I'm leaving to go vote in an hour. I'm glad we have a closed primary because otherwise the troll part of my brain would want to get a GOP ballot and vote for Don Blankenship just because I want to see his commercials get dumber and dumber and watch establishment conservatives squirm because they lack the courage to just flat out reject him in favor of a Democrat.

Yes, I'm definitely rooting for Blankenship tonight. Even if he wins he will mess with McConnell.

According to NYT, Indiana polls close in ~10 minutes, Ohio and West Virginia polls close in ~1h40m.

Sheesh. That's 6PM for much of the state and 5PM for some of it, like Gary and suburban Chicago. I know it's only the primary, but I wonder if this will help the candidates preferred by rich folk.

I think it's 6 p.m. closings everywhere, so I believe those counties across the time zone are still open for a few more minutes.

I can't particularly get my mind around which demographic would prefer which of these candidates. They aren't significantly different from each other except in personality (Rokita plays as the biggest ******* of the three). Messer is probably the most conventional/unexciting one and works best as a generic Republican, but he has seemed like the least likely to win tonight based on the limited polling and the buzz leading into today.

kucinich won't be dem candidate for ohio gov

Establishment Republican guy beat the Trumper Republican candidate for the gubernatorial primary in Ohio.

Looks like Braun won the GOP Senate primary in Indiana... at least that's CNN's projection. He's less Trumpy than Blankenship, but he's the Trumpiest of the candidates in that race, right?

Blankenship a distant 3rd (33% to 29% to 22%) with 22% reporting, that's too bad

Not really. All three were trying to nuzzle up to Trump to varying extents, but (here in Indiana) if anything I saw him doing a bit less of that pandering than the other two. He tried to frame himself as the "outsider" and did eyeroll-worthy stuff to portray himself as the every man, like showing up to the debates in a button-down and jeans rather than a suit and tie. But as dudes who run as outsiders go, he seems a pretty generic Republican.

Luke Messer was trying to hit Braun (a self-described lifelong conservative) late on the fact that the RNC had him categorized as a hard Democrat until very recently due to the fact that Braun was always voting in Democrat primaries rather than the GOP primaries, but he's been serving as a GOP state senator now, so he's not some total wildcard politically.

https://twitter.com/ABC/status/993996200188690432

yeah I did this in FL in 2016, it didn't work out

So West Virginia is probably about 50-50 now that Blankenship lost, right?

It looks like the GOP should have an EV of a little over a one-seat pickup in the Senate.

Cocaine Mitch may be the worst of the worst, but full credit to his social media team.

With Morrissey more 60/40 Dems IMO. Jenkins would be the easier sell.

Morrissey made money off the opioid crisis and is a carpetbagger. Add this to his stronger counties being the ones that are more the teacher strike hotbeds, and he's more vulnerable.

Holy ****, how is that real???

Glad to hear it... Hopefully they can hang onto it,but it seems like one of the most likely for the Republicans to flip.

Not quite the Senate, but there's no House thread: Charlotte, NC suburbs deliver the first primary loss to an incumbent in 2018

Goddamn, how did Mitch McConnell become a badass all of the sudden. That **** is stone cold.

All of a sudden?

Dude has been doing this forever.

Here is the ad that got him elected for the first time (as a bonus this was directed by Roger Ailes)



A mix of comedy with a burn

It didn't have a mega OP like this thread, but I did make a thread for this sort of thing.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/4...-bums-1707208/

Big ups to my girl Paula Jean Swearengin for her respectable performance (30.2%) in WV tonight. She is a no name activist and former stay-at-home mother who funded a decent campaign through small dollar donations. I think it has to bother Manchin that he could come in with less than 70% of the primary vote (his worst performance yet) against someone who the D establishment would consider a nonentity. I hope he remembers this if he wins reelection, he doesn't just have to worry about his right flank.

I told everyone this in the Democratic death thread like four months ago. Shocking that the space cadet who thinks there is a deep state conspiracy to oust trump ( and Fox News regular ) shocking that he can’t win a democrat primary


Not that that was particularly hard to see but still. Kucinich is like Nader. Both way smarter than me and have some good ideas while also being completely hilarious imbeciles who are unelectable. Guy is a complete waste of space. Not much different than your friend with good politics except your friend doesn’t actually siphon votes for a real democrat from 19 year olds. I’m very glad Bernie didn’t end up endorsing him

California bros:

I'm a fan of Cenk Uygur and TYT, so if you guys keep up with them, you'll already know what I'm talking about. You should consider throwing support behind Alison Hartson, the Berniecrat in the Senate race. She has received ~0 mainstream media attention, but she has a lot going for her. She is President of WolfPAC, a campaign finance reform group that has got several state legislatures to pass a resolution calling for a limited Constitutional convention to essentially overturn Citizens United and Buckley v Valeo. Consistent with that mission, she takes no PAC money, and 80% of her campaign funds come from small dollar donations. According to this article, she has raised way more in small dollar donations than anyone else, and overall has raised half as much as KDL (Feinstein has basically infinity of her own personal money in the race). Finally, Hartson ran this killer ad:



which resulted in Feinstein almost immediately changing her tune on marijuana (see here).

KDL isn't bad by any means, but he's got a lot of mainstream attention and support and still polls pretty badly. Plus, he takes corporate and giant techbro donations. In reality, Feinstein is a virtual lock to win, so I hope you will vote for someone who will go very HAM on her and will push her to the left. Hartson > De Leon in this regard.

https://www.npr.org/2018/05/21/61298...va-gop-primary

TRUMP coming to TN today to campaign for Marsha Blackburn.