Elon: Cooper by ELEVEN
No, not THAT Elon. We’re talking the North Carolina-based institution of higher learning.
Frustrated and disheartened conservative voters – at least in the western part of the state – got a morale boost this week with the selection of Jennifer Balkcom to replace scandal-ridden Tillis pal Chuck Edwards. With a weak top-of-the-ticket and a scandal-ridden standard bearer in the US House race, there had not been a whole lot of incentive to show up and vote.
Balkcom is more conservative (and viewed more favorably on-the-ground) than Edwards. And there is some poetic justice in replacing an accused male sexual harasser with a female.
But it is still quite an uphill battle to November. There is still a lot of ground to be covered and a lot of money to be raised. Ballots start going out in about two months.
That said — Balkcom is quite an improvement over Edwards. Here at the site, we’re hoping for the best for her and her team.
Back to the news from Elon University:
We’re starting to see a pattern here. That four point spread from PPP is looking more and more like an outlier.
This was 800 likely voters (MOE: 5.6 percent) taken from July 23 through July 31.
There doesn’t appear to be much undecided out there to try and coax into your camp and close this lead.
The drive-by media will try and paint all of this as disapproval of Trump. Trump does deserve some grief for meddling in the party primary process and sticking us with this horrible Senate candidate.
But the Republican establishment deserves an extra-large heaping spoonful of grief for tolerating Thom Tillis’ prolonged temper tantrum these past few months. There’s nothing like having the guy you elected to *represent* you camping out on CNN while mocking you and your closely-held beliefs.
Whatley is going down because of his long devotion to his mentor Tillis and his godawful campaign. He appears to be yet another example of an empty suit who will go to DC and sit there waiting for instructions from John Thune. (After Tillis leaves, we’ll still have one of those sitting up there *representing* us.)
Republicans in the legislature are also to blame for some of the voter frustration. They’ve done a lot of talking but not much serious about the government-cutting conservative agenda we charged them with.
In Congress, that’s also been the case. No one is seriously trying to cut spending or the size of government. Trump’s appointments are not getting approved. The national debt and the budget deficit are both skyrocketing. Meanwhile. household budgets are getting decimated simply by trying to pay the bills, fill up the car, and buy groceries. It looks like we have two parties who don’t seem the least bit interested in fixing our serious economic problems.
Blown opportunities by folks who we thought we could trust are to blame here. People like Trump and wish we could be seeing more of his campaign promises become reality. With GOP majorities, that should have been pretty easy to make happen.
