Thread by @RachelBitecofer

1. Yes, @kkondik is spot on in terms of the assessment here. In my forecast- which comes back out Sunday, the NC Senate seat is seat 50- although there are reasons to believe it was looking soft before this happened. Primary bc the @CalforNC was focused on wooing Indies & mod Rs

2. to the exclusion of any other efforts and messaging as I knew it would be when I was fervently hoping a stronger nominee would emerge. Sadly, NC's bench sat out, failing to realize how good the atmosphere would be in 2020- looking at 2020 & Burr's open seat which si DUMB,

3. my research being blacklisted off election twitter, it was hard for me to convince people back in 2019 that come fall of 2020 it would be a dominant environment to topple Tillis. So they end up w Tillis, and for the 2nd time the Ds find themselves getting screwed by the sexual

4. appetites of older white men. But this will also give us a good test of how much the D electorate will tolerate. We know how bad the R electorate is- they tried and almost succeeded in sending a child molester to the Senate in Alabama. They weren't thwarted in that effort by

5. R voters- they were thwarted by a surge of Dems and Indies. Control of the senate is on the line. I don't see Tillis dropping out and I don't see the Dems dropping him. Maybe he'll realize too that the only way he ever could win this race was via NC's college educated Ds & Is

6. and driving massive black turnout by focusing on the stakes of control of the senate and tying Tillis to Trump. That was the campaign he should have been running all along- and the fallacy of his "get Rs to bail on Tillis plan" was already apparent. But in terms of "guy wanted

7. to cheat on his wife" scandal rendering him unelectable? I'm guessing no, not in this environment with control of the senate at stake.