{"id":10304,"date":"2012-08-04T12:38:56","date_gmt":"2012-08-04T19:38:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=10304"},"modified":"2012-08-04T12:39:58","modified_gmt":"2012-08-04T19:39:58","slug":"filling-the-void-in-sacrificial-lamb-senate-races","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2012\/08\/04\/filling-the-void-in-sacrificial-lamb-senate-races\/","title":{"rendered":"filling the void in Sacrificial Lamb Senate races"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tennessee Democratic US Senate Primary vote percentage totals.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"Mark Clayton 30 percent
\nGary Gene Davis 15.4 percent
\nPark Overall 15.1 percent
\nLarry Crimm 11 percent
\nDave Hancock 10.2 percent
\nBenjamin Roberts 10 percent
\nThomas Owens 8.3 percent<\/p>\n

The winner is… Mark Clayton. \u00c2\u00a0He’s ran before<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mark Clayton is the former vice president of the Public Advocate of The United States — the same deeply paranoid, gay-hating outfit that\u00c2\u00a0misappropriated a gay couple’s wedding photo<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0for use in a political advertisement earlier this year, and last week published what was supposed to be a funny song about child-molesting\u00c2\u00a0gay scoutmasters<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

These offenses against taste and sanity don’t begin to describe the full breadth and depth of Clayton’s weirdness, or the Public Advocate’s.\u00c2\u00a0Mother Jones<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0has an instructive breakdown, which informs us that Clayton once believed the Chinese government had teamed with Google to destroy his political career; that Clayton has denounced Arnold Schwarzenegger as a sort of Austrian Manchurian candidate whose mission is to bring Nazi eugenics to America; and that Clayton’s deepest fears include the construction of a superhighway from Canada to Mexico, the completion of which would for some reason destroy the United States<\/em>. […]
\nElsewhere, he warns of an encroaching “godless new world order” and suggests that Americans who speak out against government policies could some day be placed in “a bone-crushing prison camp similar to the one Alexander Solzhenitsyn was sent or to one of FEMA’s prison camps.” (There are no FEMA\u00c2\u00a0prison camps.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Apparently the state party had asked Park Overall to run. \u00c2\u00a0She’s an actress, best known as a cast member of the sitcom Empty Ness from decades back. \u00c2\u00a0The thought seemed to be that she would have thrown out an occasional one liner and had an amount of fun in her run up to a loss in November that would have made for some good occasional copy. \u00c2\u00a0It’s instructive that the candidate considered to be her main opponent, as per actually spending some money on the thing, came in fourth. \u00c2\u00a0Overall wasn’t that famous, and Mark Clayton was first on the ballot. \u00c2\u00a0So he wins the primary. \u00c2\u00a0And the Democratic Party in the state disowns his candidacy.<\/p>\n

And… the problem for the party<\/a>. \u00c2\u00a0If you’re a Democrat running for the House in rural Tennessee and you see Barack Obama at the top of the ticket and Mark Clayton under him, you’re probably already thinking about calling it a day<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Texas US Senate Democratic Primary election run-off results<\/strong>.
\nPaul Sadler 63.1 percent
\nGrady Yarbrough \u00c2\u00a036.9 percent<\/p>\n

At least the state party got their lackluster candidate in. \u00c2\u00a0The county map totals would be worth a look. \u00c2\u00a0 I’ve covered Yarbrough’s campaign here: \u00c2\u00a0 Yarbrough is popularly believed to have gotten through off of his name, but there’s probably a bit of minority identity politics in there, and the map should show that I think. \u00c2\u00a0Anyway… it is instructive that the Democratic Primary came down to the party establishment pick (reluctantly) versus whoever’s name popped out best… and that last time Yarbrough won he was a Republican where his name didn’t help any.<\/p>\n

Mississippi. \u00c2\u00a0He has a famous name.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"Albert Gore, Jr. \u00c2\u00a0At least here this old man aligns with party policies, and there’s not much reason anyone else would’ve won. \u00c2\u00a0 Let’s see the vote totals.<\/p>\n

Albert Gore 56.8 percent
\nRoger Weiner 24.4 percent
\nWill Oatis 18.8 percent<\/p>\n

Yeah, he probably won because of his name. \u00c2\u00a0The party might have preferred the Afghanistan War veteran, but I doubt they worry too much.<\/p>\n

Maine. \u00c2\u00a0The Democrat that is dumped from the party.<\/strong><\/p>\n

There’s nothing wrong with Maine’s candidate. \u00c2\u00a0May be too left for the state party’s liking, and her narrow victory exposed some geopolitical rifts with a gun-toting opponent who’d not step anywhere near Occupy crowds she’s willing to speak to. \u00c2\u00a0But the matter with Cynthia Dill is that she has essentially been dumped by the party<\/a>, who is running with the Independent Angus King. \u00c2\u00a0It is an interesting situation, that will only lead to a bitter campaign by Cynthia Dill and random flounderings about the rise of the Charlie Crists of the world<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Wyoming<\/strong>. \u00c2\u00a0One chance to avoid embarrassment.<\/p>\n

Just to be sure it’s two perennials and an elected official somewhere<\/a>. \u00c2\u00a0The two dozen Democrats in this state — trust me: \u00c2\u00a0you want Chesnut. \u00c2\u00a0 At least the neo-nazi that is running is in the Republican Primary — that saves the party from another case of the situation in Tennessee. \u00c2\u00a0Just trying to warn your state party.<\/p>\n

The Republican sacrificial lamb senate races follow a different dynamic. \u00c2\u00a0There are no shortage of “rich men on an educational crusade to teach capitalism” or “Ron Paul Revolution” figures to fill the void of party shrugs. \u00c2\u00a0The former follows the model in Delaware and the latter Minnesota. \u00c2\u00a0 Or there’s\u00c2\u00a0Rhode Island<\/a>‘s example — we see that type of promotional purpose campaigning out there.
\nAnd yet we Still, there was talk that Orly Taitz could win the California primary in the new Top 2 jungle system, but she didn’t … I don’t know that that’s a shame in balancing the gnashing teeth qualities of party schadenfreude. \u00c2\u00a0I note that the party invited Alan Keyes to run against Obama in 2004, and that someone like Ted Cruz is about to win an easy victory in Texas, so things are balanced away already anyway.<\/p>\n

I will be watching to see how Vermont’s Senate primary turns out. \u00c2\u00a0This is actually kinda interesting… it’s moderate of old school type against Tea Party conservative for the sake of taking on and losing badly to the one avowed Socialist in the Senate. \u00c2\u00a0I want to see what Vermont is, and this election will show a bit of what Vermont is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tennessee Democratic US Senate Primary vote percentage totals. Mark Clayton 30 percent Gary Gene Davis 15.4 percent Park Overall 15.1 percent Larry Crimm 11 percent Dave Hancock 10.2 percent Benjamin Roberts 10 percent Thomas Owens 8.3 percent The winner is… Mark Clayton. \u00c2\u00a0He’s ran before. Mark Clayton is the former vice president of the Public […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10304"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10307,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10304\/revisions\/10307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}