What Will the Losers Do?

Dems are jumping ship, and it’s no surprise why – they can’t win.
 
I guess we can come up with some reasons why Robyn Driscoll is leaving her SD 25 race other than the fact that she wants to become a county commissioner.
 
Remember, county commissioner’s get paid a lot more money.
 
County Commissioners make $89,000 a year…and they can actually vote to raise their own pay, as they did last July.
 
I think that’s the reason she’s going, as it’s likely she would have won that race.
 
She needs the money.
 
Or did she already make her pile as a Community Education Coordinator for the Billings Public Schools?
 
I doubt it. No, I think she needs the money or the clout or something. I don’t think she’s afraid of losing.
 
Driscoll took 1,847 votes in the primary to Donna Huston’s 1,614.
 
If we go back to 2012 we see that she won. In fact, she won all 5 races she’s ran in.
 
So why leave the Montana Senate now, when Dems are looking at monumental losses already?

​Hell, maybe she was looking at a loss there.
 
And are you telling me that none of the other 4 people that ran for the commissioner position could do it?
 
Hell, even Dave Wanzenried carpet-bagged himself over there for a cushy teaching position…why not pick him?
 
Who knows. I’m no expert on Yellowstone County politics.
 
At this point I feel Dems will be losing that seat, however.
 
If it’s one of those 4 has-beens that gets chosen to fill in for Driscoll, boy, kiss that seat goodbye.
 
Although I have to say, based on my reading of Last Best News, that there are tons of old people in Billings.
 
I guess they want boring and has-been and that’s what they’ll get.
 
Please remember that no one in Montana supports marijuana legalization more than the good people in Billings, however.
 
We can paint the town as being rich and red, but underneath there’s a lot of resentment and young people ready for a change.
 
One day they’ll get it, but not with their current crop of has-beens.
 
Time, it’ll take time. We have it, the old fogeys don’t.
 

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When we look at the legislative races we can ask a very simple question:
 
When will Nancy Keenan get fired?
 
We know full-well that if you’re the executive director of the party and you do badly in the legislative races, you’ll get shit-canned.
 
It happened to Andrea Marcoccio in 2015 and it’ll happen again after these 2016 races are done.
 
We saw the same thing happen to David Benson after the monumental 2010 losses and although Ted Dick wasn’t fired for legislative losses in 2013, he may have been fired over funny-money incidents (ask Martin Kidston).
 
For 6 years we’ve been firing people when they can’t do a job that is virtually impossible with our antiquated and obsolete toolkit.
 
Montana Democrats can’t take the legislature.
 
Oh, they dangle the prospect that they can out in front of young and wide-eyed Democrats like Marcoccio.
 
Then when it’s clear after Election Day that the legislature will be lost to them yet again, Democrats fire that young and wide-eyed person and they in turn become embittered.
 
Now, there’s a strong chance that Nancy will use whatever ‘clout’ she has to hang on to her position tooth and nail.
 
I suppose there’s the money, though after being paid $585,000 plus benefits to work for NARAL Pro-Choice, I’m not sure if she needs it.
 
There is the authority, like the ability to fawn over legislative candidates or ignore others completely.
 
There’s access, both to the press so you can feel important and to higher-ups that’ve also been elected to statewide office, something Nancy herself first did in 1988.
 
I was in first grade that year.
 
Now she ‘leads’ the Montana Democratic Party.
 
I’ll be happy when she’s gone.
 
I’d love to call her up on the night she’s shit-canned to offer my ‘condolences,’ but as you all know, she’s too afraid to talk to me on the phone.
 
About 4 phone calls and not once did she have the courage to speak to me.
 
She did have the courage to start up a bunch of fake twitter accounts to ‘attack’ me, however.
 
Yes, Nancy Keenan – a true Montana has-been.
 

 
It’s not just Nancy that’ll be looking for a new line of work come mid-November, maybe early-December at the latest.
 
Just about everyone that’s currently working on a Democratic campaign will be shit-canned as well.
 
Mainly I’m thinking of Emilie Saunders, the main staffer for Denise Juneau in the U.S. House race.

God, Denise's campaign is a failure, and I'm not the only one saying it.

What's especially sad is that after November we're not supposed to analyze why it was a failure, we're just supposed to act all sad and teary-eyed that Denise lost.

Can you understand why Democrats lose and lose and then lose some more? 
 
You’ll remember that I profiled Emilie before, and so harsh was my profiling of her that she blocked me on social media.
 
Yes, Montana Democrats…very thinned-skinned.
 
I expect Emilie will either head back to some reporting gig in Idaho or get on full-time with the state, probably in the Office of Public Instruction.
 
Who knows, with a resume like that we might even see Emilie running for a statewide office in a couple years.
 
After all, about the only thing you need to show the higher-up Dems is how much ass you can kiss.
 
Anyone working on a statewide campaign will have learned that skill very, very well.
 
We also know that another main Dem heading up Juneau’s campaign is Lauren Caldwell.
 
She’s married to a higher-up in the Montana Wilderness Association so I expect she’ll stay here…if she doesn’t land some staffer job in D.C.
 
Most likely she’ll just get on with some nonprofit, probably an environmental or abortion group.
 
That’s the typical holding pattern for failed Democratic staffers when they have to sit out a cycle.
 
It’s a shame none of the state media agencies ever looked into the shady business surrounding her and her husband and Missoula subsidized housing. 
 
But the story revolves around Montana Democrats, a group that’s proven itself quite skilled at picking off reporters and making them their own.
 
I suspect most reporters in the state – many of whom are working for failing media agencies – would rather hold their tongues.
 
It’ll be easier to get a Democratic staffer job further on down the road if that’s the case.
 
If we head on over to the governor’s race we can be sure of one thing – all the staffers will be gone.
 
I say this because I’m pretty sure Bullock will win.
 
I mean, isn’t that why he’s spending a college-education-worth of advertising a day ($20,000)?
 
So if he wins Aaron Flint will likely be back at the radio show and the others staffers will be heading back to Wisconsin.
 
I’m not too worried about Flint. Hell, his wife is on Steve Daines’ staff.
 
On Bullock’s side we know that Eric Hyers will go back to Rhode Island and Jason Pitt will go back to Pennsylvania…unless some other Democrat somewhere hires them to send messages on Twitter all day, which is about the only function I see for those two.
 
I could be wrong – Pitt could be from RI and Hyers could be from PA…but who really gives a fuck?
 
Interestingly, Andrea Marcoccio was also from Rhode Island.
 
Anyways, neither Pitt nor Hyers gives a hoot about Montana or the people that live here. They’re hired hands that were brought in by Nancy Keenan and her National Democratic leeches.

Folks, this is the crowd that loves PAC money, whether its dark or not.
 
They talk a good game, and can hang out in the right circles, but they’re not Montanans nor will they ever be. They don’t want to.
 
And I’m perfectly happy with that. Perhaps in 10 years Hyers or Pitt will be someone other than an opinion person, maybe running in one of their own races, perhaps in their own states.
 
Or maybe they’ll just keep working for others, playing second fiddle and offering the kind of expertise that you earn by always shouting from the sidelines rather than playing the game.

I'm sure there are staffers that I'm missing.

​Feel free to mention them in the comments.