Pierce: Conor Lamb's Victory Matters, and Paul Ryan Should Be Scared
Republicans had the money. They had the gerrymandering. They still couldn't do it.
he fundamentally absurd subtext to Tuesday night’s extended exercises in the 18th Congressional District of Pennsylvania was that, by the time of the midterm elections this November, the district will not even exist in its present form. So, for a couple of months, Conor Lamb and Rick Saccone had been laying clubs on each other for the right to represent a district with, maybe, three months of life left in it.
Nevertheless, Lamb’s razorish victory on Tuesday night is another signifying moment in what has become a year of them now. It doesn’t matter if Lamb was running for Congress in a congressional district that is in some senses now largely imaginary. It doesn’t matter if he was running in Brigadoon. Lamb is another Democrat who beat another Republican in an electoral district that the Democrat had no business carrying. Or conversely, this was the last chance the Republicans had to win on an electoral map so ludicrously gerrymandered that the state supreme court blew it up and took on itself the job of redrawing the map.
This was the last gasp of 10 years of successful electoral chicanery in Pennsylvania, and the Republicans couldn’t boot their candidate home even with $10 million pumped into the district from the national party and from its vast reservoir of PACs and dark money. They couldn’t organize it. They couldn’t buy it. And they couldn’t steal it. That pretty much eliminates all possible ways Republicans generally win elections these days, and bringing in the president* for a last-ditch manic episode didn’t work, either. Not even the crazy was enough...
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.”
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a19430719/conor-lamb-pennsylvania-18th/
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Charles Pierce--what an appropriate name.
He let Paul Ryan have it with both barrels. Most excellent!
Conor Lamb was the first real Democratic candidate to run in the 18th district in over 10 years. Tim Murphy the GOP representative who resigned in November had run unopposed for the last 3 or 4 cycles, and before that the Dem candidates were weak. Democrats had just about given up in this District until Conor Lamb stepped forward and threw his hat in.
Here was a good-looking, smart young man with bonafide credentials, willing to take on the GOP machine. He comes from a prominent Pittsburgh Democratic family with name recognition - both his grandfather and uncle are involved in local politics. He still lives in Mount Lebanon (an upper-middle suburb) where he grew up and went to school, and many family and close friends helped with his campaign. Lamb was a Marine and federal US prosecutor who had success going after drug dealers, gangs and gun runners. He has the credentials and the background. But better yet, people like him. Even if I weren't a Democrat I'd vote for this guy.
Democrats all over Pennsylvania are excited about Lamb's victory because it shows that ANY district is winnable, for the right candidate. This gives hope to Democrats everywhere.
The 18th District has many registered Democrats who hadn't voted for probably 10 years or more. Some of them voted for Trump in 2016 or else they stayed home and didn't vote at all. Now all that has changed, and it's electrifying. Gerrymandering killed competition in the 18th District.
