Month: May 2022

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of the Gran Canyon scene. The photo that I’m using (My own from a recent visit.) is seen directly above.

I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a canvas panel.

When last seen the painting appeared as it does in the photo seen directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

I have now completed the entire foreground. Note the foliage and path. The painting is now finished.

The current and final state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have a new painting to show you next week. See you then.

Following the terrorist shooting in Buffalo on Saturday, Tucker Carlson initially distanced himself from the great replacement theory that obviously motivated the shooter. But then on Tuesday night, he actually tried to turn the tables and suggest that it was Democrats who embraced the theme of replacement – I kid you not!

Here’s Carlson’s opening:

You’ve heard a lot about the great replacement theory recently. It is everywhere in the last two days and we are still not sure exactly what it is. Here’s what we do know for a fact. There is a strong political component to the Democratic Party’s immigration policy. We are not guessing this. We know this. And we know it because they have said so. They have said it again and again and again.

It’s almost amusing to hear him say that he’s not sure exactly what the great replacement theory is all about – especially since he’s talked about it over 400 times on his show. But then he claimed that the Democratic Party’s immigration policy is all about replacement. Carlson goes on to provide video clips and references to articles, claiming that they make his point.

One example will suffice to demonstrate the lie that is embedded in Carlson’s claim. He points to an article by Ana Navarro from back in 2013 titled “Old, White, Straight, Male Voters Ain’t What They Used to Be.” Here’s what she wrote:

The evidence is everywhere and starkly undeniable after the 2012 presidential race: old, white, straight, male voters just aren’t enough to win elections anymore. Mitt Romney got the highest ever percentage of these voters, and the lowest ever percentage of the minority vote. He lost. The demographic trends show that the minority vote in the United States will continue to grow in numbers and influence. Unless you are under the influence of hallucinogens, it is hard to imagine future scenarios were the Republican Party can win national elections if we do not succeed in attracting more than just the “usual suspects” to the Republican tent.

Of course, Navarro is a Republican political consultant and her take was echoed by Senator Lindsey Graham who said, “The demographics race we’re losing badly. We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.” But it was Jeb Bush who was the first one to sound the alarm during a 2012 interview with Joe Hagan.

Sitting down across from me, he assumes his role as party Cassandra, warning of the day when the Republicans’ failure to tap an exploding Hispanic population will cripple its chances at reclaiming power—starting in Texas, the family seat of the House of Bush.

“It’s a math question,” he tells me. “Four years from now, Texas is going to be a so-called blue state. Imagine Texas as a blue state, how hard it would be to carry the presidency or gain control of the Senate.”

Following Romney’s loss to Obama in 2012, that was the prevailing “wisdom” among Republicans, as was outlined in their autopsy.

In the last election, Governor Romney received just 27 percent of the Hispanic vote. Other minority communities, including Asian and Pacific Islander Americans, also view the Party as unwelcoming…As one conservative, Tea-Party leader, Dick Armey, told us, “You can’t call someone ugly and expect them to go to the prom with you. We’ve chased the Hispanic voter out of his natural home.”

In other words, almost a decade ago it was Republicans who were noticing that, unless they did a better job of reaching out to Hispanics and other “minority groups,” their party was doomed.

Contrary to what Carlson suggested, the math on that is not dependent on Democrats bringing in illegal foreigners to replace white people, as the Washington Post reported back in 2018.

Experts say the main driver of diversification in the United States is the native-born Hispanic population, which grew by about 5 million from 2010 to 2016, just as the native-born white population shrank by about 400,000 over the same period, according to Census Bureau data…

“You can shut the door to everyone in the world and that won’t change,” said Roberto Suro, an immigration and demography expert at the University of Southern California…“If your primary concern is that the American population is becoming less white, it’s already too late.”

According to Pew Research, the Asian-American population is growing even faster.

Asian Americans recorded the fastest population growth rate among all racial and ethnic groups in the United States between 2000 and 2019. The Asian population in the U.S. grew 81% during that span, from roughly 10.5 million to a record 18.9 million, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau population estimates, the last before 2020 census figures are released. Furthermore, by 2060, the number of U.S. Asians is projected to rise to 35.8 million, more than triple their 2000 population.

Most demographers predict that non-Hispanic white people will no longer be a majority in the U.S. in about 20 years. That cake has already been baked – regardless of what happens with immigration reform.

Those are the facts. And short of deporting U.S. citizens (or suppressing their votes) there’s nothing Tucker Carlson and his white supremacist allies can do about it. So they conjured up a lie about hordes of brown immigrants invading our country from across the southern border as a way to gin up the kind of fear that leads to violence.

On a somewhat related note, Simon Rosenberg does an excellent job of debunking the idea that Democrats are losing Hispanic voters. He points to the fact that the Hispanic vote went from 6 million in 2000 to 16.5 million in 2020. With that, the Democratic margin went from 1.6 million more votes in 2000 to 4.6 million in 2020. As Simon suggests, “A slightly smaller slice of a bigger pie means you still have more pie. In this case lots more pie.” Results in the four heavily Hispanic states of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico tell the tale.

In 16 years (2004-2020) Dems have picked up 31 Electoral College votes, 6 Senate seats, 8 House seats and 3 governorships in these 4 southwestern states. These Congressional gains are the reason Dems have majorities today in the Senate and House.

With so much political commentary focused on white working class voters in the Rust Belt, that story has been almost completely overlooked, but it speaks volumes about why Republicans are so afraid of “the browning of America.”

I don’t have a lot of time to do analysis of the Pennsylvania primary results today so I’m going to be brief and just focus on John Fetterman’s race.  On May 13, I told you that Fetterman is, in my opinion, a much more electable U.S. Senate candidate than Conor Lamb. I believe the preliminary results of Tuesday’s election vindicate my position.

Now, to be clear, the fact that in a closed Democratic primary Fetterman beat Lamb in every county and currently holds a 59-26 lead over Lamb, doesn’t necessarily mean he’s the stronger candidate against a Republican in November.

But a look at where Fetterman ran strongest is instructive. It’s also important to see how poorly Lamb did in every part of the western half of the state, excepting the part that includes his former congressional seat (where he was still thumped).

For non-Pennsylvanians, some of this might not be intuitive. It’s key that both Fetterman and Lamb are from the Pittsburgh area. This eliminated any natural east/west divide in the results. That helps because we can see how they fared in the West without worrying that it’s more about regional loyalty than political appeal. And Fetterman absolutely rolled. In the Northwest corner, Fetterman got about 80 percent of the vote in a three-way contest in Erie County, which is actually an important source of Democratic votes. But move a little east and he got over 80 percent in lightly populated and deep red Warren and McKean counties, too. In fact, he topped 70 percent all over the West in many of counties where Trump rolled up enormous margins that wiped out (in 2016) or nearly wiped out (in 2020) the Democrats’ big advantages in the cities and suburbs.

Some of the redder counties in the East also were enormously strong for Fetterman. He got 80 percent in Lebanon County and 76 percent in Lancaster. Now, my theory is that Fetterman doesn’t just attract Democrats in red counties because they like him personally or prefer his Bernie Sanders-endorsed policies. They are looking at electability, and they’re guessing who might be more attractive to their more conservative neighbors. Fetterman, who looks like he belongs in a biker gang seems like an easier sell to them than prosecutor/veteran Lamb, who Chuck Todd keeps telling me on MSNBC comes out of central casting for a crossover-appeal Democrat. I never believed that red Pennsylvania would identify more with Lamb than with Fetterman, and I think that’s proven now. I also think it will bear out in the general election against either former hedge fund manager Dave McCormick or New Jersey resident and television celebrity Mehmet Oz (their GOP primary election is headed to a state-mandated recount).

It’s true that Fetterman somewhat underperformed his statewide average in the Philly suburbs, and in Philadelphia itself, although the latter was largely a feature of Philly state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta running a strong second in the city. I think any casual observer of Pennsylvania policies could have predicted that Lamb would do better in the highly-educated and affluent suburbs than he would in the rest of the state. That doesn’t mean Fetterman will struggle in the suburbs, necessarily, but he has to work to solidify his support and maximize turnout in both the burbs and in Philly.

He’ll benefit from the Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano. Mastriano won almost everywhere outside of the Northeast coal-country home base of Lou Barletta, but he came in second in suburban Philadelphia counties, Chester and Delaware. I don’t think Fetterman will have too much trouble convincing a lot of suburban Republicans that the GOP ticket is too extreme. In that effort, he’ll be assisted by Josh Shapiro (based out of suburban Philly’s Montgomery County), the Democrats’ candidate for governor whose race was uncontested.

Fetterman spent Election Day in the hospital getting fitted for a pacemaker after suffering a small stroke. So, we can expect his health to be an issue. It’s a concern that came up after my analytical piece from last week was published, and it would definitely have impacted my confidence level in Fetterman’s electability advantage.

Setting that aside, as the voters on Tuesday seem to have done, the Fetterman/Lamb election was a test case for a lot of my theories. One is that identity is much more important in politics today than policy. If you think a Blue Dog like Lamb is more likely to attract rural votes than a more socialist-minded candidate like Fetterman, you’re way off the scent. It matters much more how Fetterman looks, how he acts, the aura he projects. People simply aren’t saying that Lamb is preferable because he’ll be less partisan or more of a conciliator. He may be from Western Pennsylvania and he may have a military background, but he would not fit in in a bar or veterans’ hall or firehouse the way Fetterman does.

There are still parts of the country where socialism is a non-starter, for example, among the Cuban-American community in places like New Jersey and South Florida. But in most of rural America, the important thing is the messenger. And for the same reasons, Fetterman is an easier sell in a lot of rural Pennsylvania than a Muslim-American television personality or a hedge fund manager.

Now, Fetterman is authentic. But he’s still a model that can be emulated. The Democrats need candidates that look and sound like rural America to run in rural America. The golden boy, Blue Dog military veteran/prosecutor model has worked in the past, but it won’t work anymore because we’ve entered into a regional culture war. It’s based much less on policy than on feelings. People don’t want to vote for their betters any more. They’re anti-elites. They won’t trust outsiders or defer to their expertise.

But, as Fetterman demonstrates, these candidates don’t have to run in opposition to the values and policies that are valued in Democratic strongholds. If they get the image right, they’re the best salespeople for those policies.

Here’s Seth Meyers:

Let’s just say that White Nationalism and Replacement Theory are just nuts.

This nonsense was very marginal back when I was young. Can we go back to that?

Please?

Pretty please with effing sugar on top?

Is that too much to ask?

Cheers.

In the aftermath of the supermarket massacre in Buffalo, journalists are looking to help the American public understand why supposedly “lone wolf” white nationalists, both here and abroad, continue to carry out mass shootings of Blacks, Latinos, Jews, Muslims and left-leaning whites. To aid in that process, Greg Sargent of the Washington Post interviewed executive director of Integrity First for America Amy Spitalnick.

Spitalnick’s organization succeeded in winning damages from leaders of the deadly 2017 white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. It’s a useful interview, especially for understanding that these shooters are best understood not as solo operators but more as “part of a broader extremist network in which each attack is used to inspire the next one.”

Of course, it’s not simple curiosity that makes us want to understand. I think we’d all like to know what can be done to stop these mass shootings. So, yes, we’d like to know what the White Replacement Theory is and how it originated and who is propagating it now. But what’s really wanted is some kind of solution. And when the Sargent-Spitalnick interview gets to that point, the result is very unsatisfying.

Sargent: Where is this all going? Is it irrational to worry that we might see a more serious and sustained white terrorism movement?

Spitalnick: It’s not irrational at all. It’s what many in this space have been warning about for years, that we’re only going to see more acts of mass violence by extremists. It goes hand in hand with the rise in hate crimes we’ve seen.

Accountability is crucial — but you can’t prosecute or sue your way out of this crisis. You need to be building structures into our society to prevent this sort of extremism in the first place.

Sargent: What does that look like?

Spitalnick: A variety of tools. It’s anti-racist education. It includes media and digital literacy training. It means giving caregivers, parents and educators the tools to identify and prevent this sort of extremism. It means dealing with the ways in which extremism has infiltrated law enforcement, and has preyed on the veterans’ community.

Sargent: What are the prospects for having any real success? There’s cause for deep alarm, no?

Spitalnick: That’s putting it lightly. The Democratic leadership needs to be making it crystal clear to the entire country that what we’re talking about here is a broader, far-right, extremist, authoritarian effort that puts our democracy and all of us at risk.

That’s one of the most important things we could see: an unequivocal acknowledgement that this is not normal, this is not okay — and it’s dangerous to all of us.

Notice that Spitalnick ultimately puts the onus on “the Democratic leadership.” Prior to that, the first suggestion out of her mouth is “anti-racist education,” but one of the core Republican strategies for the 2022 midterm elections is to run against anti-racist education. Attempts to promote racial harmony and reconciliation through education are seen by the political right as one of the Democrats’ top vulnerabilities.

A solution that doesn’t have buy-in from “the Republican leadership” is likely to invite more political violence. When the Democrats try to make it “crystal clear to the entire country that” these shootings are part of “a broader, far-right, extremist, authoritarian effort that puts our democracy and all of us at risk,” they’re met with accusations of teaching Critical Race Theory and white self-hatred.

Now, you can argue that this proves that the solution must come from Democrats since they’re certainly not going to get any help from Republicans, but it’s more obviously evidence that partisan solutions won’t work. Spitalnick argues that we “can’t prosecute or sue [our] way out of this crisis,” which is an acknowledgment that passing and enforcing laws is not going to be sufficient.

Partly this is because of Republican resistance to strong measures to stop gun violence or treat right-wing militant organizing as a terrorist threat. This means that the Democratic politicians can identify possible legislative tools that might be helpful, but they don’t have the unilateral power to implement them. So, again it’s a mistake to talk about what the Democratic leadership needs to do.

Equally pointless is arguing about what the Republican leadership needs to do, because they are most definitely not going to do it. So, if our political parties aren’t the answer, that leaves ordinary people.

In theory, the people could elect enough Democrats that solutions can be sought without the need for any help from the Republicans. But even in a deep minority, solutions that the GOP vehemently resists are going to maintain the partisan status quo of these types of attacks.

If there’s a magical solution, it’s actual leadership from someone on the right who has the charisma and power to change how Republicans think on these issues–how the party chooses to campaign–how its media organs choose to message.

But absent magic, the solution can only come, at least initially, from outside the political process by the development of people-powered movements. I’m thinking of something much more like Mothers Against Drunk Drivers than anything overtly partisan. I remember how the mothers of soldiers who died in Afghanistan organized in the Soviet Union to bring about an end to the war there. They were operating in a severely repressive one-party state, so there wasn’t any prospect of voting out the people responsible for their suffering, but they found a way. In the end, they helped initiate the breakup of the entire political system, but that wasn’t their goal.

In any case, it’s a mistake to look at our current situation and think it’s fair or likely to be fruitful to ask the Democrats to solve things on their own. People need to take the initiative into their own hands.

One thing I’m still trying to figure out about open, virulent white nationalists is why they so frequently back away from their beliefs. I’m very familiar with a different kind of conservative. People who say racist things and espouse racist policies frequently deny that they’re racist. They’ll say that it’s their accusers who are racist or say their comments have been misconstrued. They’ll find someone of color who has said something similar and use them as a shield. They’ll claim to have black friends. They’ll provide some non-racist rationale for the racist policies they promote. This I understand.

But it gets weird when a Neo-Nazi gets sensitive about being called a racist. Or, take the shooting in Buffalo. The shooter was unapologetic about his motive. He did everything he could to assure that people clearly understood his motive. Nonetheless, we see the spectacle of Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers claiming that the shooting was a false flag operation carried out by government officials. This theory has apparently been echoed by Nick Fuentes, who makes no bones about his racism and anti-Semitism.

You’d think these folks would openly embrace a mass shooting of innocent black grocery shoppers and call for more of it. After all, this is the kind of act they’re trying to incite. But they don’t choose that path. Instead, they deny it really happened how it happened. They act like it’s a frame-up to make them look bad.

Maybe this is way to escape responsibility or maybe it’s just as important to them to spread conspiracies about the evil cabal supposedly running the government, but it’s just weird.

During the 2020 presidential primary, Sen. Elizabeth Warren focused on the need to break up big tech companies. During a CNN town hall, she provided a helpful explanation for how a move like that would benefit people who shopped online at Amazon.

Giant tech companies have too much power. My plan to #BreakUpBigTech prevents corporations like Amazon from knocking out the rest of the competition. You can be an umpire, or you can be a player—but you can’t be both. #WarrenTownHall pic.twitter.com/73y1002QVv

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) April 23, 2019

As Warren talked about the need to break up Amazon, Google and Facebook, another presidential candidate, Sen. Cory Booker, provided an important qualification.

“I don’t care if it’s Facebook, the pharma industry, even the agricultural industry. We’ve had a problem in America with corporate consolidation that is having really ill effects,” Booker said on ABC News’s “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos.

But, Booker added, “I don’t think that a president should be running around pointing at companies and saying breaking them up without any kind of process here. It’s not me and my own personal opinion about going after folks.”

That distinction is gaining even more importance as the so-called “New Right” is in the process of using government power to attack specific companies as part of their culture wars.

For example, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis specifically targeted DisneyWorld because they spoke out against his “don’t say gay” bill. He did so by passing legislation that attempts to remove their special district status. While some liberals might applaud the end result, the democratic (as opposed to fascist) approach would have been to decouple the move from the culture wars and eliminate all of Florida’s 1,844 special districts – like the one covering The Villages in central Florida.

Two of my former colleagues at the Washington Monthly recently approached the possibility of Democrats being able to work with the New Right on issues like anti-trust.

The group includes many younger conservatives who combine contempt for the usual targets of conservative bile (the media, Hollywood, universities) with a brief against the great monopolies of surveillance capitalism (Facebook, Google, Twitter), all while embracing, in many instances, a kind of white Christian identity politics. After hearing presentations from Rachel Bovard, Amanda Milius, Christopher Rufo, and other Millennials at the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, David Brooks wrote about witnessing, in the new conservative movement, a “fusing of the culture war and the class war into one epic Marxist Götterdämmerung,” and pronounced himself terrified.

Should we also be terrified? Emphatically, yes! But there are still startling points of actual and potential overlap emerging between today’s New Right and New Left.

One of those areas of potential overlap is, indeed, anti-trust legislation. But the authors failed to mention the important distinction made by Booker. To the extent that the “New Right” wants to use government to target specific institutions/corporations that don’t comply with their racist, sexist, homophobic agenda, that is nothing short of fascism and must be condemned in no uncertain terms.

Senator Josh Hawley is an odious example of the threat posed by the “New Right.” In an attempt to keep pace with DeSantis, the senator from Missouri has introduced a bill to strip Disney of its copyrights in a move that has been called “blatantly unconstitutional.” While Hawley tried to avoid language that made it obvious he was targeting Disney, “the retroactive provision of the bill applies to any entertainment company with a market capitalization above $150 billion. Disney’s market cap is $196 billion.” Hawley’s public statements also make his intentions perfectly clear.

“Thanks to special copyright protections from Congress, woke corporations like Disney have earned billions while increasingly pandering to woke activists,” said Hawley, who once clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts. “It’s time to take away Disney’s special privileges and open up a new era of creativity and innovation.”

On the other hand, Hawley signed on as a co-sponsor to a bill authored by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (yes, you read that right). The American Innovation and Choice Online Act would address the issue identified by Warren in the video above.

The bill prohibits dominant platforms, defined by criteria including how many users they have and their market cap, from discriminating against other businesses that rely on its services, in what’s sometimes referred to as self-preferencing.

That means, for example, Amazon could not simply decide to list its own private label products higher in its search ranking than third-party rivals’ listings. And, similarly, Apple and Google could not unfairly rank their own apps higher than rivals in their own mobile app stores. The same principle would apply to results from Google’s general search engine.

Twelve senators have signed on to co-sponsor the legislation – including six Democrats and six Republicans. It passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee by a vote of 16-6, with five Republicans (Grassley, Graham, Cruz, Hawley and Kennedy) voting in favor of the bill. The committee’s House counterpart has advanced a similar bill, while the Biden administration has offered support from both the Commerce and Justice Departments. With mainstream media practically salivating over the need for bipartisanship, it is unfathomable to me why this piece of legislation is being almost completely ignored. It’s a pretty BFD (as POTUS might say).

What Klobuchar’s bill demonstrates is that there are places where the so-called “New Right and New Left” can work together. As odious as some of those Republican senators might be, if they want to sign on to legislation drafted by Democrats to address anti-trust issues…fine by me.

But make no mistake – we’ll fight them every step of the way on their attempts to manipulate this issue in order to “Orbanize” our democracy.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of the Gran Canyon scene. The photo that I’m using (My own from a recent visit.) is seen directly below.

I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 8×10 inch canvas panel.

When last seen the painting appeared as it does in the photo seen directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

I have now revised the near and distant buttes. I’m happy with these and will have much more for next week’s cycle.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week. See you then.

Hi photo lovers.

I couldn’t let a Friday the 13th go by without a photo post. This flower is just one of many we have gracing the place right now, thanks to one of my daughters working at a greenhouse. I liked the way it turned out. I’m no olivia, but I think this turned out just fine.

I am still using my same equipment, and am no professional. If you are an avid photographer, regardless of your skills and professional experience, you are in good company here. Booman Tribune was blessed with very talented photographers in the past. At Progress Pond, we seem to have a few talented photographers now, a few of whom seem to be lurking I suppose.

I have been using an LG v40 ThinQ for for about three and a half years. My original phone is gone. The back of the phone came off. Apparently the battery began to burst. I am using a replacement (thanks to insurance) that is identical. I need more time to research smart phones, especially at the high end. I prefer to get a device and keep it for four or five years. Most of my family seems to be gravitating toward iPhones, so I suspect I may eventually have to succumb and go to the Dark Side of The Force. Given the times we live in, my default is to delay any major purchases as long as possible. So, unless something really goes wrong with my current phone, I’ll stick to the status quo for as long as possible. Keep in mind that my last Samsung kept going for over four years (the last year was a bit touch and go). Once I do have to make a new smart phone purchase, the camera feature is the one I consider most important. So any advice on such matters is always appreciated. Occasionally I get to use my old 35 mm, but one of my daughters seems to have commandeered it for now. So it goes.

This series of posts is in honor of a number of our ancestors. At one point, there were some seriously great photographers who graced Booman Tribune with their work. They are all now long gone. I am the one who carries the torch. I keep this going because I know that one day I too will be gone, and I really want the work that was started long ago to continue, rather than fade away with me. If I see that I am able to incite a few others to fill posts like these with photos, then I will be truly grateful. In the meantime, enjoy the photos, and I am sure between Booman and myself we can pass along quite a bit of knowledge about the photo flog series from its inception back during the Booman Tribune days.

Since this post usually runs only a day, I will likely keep it up for a while. Please share your work. I am convinced that us amateurs are extremely talented. You will get nothing but love and support here. I mean that. Also, when I say that you don’t have to be a photography pro, I mean that as well. I am an amateur. This is my hobby. This is my passion. I keep these posts going only because they are a passion. If they were not, I would have given up a long time ago. My preference is to never give up.

Trip Gabriel in the New York Times asks: Conor Lamb Had All the Makings of a Front-Runner. So Why Is He Struggling?. Writing for Cook Political Report, Amy Walter claims the Electability Argument is Falling Flat in 2022. These two pieces of political analysis are remarkably similar. In both cases, the strong polling lead of Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman in the Democratic Party’s primary for U.S. Senate is used as the top example of how left-leaning voters are abandoning moderation and pragmatism, and rejecting electability as their top priority.

I want to be clear that these articles are not garbage. They’re both on mostly solid ground, offering useful insights to readers. It’s true that in 2018 and 2020, Democratic voters demonstrated a pragmatic streak that focused more on getting wins at the ballot box than obtaining intraparty ideological wins. It’s also true that the mood of the left has shifted markedly since then, with voters now showing more appetite for candidates who will fight.

What Gabriel and Walter don’t contemplate, however, is that the attributes that make a candidate “electable” may have also shifted markedly since Trump left office. In other words, Lamb had the right profile to win a Trump-leaning Western Pennsylvania congressional district in the previous election cycles, but perhaps Fetterman has the better profile to win statewide in Pennsylvania in 2022.

Lamb’s profile as a Marine and former prosecutor is familiar and has been often used successfully by Democrats to carry red districts in cycles where the electorate is in the mood to punish the GOP. In 2006, Patrick Murphy, an attorney and Iraq War veteran with golden boy looks and a moderate Blue Dog message, was part of a hugely successful midterm campaign for the Democrats. He won the suburban Philadelphia congressional district in Bucks County.

But, sadly, 2022 is not shaping up to be a cycle where the electorate wants to punish the Republicans. It’s a cycle in which the Republicans are fired up and the Democrats are dispirited, demoralized and not a little terrified. On the whole, the electorate is looking to punish incumbents or anyone they deem responsible for their unhappiness, and so they’re not looking for middle of the road candidates who will forge compromise. Democrats just want people who will stand up and defend them against creeping fascism.

Gabriel and Walter correctly identify this mood among Democratic primary voters in Pennsylvania and use it to explain Fetterman’s commanding position leading into next Tuesday’s primary election, but they don’t see that Fetterman’s profile may be the stronger than Lamb’s for the general election.

Both candidates come out of the Pittsburgh area and have better than average appeal in the western part of the state. Both candidates have demonstrated the ability to attract crossover votes. But Lamb looks like a poster boy for Most Available Bachelor while Fetterman looks like a hulking 6’9″ heavily tattooed leader of a biker gang. Lamb lights up a room with his smile, while Fetterman has resting bitch face. Lamb talks about West Virginia senator Joe Manchin in approving tones, while Fetterman spits fire in Manchin’s direction.

There are Republicans who will be attracted to Lamb and Republicans who will be attracted to Fetterman, but they’re completely different kinds of Republicans. In the end, this aspect of their relative electability may be fairly close or even a wash. Where Fetterman has the advantage is with independents and Democrats. The Democrats are simply more excited to support a fighter like Fetterman than a reconciler like Lamb. And low-propensity voting independents are more likely to choose someone who doesn’t look or act like a typical politician. Fetterman may be an incumbent Lieutenant Governor, but he’s unlike anyone who has ever served in the U.S. Senate. In an anti-incumbent environment, this is a big advantage.

In my opinion, it’s not really close. Fetterman is a much stronger general election candidate than Lamb. He’s significantly more electable. That might not have been the case in 2018 or 2020, but it is the case in 2022. And I think Gabriel and Walter are discounting the possibility that a lot of Pennsylvania Democrats are still taking electability very seriously and opting for Fetterman for that very reason.

One final consideration is that Fetterman has been one of the strongest proponents of marijuana legalization and this is an issue that can actually motivate a lot of younger voters to come out and support him even in a midterm election when they’d usually stay home.

Lamb doesn’t have an issue that can similarly excite young voters. His strongest electability argument is actually that the Republicans might succeed in turning black voters against Fetterman over an unfortunate incident that occurred in 2013 when Fetterman was the mayor of Braddock in the Pittsburgh suburbs.

In 2013, Fetterman pursued a man and pulled a shotgun on him because he wrongly believed the man, who turned out to be a Black jogger, had been involved in a shooting…

…Fetterman was well into his second term as the mayor of Braddock in January 2013, when he said he heard gunshots not far from his home and then saw someone running from the area.

Fetterman said in a TV interview at the time that he rushed his 4-year-old son inside his house, called the police, and then pursued the man in his truck. He said he confronted him with a 20-gauge shotgun to stop him from fleeing before police arrived.

This confrontation happened one month after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and Fetterman was concerned there may have been a mass shooting. The majority-black town of Braddock went on to reelect him as mayor twice. The black jogger, Christopher Miyares, has strongly endorsed Fetterman’s candidacy, writing the Philadelphia Inquirer that “it is inhumane to believe one mistake should define a man’s life,” and “Mr. Fetterman and his family have done far more good than that one bad act or action and, as such, should not be defined by it.”

Miyares signed that letter: “Gooo Fetterman,” and underlined it three times.

Of course, I do expect the Republicans to make this incident a big deal in an effort to depress black turnout, but I don’t think this vulnerability is substantial enough to transform Lamb into the more electable candidate.

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta is also a candidate for this U.S. Senate office. He’s easily the most likable of the three candidates, and by far the best debater. A North Philadelphian, he’s the first openly gay black member of the Pennsylvania legislature. He has a strong and impressive progressive profile and I really have nothing negative to say about him at all. I think the impression that he’s not electable to statewide office in this political climate is the main thing that is hurting his chances and has him mired in single digits in the polls. But that’s just more evidence that Democrats haven’t abandoned perceived electability as a strong criteria for how they’ll vote.