Definitely Trump promoted some extremist candidates who lost races that more mainstream Republicans might have won... though might is the key word there, different candidates could have had an impact on turnout as well as swing voters and reality is more complicated than the simple theory of how the more moderate candidate is more likely to win in a general election.

Yep. Good to see that the Democratic secretary of state candidates seem to run ahead of the senator/governor ones in states like Arizona and Nevada, suggesting that a small but crucial number of swing voters understands that... but still it's scary how small that number is.

Not really sure what your point is here, as I'm not really sure what Warnock, Fetterman, Hassan and Kelly have in common or how they're flawed. They're certainly quite different and at least Fetterman, the only non-incumbent of the lot, seems to have potential as a new, more viable type of Democratic candidate.

If you mean that those four Republicans are terrible candidates, well yeah, duh, but then I still don't get the 'other side runs vulnerable candidates'...

The conservatives on the SC may not be quite as disconnected from the policy goals of the Republican party as the Chief Justice would have us believe, but still they're not quite at the level of just doing whatever McConnell, McCarthy or Trump would like them to do, at the precise moment they'd like them to do it.

But anyway, good to see that Kentucky voters rejected an extremist amendment on abortion, Michigan ones passed the amendment protecting it in their constitution, and Kansas voters kept Laura Kelly in her job to protect their famous vote from a while back. Definitely there is a serious gap between the positions on abortion that win Republican primaries, and the ones that win general elections, even in red and purple states.

A great night for Ron DeSantis and a poor one for Trump - but on both counts, not quite stark enough to get RDS to the point where he can afford to take Trump on directly. And if he does that anyway, Democrats will have to start picking their poison - would you rather have the egomaniac controversy magnet who doesn't actually give a fuck about most conservative priorities or the day to day job of a president, or the other guy who'd at least show up and do his damn job, but might actually make good progress on conservative priorities along the way? Ben Shapiro predicted already years ago that as soon as somebody manages to eclipse Trump in the GOP, many liberals will start finding reasons to consider that person even worse than Trump. And if you look at it from a policy or political effectiveness perspective rather than a personality one, those reasons will be very easy to find.