Share this page!

Lakshya Jain Profile picture
Twitter logo
18 Feb, 4 tweets, 1 min read
Properly messaged, this scandal can seriously do some immense damage to Ted Cruz, even accounting for the fact that his re-election campaign is 3 years out.
Something like this bruises his favorability ratings among low-information voters, and it's generally kept independent of legislation and directly impacts the "trust" factor that is on an individual basis. It's a bit different from a party not delivering on campaign promises.
Photos play really well with the public if properly used and end up hurting the candidate among voters who don't tune into politics much and only know him as the "asshole who went to Cancun".
Now, they can also fade from the cycle very quickly...but there's currently a window for Democrats to take advantage of this and really hammer the message home. Will they take advantage of it and message based on it?

I have no idea.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Lakshya Jain

Lakshya Jain Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @lxeagle17

Lakshya Jain Profile picture
16 Feb
Democrats have nearly hit the floor in Tennessee -- the state's elasticity reflects the lean of many ancestrally D areas staying steady.

But Kentucky may not have finished its GOP slide yet, particularly in the ancestrally Democratic east, and the suburbs aren't moving that much
There's not really too much to save Democrats in Kentucky. Currently, the downballot picture for them is grim -- a strong snap towards the GOP is expected as the presidential results converge with those further down the ballot, while this has already largely happened in TN.
Unfortunately for them, the suburbs haven't moved too much -- you'd want to see a larger swing in Louisville, but that just isn't the case yet. Until that begins accelerating, there's nothing to prevent Democrats sliding further and further down in this state.
Read 5 tweets
Lakshya Jain Profile picture
14 Feb
A suspicion I have, based on polling and name ID, is that a lot of the reason the "ancestral Democrats" effect persisted downballot is because most people didn't even know who those candidates are but considered themselves Democrats still when name ID was stripped away.
These folks would say "yeah, the national Democrats definitely don't represent me" etc, and that's because they know who those candidates actually are (based on Fox News etc).

But when you strip away name ID, it's down to party ID, which likely tends to take longer to switch.
@JMilesColeman @gelliottmorris @baseballot @SenhorRaposa does anyone have any data to back this up or contradict it? Would love to see some actual research on it but I haven't seen anything, so this is informed only by polling and name ID.
Read 7 tweets
Lakshya Jain Profile picture
11 Feb
no, Marjorie Taylor Greene cheating on her husband with two different people is not a *good* thing, and she should not be immune to criticism for it. she tries to claim a moral high ground on "family values" while pushing awful QAnon conspiracies and railing against LGBTQ folks.
I'm not naive enough to think that even half of Congress is clean with regards to spousal fidelity. They're not, and it's no secret. I didn't think Cunningham's affair, as bad as it was, disqualified him.

I don't judge political fitness on that. A ton of politicians have affairs
But it *does* reflect on you if you center your image around Family Value policies and then try to strip other people of rights by saying they're not following Biblical Values, all while you decide to break someone's trust and cheat on your spouse.
Read 5 tweets
Lakshya Jain Profile picture
11 Feb
Me talking to people who say states like Missouri will *never* go blue again:
It could take 20-30 years for Missouri to turn blue again. But things change in politics very quickly, and very weird things tend to happen that we could never have foreseen. Cast your mind back 30 years -- did it seem plausible for a Democrat to win Virginia but not Missouri?
You don't need to pour 40 million into unwinnable races, but you definitely should try to run good candidates in every single state, from West Virginia to Nebraska to Hawaii. The point is to build up infrastructure and party strength to expand your message.
Read 4 tweets
Lakshya Jain Profile picture
11 Feb
A way to tell when realignment has kind of completed is when an ancestrally Democratic state's elasticity begins to look normal instead of being extremely high.

And aside from Joe Manchin, that's exactly what we get in West Virginia. This state is Republican, through and through
Manchin is the last holdover for WV Dems. There's absolutely nothing left for them here after he's gone. There just aren't many votes left out there.

The good news is that realignment has completed, essentially, and this is their floor. Now comes rebuilding, fueled by DC exurbs.
preemptively asking you to chill with the "yOu CaN'T jUsT iGnoRe JoE mAnChiN" takes please, you absolutely literally cannot replicate his success there, whether you run a Bernie candidate (Swearengin) or a conservative Democrat (John Perdue lost in 2020!).
Read 5 tweets
Lakshya Jain Profile picture
30 Jan
Why I'm *highly* skeptical of Democrats unseating Rubio in Florida, in one set of numbers:

Miami-Dade, President 2016 (Trump vs Clinton): D+29.4
Miami-Dade, Senate 2016 (Rubio vs Murphy): D+11.3

Dade has only gotten more Republican since then.
Now, there's an argument to be made that a lot of the 2020 results were those changes flowing downballot, but I don't buy it, because Nelson won Dade by ~20 against Scott. Even accounting for low-propensity voters, the 2018->2020 swing indicates a harder snap to the right.
So I'd expect Dade to likely be single-digit margins for Rubio's race (though I don't know if that's the case with DeSantis), and I personally don't think Democratic gains in Pinellas and Duval will be enough to offset what will likely be a single-digit margin in Dade for Senate.
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @lxeagle17 has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @lxeagle17!

Read all threads by @lxeagle17