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You are here: Home / Organizing & Resistance / Don't Trip, Organize / Good job Florida

Good job Florida

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That is the third Red to Blue flip this year in special elections. The seat in a neutral environment leans Republican but will flip in this environment. This is the type of seat that will determine the majority in November. Democrats need to pick up a double handful of these types of seats assuming that they pick off most Republican-Clinton seats in November.

Given that it was a twelve point swing, this is useful information for November.

Reader Interactions

105Comments

  1. 1.

    japa21

    Gee, I’m almost getting tired of all this winning…nah, not yet. And these seats, at the state level are almost as critical, if not as critzical, as se#ats at the national level.

  4. 4.

    Mary G

    I just put some tweets in the last thread:

    1/ It was our party before it was Trump's party. Trump's party gets their asses beat like a rented mule in an R + 5 District. https://t.co/zvmeoC9yib— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) February 14, 2018

    2/ This is one of the most Trump areas of Florida. They had Corey Lewandowski there doing MAGA rallies. The R was the son of a Congressman and raised a MILLION DOLLARS for a state house race.— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) February 14, 2018

    Insert Nelson from the Simpsons!

  9. 9.

    scav

    I’m in a simple mood. As for the above news? Good.

    And for a simple OT quote, how’s the below for giving one pause?
    BBC: Spy chief warns on Trump aides’ clearance

    Despite his lack of a full security clearance, Mr Kushner is able to read the President’s Daily Brief, a top secret intelligence report that Mr Trump himself does not bother to read, according to reports.

  11. 11.

    TenguPhule

    @scav:

    Despite his lack of a full security clearance, Mr Kushner is able to read the President’s Daily Brief, a top secret intelligence report that Mr Trump himself does not bother to read, according to reports.

    We are living in the Darkest Timeline.

  12. 12.

    efgoldman

    @dmsilev:

    who did Florida Man vote for?

    Florida Man, being who and what he is, went to the wrong polling place. When they wouldn’t let him vote, he went out to his pickup, got his shotgun, and shot the roof off the place.
    Then he bought a case of panther piss beer and went down by the canal, drank most of it, got up to pee, fell in, and a gator got ‘im.

  13. 13.

    dmsilev

    @scav: To be fair, under Trump the PDB format has been updated to include sock puppets and reruns of Garfield comic strips. It’s less sensitive than it used to be.

  15. 15.

    NotMax

    Two pieces read today which kind of tie together.

    1) Trump Proposes Firing 2,000 Park Rangers

    2)

    The Trump administration is violating federal law and circumventing the advice-and-consent role of the Senate by relying on temporary directors to head agencies such as the National Park Service, an environmental group alleged Monday.
    [snip]
    …the administration could be inviting legal action if these appointees signed significant policy directives or memos while in an acting capacity… Source

  16. 16.

    FlyingToaster

    Hooray!

    In my non-news, I just got push-polled for Charlie Fucking Baker. My husband was laughing as I repeated “makes no damn difference” and “I will never vote for another Republican again”.

    This is after I spent all day with a stayed-home-sick WarriorGirl and all afternoon coaching her on her essay, “Why we should impeach Donald Trump”.

    FlyingToaster+1, and I will fucking finish a bottle of wine tonight — Jeebus on a Pogo Stick

  17. 17.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Mary G: I was just gonna post those, so I’ll add one more, my favorite

    3/ This area is so reliably Republican it’s absurd. The county chairman was one of Trump’s earliest endorsers. This was Katherine Harris country.

    Remember Katherine Harris?

  18. 18.

    efgoldman

    @NotMax:

    The Trump administration is violating federal law and circumventing the advice-and-consent role of the Senate by relying on temporary directors to head agencies such as the National Park Service

    Apparently Ferret Head, or someone in his food chain, figured the obvious: that no-one they could appoint is confirmable.
    Cutting the budget (which isn’t going to happen) is a bonus

  22. 22.

    efgoldman

    @FlyingToaster:

    I spent all day with a stayed-home-sick WarriorGirl and all afternoon coaching her on her essay, “Why we should impeach Donald Trump”

    Glad to see, like me and my daughter, you’re giving your kid a proper education.
    Best to Warrior Girl. Take care of that bow arm.

  24. 24.

    Miss Bianca

    @NotMax: I can’t even with this shit on a daily basis. It’s making me crazy. Well, crazier.

    On the bright side, our local Democrats have had AV conferences with the two Democratic challengers for CO CD3, which is currently held by the repellant Scott Tipton, who won in the Republican wave of ’10. (The previous seat holder had been John Salazar, a Demo from the San Luis Valley, and brother to former Interior Secy. Ken Salazar). Both of them seem at least bright and competent, and either would be a huge improvement over Tipton. Diane Mitsch Bush is a current state representative. Ken Hanlon is a water rights lawyer who’s done a lot of work with government entities and nonprofits. I’m kind of leaning toward him even tho’ he’s never held public office before, because he’s obviously done a lot of homework, and I like what he has to say about health care and the environment. We’ll see!

  26. 26.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    Why, with these kind of results, the GOP will just start canceling elections.

    Like Scott Walker seems to be doing.

    It’s morally justifiable to napalm fascist totalitarians, isn’t it? AFAF.

  27. 27.

    Mike in NC

    We’re watching the last episode of “Big Little Lies” on HBO, which features a credit-to-the-community, suit-wearing businessman type who beats his wife. Nothing like that happens in real life, right?

  28. 28.

    FlyingToaster

    @Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): The saddest thing for me was that I recognized the accent of the poor kid trying to read her script. If she’s not a Young Republican from Northern Ohio or Indiana I’ll eat a MAGA hat. Not that it’ll be put to the test — I’m sure we just got put on the “they’re Democrats, don’t call them anymore” list.

    (I was born and raised in KCMO, but I spent 8 years in Bloomington, IN and I know that accent.)

  31. 31.

    Gretchen

    It’s not just the red-to-blue flip. It’s the margins. The special election in Missouri that flipped last week went from Trump +28 to a 3 point win. Another lost by 3 in a district Trump won by 59. The other two were 18 and 24 points bluer than when Trump ran.

  33. 33.

    FlyingToaster

    @efgoldman: WarriorGirl’s not practicing either of her instruments, because her ears are so plugged she can barely hear.

    Friday she’s supposed to perform with her classmates on recorder; a week-n-a-half ago she played a fiddle tune for the school that completely freaked out our new Head of School. And, assuming she’s better, we’re flying to sunny Flah-Ri-Dah (well, RSW) on Sunday.

    Right now we’re at 60/40 on school tomorrow; we’ll see how her hearing and throat are at 7am. Rhinoviruses with the non-stop-runny-nose are the bitch.

  34. 34.

    TenguPhule

    @NotMax:

    The Trump administration is violating federal law and circumventing the advice-and-consent role of the Senate by relying on temporary directors to head agencies such as the National Park Service, an environmental group alleged Monday.

    Constitutional Crisis part XVI. So what is Congress gonna do about it?

    Cue Trump dictates by fiat…..

  35. 35.

    efgoldman

    Jackal advice bleg:
    Many of you will remember my sister in law who was murdered almost exactly two years ago. (BTW murdering bastard still not gone to trial, still held without bail)
    She collected Teddy bears. Big ones, small ones, a couple of really huge ones.
    When we cleaned out her house, mrs efg brought them here. ~120 bears in plastic bags in our garage,
    Here’s the problem: we don’t know what to do with them. None of the usual places (Salvation Army,. Morgan Memorial, Savers) will accept used plush toys. Because of their origin, mrs efg can’t just trash them … too emotionally wrenching.
    Any ideas what to do? I’ll be here all week.

  36. 36.

    TenguPhule

    @Snarki, child of Loki:

    It’s morally justifiable to napalm fascist totalitarians, isn’t it? AFAF.

    No, napalm is still banned by the Geneva Conventions.

    You’ll have to settle for setting them on fire with regular unleaded gasoline.

  38. 38.

    PaulWartenberg

    @dmsilev:

    That’s Sarasota’s area. For the most part, retirees, older folk, some rural, mostly suburban development from the 1980s onward. I wouldn’t call it the hardest hardcore conservatism, but there’s a lot of social, evangelistic, Confederate flag-waving types in that part of FLA. I’d give it a scale of 8 out of 10 for Far-Right world-view… until tonight.

    For a place like that to flip in an open contest for a vacant seat is still hard for ANY Democrat to pull off.

  40. 40.

    TenguPhule

    @efgoldman:

    Any ideas what to do? I’ll be here all week.

    Ebay?

    If any of them are genuine vintage stuff, might be worth trying to see if you can find a collector interested in buying.

  42. 42.

    PaulWartenberg

    @efgoldman:

    Florida Man, being who and what he is, went to the wrong polling place. When they wouldn’t let him vote, he went out to his pickup, got his shotgun, and shot the roof off the place.
    Then he bought a case of panther piss beer and went down by the canal, drank most of it, got up to pee, fell in, and a gator got ‘im.

    Then the gator, having more sense and good taste than any Florida Man, promptly puked Florida Man back out, and went in search of something more appetizing. Like a bucket full of manatee manure.

  45. 45.

    efgoldman

    @FlyingToaster:

    Rhinoviruses with the non-stop-runny-nose are the bitch

    Yeah, my granddaughter and her pre-K class pass them around as quickly as they mutate.
    Not for nothing do we call her snottyface.

  47. 47.

    Mary G

    @efgoldman: If she will agree to pull off things like button eyes that could be choking hazards, a dog rescue maybe? I worked in a thrift store where we sold stuffed animals and no one bought them for children, but dog owners loved them.

  49. 49.

    Gravenstone

    @efgoldman: Hospitals, particularly pediatric focus. Imagine we can throw together some funds to offset shipping costs if they can’t find localish homes.

  50. 50.

    TenguPhule

    Bob Corker warms to Trump and flirts with reelection bid

    The Tennessee Republican called the White House an “adult day care” in October. Now he’s talking to the president and Ivanka Trump as he weighs shelving his retirement plans and seeking a third term in November.

    They just can’t quit him.

  55. 55.

    JPL

    @TenguPhule: Marsha isn’t polling so well, so they are trying to convince Corker to stay.
    Of course, he has to kiss the leader’s ring and be for forgiveness.

  56. 56.

    No Drought No More

    Senator Angus King today stated that the Trump’s campaign “problems” with Russia bear no relation to Russia’s dastardly attack-and-hack upon the United States in the 2016 election.

    I’d like to know what King is smoking. R.O.T. means Russia Owns Trump, and obviously it has its hooks deep into the party of traitors that protect Trump’s treason. And I don’t require the Mueller report to so conclude.

  57. 57.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @TenguPhule: “You know, from what I’ve seen and heard about this Meuller investigation, I think I want to tie myself more tightly to trump!”

    I saw a report today that he’s already returned over a million in campaign money (of course, he can just write himself a check). More interestingly (from Somebody Else on twitter, so FWIW) big-footing Blackburn, with his existing history of trump-bashing, could hurt him with True Believers. Ads recalling how he dissed the Il Douchie would hurt him more with the goobers than with the nice suburbanites.

  59. 59.

    efgoldman

    @JPL:

    Of course, he has to kiss the leader’s ring and be for forgiveness.

    Maybe we can get Orangina to campaign for him

  61. 61.

    FlyingToaster

    @efgoldman: We went through that phase, too. My sympathies to your daughter and her husband; their adult immune systems will get a serious boost. Our problem now is that there’s a particularly virulent rhinovirus going around WG’s school. She went symptomatic Sunday, having caught if from a classmate’s younger sister, so I held her out yesterday and today and left her home to go exchange her notebooks this morning. Both instructors for her Monday and Tuesday afterschool classes were out sick. It’s one I’ve been exposed to before, so all I have is a lingering sinus headache and a popping right ear.

    And now the flu has just hit the Bwhastin campuses, so the next month-or-so are likely to be hell. HerrDoktor’s company exploits interns from Northeastern…

  62. 62.

    Chip Daniels

    I’d be curious about these flips;
    Is this a case of winning over marginal R voters, or boosting the turnout of the D base?

  65. 65.

    Ohio Mom

    @efgoldman: You need to find an artist to make something out of them — as an example, the artist who created the Heildelberg Project in Detroit used a lot of stuffed animals. But he is slowly dismantling the Project and moving onto other things so you’d need to find someone else.

    Or maybe you could do what Orthodox Jews do with Torahs and prayer books that are past their prime: give them a proper burial.

    I could see why this is hard, to abandon one of the things that gave your SIL’s life meaning. Maybe after you bury them, you could give a charity a set amount of money for each bear so they can buy new stuffed animals for hospitalized or other needy kids.

  66. 66.

    patroclus

    I’m on pins and needles about the Oklahoma panhandle seat where polls close in 12 minutes or so. It’s a Republican lean of about 81-16, but I’ve got high hopes we can take it tonight!!

  67. 67.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    verily t’would be hilarious to see Liddle Bob Corker, would be Secretary of State, get Romney’d by the Beast in favor of Marsha Fucking Blackburn

    Jonathan Martin‏Verified account @ jmartNYT
    NEW: Corker needs Trump’s blessing & the WH + broader GOP orbit doesn’t want him to give it
    And Marsha is sticking

    ETA

    Jonathan Martin @ jmartNYT
    Many in Lamar wing of Tenn GOP fear Blackburn is vulnerable v Bredesen, who is starting to raise from GOP $ types

    a college friend whose parents were, she said many years ago, solid liberals, one of them on the Vanderbilt factory, really like Lamar!, almost thirty years ago

  68. 68.

    efgoldman

    @Chip Daniels:

    Is this a case of winning over marginal R voters, or boosting the turnout of the D base?

    I’ll let the statheads pore over the results. My guess is:
    1) turnout is always low in special elections.
    2) Anti-Hair Furor voters are more motivated to show up.
    3) RWNJs are taking districts that have recently gone to them, for granted.

    The thing to see, is how much of this carries over to larger electorates – congressional districts and statewide. I am very optimistic.
    Also PA redistricting should make a difference.

  71. 71.

    Roger Moore

    @Chip Daniels:

    Is this a case of winning over marginal R voters, or boosting the turnout of the D base?

    Probably improved D turnout. Special elections tend to have low turnout, so voter enthusiasm is critical.

  72. 72.

    Mnemosyne

    @efgoldman:

    If some of them might be collectible (ie worth money), it could be worth it to have someone come evaluate them.

    Otherwise, I like Ohio Mom’s idea of giving them a proper burial or funeral pyre and then making a donation in your SIL’s name to a children’s charity.

  76. 76.

    tobie

    @patroclus: I wrote postcards for Jensen so I very much hope she can pull this out but I’m not deluding myself about the odds she’s facing. I gather two-thirds of the precincts are in and she’s got 33% of the vote which is a big improvement over Clinton but not enough for a win…unless the largest precincts have yet to report. Hope springs eternal!

  77. 77.

    Lizzy L

    @efgoldman: Some thoughts:
    1) Shelters, especially those shelters which take in abuse victims and abused or homeless children
    2) Local daycare centers
    3) Children’s group homes (run by the county or the state) or kids in foster care

  80. 80.

    FlyingToaster

    @Ruviana: Well, if I called her Xena it could be too damn close to home (ethnicly transposed, as it were), and probably copyright infringement.

    Edited for spelling.

    FlyingToaster+2

  85. 85.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    Resident of Sarasota here. I wasn’t surprised by this result at all even though the only Democrat we’d elected in decades had been tax collector Barbara Ford-Coates before tonight. I hadn’t seen any polling for this race, but what I’d call the circumstantial indications were heavily in Good’s favour.

    First, Trump didn’t win this district by a large margin, as mentioned in the OP. This was always a winnable race for the Democrat.

    Second, distribution of yard signs. These don’t always foretell a race outcome, but I barely saw any for Buchanan. Signs for Good were everywhere (to be clear, it’s not just the quantity of signs that matters here – seeing two dozen signs in a row is pretty much irrelevant – it’s that I saw them on many people’s houses), and there were probably even more signs for the lolbert candidate Alison Foxall (sp?) than for Buchanan. I take these more as indicative of voter enthusiasm – shallow supporters won’t put up yard signs; enthusiastic ones will – and only among the demographic of people who own houses. But that should have been Buchanan’s natural constituency.

    Third, the sheer desperation and ineptitude of Buchanan’s advertising. They blanketed everything, and they did so incessantly. I have an ad blocker on my computer, but there were ads for Buchanan here, on LGM, on YouTube videos for Colbert, Trevor Noah, The Opposition. Everywhere. Constantly. Seemingly half the videos I watched had the same damn ad. All shows/sites with largely liberal audiences, too.

    And it was awful. I never watched the whole thing, but it opened by name-dropping Rick Scott in a positive manner. I haven’t checked in the last couple of months, but the last time I saw, Gov. Voldemort’s approval rating was in the toilet. That seems like an enormous unforced error. They also referred to Good as a “Hillary Clinton clone”. Granted, I’m not exactly the middle of the road voter they aimed the ad at (something like that reads to me as a ringing endorsement), but… she’s hardly massively unpopular. They didn’t even open with an attack on Pelosi, whose approval rating is way lower. Amateur hour.

    And then they blanketed the ad so heavily that I’m sure it just pissed off people who were on the fence. It was always the exact same ad, too. Just terrible, shoddy work.

    The sheer amount of advertising read as a move of desperation to me. Like they had internal numbers that indicated they knew they were down in the polls, and they were panicking.

    By contrast, I didn’t see much advertising from Good. Some people might’ve read that as a sign of weakness, but it didn’t read that way to me. They emailed me to make sure I’d voted, and there were a couple of fundraising appeals, but it was a perfectly reasonable number. If I were apolitical, I could easily see myself voting for Good just on the basis of her campaign being so much less annoying. As it was I found myself grumbling in annoyance at my phone in annoyance at the YouTube ads at least five times.

    Good ran a (pardon the pun) good campaign. I didn’t see any clear unforced errors. I could easily see her going places in the Florida Democratic Party. She’s certainly done Sarasota proud.

  91. 91.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @JPL: The advertising was so abysmally targeted that I half suspect some sort of grifting operation involving whoever made the damn thing and who knows who else. Like… they had to know that a lot of the places where they were running the ad had audiences who wouldn’t be receptive to it. And Vern Buchanan (U.S. rep for the district) is so slimy that I can easily see his whole family being involved in some sort of shady business involving campaign advertising. Maybe we’ll find out eventually. I sure hope the motherfucker gets kicked out in November. I don’t quite hate him as much as Katharine Harris, but it’s only because he doesn’t have the 2000 election shenanigans in his résumé. Otherwise it’d probably be more.

    Also, no problem.

  93. 93.

    Gravenstone

    @NotMax: Speaking of ‘real things’, finally catching up with you to tweak you about your disdain over what you assumed was poorly done sub-titling in some police procedural you were watching. “Liver mortis” is very much a thing. Here we call it lividity, it’s the pooling of blood in the lowest lying portions of the body following death and is used as a means of determining approximate time of death.

  96. 96.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @(((CassandraLeo))): I should note that I actually met Harris at one point after her unsuccessful campaign for the Senate. Unfortunately, I was on the clock at my old retail job and didn’t really have the option to ream her out for contributing to the country’s ruination unless I wanted to throw the job away (which, at time, I didn’t). Plus she was on the phone for most of the transaction, anyway (which always struck me as pretty rude, but we have this awful attitude in this country that The Customer Is Always Right, which of course contributes to retail workers taking all kinds of shit from customers. What I had to deal with was pretty mild in comparison to accounts I’ve read from other people).

    Stephen King also used to come into the place all the time and I never got to meet him during my entire seven and a half years there. Pretty rotten luck, really.

  97. 97.

    NotMax

    @Gravenstone

    Except that in the instance cited, the spoken dialogue quite distinctly and clearly said rigor mortis. Both cops present were regular patrol officers, neither with any forensic credentials. Body was lying in the open on a rocky beach and was completely clothed, including an ankle length flannel nightgown and robe.

  98. 98.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @(((CassandraLeo))): I am 80% sure I sat at a table next to Stephen King’s in a Paris restaurant, a few years back. He was very quiet, his wife did all the talking, and I didin’t overheard any spooky anecdotes about small towns in Maine

  99. 99.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Judging from things my former coworkers who’d actually met him said, I get the impression that he’s a pretty unassuming guy in person. Doesn’t surprise me. You have to spend a lot of time alone to be a writer. It doesn’t to be the sort of profession that attracts a lot of gregarious individuals.

    I can’t complain too much about being deprived of opportunities to meet famous people, though. One of my middle/high school classmates won the Oscar for Best Picture last year, as I’ve mentioned a few times previously. I’ve also briefly met several other household names (George Lucas is probably the biggest).

  102. 102.

    patroclus

    @(((CassandraLeo))): I certainly hope that you told Lucas that Han shot first, that Jar Jar Binks was the worst movie character that ever existed in the entire history of humankind and that the wooden dialogue he wrote aptly deserved the changing of the name from Annikin to Mannequin Skywalker.

  104. 104.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @patroclus: TBH, I met him close to two decades ago. I don’t even remember if TPM had come out at the time. Attack of the Clones certainly hadn’t, and I didn’t spend enough time online to know about the “Han shot first” thing – I don’t think I even noticed it at the time, because it happens so quickly. (I’m not discounting that it’s an awful change to Han’s characterisation – I just didn’t pick up on subtleties like that. I was probably no older than sixteen or seventeen.) if TPM was out, I think mentioning Jar Jar wouldn’t have come to my mind because there was an intriguing discussion going on about how experiencing others’ art is one of the best ways to improve your own artistic ability, and I definitely didn’t want to change the subject.

    Plus, as awful as the PT is and as awful as a few of the special edition changes are, he still was a major creative force behind the original trilogy and American Graffiti too, and given that I knew I’d probably only be getting limited time to interact with him, I was more of a mind to pick his mind about those films than I would’ve been to berate him for the new ones. If they were even out – again, I don’t exactly remember how long ago it was, but I was definitely still in high school, so it couldn’t have been later than 2001.

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