And it’s an observation because it doesn’t even rise to the level of a HAWT TAEK! In Pennsylvania Tuesday night, John Fetterman demolished establishment and one-time Manchin wannabee candidate Conor Lamb. It’s seen as part of a triumph of progressive candidates in general. Needless to say, moderate Democrats are caterwauling about this.
What has to make this even more painful for centrist/moderate Democrats is the vote breakdown:
Fetterman: 59%
Lamb: 26.4%
Kenyatta: 10.3%
Khalil: 4.3%
While some voters always do weird, inconsistent stuff, I can’t see a mass migration of Kenyatta or Khalil voters to Lamb; Fetterman likely would’ve picked up the majority of their votes. What that means is if those ‘spoilers’ hadn’t been in the race, Lamb would’ve have been crushed by Fetterman even harder.
That’s gotta hurt. Sad, really.
mikethemadbiologist
PA Dem voter here. As somebody who donates freely (which means I’m on every campaign fundraising list in the universe), I would add that I heard from the Fetterman campaign every single day, even after I started donating, and I heard from the Lamb campaign once, about 2 weeks before the election. I don’t watch a lot of TV, but I saw zero Lamb ads. I live in one of the Philly suburb “ring” counties that should be Lamb’s sweet spot: upper-middle class social liberals who hate paying for anything.
I don’t know if he was overconfident because “obvioiusly people will vote for the centrist because centrist!” or what, but it sure seems like there wasn’t much effort on his part to do anything at all but assume he’d win.
It’s also easy to forget that yes, Lamb beat a GOP incumbent when he won the special election, his first one, but that opponent was an incredibly weak campaigner (because he’d never had to bother). And for folks who kept “wondering” whether Fetterman can win a statewide election–he has. Twice.