If the blue wave is coming, we want it to be the right shade of blue. That's where a little thing called primaries comes into play. Will we have good Democrats that fight for progressive change or the same old ring-kissers who yield to Donald Trump and serve the donors? On the GOP side, will the MAGA agenda prevail at the ballot box, or are Republicans "sick of winning" with candidates like Roy Moore and Rick Saccone? Let's find out together, shall we?

Illinois had a primary today. The results: meh.

R governor narrowly won by the incumbent, Rauner. While he is fairly unpopular, I imagine he still stands a better chance of holding the governorship than his hardcore rightwing opponent.

D governor won by billionaire Prizker. He is cut from the Hillary Clinton deeply establishment mold, but seems alright on the issues.

3rd district was narrowly won by the incumbent, Lipinski, who I have elsewhere called the worst Democrat in Congress (anti-choice, anti-LGBT, voted against ACA, takes money from Republican super PACs, etc). The R candidate for the district is an actual neo-Nazi, lulz.

I think we need to elect anyone who will oppose Trump and most of his agenda, then worry about pushing for more progressive candidates.

Title change now: “We comin for that ass”
This was already decided in the other thread and it is non-negotiable. We will boycott this thread until we get the title change. That is all. Good day sir.

It's constantly lamented that some Dems and supposedly liberal institutions like the NYT do a really ****ty (intentional more than not imo) job of opposing a lot of the Trump agenda.

The left will never stop ceding ground until they draw a firm line in the sand and start causing people to lose primaries. I'm not hopeful that this will ever come to pass.

I got called a Russian on Reddit today for pointing out the stupidity of having Lipinski occupy a safe Democratic seat. If we're wasting our safe bets on Conservative Democrats then who the **** do we elect in Republican districts? It's stupid to send Lipinski back to Congress to represent a Democratic district in a Blue Wave election cycle when his opponent is a Neo Nazi. Jesus ****ing Christ what a waste.

I guarantee stuff like this would not have flown on the Republican side circa 2010.

This tilted me so hard when I woke up to read the news.

Argggggggggggggggggggg!!!!

It's not like the various states or districts are homogeneous entities. I agree with Micro that a hard left economic message would almost certainly play well in WV, but Dem donors don't want that, so we get the culture wars instead.

It is a great title, but "we comin for that ass" should be for the general.

We tried that with Hillary. It didn’t go well.

Ok. Sounds good.

WV-3 is going to be interesting. Ojeda might have been created in a lab as far as testing a labor focused progressive approach in WV. That he won a deep coalfield state senate race as a pro-labor anti-coal progressive was already bonkers. Now he's gotten a massive signal boost from the teachers' strike. He could very well flip that seat and bring a few state legislators in on his coattails.


Unions and dope. A rust belt Democrat letting the conversation get to far from that is setting votes on fire.

It's damn hard to primary an incumbent and it was a very close race. Illinois is also open primary, I believe, so he could have had pro-lifers voting for him instead of the Nazi running for the GOP slot. Also, I believe Chicago voted for Lipinski and the suburbs for his opponent. Well, I'm not worried about losing the cities to "right of center" Dems. Finally, from what I've seen incumbents generally get the message after a close race and either give up the seat or lose, because challengers often do better the second time around.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/n...e=sectionfront

Democrats in New York State Senate Reconcile After Years of Infighting

Some background: The IDC is a group of renegade Democrats in the New York state Senate who caucus with Republicans. For the most part, they are Republicans, but run in districts where the GOP are unelectable. The donor class loves these guys, and they have successfully blocked and watered down numerous pieces of progressive legislation during their seven year reign.

But that is apparently over now. Yesterday, Governor Cuomo called on the IDC to reunite with the mainline Democrats in the Senate. The IDC leadership has agreed to the unity arrangement, and the Democrats will regain a (very narrow) majority in the chamber. What is remarkable is how easily Cuomo was able to accomplish this after years of telling progressive critics he had no control over the renegade conference. In reality, Cuomo played a role in forming the IDC, and the group frequently served his interests.

So why is this happning now, and why did I post this itt? Well, two weeks ago, progressive actress Cynthia Nixon (of Sex and the City) announced her primary challenge to Cuomo. One of the main points she and her allies hammered Cuomo on was his continued enabling of Republicans through the IDC. Let this serve as Exhibit 9763 in the case for primaries.

Man, that IDC stuff always seemed FUBAR. I hope they all get primaried and that Cuomo gets what's coming to him., a nice retirement for the Don jr of the Cuomo family.

A bum was successfully gotten rid of in Mecklenburg County, NC (contains Charlotte): Democratic Sheriff who participated in Trump admin deportation program got primaried

California Governor's race

Came up in the LC thread. What do y'all think?

My ballot came in the mail today. I haven't decided, but I sorta want to vote for Chiang. Strategically there's him having almost no chance and the way the election works, voting for someone who has no chance is theoretically possibly splitting the vote and giving one of the nutty Republicans a shot at the runoff. But that's less than no chance right? And winning the general is even less than that, right?

After reading his website, the wiki on him and watching much of the following youtube, I'm feeling Chiang. If you watch the video you gotta put the speed up to 1.5, it's kinda painful otherwise. I don't want to say he's boring, but he's kinda boring - I don't mind that though.

Your vote also counts for sending a message to the other and future candidates. I say vote your values.

Hehehehehe... "PPIC."

Some interesting primaries tomorrow, including in the new Pennsylvania districts.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...ho-and-oregon/

In PA-7, we have a candidate worthy of a post in the Tragic Death of the Democratic Party.

Greg Edwards is cool though. Any PA-7 residents itf, consider throwing a vote his way.

Here's another one: Nebraska 2, where the DCCC is again at odds with progressives.

Gotta love the establishment bias here. "Pragmatism vs progressivism." You have to rerun a Republican-lite candidate as a Democrat in a district he just lost. It's only pragmatic.

Noted douchenozzle Raul Labrador loses in ID governor GOP primary.


https://twitter.com/Taniel/status/996632579808907264

Some good-ish news on the primaries I mentioned in my previous post. In PA-7, the EMILY's List supported Susan Wild won, which isn't my ideal result, but certainly much better than a Democrat who wants to work for Donald Trump and deport the "illegals." In NE-2, Kara Eastman, the progressive Justice Democrat, defeated the DCCC candidate. So much for "pragmatism."

Also Rick Saccone (Connor Lamb's former opponent) lost again, lol.

Probably not going to happen but it'd be awesome if Paulette Jordan won.

https://twitter.com/pwthornton/statu...60295932059648

There's still a centipedes worth of shoes to drop before the mid-terms, and I suspect most of them will be bad for Trump.