SC-1 special election - May 7th

[Beet]

I watched a small portion of the debate and agree with the analyses above.

I'm probably in the minority as a Democrat that doesn't give Clinton a pass for his sex scandal. I think it was a mistake and a pretty serious one at that (exhibit A: the impact on the Al Gore 2000 campaign). Not because I care what Bill does in his personal life, that's between him and his family and shouldn't be a public matter.

Rather, it's because as a public official people's opinions of you are shaped by their perceptions of your character, and part of your job is to maintain that character. It's similar to how some celebrities carefully manage their public personas. Their career is built on the basis of their fame and how people perceive them, so what would be a purely personal matter for most people becomes a professional matter for them. For politicians, it's very similar. How people perceive you is part of the job.

I make this argument carefully because even acknowledging this, I think that if a politician does something in their personal life that isn't really blameworthy, it's still not their fault even if a segment of the population chooses to blame them negatively for it. For instance, let's say a politician was caught admitting to being an atheist, or smoking marijuana. In that case, I'd still defend the politician, because I think society should change to become more accepting of these things.

However, when it comes to cheating, I think people rightly see this as a negative. When people saying Democrats aren't the party of family values, it doesn't mean that Democrats think there's nothing wrong with infidelity. It means Democrats are more accepting of non-traditional family structures, like same-sex couples, divorcees, and single parents. We still think that if you make a vow, it's bad on a personal level to go against it. It's legitimately bad personal flaws like this that I think become part of a politician's job description as a public vote-getter whose effectiveness is dependent in part on his or her popularity.

[Beet]

I'm going to say Colbert Busch pulls it off
Colbert Busch - 48%
Sanford - 46%
Platt - 5%

[Beet]

So the big question is...

Does the election of Sanford destroy the GOP's credibility even more than before?

The people whose credibility has been shaken are liberal Democrats in the South.  Their claims to being "conservative" are increasingly being discounted.

Sad but true. This is why the party, at least the state levels in the south, needs to move to right. Then, they can bring the voters who are increasingly willing to vote R back into the coalition.

Yep, this is exactly correct.