Tuesday marks the unofficial start of the second part of primary season. Problems caused by redistricting have altered the normal calendar. with many states going out of their usual order. Normally, there is a good break between the Spring primaries (typically ending by mid-June) and the Summer primaries (typically starting in early August).
Maryland which starts off the Summer primaries this week is a good example of that. It was supposed to be at the tail end of the Spring primaries. Instead, it got moved back three weeks. It and the postponed state runoffs in North Carolina the following week are serving as a bridge between what is typically a five to six week break between the two halves.
The regularly scheduled primaries start the following week with Arizona, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, and Washington on Tuesday (August 2) and Tennessee on Thursday (August 4). Arizona, Michigan, and Missouri all have races on their ballots which are best described as total chaos on the Republican side. Michigan may be in the worst shape as several of their strongest candidates for Governor failed to make the ballot leaving a real clown car of a race. The results from these three states will help frame the big question on the Republican side for this fall — how off the rails full on Trumpist will the Republican candidates be this fall. The Democrats in same of these early states have our typical establishment vs. the Squad vs. Bernie Sanders vs. working class populism battles. That struggle will also help define what the issues will be in the fall.
The week of August 8 will see Connecticut, Minnestoa, Vermont, and Wisconsin on Tuesday (August 9) and Hawaii on Saturday (August 13). Wisconsin may be most interesting with Republicans having an interesting primary for Governor and the Democrats having an interesting primary for the opportunity to replace potential convict Ron Johnson who will be spending the fall having to fight to be reelected while trying to avoid charges for his role in the events of January 6.
The week of August 15 has three Tuesday primaries. In Alaska, we will get the first full test of the top four primary system. Since the special election (using ranked choice voting) for the House is on the same day, it will be interesting to see how the primary for the House and the special election for the House interact. (My expectation is that the three candidates who made it to the general in the special election will make the final four for the general by a wide margin and whomever gets the last slot will get it with less than 10% of the vote). While South Dakota will probably be uninteresting, there is a lot of attention on the Wyoming primary in which we will see if it is possible for a politician to honor the oath of office and still get nominated by the Republican Party when Representative Liz Cheney tries valiantly to hold onto her position. If Liz Cheney loses, plan your eulogy for the old Republican Party because it will be dead, replaced by the Party of Trump.
On August 23, there will be the regular primaries in Florida and the “federal” primary in New York. With the loss of a district and the weird lines that were drawn, we have several members in New York either facing each other or running in districts that are vastly different from their old districts and some will not survive. Florida is a gerrymander on steroids, but the Republicans might find a way to lose some winnable seats by nominating hard core Trumpists.
In September, the day after Labor Day will see the primary in Massachusetts. Finally, on September 13, things come to a close with primaries in Delaware, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Massachusetts is somewhat like Maryland in that the somewhat moderate Republican governor is not running for reelection. If the Republicans were to put forward a moderate, such a candidate might have a chance to win. However, the primary voters in the Republican party are simply out of touch with the majority of the state, and are likely to nominate the most Trump-like candidate they can.
The bottom line of all of this is that the “fundamentals” of the general election this year have a lot in common with 2010. Perhaps, the Supreme Courts hard turn to the right helps encourage Democrats to turn out. But, just as happened in 2010, the Republicans seem to be doing their best to blow some very winnable races by choosing unelectable candidates. But because the Republican base is so nuts, some of these unelectable candidates might just eke out a win, especially if Democrats do not turn out in November because we are disappointed that we were unable to get much done with a 46 Democrats, 2 Democratic-leaning independents, and two nominally Democrats giving us a paper majority in the Senate. In four months, when we are wrapping up and doing the post-mortem of the 2022 election, we will probably look back and see several primaries where the Republicans either made a sane choice which led to wins in close races giving them majorities in the House and Senate or see several primaries where the Republcians opted for bat-shit crazy nominees and allowed the Democrats to keep a very narrow majority in the House and pick up the two or three Senate seats that will permit us to actually pass significant legislation in 2023 and reform the filibuster.
