If the Republicans really are dumb enough to nominate Mehmet Oz or Kathy Barnette in Pennsylvania…
Kathy Barnette – who could win the Republican Senate primary in Pennsylvania this week – participated in the January 6th march to the Capitol. According to NBC News, she not only participated in the march, she marched adjacent to the Proud Boys.
Participating in the march is not a crime on its own. There is no known evidence that Barnett participated in the actual Capitol attack. And while multiple Proud Boys have since been indicted for the Capitol attack, there is no known evidence that she was conspiring with the Proud Boys; she’s now insisting she had no idea she was marching next to them.
All that said, if Barnette ends up with the Republican nomination, this could sharply increase the odds of the Democrats winning that seat – because it’ll play really poorly in the court of public opinion.
Mainstream voters in the middle would have a real problem with a candidate who participated in the January 6th march. This kind of lunacy won’t hurt her, and might even help her, in the Republican primary. But she’d have an extraordinarily difficult time winning the general election, with this kind of controversy hanging over her candidacy.
Most pundits will insist we should be “terrified” of Barnette and that we should sit around and lament about the “danger” and the “damage” if she’s the nominee. But this kind of paralyzing loser-think never helps us win anything, and only helps the the other side.
The reality is that if Barnette does end up being the Republican nominee after she’s been caught up in the January 6th scandal, she’ll likely lose to the Democratic nominee. And then we’ll have to hear the pundits lament about how the Democrats “only won by X points” over Barnette, as they try to spin our win into a loss – but that’s par for the course.
What’s remarkable is that Barnette’s top Republican primary rival, Mehmet Oz, is a walking talking scandal in his own right. If Oz gets the nomination, it’ll be a gift to the Democrats. But if Barnette gets the nomination, if may end up being even more of a gift to the Democrats.
As always, we’ll still have to put in the work required to win. No race wins itself. But if the Republicans really do end up picking someone as scandal-plagued and vulnerable as Barnette or Oz, the Pennsylvania race will rise to the top of the list of Senate seats that are flippable for the Democrats if we put in the work.
