No Congress for Old Men And other lessons from the 2014 primary season.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/06/_2014_primary_season_lessons_tea_party_wins_establishment_losses_and_democratic.html


Republican Neel Kashkari’s primary win in California means the party won’t have a statewide candidate embarrassing them down the ballot.

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The “establishment” isn’t holding on by appealing to the moderate natures of the GOP base. It’s joining them on the right. Really, we need to move on from this idea that the Chamber of Commerce, that enemy of EPA rules and the Affordable Care Act and torts, is nudging the GOP toward moderation.

Progressives sort of have their act together, at last. For all sorts of structural reasons, the left struggles to drive the Democrats’ agenda the way that the right owns the Republicans’ strategy. After Montana Sen. Max Baucus resigned for a diplomatic post in Beijing, and Sen. John Walsh was appointed to replace him, former Gov. Brian Schweitzer insisted that a primary between Walsh and progressive Republican-turned-Democrat John Bohlinger was “too close to call.” It was not. Walsh won by at least 41 points. The left is unlikely to upset an incumbent or “establishment” pick this year—see also New Jersey’s first congressional district, where party machine candidate Donald Norcross easily won a primary.

Yet in races where the establishment was weak, the left found ways to win. In New Jersey’s 12th district, safe blue turf, labor and progressive groups backed Bonnie Coleman, who will likely become New Jersey’s first black female member of Congress. In Iowa’s 1st district, being vacated by Senate candidate Bruce Braley, Democrats nominated a state senator who ran as a “proven progressive.”

And in California (where, if you were curious, Sandra Fluke advanced to a runoff for the state Senate), Democrats avoided some disasters. In 2012, Democrats punched each other out and failed to make the runoff in the 31st district, which they should naturally win. This year, as support for former Blue Dog Rep. Joe Baca flat-lined, Redlands Mayor Pete Aguilar made it into the runoff. In 2012, Democrats accidentally sent a check-bouncing businessman into a runoff with now-Rep. David Valadao. They corrected the mistake this year and advanced Amanda Renteria. And yet …