Mike Espy does have a shot. It’s also not a very good one.

On November 6th, 35 elections to the senate took place. Most of them weren’t that competitive, but a couple stuck out as potentially very interesting. Indiana, Missouri and West Virginia had democratic incumbents in red states who could be in trouble. However, today we’re not going to talk about that, because those races are pretty done and dusted. We’re here to talk about the only senate election that is yet to be called, the Mississippi special election.

The election is taking place today, on Tuesday November 27th, because it is a runoff, which means no one candidate surpassed 50% of the vote in the first round where there were 2 republicans and 2 democrats. So, the race moved forwards to today and eliminated everyone on the ballot but the top two vote-getters, who were republican Hyde-Smith and democrat Espy.

Let’s be real here: incumbent senator Cindy Hyde-Smith is a pretty heavy favorite, and that’s the case for a couple of resons:

1: Mississippi is a very red state, among the reddest in the country.
2: Mississippi is a very inelastic state, that is to say, there aren’t many swing voters.

However, there’s also a couple of reasons why we’re in this mess. For one, Hyde-Smith is an incumbent, yes, but she’s an appointed incumbent, not an elected one. What that means is that this is her first time facing the voters, because she’s been appointed to the office by the governor because of the death or retirement of another senator. In this case, it was senator Thad Cochran who resigned. This may seem minor, but appointed incumbents typically do worse than elected ones. Just look at Minnesota’s two senate races this cycle. Both of the victors were democrats, but elected incumbent Amy Klobuchar won by a very wide 30% margin, while appointed incumbent Tina Smith won by a comparatively anemic 10%.

However, the most important reason are Hyde-Smith’s inflammatory comments on race. She joked about attending a public hanging to a supporter, and she also talked about making it harder for liberals to vote. In case you couldn’t tell, THESE AREN’T THINGS YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO SAY. She has, apparently, gotten away with a half-apology-but-not-really, but this is probably the main reason why this race is competitive. Probably the worst part about the comments is Mississippi’s history of lynchings, being the worst offender among all the states way back when. Truly, Hyde-Smith has proven to be an incredibly inept candidate.

So those are Hyde-Smith’s weaknesses, but what are Espy’s strong points? Let’s go through a couple of them.

First off, he’s a very good candidate. He’s a former Secretary of Agriculture during the Clinton administration and he also was a longtime Congressman from Mississippi’s only blue district. He’s a well trained, well prepared candidate for the job, and he has put up more of a fight than some former city council member would have.

Furthermore, the timing of the election could favor Espy. This is happening a couple of short days after Thanksgiving, so folks who aren’t energized by a campaign may not even realize that they are being called to go to the polls today. If the turnout is similar to those of a special election, then he can make it close.

So, what would an Espy win look like? It’s actually pretty simple: bolstered turnout among black communities, probably needs to go a bit higher than on election day, and depressed turnout among white republicans. If that’s what happens today, then it’ll be very interesting. However, if there are any exit polls that fundamentally contradict this narrative (I don’t know if exit polls will be conducted), then Espy’s probably toast.

And how likely is an Espy win? Nate Silver says it’s around 15%, and I agree. That’s the range where it really could happen and it’s pretty unlikely, so prepare yourself. Mentally. It might be a long night.

2020 candidates ranked.

It’s been a week since I started my «The case for» series, and I’ve writen about all the major candidates and three minor ones since. On Sunday, I promised that today I would bring you my power ranking of 2020 democratic presidential contenders, a mere 15 months away from the Iowa caucuses. I’m not going to beat around the bush now, but I’m going to do a whole lot of that after the ranking itself, so there’s no shortage of information. Without further ado, here they are:

1: Joe Biden.
2: Elizabeth Warren.
3: Bernie Sanders.
4: Beto O’Rourke.
5: Kamala Harris.
6: Amy Klobuchar.
7: Cory Booker.
8: Kirsten Gillibrand.
9: Sherrod Brown.
10: Steve Bullock.

Some of you may be shaking your clenched fists at the screen in rage, wondering how I could be so stupid to put Harris in 5th or Sanders in 3rd, etc. Just hear me out, ok?

We’ll go from bottom to top, and look at each candidate’s strengths and weaknesses.

10: Steve Bullock: Steve Bullock’s standing in a hypothetical 2020 primary has greatly diminished, at least in my opinion. He’s a moderate governor from the midwest who has been elected thrice to statewide office in a red-ish state, so he could have appeal with rural voters. However, what he was probably hoping for was a lesser wave by Democrats or no wave at all, so that the more moderate narrative about how the party has moved too far to the left would be more palatable among the party’s base. His best chance at staying in public life will probably come from challenging senator Steve Daines, rather than a run for president.

9: Sherrod Brown: the senator from Ohio has proven that he has appeal beyond partisanship, as he won reelection with a comfortable 6% margin while democratic candidate for governor Richard Cordray lost by 4%. He’s part of the populist-progressive wing of the democratic party, somewhere close to Beto O’Rourke, and he would have more appeal in the midwest than other candidates would. He’s also publicly mused about a 2020 campaign, so it’s not like he’s a Michelle Obama. He would be a force to be reckoned with.

8: Kirsten Gillibrand: the junior senator from New York has moved decisively to the left in recent months. She was the first member of the senate to call for abolishing ICE, she’s no longer taking corporate/PAC money, she has endorsed medicare-for-all, called for a 15$/hour minimum wage and criticized Amazon’s opening of an HQ in Queens. She would certainly be a well-funded candidate from a populous state, but she would have to explain some very moderate votes from back when she represented upstate New York.

7: Cory Booker: Booker is an eloquent, charismatic speaker, and he has also moved to the left recently, in a similar way to Kirsten Gillibrand. I’m pretty Booker skeptical for 2 reasons, though: 1- He’s not well liked among progressives for his dealings with Big Pharma, and 2- he may turn off moderates with his newfound lefty message. He could turn out to be a great candidate or a paper tiger, but we’ll just have to see.

6: Amy Klobuchar: it would be hard to imagine a worse year for a candidate like Klobuchar to really shine, because she would almost certainly be the front-runner in a year like 2016 if she had gotten the type of attention that she’s getting now. She’s eloquent, soft-spoken, comes across as truthful and she’s also more of a centrist, which means she could be a female alternative to folks who don’t want to back Biden. She could be a very good candidate, but she’s fighting for the same lane as Biden, and it’s unlikely that she’d emerge victorious from that fight. Oh, and she won reelection in a landslide.

5: Kamala Harris: you may have deducted from my piece on her a couple of days ago that I’m a little bit Harris-skeptical, and you would be correct. I don’t think she’s doing as much as she needs to do to have as good of a shot as folks on CNN think she does. She would, presumably, be a good unity candidate between black voters and the more liberal wing of the party, but none of those groups strike me as incredibly enthusiastic for her. I don’t know, maybe I’m just stupid, but I don’t see it.

4: Beto O’Rourke: I’m still not sure what to make of O’Rourke’s hypothetical campaign, or whether he would actually have a lane to run in. But I basically think there’s 2 ways this can go: either he runs a grassroots campaign that’s very energizing and convinces moderates in the general, or tries to be a unity candidate in the primaries and goes down in flames. We’ll just have to wait; we’re not even all that sure on whether he’s running or not.

3: Bernie Sanders: some people may think this is too high, some may think it’s too low, but I think that it’s about right. The senator from Vermont has proven that he can win over votes by mounting an incredibly competitive challenge to Secretary Clinton in 2016, and he’s currently second in public national polling. The only reason why he’s third and not second in my ranking is because I think Warren is more likely to convince Sanders that it’s her moment than the other way around. But if Bernie runs and Warren doesn’t, then Bernie moves up a spot, perhaps even two.

2: Elizabeth Warren: she is the darling of the left wing of the party and a political behemoth; she has made a name for herself in a matter of a couple of years and has been able to fight for both sides of the aisle occasionally. She just seems like an actually good unity candidate, which is something that’s pretty rare these days. While I’m sure a lot of progressives wouldn’t vote for her because she’s not «pure enough», most would pull the lever for her over someone like Biden in a heartbeat. And establishment dems are largely okay with her too, seemingly classifying her as «good enough».

1: Joe Biden: I’m not sure I’ve thoroughly convinced myself that Biden still deserves to be number one, and it also doesn’t feel right. But it feels less wrong, and that’s really what matters. Biden is a mainstay in democratic party politics, a familiar face, and most democrats would be perfectly fine with him. The reason why he’s so high is that he’s likely to crush anyone in the moderate lane of the primary, thus securing that part of the electorate for him. Bernie, Warren, Harris, Booker, Gillibrand: they would all have to fight for the same voters. Biden doesn’t need to do that. Oh, and he’s polling first.

I’m sure people will have their disagreements, I personally disagree with most of the picks on CNN’s list. But I hope I persuaded you on at least one of these picks, and be sure to let me know how much of a cuck I am.

I’ll be right back with you all tomorrow with a piece on the Mississippi special election.

The case for Richard Ojeda, Andrew Yang and John Delaney for president.

During the 2018 election, there was a lot of buzz around the race for West Virginia’s third congressional U.S. House district. The incumbent at the time, Evan Jenkins, was retiring to run for senate, so he left an open seat that West Virginia state senator Richard Ojeda thought he could take. It was, by any standard, a tall order; WV-03 was 37% more republican leaning than the nation as a whole, the 43rd most republican district out of 435. His rival, Carol Miller, was ostensibly just a party-line republican, so it’s not like she was Roy Moore bad. However, not everything was uphill for Ojeda. West Virginia is ancestrally democratic, and he was on the ticket with Joe Manchin, a democrat who was running for reelection statewide (and won). In the end though, it wasn’t enough for Ojeda to eke out a win. He lost by 13%, which is still a really good result for D’s. In fact, the WV-02 race -a VERY deep sleeper- ended up being closer than WV-03, democrat Talley Sergent lost by about 11% there.

Not a week had passed since his election loss, but Ojeda decided to jump into the 2020 democratic *presidential* primary. Whether he only is doing this for shits and giggles or really believes he can win remains to be seen, but it’s a bold move to be sure.

He hasn’t been included in any public polls, but I suspect he’d be polling in the Bobby Jindall zone, which is to say pathetically low. Does Ojeda really think he can win?

Probably not, but he’s going to give it a shot anyways. Here’s my thesis: Richard Ojeda, someone who borrows from the left and right wings of the democratic party, won’t be popular with a national electorate, who want someone they can absolutely be sure they can trust for president. He would be too left wing on issues like healthcare to appeal to centrists and too right wing on issues like guns to appeal to progressives. Also, he voted for President Trump.

But, let’s not fool ourselves, he’s probably just doing this so that he can run for a spot at congress again while being remembered in West Virginia. Whether that be challenging Carol Miller or Shelley Moore-Capito, only time will tell. But that’s probably Ojeda’s endgame here.

But Ojeda isn’t the first major (using the word major very loosely) candidate to enter the race. That would be Maryland U.S. Representative John Delaney, who has been running for president since July 28th. July 28th 2017, that is. He’s been running for about a year and a half, and he’s already putting up ads in Iowa, although they don’t seem to be helping much. He hasn’t been included in any Iowa public polls and, to my knowledge, hasn’t been included in any National polls either. He even gave up his House seat to focus on his run for the presidency, which he really didn’t need to do, and may very well result in political suicide. What did he expect?

I also suspect he would be polling in the Bobby Jindall zone, mostly because he’s a moderate, and moderates are seriously considering a group of candidates like Biden and Klobuchar. Delaney, presumably, isn’t in that group.

To be brutally honest for a second here, I don’t know what he expected. Did he think he was the next Donald Trump? That he’d come back from behind and shock everyone? Well, at least for now, he certainly hasn’t, and it doesn’t look very good for John.

The last minor-league candidate we’ll be looking at today is Andrew Yang, a young, leftist businessman running an anti-automatization and pro-UBI campaign. He’s about as likely to catch fire as the other two, but he’s appealing to the purest of progressives. You know the ones, those that think Elizabeth Warren isn’t liberal enough. I really don’t know what else to say about Andrew Yang other than this: if this is just a setup for a future political career then bravo, he’s certainly got the attention of the people he needs, the berniecrats. If he truly believes that he can win and seriously wants to make a run then I’d say he’s doing well so far. He’s doing what he needs to do to have a tiny chance, basically. What he really needs is some kind of major, incredible, unprecedented shift from Sanders and Warren to him, and that would presumably happen by them not running. If neither Sanders nor Warren run, then Yang might have a chance. If they do, he’s probably doomed.

To borrow a phrase from Ezra Klein, these kinds of candidates are the underpants gnomes of the presidential run, and here’s what they’re basically thinking:

Step 1: Run for president!

Step 2: ???

Step 3: Yay I won!

Ok, maybe it’s not exactly that, but you get the idea. Thay all think they are going to be the next Donald Trump. A candidate that no one saw coming and took the party by storm. However, there’s one main difference: Donald Trump started rising in polls almost inmeaditely after he made his announcement. John Delaney has been running for a year and a half. Andrew Yang has been running for a year. We still don’t know what’s going on with Ojeda but I suspect it’s not favorable to him. So, with just a tad bit of caution, I think these candidates are going to fail. Especially John Delaney. Who would make a decision like that?

So, to bring this series to a close, here are the strengths and weaknesses of minor-league candidates:

STRENGTHS:

Upset potential.
Less political baggage, as they haven’t been closely followed by the press for months.
Excluding John Delaney, they look like outsiders, which can be a major plus.

WEAKNESSES:

Literally everything else.

You might scoff at that last part, but think about it. What else do these candidates have going for them? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. They are running against well-funded, often well-liked candidates. These lesser-known candidates might not be disliked by the public, just unknown. One thing is certain though: almost no other candidates have a steeper hill to climb.

This is the final entry of «The case for…», at least for now. I’ll bring you my power rankings on Monday, and I’ll also write a short piece about the Mississippi senate election on Tuesday. Hope you enjoyed this series.

The case for Beto for president.

For way too many months, the Texas senate race was both closely followed by most people and utterly dismissed by some prominent personalities. Kavanaugh seemed to give Ted Cruz a bump, even if it probably wore off, and early indicators looked good for his challenger, Beto O’Rourke. Early voting, while it doesn’t mean much, looked pretty decent for democrats, an some final polls showed the race really close.

And it was. The Texas senate race was closer than many expected. Early on election night it even seemed like Beto had a puncher’s chance at unseating Ted Cruz, which would have been an upset by a lot of standards. However, Cruz retained his seat by about 3%, and he should be happy that he was up this year and not 2022 or something similar, as Texas is getting bluer.

Things aren’t over for O’Rourke, though.

If you were following this election very closely, as I was, you knew that Beto could potentially run for president and that his ideal scenario in the Texas senate election if he wanted to make a run would be for Cruz to pull out a squeaker. If he had won that senate seat, inmeadiately launching a presidential run a couple of months afterwards would be very bad optics, and wouldn’t bode well for him while seeking reelection. Meanwhile, let Cruz prevail by 10 points and you just look like a loser who lost by more than Hillary Clinton in a way better year for D’s. This way, he looks like a good candidate that got unlucky, and it would be a shame to let a very good candidate go to waste like that right?

I’m not even close to certain that Beto is running, but let’s speculate anyways. What would that apparatus look like?

Well, out of all the field he probably has the most options when it comes to choosing a lane to run in. Candidates like Sanders or Warren can’t lose their cred with more liberal voters, otherwise they would be left with no base and collapse. Joe Biden has to be Joe Biden, he can’t just become liberal all of the sudden after more than 40 years of being more of a centrist. Other potential candidates like Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar have reserved themselves a bit more flexibility, but they have also boxed themselves into a corner somewhat in recent months (Booker and Harris have moved left while Klobuchar has stayed put).

While Beto would also have some baggage (he ran in Texas mostly as an open liberal) he was also a very party-line democratic backbencher in Congress, so if he decides he’d rather run a more establishment campaign then he can certainly do that, albeit losing trust with the more progressive wing of the democratic party.

But enough about campaign ideology. What about the primaries? Would he have a chance? In short, yes.

Beto has proven that he can attract white voters even in a red state like Texas, and guess what kinds of voters Iowa and new Hampshire have? You guessed it, white, working class and, at least within the democratic party, largely progressive. He would need to have a strong result in Iowa to allow himself to have a weaker result in New Hampshire, and if that didn’t kill his momentum then he’s off to the races.

He could also have a real chance to pick up some sun belt states, particularly Arizona, and he would obviously wield a massive lead in Texas, which has tons of delegates. I’m unsure about how he would fare in Nevada and South Carolina, but if he can pull off a win in either then he would probably be the frontrunner.

Furthermore, what about the general election? What would his particular map to 270 look like?

It would be an understatement to say that I have no idea. It seems like O’Rourke is strong with all constituencies but not particularly so with any specific one of them. Do southern voters feel the «Beto-mania»? Are white midwestern voters excited by his message? I think the former is more likely than the latter, but I can’t say for sure.

So, finally, here are the main strengths and weaknesses:

STRENGTHS:

Good enough appeal in early primary states (and in most states, really).
An ability to excite the democratic base.
An ability to convince moderate voters.
A wide array of ideological possibilities for his campaign.
A wide map to get to 270 electoral votes.
He would be one hell of a VP pick.

WEAKNESSES:

His potential strategy to appeal to both wings could backfire and end up appealing to no wings.
He could just fizzle out like so many «rising stars» (also see, Marco Rubio).
We don’t yet know how strong his appeal would be nationwide, and he needs more than just Texas to win.
A presidential run, if not terminated soon enough, would prevent him from running for senate again and do lots of damage to his career.

Overall though, I really think the pros outweigh the cons here for O’Rourke. He has proven that he can run an intelligent, effective, good campaign, and that’s pretty much all he needs here if things go his way. He would be a very robust candidate.

But perhaps this is getting a bit ahead of ourselves. We don’t even know if he intends to run or if he is just keeping his options open. One thing’s clear though: the future is bright for Beto O’Rourke.

The 2018 races that are yet to be called.

While I’m sure a lot of people wish the election could be done and dusted right the day after, this is really never the case. Sure, most of the races get called the day of the election (even when they shouldn’t have been) and most of the closely watched elections get called without all of the returns being in. However, every election cycle there are always a couple of races that have to go into overtime. Be it mail-in ballots, of which there are a lot of in California and Washington, recounts or provisional ballots. Here are the races that are yet to be called as of November 17th.

CA-21, David Valadao (R). 538 rating: Toss-up. Valadao has looked safe for most of the cycle, even as he got outraised in the last quarter (Valadao still led in overall fundraising). This held through election night, although the margin was, perhaps, closer than it should have been. Some may have called it too close for comfort. Since then, the race has substantially tightened. Valadao now leads Cox by 1%, or ~2,000 votes. Cox has closed the margin by winning more ballots that were counted after election day, and by a substantial margin at that. It’s still unclear if TJ Cox has enough votes in the counties where he’s favored to overturn Valadao’s lead, but this is worth keeping an eye on.

UT-04, Mia Love (R). 538 rating: Lean R. After election night, it seemed Love had been defeated by Ben McAdams (D) by a margin of about 3%. However, Love has made up that difference by getting massive amounts of non-election day votes in Utah county and substantially chipping away at McAdams’ lead in Salt Lake county. She’s actually in the lead now by ~400 votes. Not an impossible comeback, but challenging to be sure. How does one turn that around? Provisional ballots. There are about 35,000 provisionals that are left to be counted, and we have no idea where they may be coming from. If Dems can win this batch by a big enough margin, they may be able to turn this one around.

GA-07, Rob Woodall (R). 538 rating: Likely R. Republican Rob Woodall is ahead of Democrat Carolyn Bourdeax by ~420 (heh) votes, and I don’t think there are any ballots left to count. It is moving on to a recount. It’s unlikely that Bourdeax could end up winning after the recount is done, but it’s close enough that it deserves to be considered competitive.

NY-27, Chris Collins (R). 538 rating: Likely R. Not sure what to think here, actually. Seems like Collins should be safe, but there are enough uncounted provisionals that it’s not impossible for McMurray (D) to turn that around.

I guess that we’ll just have to see how these unfold to get a clearer idea of where these races stand. However, not counting state legislatures, once these races are done the election will finally be over.