I wasn’t aware of this observation when I wrote about the Alabama primary earlier today:
Turnout for the Alabama GOP Senate runoff was abysmal, and one Republican strategist told the New York Times you can’t just blame it on the coronavirus.
Said Angi Stalnaker: “The story here is that Trump cannot turn out votes in the reddest state in the country. That should worry him.” [Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire]
This changes the predictive calculus slightly, making it more fuzzy because we don’t know why the Republican Party voters were unenthusiastic. Was it concerns about Covid-19 and polling locations? Are they already sick of Trump? Just not interested in a primary runoff?
Or were both victor Tuberville and loser Sessions simply that much of a turnoff?
In any case, I’ll upgrade incumbent Senator Jones’ (D-AL) chances slightly. He still has a hill to climb, but the Republicans, by failing to field a respectable candidate, may fumble away their easiest pickup opportunity this November.
This, to be honest, is not unexpected, at least in retrospect. As the more moderate, but more competent, people are chased out of the party by the shrieking RINOers, the median member’s characteristics moves farther and farther rightward, and ideology and competency does have a loose correlation. While there have certainly been highly competent ideologues on both sides of the spectrum, my observation is that the competent people also tend to look at the world with more encompassing vision, and realize that ideology is sometimes a block around the ankle rather than a balloon ride over the mountains.
And those who gained traction via the RINO tactic didn’t have much more to offer, to be honest. It’s not an intellectually impressive approach to moving up the political ladder; one can only say that it has worked, so far.
