Thread by @lxeagle17

Cal Cunningham would not have won even if he kept his zipper up.

Biden didn't win the state and shouldn't have, based on the national environment, and in an inelastic state like NC, expecting the senate candidate to run >1.5% of Biden in an open seat is just unrealistic.

Biden only did 0.4% below average in NC. It's not as if he had some shocking underperformance there! He would still have lost by around a percent if everything went to plan in the state and it went exactly according to the national environment.

So why would we expect the downballot candidate to outrun Biden by a percent against a sitting incumbent? That's a tall ask for any normal candidate anyways.

Cunningham isn't great, but that's not why we lost the seat.

I try to make this clear because ascribing person-specific reasons to the results of a race is quite frequently not the answer and is usually a lazy explanation that ignores the real causes and leads to problems.

Cunningham didn't lose us NC-Sen, Abrams didn't win GA for us, etc

This isn't 1980; the electorate is way less elastic now and the parties a lot more polarized. It's not 1984 KY-Sen, where Reagan felt like Huddlestone (D) was basically the same as McConnell (R).

Cunningham isn't an outlier here; it's just the overall electorate picture.