Car Wreck
We’ve all been there. You’re traveling northbound on I-71 from Cincinnati to Columbus, when, all of a sudden, traffic comes to a crawl. You check all of your travel “media” to see what’s going on, but there are no reports available. Should I be in the left lane, the right lane, which line should I choose? And finally, after twenty minutes of crawling along, playing with the radio and watching the “lane-switchers” trying to get ahead – you finally see what’s going on.
There’s a semi on its side – but it’s on the southbound side of the highway. There are no obstructions on the northbound side, just “rubber-neckers” slowing down to see the crash. We could be on I-270 headed for home already. But everyone needs to look, to see what happened, to analyze the accident pattern and hypothesize the cause. We all want to watch.
If it Bleeds, It Leads
It’s frustrating to listen to the media discuss the 2022 primaries. The Democratic candidates are generally considered an after-thought. Sure, Tim Ryan was a shoe-in in Ohio, and John Fetterman in Pennsylvania had a stroke to make his Senate race a little more interesting, but there really isn’t much coverage of what the Democrats are saying or doing or how they’re voting.
And why is that?
Former President Donald Trump was not much good at governing, but he does have one “super-power” as a politician. He is able to take “all the air out of the room”. When Trump gets involved, he makes himself the center of attention, even when he isn’t the one running for office. We see it time and time again. Ohio’s Republican Senate primary had multiple candidates, with all but one trying to prove how “Trumpy” they were. But the real question here in Ohio was, who would Trump himself support. The winner, both with Trump and in the balloting: venture capitalist and Hillbilly Elegy author JD Vance.
Media coverage wasn’t really about parsing the differences between Vance and former State Treasurer Mandel, or Matt Dolan or Jane Timkin. It was all about which candidate would receive the anointment of the former President, and whether that would be enough to push him (or her) over the top. It was.
Pennsylvania
The same kind of thing happened in Pennsylvania. Dr. Mehmet Oz didn’t even live in Pennsylvania until a year ago. His primary qualification for the US Senate is that he played a doctor on TV ( and actually is one). The question in his campaign for the Republican Senate nomination should have been whether a “carpet-bagging” TV star was better qualified to run for Senate than Washington, Pennsylvania born and former Under-Secretary of Treasury David McCormick.
But that issue wasn’t really mentioned. What was the “critical” point, leading to a near-tie in the Pennsylvania Republican vote? Would the former “Apprentice” star endorse the TV Doctor? When Trump did, it put Oz in the hunt for the primary win. Those votes are still be counted.
In Georgia, the Governor’s race should be a pitched fight between former Senator David Perdue and the incumbent Brian Kemp. Instead, the race is about Trump backing a “loser” in Perdue, and former Vice President Mike Pence jumping on the Kemp bandwagon to “differentiate” himself from the former President.
Rubber Necks
We are watching the cars wreck. The media is focused on Trump’s influence. The Democrats are waiting in the wings. They have strong candidates in Stacey Abrams and John Fetterman and Tim Ryan, even though “history” shows us that the mid-term elections almost always go against the sitting President’s party.
Some analysts are making a big deal about Republican versus Democratic turnout in the primaries. “Republicans are motivated to vote, while Democrats are disappointed and disinterested” they claim. But there is another way to look at this. Democrats have many single strong candidates in play. Whether it was Tim Ryan and Nan Whaley in Ohio, or John Fetterman and Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, or Stacey Abrams and Raphael Warnock in Georgia. And Dems weren’t waiting for a “canonization” from Mara Lago, or even from the White House.
The media recognizes a good car wreck when they see one. And we Dems are all “rubber-necking” as the Republican Party continues to carene into a Trumpian nightmare. The question is, will we drive to the polls in November and make a difference, or get stuck watching the wreck?
