What an unexpected delight: The most dramatic down-ballot anchor drag in modern history
Givens: 1) Losing NC ends Trump’s re-election chances, proof he’s toast (without it he can’t reach 270 EV); 2) Nominees for state governor don’t wipe out the national ticket unless so horrendous they drive their own voters away; 3) Riding procreative freedom and more, Harris already leads in this purple state; and 4) Trump’s campaign continues to implode while the Dems sustain a professional, targeted, well-funded effort, prepping for a purple state run.
Remember Todd Akin, the conservative Missouri Republican ignoramus who claimed women’s bodies can magically deflect pregnancies in cases of “legitimate rape,” thus handing a winnable senate seat to a Democratic woman. Or Herschel Walker in Georgia where the No. 2 GA state Republican placed him among the “nation’s worst GOP candidates.” Among many other un-electable MAGA flubs these two neither knew how to campaign, nor how to present their own strongest issues, thus blowing winnable contests.
Arguably more offensive than Trump or Vance, Mark Robinson, the right-wing nominee for governor of NC, has now displaced other truly dreadful GOP candidates with boundless campaign incompetence, insensitivity and wacko bigotry unequaled in our lifetime. Right, here’s the loudmouth black guy loaded with conspiracy nonsense who attacks his own race as disreputable, wallowing “in victimhood like hogs in slop.” He doesn’t consider himself part of the African American community because it “murders its children” and “sucks from the putrid tit of the government and then complains about getting sour milk.” Want more? He also slams opponents as demons, puts down Martin Luther King, Jr. and Michelle Obama, endorses slavery (!!), hates gender rights, wants a total abortion ban, dumps on Jews and Muslims, and identifies with Hitler, Nazis and the Klan—now plagued with self-reports of being a sexual “perv” (leering after young girls).
The winner of the purid MAGA clown show?
Other than shooting someone on Fifth Avenue, is it possible to imagine a more outrageous, less electable candidate for any office, let alone governor of a major state? Gosh, makes even House nutcases look halfway prudent. Already way behind the Democratic nominee, Josh Stein, Robinson has lost his own party’s outreach support and looks not just to lose but get skunked, destroyed, even whitewashed, pardon the unPC phrase.
Kamala Harris is funneling immense resources to take a state Obama won but Biden didn’t, boldly targeting more conservative rural NC residents. This member of the Confederate Old South still leans right, but hardly a GOP lock. That leaves the biggest question to ponder—whether the worst Republican/MAGA candidate in history (on par with a multiple, criminal felon) will drive away his own right-wing voters and hand NC to Harris. No, Robinson’s MAGA backers won’t rush Democratic. But how many thousands are now so alienated they simply write off this election and stay home, disgusted with the repeat unfit candidates the GOP puts forward.
Really, a porn-loving, “Black Nazi” who dumps on women’s rights, moderate minorities and patriotic Americans in a state with plenty of each? Who knows how many MAGA House NC prospects will now never serve in Congress? Or how many reliable Republican voters in neighboring states won’t feel so tainted, they throw up their arms, “A plague on both their houses.” Every infuriated, non-voting MAGA fan propels the Dem electorate who go to the polls, especially in the WH race.
How much filth can Rethugs take?
So, what we have is a close, highly critical battleground (mandatory for Trump) that has been rocked by a lurid scandal that only reinforces the huge Robinson negatives on display (and apparently for some years). The ex-Republican governor on CNN openly admitted this week, “I got a feeling about a month ago, the Trump campaign was finding out that there could be some dirty laundry on Robinson . . . for over two years, most of us knew this was a ticking time bomb.” Behold a state that could well trigger a much easier Dem victory, even a rout, than appeared a month ago. That prospect increases the longer that top Republicans won’t directly criticize, even reject Robinson as a wholly unfit, immoral character who instead deserves shunning. Nothing like a tolerant, black, California woman from immigrant stock—without any personal scandals—to dramatize spineless GOP dinosaurs who can’t stop total losers from getting nominated.
Look, North Carolina is arguably the hippest, youngest, most tech-oriented southern state other than Virginia. Voters there are plagued with egregious gerrymandering, assuring undeserved leverage for radical right-wingers, but nevertheless NC has elected only one Republican governor this century. Today’s Democrat, Josh Stein, will stroll into the governor’s mansion, and someday soon there will be a second woman senator, even a Dem, from the Tar Heel state. In fact, NC has been open to women leaders, having elected Kay Hagen and Elizabeth Dole in the last two decades. No other southern state matches this record. Only California, the most advanced state, can boast having two women senators in the modern era.
NC could signal and/or swell the Dem win
So, considering the various winning ways available to Kamala Harris when/if she takes NC, what Mark Robinson has achieved is help hand off the White House to a competent Democrat. Sure, Harris could have won NC with a less outrageous nominee, but the bottomless moral abyss that is Robinson only makes it more likely. So, hats off to extremist NC primary voters who endorsed this absurd, super-MAGA bigot, managing to put in play among the greatest backfires in American political history. Not only will a Dem serve as NC governor, but what other state’s backward, benighted primary voters shoulder such a paramount role in electing the next president.
If national, presidential campaign vectors remain in place—and it’s hard to imagine Trump getting better or Harris blowing it—the Democratic nominee will ride home her increasingly favorable leverage. But winning NC, along with AZ, NV, and GA, defines a runaway. That makes even more wacko, irrational, desperate and laughable the inevitable, tiresome 2024 Trump election denial for a confirmed, three-time loser. Nothing like confirming your loss for history.
If Harris wins both the popular and Electoral College votes by greater margins than Biden in 2020, the one in a ten chance for Trump to rattle the electoral gate (as with Jan. 6) expands to one in a thousand or one in a million. There will be no more provable voter fraud this year than in 2020—and the more emphatic the Harris triumph, the more deranged and cornered Trump will appear. If he loses the Electoral College by an un-challengeable margin of votes, his fat goose is cooked, roasted, baked and barbecued. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving MAGA loser (well except for Robinson), confirming that no rational, pragmatic, functional party should ever have nominated, let alone stood by two campaigns readily predicted to go off the rails.
Reality is a sobering experience, especially when proving that known failed moves won’t produce different results. One hesitates to dispute Yogi Berra’s quip, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” But that depends on the prediction and the future.
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