The Past Week Summarized - Primary Elections and What Not

Yes, I know today marks the first anniversary of the white supremacist shit show that went down in Charlottesville, VA that eventually ended up in James Fields Jr. murdering counter-protester Heather Heyer with a car.  While I will comment on that in a later post today I felt it was necessary to give a brief overview of the past week.

For many parts of the USA this past Tuesday was primary election day on the road to the 2018 midterm elections.  There were some hopeful results and some bad ones.  Starting with TTWN's original home base of Missouri where voters overwhelmingly rejecting an anti union right to work law.  Though there are some rumors the heavily Repub MO state legislature have right to work again on the ballot in November to be part of the sate constitution (I haven't been able to confirm that though) this is a good sign indeed.  Also of note in MO is the defeat of longtime St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch (seven term incumbent with almost 30 years in office) by Wesley Bell, who was reportedly motivated towards public office after the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO four years ago.  Yes, time will tell what Bell's performance as a county prosecutor will be like but after decades in office McCulloch had been there too long and a change might be a good thing in a place as tension filled as the St. Louis area.

Overall though the election news was bittersweet in retrospect.  Brent Welder, whose campaign was suddenly highlighted as a potential win in the wake of the victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in NY earlier this summer, lost the primary race of the 3rd Congressional District in Kansas to Sharice Davids, a gay Native American veteran and former MMA fighter.  While some noted a computer glitch in one area of the district (Johnson County, KS) it is worth noting that while said district does have the cities with the 2nd and 3rd largest populations in Kansas (Overland Park and Kansas City respectively) , one of them is in Johnson County, which can arguably be called the most affluent and right wing part of the Kansas City metropolitan area (yes, the 2nd and 3rd largest cities in Kansas are both suburbs of the largest city in Missouri) so while the glitch could be foul play the attitudes of the area could be more important.  IN the Ohio special election it remains too close to call between Repub Troy Balderson and Democrat Danny O'Connor.  While Balderson (and in turn electoral vote winner Donny) has claimed victory O'Connor is waiting until every vote is counted.  Also of note is that they'll have to be up on the ballot again in November.

What we do know.  In many places the incumbents won their races, which is to be expected since they usually do.  However, though the corporate owned mainstream media likes to call progressive inspired groups such as Our Revolution and Justice Democrats as failures for not getting every candidate they endorsed elected,  it should be noted that out of the 13 candidates endorsed by Justice Democrats, 7 won the primary race.  I know people will think that trails something like the tea party in the 2010 midterms but those people overlook that the teabaggers will largely astroturfed even from the start which makes it far different from progressive candidates who won't accept SuperPAC money.

This barely scratched the surface.  So what now?  Now the road is set towards November and the negative ads will likely be ramped up along with voter suppression efforts that will avoid the media scruinty they should get (and which gave us electoral vote winner Donny back in 2016).  We don't know what will happen in those elections but I do know that turning out the vote will be more important than ever this time around because of said suppression efforts and that we need to be on guard against this shit ever more nowadays. 

ONly a couple of months left so strap yourselves in 'cause it will be a turbulent ride.