At the time this was written the Conor Lamb claimed victory, but the Associated Press still said the election is too close to call due to absentee ballots.
Notwithstanding the outcome of the special election in the “soon to be eliminated” 18th Congressional District in Pennsylvania, the Democratic Party should be concerned. So should the voters. Conor Lamb, the Democratic, chiseled jawed, central casting challenger to Republican Rick Saccone, is intentionally or unintentionally, a fraud. Both major political parties have lessons to be learned from this special election.
The fact is Conor Lamb ran as a Trump Republican. He claims to be pro-life, pro-gun, pro-tariff, pro-tax cut, and pro-fracking. Really? Outside of the health care issue, he has taken positions diametrically opposed to those of the Democratic Party as it is currently made up. He is an old-style Democrat. But like your grandfather’s Oldsmobile, it just ain’t around any more. Voter Beware!
Like Joe Manchin from West Virginia, who ran on a similar platform and turned into a Chuck Schumer lap-dog, Mr. Conor will arrive in Washington and make a trip to Nancy Pelosi’s office. She, in turn, will tell him to bend over and shove the money he received from the Democratic Party and Pelosi related PAC’s right up his proverbial behind. Next thing you know, he will be voting for the Progressive Democratic agenda 100% of the time.
What should also worry the Democrats going into the midterms is the demographic of the Pennsylvania 18th District. It has 70,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans…even after the Trump victory in 2016. It also has 87,000 union members. The unions, including the Mineworkers Union, endorsed Lamb because Saccone had a history of anti-union rhetoric, pending union pension fund issues currently in front of Congress, and more importantly the case currently in front of the US Supreme Court which would decimate unions. It is widely assumed that newly appointed Justice Gorsuch will be the deciding vote against the unions. With those kind of numbers, a bad Republican candidate still battled to a draw.
Finally, the margin between the two candidates is in the hundreds of votes. The press is not reporting the Libertarian Party also fielded a candidate who drew sufficient votes to possibly have swung this razor thin vote from Saccone to Lamb.
The lesson for Republicans is just as important. Quit running bad candidates. The surprise isn’t that Saccone may have lost what should have been a slam-dunk for Republicans, but that he did as well as he did given his totally inept campaign. He is another in a series of bad candidates Republicans have fielded over the past several years.
More importantly, the Republican Party needs to beware of phony “centrist” Democrats in the Rust Belt. For those of us living in Ohio, Tim Ryan, the congressman from Ohio’s 13th Congressional District (Youngstown) is a perfect example. He is being touted as a new “centrist” Democrat making numerous appearances on the cable news channels, including Fox News. He is not new and not centrist. He has been Congressman from Youngstown since 2003 and voted with Nancy Pelosi 99% of the time. He voted to shut down the government for illegals. He voted against tax cuts. He voted against Kate’s Law. He voted against Justice Gorsuch. He voted to fund abortions. He tows the Progressive line 100%.
As the mainstream media dances in the street claiming that Lamb is the beginning of a blue wave in November, look beyond the politics. The nature of the political parties is still changing. It will take several years to shake out. The Democratic Party is now the blackhole of politics sucking all its candidates into its crushing Progressive core. If the Republicans can figure out how to get that message across, any possible blue wave could turn red in November.
Finally, a word to both political parties. Are you nuts? This is a district that more likely than not won’t exist in six months. Yet both parties poured millions of dollars into this race to prove a point. And Americans wonder why there are problems in Washington.
By: Mark Mangie