NC-SEN 2020: Tar Heel Tillis

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Considering Tillis isn't exactly beloved, I can't see this race not being competitive. Not to say that he'll lose, but I think it'll be within 4-5% either way.

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Cunningham is neither a "meh" nor a "star" recruit, he’s a generic Democrat who’s lucky that he’s running in a Democratic wave year.

True, though that’s pretty much what Tillis was in 2014.

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Cunningham is neither a "meh" nor a "star" recruit, he’s a generic Democrat who’s lucky that he’s running in a Democratic wave year.

True, though that’s pretty much what Tillis was in 2014.

Tillis had a much more notable political record.

Right, but his win was pretty much entirely due to the national environment.

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Yeah, if Tillis is a "generic Republican", that just shows how god awful the average Republican has become. Trump is not the exception to the rule, he's very much an embodiment of what the Republican Party has become, and what many Republicans in Congress think but don't publicly say.

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Holy guacamole

https://twitter.com/ameliakfox/status/1290999210091962370

I'm becoming more and more convinced that Tillis will lose this race. Probably not by 9 points as some polling indicates, though.

Yeah, I’m pretty close to moving this to Lean D. Tillis needs a big change in the national environment to win at this point, though I’m guessing he loses by low to mid-single digits instead of high single digits.

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Another great day for the Tillis campaign.


https://twitter.com/Sharrison_WFAE/status/1299396632799133697

But Thom, I thought you said Latinos were the ones not wearing masks or distancing and causing a spike in COVID-19?

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I think it's more that Democrats recognize how important this race is to taking the Senate than it is that Cunningham himself is a great candidate. He's not necessarily a bad candidate, but this has more to do with taking the Senate than anything else.

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I do think Democrats could’ve come up with a better candidate than Cunningham, but I don’t think this significantly affects the race.

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Wait, now Tillis has a scandal? I had just moved this race from Likely D to Likely R, Tillis underperforming Trump by 5 to overperforming him by 8, but I guess now I have to move it to Titanium D, with Tillis underperforming Trump by 13. My sources tell me that hundreds of thousands of voters in NC went from leaning toward Cunningham to set on Tillis to absolutely set on Cunningham after very carefully following the news cycle of this race and refreshing Twitter every 3.6 seconds.

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Wait, now Tillis has a scandal? I had just moved this race from Likely D to Likely R, Tillis underperforming Trump by 5 to overperforming him by 8, but I guess now I have to move it to Titanium D, with Tillis underperforming Trump by 13. My sources tell me that hundreds of thousands of voters in NC went from leaning toward Cunningham to set on Tillis to absolutely set on Cunningham after very carefully following the news cycle of this race and refreshing Twitter every 3.6 seconds.

No, some Democratic hacks are trying to conjure up a domestic violence scandal despite no evidence or even accusation of such a thing having ever occurred. 

I know, I'm making fun of the immediate overreaction.

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Calling this race Tilt D (or even Lean D) is acknowledging that Tillis still could win. No one should be taking this race for granted, but rushing to say that Tillis is now favored without polling to back that up is also kind of silly.

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https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1314926460692582400?s=20

Wonder if other Senate Republicans will follow suit

Not this s*** again. Republicans would not be a “check” on Biden, they’d be a pair of handcuffs. They’d stop at no means, no matter how corrupt and unethical, to stop him from doing anything to help Americans, and happily let the country go to hell so that they can blame it on him and win again. People thinking about voting Biden and Republican downballot need to understand this. Biden and a Republican Congress would not play footsie and make America a moderate wonderland again.

The Democratic rebuttal to this has to be two things. 1) The election isn’t over yet. 2) Republicans like Tillis have proven that they won’t be a check on anything, since they’ve shown time and time again that they’ll vote with Trump and McConnell without question, without any concern for Americans. They can’t be trusted to bring any kind of balance to Congress.

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https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1314926460692582400?s=20

Wonder if other Senate Republicans will follow suit

Not this s*** again. Republicans would not be a “check” on Biden, they’d be a pair of handcuffs. They’d stop at no means, no matter how corrupt and unethical, to stop him from doing anything to help Americans, and happily let the country go to hell so that they can blame it on him and win again. People thinking about voting Biden and Republican downballot need to understand this. Biden and a Republican Congress would not play footsie and make America a moderate wonderland again.

The Democratic rebuttal to this has to be two things. 1) The election isn’t over yet. 2) Republicans like Tillis have proven that they won’t be a check on anything, since they’ve shown time and time again that they’ll vote with Trump and McConnell without question, without any concern for Americans. They can’t be trusted to bring any kind of balance to Congress.

Newsflash: THIS STRATEGY ISN"T AIMED AT YOUR VOTE

This kind of strategy is aimed at rich suburbanites, who are center right but hate Trump's guts. People who aren't on board with Biden's agenda or at least not as a whole and thus don't feel comfortable with him having a blank check to implement it. They are just voting for him to get rid of the Orange buffoon.

Why is this forum full of such smart people so clueless when it comes to elections. "Why would anybody vote for Biden and Tillis", I see this everywhere. It isn't that complicated, idiosyncratic voters are a thing and they often end up deciding close elections. Not everyone is as engaged and knowledgeable about politics as us, and we should be mindful of that when getting outraged at the thought that there might be Anti-Trump voters who want Biden to get elected to get rid of this incompetent administration, but don't want some or all of Biden's proposals.


Tillis is very much dialed into this mindset as a business Republican from a business oriented community of probably now ex-Republicans in the Charlotte Area, hence why it is not surprising that he would be the first to break ranks and embrace such a strategy.

Yes, I’m completely aware of what Tillis is going for, and I’m merely pointing out how wrong it is, even if I know why people would be susceptible to buying into it. I was also pointing out how Democrats should respond. I fully understand why some people would vote Biden/Tillis, but that doesn’t mean I have to view that vote as smart, productive, or even particularly rational.

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I’m not going to deny that I’m excited for McConnell to put the same "check" on Biden's presidency that Democrats were so eager to put on Trump, though....

You're eager to go back to the days of

Zero legislation getting passed

Zero nominees getting confirmed

Artificial crises being created by the Republicans just so the country can lose and they can blame the Democratic president

Annual government shutdown fights

Endless, pointless hearings about Fox News conspiracies that go absolutely nowhere

Republicans passing 50 different Obamacare repeals instead of working on real legislation

and all while Mitch McConnell laughs about it with his rich buddies?  You really enjoy having a completely broken government?

If we could have balanced government like Tip and Reagan in the 80s, I'd be fine with that.  But Mitch McConnell just smashes everything and leaves the country in a deep freeze for purely political reasons.

I mean, I at least appreciate Republicans being honest about the fact that they want a Republican Senate because they don't want Biden getting anything done, rather than trying to argue that we should have Biden and a Republican Senate for "bipartisanship and moderation " and/or because said Republicans will provide "checks and balances ".

If it's electoral success for Republicans that they want, they should at least own up to it.

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I want Democrats to play hardball, but they don’t need to stoop to McConnell’s level to do that.