sexting and extramarital affair scandal-ridden Cunningham.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_Senate_election_in_North_Carolina
Cunningham admitted to exchanging sexual text messages with a woman who was not his wife, damaging an image that leaned heavily on his character and military service. Days later, the woman confirmed that she had a consensual physical relationship with Cunningham in 2020. The Army Reserve started an investigation into Cunningham. The husband of the woman who confirmed having an affair with Cunningham, himself an Army veteran, called on Cunningham to drop out of the Senate race. Asked repeatedly whether he had had other extramarital affairs, Cunningham declined to answer.
Besides NC, there were multiple other people who were clearly the best possible candidates, but who refused to run in 2020 (and for one, in 2018 as well). They would have prevented Manchin and Sinema from having anywhere near the power those two have now. I had been posting on it all throughout the 2019/2020 primary season.
We were so poor at recruiting the best candidates.
North Carolina (already discussed) A case could also be made for Stein and Foxx both being better candidates than Cuingham as well.
Tennessee - Tim McGraw has now TWICE turned down open seats, after promising he would likely run for Senate once he was 50 years old. 2018 was especially frustrating, as not only was it an open seats, but the Rethugs nominated a weak, insane, stupid nutter in Marsha Blackburn, AND McGraw would have had the huge Blue Wave at his back. Then, in 2020, he refused to run for another open seat.
Maine - Stephen King would have beaten Collins, I am 99% convinced of this. He is a native Mainer (so important in that state) and ultra popular. Gideon is not a native Mainer and Collins pounded her with this. Susan Rice is not a native, so would have had that issue, but was also probably a superior candidate to Gideon. King's turndown was such a disappointment, as was Manchin fucking endorsing Collins, which she so used to bolster her faux moderate, pragmatic, bi-partisan bullshit framing.
Kansas -Kathleen Sebelius was not only the only Dem who could have won, but she would have been the favourite (the consensus of all major local state media and experts). It was an open seat too, and Marshall was far from an ultra strong lock.
Iowa - Tom Vilsack would have a far better chance to win than Greenfield, the same likely for Axne, but both refused to run against the pig castrator MAGAt Ernst.
Alaska - We did not even run a candidate, and I was very unhappy that a previous, proven winner (he was a US Senator from Alaska before) Mark Begich, refused to run.
Finally, there were hundreds of millions of dollars shit away on fantasyland races in SC, KY, and TX (plus ME to a degree, mainly because they did not shift their excess cash to states in need late in the game).
Those 4 campaigns never came close to spending all the monies they received, and yet two races, IA, and especially Bullock in MT, were cash-starved and could not respond effectively to one hundred million plus, in late-in-the-game dark RW money that buried Greenfield and especially Bullock, who was leading until the giant negative advert blitz at the end permanently turned the tide.
We were never going to beat Cornyn (he is no Cruz, and there was no 2018 Blue Wave), not even Beto would have prevailed. McTurtle was always going to win plus we had a poor candidate who kicked off her campaign by saying she would have voted to approve drunk-rapey Kavanaugh, arfff.
And then there is South Carolina. In SC, there was one external poll, an outlier poll (internal polls are often spin-up jobs), weeks and weeks out from the election, that showed Harrison in a virtual tie with Graham. Harrison ran with that poll the rest of the election (U saw like 50-100 adverts on my American streams whilst watching MSNBC/CNN), even though it reverted to him trailing more and more. So so much money poured in, far more than they could spend, all in vain.
IA and MT so so needed the extra cash from those 4 campaigns to counter the late, dark money, RW media blitz, and were not helped enough, as people gave their cash with their hearts, not their heads, for wish-fulfilment emotionally driven races. Also, again, the national orgs did a poor job redistributing the excess.
Bullock was the ONLY 'best possible Dem candidate' who lost in 2020 in realistic races for the Senate. All the others won their races. Poor recruitment sunk us, and Bullock was leading until that massive last minute RW injection of lying attack adverts buried him, as he did not have the cash to counter it.
Really fuming still over TN (twice, especially 2018 as McGraw would have had that huge Blue Wave at his back and Blackburn was such a fucking RWNJ and highly limited intellectually, she is one of the least intelligent Senators in the past 20,30 years), KS, ME, and NC (NC also because of Cunningham's fucking stupid choice to engage in moronic behaviour and blow his lead).
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