Aftermath of the Conor Lamb election

I wrote prior to Tuesday's special election in Pennsylvania about how establishment Democrats could be expected to draw the "lesson" from either a win or a loss there along the lines of, well, what corporate Democrats always want: candidates beholden to wealthy donors and who hold "Blue Dog" (i.e., Republcican) positions on guns proliferation, abortion rights, the military budget, and corporate deregulation.

One way to look at this is to use a metaphor along these lines: the progressive Dems are the left/center left party, corporate Dems are the conservative party, and the Republicans are the raging reactionary Trump party.

That's only a metaphor, though, because the American electoral system with winner-takes-all districts creates a very strong incentive for a two-party system, and that's what we have. Despite the dissonance within the Republican Party over Trump's erratic foreign policy style and his protectionist rhetoric, there is remarkable uniformity over major issues like the military budget, massive tax cuts for the wealthiest, and reckless disregard for international agreements and treaty commitments.

It's worth stressing here that people generally assume that Barack Obama was a "left" Democrat. Republicans, of course, generally profess to see no difference between Democrats, Bolsheviks, and tribes of cannibals in a Tarzan movie. But Obama also repeatedly called for cuts to Social Security and Medicare as part of a bipartisan "Grand Bargain" that he apparently wanted intensely. So Conor Lamb in his Pennsylvania race was to the left of Obama on Social Security and Medicare.

The two wings of the Democratic Party have more substantive differences. I'd have to bracket military policy here, though. The Democrats have spent so long trying to reassure everyone they are "tough on defense" that few of them are willing to criticize even a world-historical boondoggle like the "missile defense" corporate-welfare program. They mostly aren't willing to assert Congressional war powers under the Constitution in a meaningful way. There are exceptions. Sanders, Lee and Murphy Introduce Yemen War Powers Resolution 02/28/2018:

And even there, only one of those three Senators is elected as a Democrat! Although, of course, Bernie Sanders caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee - who represents my Congressional district - has obviously been a leader in this regard, challenging bad war policies and criticizing intelligence agency abuses:

Gina Haspel’s role overseeing the Bush Administration’s illegal torture program should disqualify her from leading the CIA. At a minimum, our CIA Director should respect human rights & international law. https://t.co/JyfqAbMCAe

— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) March 13, 2018

Tillerson was ineffective at State but Pompeo could be even worse. I served with him in the House – he denies the reality of climate change, opposes the Iran Deal & supports regime change in #NorthKorea. We need an experienced diplomat at State, not a rubber stamp for Pres Trump. https://t.co/ixIDag5XCd

— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) March 13, 2018

But Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, Joe Manchin, even Diane Feinstein are generally firmly in the Bipartisan consensus in favor of constantly supporting the military-industrial complex and pretty much anything the Intelligence Community wants to do.

Here is the corporate Democratic Chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Tom Perez on the Conor Lamb election, DNC Chair: 'Republicans Are Understandably Quaking In Their Boots' Velshi & Ruhle/MSNBC. He gives the safe, poll-tested answers in this interview withStephanie Ruhle, the kind that are guaranteed to make the listeners eyes glaze over in 60 seconds time:

Perez says that Lamb was "talking about" various issues including "pension security." Is it really too much to expect the DNC chair to uses a moment like that to say that Lamb campaigned against the cuts that Republicans will make to Social Security and Medicare unless we stop them? Apparently, it would be. But he rolled along with Ruhle in chatting about the horse race. Also, Tom, it probably not the best choice to say that African-American voters in Doug Jones' Alabama Senate race were the "linchpin" of the Democrats' success. I'm just sayin'.

Ruhle also picks up the Republican/corporate Dem theme that ludicrously says that Conor Lamb ran as a Republican. Ed Kilgore takes down the Republican spin in No Clear Winner Yet in Pennsylvania Special Election, But the GOP Is the Clear Loser New York 03/14/2018:

Yes, this is a special election; some might imagine that in a regular election, such as the one in November, more Republican voters will show up. The problem with that hypothesis is that turnout today was at full midterm levels. There’s no reason to think turnout patterns in November will be more favorable for the GOP, particularly given the massive Trump administration attention that this district got during this contest.

Another Republican rationalization we have already heard from the Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito is that Conor Lamb is not a real Democrat (because he was nominated by a convention and didn’t have to win the votes of left-bent primary voters), and thus his performance does not show how real Democrats will do in November. But, by any standard, Saccone is a real Republican who ran more than ten points behind the normal GOP vote in PA-18. And Lamb was lifted to parity with Saccone by the very same labor movement — battered and diminished as it is — that will be fighting for Democrats in swing districts all over the country. Dismiss labor, dismiss energized rank-and-file Democrats, and dismiss the ability of the Donkey Party to find suitable candidates like Lamb, and you’re well on the way to underestimating the likelihood of a Democratic wave in November. [my emphasis]

Others suggested better lessons for the Democrats to draw from the experience:

"Organized labor built western Pennsylvania."
This is a nice touch from young Mr. Lamb.

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) March 14, 2018

Here’s the lesson Dems in blue collar America should take from @ConorLambPA: run with labor and against national party/Pelosi. @PHP2018 #bluewave

— Krystal Ball (@krystalball) March 14, 2018

Pierce expounded on the implications in his distinctive style (Conor Lamb's Victory Matters, and Paul Ryan Should Be Scared Esquire Politics Blog 03/14/2018):

There will be some attempt now to minimize what the voters in that district did on Tuesday night. Rick Saccone was a dullard of a candidate. (True.) Conor Lamb is personally going to run Nancy Pelosi out of national politics, so he’s not really a Democratic candidate. (Please to be giving me a break.) It’s a long way until November and Things Can Still Happen. (This theory depends vitally on the president* suddenly becoming Up To The Job. Yeah, right.) This is whistling very loudly past a very large graveyard. This was a Republican district. It was built to be a Republican district in perpetuity, which is why its days are numbered right now.

In the latter days of the campaign, the Republicans abandoned their economic pitch that was based on the president*’s ability to convince congressional Republicans to pass a massive plutocrat’s wet dream of a tax cut. This was supposed to be the magic bullet in this election. Instead, Saccone decided to let the traditional culture-war boogeypersons out of the closet.

On Monday, for example, Conor Lamb was a wild-eyed "libtard" who was going to let undocumented immigrant doctors perform abortions on your 10-year-old daughter in the middle of a mass gay wedding in Greene County. On Wednesday, according to those same Republicans, Conor Lamb was basically Mark Meadows in Democratic drag. Are the Republicans pretty well and truly fcked up as a party right now? Signs point to “Yes.”

What establishment Democrats will learn from Tuesday special Congressional election in Pennsylvania

Will Bunch worries that whether Trump wins or loses in the special Congressional election, the national Democratic Party leadership will draw the wrong lesson from it. (Yes, that's about as safe as predilections get, I know, but stay with me.)

In A Democratic win in Pa. Trump Country won't mean what you think it means Philadelphia Inquirer 03/11/2018, he doesn't call Democratic candidate Conor Lamb Republican Lite. But he takes a dim view of the conservative tone Lamb's campaign seems to be striking:

These are the voters who deliver special elections, and they may do so on Tuesday because of antipathy for Trump, not because of any love for Lamb. And there’s a lot for the Democratic base and voters on the left not to like about their special-election candidate. Although ostensibly pro-union, Lamb won’t support a $15 living wage. His attacks on fellow Democrat House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi are more than a tad awkward in this season of #MeToo politics. But then, Lamb goes out of his way to not mention that he’s a Democrat, or discuss any policy at all other than he’s for “working people.”

While there’s no dispute that Western Pennsylvania leans right on guns, Lamb’s passion for weaponry — he filmed a campaign spot firing an AR-15 — is shameful in a political moment dominated by the Parkland massacre. Hours after a teen gunman mowed down 17 people in the corridors of that Florida high school, Lamb (who mildly supports stronger background checks and thus sits a tad left of his fellow gun zealot [Rick] Saccone [the Republican candidate]) said, “I believe we have a pretty good law on the books.” Since Parkland, Florida’s NRA-backed Gov. Rick Scott has shown more gumption on guns than Lamb. Let that sink in. Sometimes firing an assault rifle for the camera isn’t a mark of political courage but cowardice.

Bunch talks about the shift the pollsters are finding nationally of suburban women being particularly disturbed about the Trump Orange Clown show. He thinks it's probably not a good strategy for Lamb to de-emphasize criticism of Trump.

On the other hand, for a candidate of either party to go hard on local problems in the campaign isn't unusual. And certainly not a bad idea in itself.

He concludes by stating what people who have been following the Democratic establishment's approach to the 2018 campaign will recognize as a sensible concern:

This [the Conor Lamb approach] isn’t the only way forward; another new study published in the Times last weekend urged the Democrats to push to regain a few million young and mostly nonwhite Obama voters who failed to show up at the pols in 2016; that wouldn’t mean so much in predominantly white PA-18, but it could sway key Senate races from Texas to Ohio. That, and tapping into the energy of angry, anti-Trump women. Playing for the God, guns and gold crowd that went ga-ga for Trump in 2016 seems a much lower priority — especially when it might drive away the first two groups.

But if the past is prologue, Beltway Democrats are going to get the wrong message from whatever happens on Tuesday. The worst plan for moving past the Trump nightmare would surely be to lead a flock of “Lambs” into November, some of whom will surely be slaughtered at the polls.

This is why ousting Trump, either by impeachment or election, depends on a sufficiently reinvigorated Democratic Party to actually stand for something in people's eyes besides not-being-Trump.

Conor Lamb's Congressional bid in tomorrow's Pennsylvania special election

I forced myself to listen to Trump's whole, long, rambling, narcissistic speech from Saturday, campaigning in Pennsylvania for Republican Congressional candidate Rick Saccone, who is running in a special election that takes place tomorrow. Trump unscripted and unleashed in Pennsylvania stump speech 03/10/2018:

TPM's Caitlin MacNeal notes of that race, "Republicans are unhappy with Saccone’s performance, and conservative groups have been forced to dump money into a race for a deep red district." (Report: Trump Criticizes ‘Weak’ Penn. House Candidate Behind Closed Doors 03/12/2018)

This is why the Democrats need to be regularly running a 50 state strategy. To build the strength of the party, it requires running campaigns in Republican-dominated districts even when a Democratic loss looks highly unlikely. Because at the very least, it will require Republicans "to dump money into a race for a deep red district." It also builds up the party's infrastructure, gets a positive version the Democratic message in front of more voters in the district, and gives actual electoral experience to potential candidates and party activists.

Here are Joe Scarborough and his panel on Morning Zoo talking about the speech, President Donald Trump's Worst Instincts In Display In Speech MSNBC 03/12/2018:

David Ignatius in a different Morning Joe segment talks about the Democratic candidate, Conor Lamb, as like a "Scoop Jackson Democrat," referring to the very hawkish Democratic Senator from Washington who played a big role in developing what we now call the neoconservative foreign policy perspective. Jonathan Swan in Axios observes, "Lamb is running effectively as Republican Lite. He's pro-gun and says he personally opposes to abortion (though he supports abortion rights)." (Trump privately trashes Rick Saccone 03/11/2018)

It's a good sign for abortion rights if the position of being personally opposed to abortion but supporive of women's choice is staring to be considered by the media as Republican Lite. That for decades was considered the "safe" Democratic liberal position. It was notable that Hillary Clinton straightforwardly defended abortion rights in her campaign for the 2016 Presidential election. For years, she used the slogan that she wanted abortion to be "safe, legal, and rare," her version of personally-opposed-but-want-it-kept-legal position.

Elaine Swensen in This Democrat Is Running for Congress — but Not Against Trump The Atlantic 03/05/2018 talks about how Conor is campaigning on local issues and not emphasizing attacking Trump.

Lamb calls himself a “Western Pennsylvania Democrat,” which seems to him to mean focusing on things like labor issues, the opioid crisis, and the need to protect entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security. Lamb’s emphasis on these particular items is an effort to endear him to the same voters who supported Trump—perhaps the same people Trump referred to in his 2016 victory speech as the “forgotten men and women of America.”

The congressional district has more than 87,000 union members, and Lamb is leaning heavily into labor issues. ...

The other issue on which Lamb appears laser-focused is the opioid crisis. More than 4,600 fatal overdoses occurred in Pennsylvania in 2016. The former federal prosecutor said his years spent working on heroin cases inspired him to run for office in the first place. He’s pushing for longer and more-affordable treatment programs. “It’s not easy, and it’s not cheap,” Lamb told me, “but we should expect enough from our government that they should be able to get that done.”

The danger in a 50 state strategy is that the current Democratic leadership will seek out Republican Lite candidates.

But I'm not at all sure that Conor Lamb's campaign can be called a Republican Lite campaign.