I’m wondering if there might be two factors to help Brat. One is that constitutional conservatives have some momentum after McDaniels and Ernst beat expectations by a lot. The other is that with the impotence of the DC crowd, even in the extreme situation of Obama releasing the Gitmo Five, voters will be eager to vote out incumbents, especially leadership.
I’m hoping the same. We’ll see. I’ll be posting as many stories I can find till Tuesday. It’s the most I can do from up here in MA.
I get the distinct impression that those motivated to vote Eric out are more motivated than those constituents content to leave him in place - hope this translates to voter turnout. Lots of Brat stickers on cars and his ads (pretty good ones) are finally hitting the TV whereas Cantor has had mailings out almost every single day to the point that folks I know are complaining. It’s a long shot, but Brat has a chance - fingers crossed because if he pulls it off, there will be a 10.0 political earthquake among the RINOs.
There are some other factors at play as well. Since I live in this district, I’ll give you my perspective.
Eric Cantor does not do town halls - never has. If he does public events, they are very scripted and you have to pay into his campaign coffers to attend. He is not one to mingle with the great unwashed. This has set him up as distant and aloof and not at all sympathetic to his constituents problems.
Eric and his young guns posse spent the spring trying to slate at various mass meetings. Slating in slimy trick to elect hand picked delegates for the district and state conventions. Eric was trying to flex his muscle. Fortunately, by the time the Henrico mass meeting took place, we were on to him and stopped the slating in its tracks. Bear in mind this is Eric’s home county. This pushback was huge.
Furthermore, Eric did not bother to attend the Henrico County republic committee mass meeting. IMHO, it was a slap in the face to everyone in the county who has supported him over the years. I was there and it was EPIC. Dave Brat DID attend and give his stump speech. He was interrupted numerous times with huge applause. I think that was the moment that Cantor’s team started to wet their pants.
At the 7th district convention, Cantor-crony Linwood Cobb was defeated as 7th district chair. This may all seem rather much like inside baseball, and it is. The point being, enough people are sick of his games that they rebelled. It was awesome. Cantor did show up and gave a speech at this convention. He was booed throughout and from all reports that really rattled him. His habit of only doing scripted events really hurt him - he has no experience in dealing with less than friendly audiences. He fled the convention after his speech.
I have personally turned two Cantor voters to Brat voters. I have done some door-knocking and NO ONE had anything positive to say about Cantor. Not.one.single.person. My anecdotal experience is there is seething resentment of Cantor and people are ready to send him packing.
Finally, at the moment, there is no democrat candidate. The deadline passed with no dem filing to run. Now, as we all know, the dems will ignore the rules if it suits their purposes, so a dem could file after Tuesday. But a lot of dems view this as their opportunity to stick it to Cantor. They hate him with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns. No dem is going to take him out in the general - but this primary is another story.
Brat has been getting national attention and the money is coming in. He’s got radio and tv ads going. I get a mailer a day from Cantor - which goes into the trash where it belongs. I’ve gotten almost daily emails from Cantor begging for help. The tone of these emails is waaaaay different from past primaries.
One last little tidbit. I was told by a campaign worker that someone close to the Brat campaign has been in some of the Cantor campaign activities/meetings/something more inside than showing up and doing phone calling. This source says the Cantor campaign is really, really, really worried. Like freaking out kind of worried. They all see their gravy train derailing and they are not happy.
So, donate to Dave Brat’s campaign if you can. Volunteer if you can. And pray. If Cantor loses, it’s seismic. And on Tuesday, I will revel in the joy of upsetting the establishment applecart.