both of Georgia’s current U.S. Senators are Democrats, let’s be clear:  Both of them barely won their runoff elections in 2020 primarily due to the Orange Guy’s obsession with overturning his own loss in Georgia.  While I won’t discount the phenomenal strides that Democrats have made in Georgia (more on that in a moment), the Georgia GOP owns a state trifecta – the Governor’s office and both legislative chambers – in addition to the offices of the Lt. Governor, the Secretary of State, and the Attorney General.

Democrats are the red-shirted extras on the set of the Georgia Enterprise who managed to land a couple of guest-starring roles while everyone was watching an executive producer try to bang the whole special effects department on the craft services table. (Go ahead. Parse THAT analogy.)

With a decent GOP Senate candidate in a mid-term election with an unpopular Democratic President, Warnock should have been easily beatable in Georgia.

However, the Orange Guy once again stepped in to declare that Walker should be the 2022 GOP Senate nominee with the sole “logic” being that the best choice to defeat a black pastor would be a black sports figure who pledged orange fealty.  Of course, the black citizens of Georgia aren’t stupid.  Only 8% of black voters in Georgia chose Walker.  Black women were even less impressed, giving Walker only 5% of their votes.

On the other hand, 70% of white Georgians voted for Walker.  Of particular interest is that 88% of self-identifying white evangelicals voted for the morally bankrupt Walker over the guy with a friggin’ doctorate in theology who is a pastor of one of Atlanta’s most revered Baptist churches.  While that incredible hypocrisy no longer surprises me, it still irritates my soul.

The Democratic Renaissance in Georgia

The 2020 elections saw Democrats make considerable gains in organization, enthusiasm, and voter registration.  That surge was largely led by Stacey Abrams and her Fair Fight PAC.  While she lost her own 2018 and 2022 bids for Governor, her efforts were uniquely instrumental in the 2020 Democratic wins in Georgia for President and for both Senate seats.  Her importance to the Georgia Democratic Party cannot be overstated.  However, while she is extremely smart, she can often be polarizing and is perceived as a bit too overtly ambitious – even for a professional politician.  She publicly sought Biden’s VP nod when such lobbying is generally frowned upon; she seriously overplayed her hand when pursuing some initially valid concerns about the fairness of her first Governor’s race; she allowed herself to be cast as a guest star in “Star Trek: Discovery” as the President of United Earth.

Still, Abrams’ involvement and full-throated support is absolutely essential to Warnock’s runoff campaign.  It’s likely that she could single-handedly deliver (or de-motivate) the Black Woman vote – which is perhaps the Georgia Democratic Party’s most loyal constituency.  Since Abrams is undoubted disheartened by her own election loss, Georgia and national Democrats should quickly give this woman something to keep her deeply involved.

Walker’s Georgia Bona Fides

This really needs to be made a bigger issue that it’s been.

Yes, Walker won the Heisman in 1982 while playing for the University of Georgia.  Got it.  His campaign repeats this one resume item like he cured cancer while walking on the moon.  Damn, folks.  He won a college sports award 40 years ago!  Give it a rest.

After leaving college (without graduating), Walker quickly bolted from Georgia.  He spent three seasons playing for the USFL’s New Jersey Generals until that league folded.  He then played for the Dallas Cowboys for two years before being traded to the Minnesota Vikings, then to the Philadelphia Eagles, then to the New York Giants, and finally back to the Dallas Cowboys as a backup.  His 12-year NFL career was unremarkable and, notably, the Atlanta Falcons were NOT one of his pitstops.  Walker has no Super Bowl ring and, in fact, only saw the field in five playoff games for a combined 28 carries resulting in a grand total of 132 yards and zero touchdowns.  Woo.

And, by the way, in second place for the 1982 Heisman?  John Elway and his TWO Super Bowl rings.  So much for the Heisman’s prediction of NFL success.

Walker retired to Westlake, Texas and didn’t move back to Georgia until 2021 – specifically to establish residency for his Senate run.  His response to being called a carpetbagger?  “I think the people made a mistake by saying I’m not a Georgian. I’ve always thought about Georgia. I’ve lived in Georgia.”

Hey, I used to live in Germany and I still think about it.  Scheisse!  Does that mean I’m German?

Walker is an Idiot

While this topic has at least been raised, it needs to be hammered home during the runoff campaign.  Here’s just a few quotes, provided without commentary:

• On climate change mitigation:
  • “A lot of the money is going into trees. We’ve got enough trees. Don’t we have enough trees around here?”
• On pollution:
  • “Since we don’t control the air, our good air decided to float over to China’s bad air, so when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then, now, we got we to clean that back up.”
• On women’s Issues:
  • “This economy is tough because they gotta buy groceries.”
• On Georgia being ranked in the bottom half of states in education, health care, crime, environment, etc.:
  • “If it’s the worst state, why are you here? Why don’t you leave? Go to another – there’s, what, 51 more other states that you can go to?”
• On his custom COVID solution:
  • “You know, right now I have something that can bring you into a building that would clean you from COVID as you walk through this dry mist.  As you walk through the door it will kill any COVID on your body. When you leave the building it will kill the virus.”
• On school shootings, less than two days after the Uvalde incident:
  • “Cain killed Abel and that’s a problem that we have. What we need to do is look into how we can stop those things. You know, you talked about doing a disinformation — what about getting a department that can look at young men that’s looking at women that’s looking at their social media. What about doing that? Looking into things like that and we can stop that that way. But yet they want to just continue to talk about taking away your constitutional rights. And I think there’s more things we need to look into. This has been happening for years and the way we stop it is putting money into the mental health field, by putting money into other departments rather than departments that want to take away your rights.”

Walker is a Liar

Not only is Walker a compulsive liar, he’s a laughably bad liar.  Seriously.  If you’re inclined to lie at all, why on Earth would you choose to lie about things that are quite easy to verify?  Here’s just a few highlights:

• “If you have a child with a woman, even if you have to leave that woman — even if you have to leave that woman — you don’t leave that child.”
• “As a Christian, a father, and a husband, Herschel knows that strong families are the bedrock of our country.” [from his website]
  • While basing his campaign on a “family values” schtick, he assumed that the media wouldn’t find out that the fathered not one, but four children by different women and has been largely uninvolved in their lives.  He assumed that the media wouldn’t find out that he also paid for one or more abortions.  As the details trickled out, he just continued to lie.  He lied about it to his own campaign.  He lied about it after his own son called him out as a liar and a horrible father.  Well beyond the considerable moral issues here, the blatant lies in the face of hard evidence are impossible to defend.
• ‘I … was in the top 1% of my graduating class in college.”
  • He was not.  He never even graduated from college.
• “I worked for law enforcement, y’all didn’t know that either?”
  • Walker has variously and repeatedly claimed to be a sheriff, a peace officer, and an FBI agent – often brandishing fake badges as “proof”.  The Georgia Sheriff’s Association had to release a statement that the honorary badge Walker flashed in a debate has “no specific law enforcement authority.”  They went on to say that they’ve now stopped handing them out, fearing they could be used to impersonate a police officer – which is a felony in Georgia.
• “My mom just told me that my grandmother was full-blood Cherokee.  So I’m Native American!”
  • No, he’s not.  Walker has offered no proof and none of the Cherokee tribes recognize any family connection whatsoever.  Where are the Republicans who lambasted Elizabeth Warren for her similar claims?
• “I’m this country boy.  I’m not that smart.”
  • Well, okay.  I’ll give him that one.

Runoff Analysis & Gameplan

I briefly considered building a new predictive model for the GA runoff election before quickly realizing that there’s only data point that matters:  The very recent state-sponsored “poll” that was conducted using all of Georgia’s actual voters in the general election.  Warnock won a plurality with some 35K more votes than Walker.  That’s a good number, but it’s not a safe number.

The runoff is all about executing a solid turnout ground game and I see four primary goals:

1. Get Warnock Voters to Vote Again
   • By far the biggest chore is to convince Democratic voters in GA to turn out One More Time.  The Warnock campaign has access to the profiles of everyone that voted and can quite accurately identify those individuals who likely voted for Warnock.  These people need to be individually contacted and asked to please vote again.  Yes, that’s close to 2M voters.  I didn’t say it would be easy.
2. Turn out Warnock Profiled Voters Who Didn’t Vote
   • By the same token, Democrats have access to the profiles of every registered voter that DIDN’T vote and can quite accurately identify those individuals who would have likely voted for Warnock using the demographics of the voters who DID vote. Sets of these individuals need to be contacted and convinced that their vote matters.
   • For example, while the public data isn’t quite complete yet, it appears that only 14% of GA registered voters under the age of 30 voted in the general election, well below the national average of 27%.  Since that demographic nationally tended to heavily favor Democrats, young people might be a good target audience for GA Democrats to collect some new votes.
3. Win Over the Libertarian Voters
   • Around 81K voters chose the Libertarian candidate.  Historically, Libertarians have been more likely to lean Republican due to the GOP’s traditional small-government stance.  However, that’s the GOP of the past.  With these voters, Democrats need to hammer Walker primarily over women’s rights and the GOP’s desire to dictate their healthcare choices.
   • For the practical Libertarians, I’d also pose this question:  Would  you rather have a Senator in a slim majority who can possibly tilt legislation to favor Georgia or would you rather have a Senator in the minority with no leverage whatsoever?
4. De-Motivate Walker Voters from Voting Again
   • At this point, while no minds will be changed, it is possible that some Walker voters simply won’t participate in the runoff – and every Walker voter that doesn’t repeat is a vote for Warnock.  This isn’t a one-on-one problem, but the seeds needs to be planted, both online and in the media, that voting for Walker again isn’t worth any Republican’s time.
   • I contend that many Georgia Republicans knew that Walker was an insincere imbecile.  They just didn’t care as long as he was willing to toe the party line.  This quote from Dana Loesch, a former NRA spokesperson, says it all:  “I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles. I want control of the Senate.”  Sorry, Dana.  While your honesty is appreciated, that just ain’t gonna happen now.  So why waste any more effort on this idiot?

There’s a debate scheduled for Monday, 11/21 and the Warnock campaign needs to remember the above.  People have already made up their minds on the issues and the focus now needs to be on turnout.

Runoff Wishes

I’ll shortly be sending the Warnock runoff campaign some money.  However, I’d like to make just a few requests if they expect me to donate any further…

• I understand that emails are a free way for you to solicit donations.  But please!  Stop sending the same damn formulaic emails and stop sending them multiple times a day.  Also try to display a modicum of pride and stop groveling for money.  For the Love of God:  Hire a good, clever writer that can make folks actually want to read your campaign emails.  If they are brilliant pieces of literature, you can send one a day.  If they’re merely readable, make it no more than twice a week.  Otherwise, you’re just pissing me off.
• Please don’t send texts to people outside of Georgia.  That’s just annoying.  Your profile of me tells you that I’m not a GA voter so don’t make me a target of your “Get Out The Vote” effort.
• Spend some money to create a few great ads that can quickly go viral.  Humor works wonders.  As a bonus, you can get away with being a whole lot meaner if you’re also funny.  There’s a ton of excellent comedy talent that would love to help.  Reach out with a check.  People are SO. VERY. TIRED. of this election. They’re particularly tired of being bombarded by variations of the same crappy political ads set to different royalty-free, talent-free music.  Give people a reason to smile and they’re much more likely to give you their money and/or their vote.

Donate!!

Any money is good, but early money is best.  I’d already donated to Warnock’s general election campaign but I’ll be sending another contribution today to support the runoff campaign via ActBlue.  Contribute if you can!