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Administrator- Joined
- May 11, 2013
- Posts
- 24,887
- Reaction score
- 13,613
- Points
- 2,755
- Location
- Morganton, N.C.
- Website
- conversations-ii.freeforums.net
(The Guardian) Democratic senator Jon Tester’s bid for re-election in Montana is a mirror of the party’s wider struggles to maintain the support of voters in rural areas across the country, which have grown increasingly Republican in recent years, threatening the party’s ability to win races up and down the ballot. The Guardian’s David Smith traveled to Big Sky Country to see if Tester’s circumstances are as dire as they appear from afar: He was a young and little-known underdog. So Max Baucus, candidate for Congress, decided to trek 630 miles across Montana and listen to people talk about their problems. “As luck would have it, on the first day, I walked into a blizzard,” he recalls, pointing to a photo of his young self caked in snow. “It was cold! But the blizzard didn’t last that long.”
Baucus shed 12lb during that two-and-a-half month journey in 1974. He also made friends. The Democrat defeated a Republican incumbent and would soon go on to serve as a Montana senator for 36 years. He never lost an election but saw his beloved home state undergo many changes. Among them is the prospect that Democrats like him are now facing political extinction.
Jon Tester, a moderate Democrat who is one of Montana’s current senators, is fighting for his political life in the 5 November election. Opinion polls suggest that he is trailing his Republican rival, Tim Sheehy. Control of the closely divided Senate, and the ability to enable or stymie the ambitions of a President Kamala Harris or President Donald Trump, could hinge on the outcome.
The Senate race in Montana is widely seen as a litmus test of whether Democrats can still win in largely rural states that have embraced Trump’s Republican party. It is also a study in whether the type of hyperlocal campaigning that Baucus practised half a century ago can outpace shifts in demographics, media and spending that have rendered all politics national.
www.theguardian.com
Baucus shed 12lb during that two-and-a-half month journey in 1974. He also made friends. The Democrat defeated a Republican incumbent and would soon go on to serve as a Montana senator for 36 years. He never lost an election but saw his beloved home state undergo many changes. Among them is the prospect that Democrats like him are now facing political extinction.
Jon Tester, a moderate Democrat who is one of Montana’s current senators, is fighting for his political life in the 5 November election. Opinion polls suggest that he is trailing his Republican rival, Tim Sheehy. Control of the closely divided Senate, and the ability to enable or stymie the ambitions of a President Kamala Harris or President Donald Trump, could hinge on the outcome.
The Senate race in Montana is widely seen as a litmus test of whether Democrats can still win in largely rural states that have embraced Trump’s Republican party. It is also a study in whether the type of hyperlocal campaigning that Baucus practised half a century ago can outpace shifts in demographics, media and spending that have rendered all politics national.
Can Democrats still win in rural states? Montana’s Senate race offers high-stakes litmus test
Jon Tester is fighting to keep his Senate seat amid the prospect that Democrats like him are now facing political extinction in the state
www.theguardian.com
