The Ohio Republican Victory That’s Scaring the Sh*t Out Of Republicans This Morning!
Yes, we typed that correctly.
Hey look, it’s the morning after yet another election night in America where Democrats wildly overperformed expectations, leading pollsters and pundits alike to say “WHUT? But I had it on good authority that Joe Biden is old and that according to the conventional wisdom written on the thumb I keep permanently affixed inside my ass,” etc., and so forth.
There was a special election in Ohio’s Sixth Congressional District last evening to replace former Rep. Bill Johnson, who resigned to be a college president. It’s a largely rural district on the east side of the state, and it contains East Palestine, Ohio, the site of the famous train derailment that happened when gay Transportation Secretary Mayor Pete Buttigieg canceled all the trains so drag queens could use the tracks as runways.
The district is also, if you’ve ever driven through it, full of horses and buggies. (Because it’s Amish country, not because Secretary Mayor Pete stole all the trains.)
Point being, this is a very white Republican district. It hasn’t been represented by a Democrat since 2011. Cook Political Report rates it as R+16. When Johnson won re-election in 2022, he won by 35 points. Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 there by 32 points. Trump beat Biden in 2020 by 28.7 points.
The Republican Michael Rulli won last night. By a whole-ass whopping nine points. Congratulations, Speaker Mike Johnson. Your eeny weeny House Majority just got bigger by one.
It gets better, though.
Rulli has quite a bit of name recognition in the district, as his family has a long-established chain of Italian grocery stores in the area. He raised over $700,000.
Rulli’s Democratic opponent Michael Kripchik is a newcomer, a political unknown, literally a waiter. He raised, um, 20 grand or so.
Or as this numbers guru put it:
Yeah, if we were Republicans we’d be shitting our pants right about now, again.
As Daily Kos Elections reports, this is the best performance by a Democrat in a special election, when compared to recent past presidential election results. But that’s the best performance out of a long string of really good performances by Democrats in special elections. Overall, they say Dems are outperforming Joe Biden’s 2020 numbers in special elections by an average of 3.8 points.
Chris Hayes has been harping on this. We’ve posted this clip from last year, where he went through the track record at that point.
That track record clearly hasn’t changed.
Maybe some will cling to the notion that OK sure, fine, maybe Dems are doing better than expected in these special elections, but that has nothing to do with Joe Biden, who is old.
Of course, if you look at this another way, perhaps it’s that MAGA Republicans are underperforming, perhaps because they’re lunatics who are obsessed with policing children’s genitals and banning books, and average Americans fucking hate them.
We’ll have to see what happens, but as Simon Rosenberg of Hopium Chronicles is fond of saying — and said this week about the presidential race, in fact — I’d much rather be us right now than them.
Eyes on the ball, everyone.
Evan has a new side project called The Moral High Ground, you should check it out and subscribe there too!
Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter right here.
@evanjosephhurst on Threads!
If you're shopping on Amazon anyway, this portal gives us a small commission.
45 percent of the vote in rural OH-6 went to the Democratic candidate and the MSM still can’t seem to find one Biden voter in an Ohio diner. And the candidate was a waiter in a diner.
"they’re lunatics who are obsessed with policing children’s genitals"
And entering pictures of genitalia into the Congressional record