He made a strong run of it.

There was no other sort of Dem in Montana who'd have done better.

singing at nudist colonies.

Who is the most popular man in a nudist colony ?

This better be worth it

They elect Democrats but this guy didn't cut it.

He was popular in the state and independent of the Party machine, which couldn't hurt in a state like that. Someone like Baucus would have done just as badly and maybe worse.

The progressive lost in Montana tonight.

The state has gotten worse. Progressives should get NO blame here.

I don't think progressives deserve fault, I just think the wrong candidate was chosen.

Sorry, I just do. He was chosen in Montana (he beat all others) and there in no proof anyone would have done better the way Montana has gone further right.

Just our gut feelings.

too bad all the early voting was in. But deplorables are so bad that they might have even turned out more after the assault. Awful.

A centrist candidate more suited to the state might have won. We will have another chance...in 18 to pick a better candidate. I think the narrow loss bodes well for our chances.

If no centrist stepped up to the plate, this candidate was entitled to the full monetary support of the state and national party.

lose. We have to face that reality and use it to recruit candidates who can win.

Nobody barred them from filing.

If this was the guy who did choose to run, he was owed as much support as you think Ossoff deserves in Georgia(and all the support the DNC and DCCC refused to give our candidate in the special election in Kansas).

And they did support this campaign.

a candidate running running on a liberal platform complete with rallies with Sen. Sanders is not a winning strategy for a deeply red state?...I have to wonder with a better candidate more suited for this state... could we have turned this seat blue? I still think it was a difficult thing to do and just coming close bodes well for us.

that should automatically have meant the DCCC giving the candidate as much support as they're giving Ossoff.

It's beginning to look as though the DCCC doesn't think any of the races other than the Georgia one matter-and that's a tragic mistake.

If we ONLY take the Georgia seat, we're still in decline. If we ONLY elect Ossoff, we've lost overall for the year.

you know Sen. Sanders campaigned for him right? I don't know how much help that would be in Montana, but he did...Quist refused help from the DCCC...the take away from this race is we need to field proper candidates because a centrist Democrat beat the GOP asshat last year for governor...we might have won, but not with Quist. We will have another go at it in 2018 and with the right candidate, we have a shot. I never expect Quist to win...but did send him money...hoping.

And yes, Bernie campaigned for the guy, but that doesn't make it Bernie's fault that he lost(OR that we lost in November-Bernie was blameless in that).

I am sure Sen Sanders did what he could, but it was never going to be enough...bad fit.

Not a very appealing excuse but they were proven right.

And my understanding is there was no primary but the party decided the candidate. Nice guy but wasn't ​the best choice.

The fact is, we've lost most of the time in Montana no matter WHO we ran since 1981.

The candidate we had did as well as anybody could have done, given the state. He's done nothing to deserve being trashed here.

(btw, Ed Muskie's 1972 platform was massively to the left of any Democratic nominee we've had since), there has to be a Muskie available.


(brief digression...as an eleven-year-old in '72, I supported Muskie to start with-then switched to McGovern-still think Ed Muskie would have been a good president-but if Muskie could be brought down that quickly in a Democratic primary over a fairly trivial right-wing smear, doesn't that pretty much discredit the argument that he'd have been a much stronger candidate in the fall? God knows what CREEP would have thrown at him if he'd been nominated).

He was never going to win.

It's not as though the state party deliberately turned down other people for this contest who'd have done better.

Going into it, nobody thought Gianforte could be beaten.

I think a six-point loss was the best we could possibly have done here.

with the right candidate...but some won't accept this and think that progressives can win everywhere...I wish that were true. Joe Manchin in a year where the Senate is in real danger is being primaried by a candidate who would have no chance in a general and could make re-electing him more difficult.

The candidate was fine. We weren't going to win there just yet it turned out. No blame goes to progressives.

If we improve our standing in each district by 8 points in 018 we will be in great shape and win the House.

Looking at how the dictrict has gone, progress was made. I wonder what the Repukes have to do to stop Repuke red staters from turning out, though.

msnbc showed on example where the same day voting was similar to the early votes.

Both are in their second terms. There were better candidates for our side. Our candidate ran hard and that was good to see, but he was too far out for that state.

No so called new Democrat/Progressive can win in Montana.

it's back to playing guitar drinking beer and looking at butt cracks for Rob Quist.

It's not like there was a massively better candidate who was cheated out of the Democratic nomination.

and deal with it. We need to field candidates who can win in red area and look for opportunities as Howard Dean did...wish he was still the DNC head. We need practical people at the DNC not ideologues.

were a large part of this. It's one of the reasons I'm dubious about early voting.

If all Montanans had to vote today, this might well have turned out differently.

Gianforte won by 7 points, his predecessor won by 16%

Let's see how each party would have taken it:

The Democratic candidate loses by 7 points: "Oh my gaaaaaawd we LOST!!! WTF?? I hate being in this country right now!"

The Republican candidate loses by 7 points: "That we cut the lead of their candidate by over half shows that residents of this district are growing tired of liberal politics as usual and are looking for a change."

Instead of running with this Dem talking heads will be on teevee tomorrow acting as if this single election in a lightly populated, conservative leaning state is nothing less than THE tipping point on the road to Armageddon.

Countless states simply will not elect a perceived liberal. Montana is one of them. Shocking development. Next thing you know we'll have lousy polling in Alaska. I'll be shocked again.

Exit polls in Montana were last conducted in 2012. It was 40% self-identified conservatives and 19% self-identified liberals.

Uh, that might be a bit of a hint. For reference purposes, the national exit poll in 2012 was 35% conservatives and 25% liberals.

In Las Vegas anybody who consistently swings against the mathematical realities leaves town broke on a bus. I've known many who qualify. Somehow in politics and particularly in Democratic circles it's popular to swing against the math time and time again. No chance and no clue.

We are making a statement, after all.

Moderates and complacency were our only chance, given that devastating ideological split. I warned Chris Bowers in 2004 that he had absolutely no idea what he was doing, when he strived to cleanse the party via more progressive nominees. That's swell in the northeast but mostly masochistic everywhere else. Minority guarantee.

What I warned about has indeed evolved, that pushing to the extremes can only benefit the Republicans because they can get far more of their outer ranks elected, and therefore the notion of what a typical conservative is has shifted sharply to the right. No other possibility made a fleck of sense, from a handicapping perspective.

BTW, I can't wait for genius Rachel Maddow to tout favorable polling numbers in some state that similarly tilts 42-17 or thereabouts. She is dependably dunce in that regard.

There wasn't even anyone like that AVAILABLE to run in Montana(there wasn't in the Kansas race, either).

and maybe we won't win such states...or maybe a carefully selected 'boring' candidate similar to Joe Manchin could win. However, one should consider it was closer than expected and that is a good sign for us ...I think Georgia could go our way...we shall see.

Moderate Democrats win there. The same people that chose Gianforte for the US House seat chose a Democrat over him in November. Both races were statewide.

And the candidates you listed there also simply had a higher profile than the candidate we had this time.

Plus, special elections tend to have a lower turnout than general elections.

It's not as simple as "progressives bad...moderates good".

Plus, there's a limit to the good that comes from electing a "moderate" Dem.

Remember how many of THAT sort of Dem spent the first two years of the Obama Administration blocking the legislation that mattered or watering it down to next to nothing, which is basically the same thing as blocking it.

How effective are we going to be as a party on a long-term basis if we accept ALWAYS having a large bloc of Dem congressmembers and senators who base their political identity on the assumption that it's WRONG to be progressive and that what most of the party wants has to be stopped? Do we have to campaign on the assumption that we can never actually win the argument? That the other side has a right to a strong set of core values and we don't?

And what's the point of even contesting these elections if the only one the party's going to TRY to win is the one in Georgia? Ossoff is an ok guy, but if that's the ONLY seat we flip of any of these, we have no chance in 2018. Ossoff was never the only one of these special election candidates worthy of full DNC-DCCC support, and electing no one but him makes this whole series of campaigns meaningless.

I want use to get a solid super majority of Democrats,,whether they be moderate or liberal. At that point, we can go about pushing the bar higher. This backfilling where some in our party savage moderates and that results in republicans being elected is devastating the Democratic Party and the country. There is no way you can convince me that we would not be better off if Gore had been elected in 2000 instead of Shrub. The destruction the nation suffered under Bush plagued President Obama every day of his two terms.

BTW, if not Tester, then who can win in Montana for Democrats. The purity crap could cost us Senate seats when McConnell is relishing the chance to have a certain 50 seats so that he can ram everything through, with no regard to what Democrats want. Such foolishness.

Don't assume I disagree with you on that.

At some point, though, we HAVE to have a Democratic president who actually challenges the right-wing narrative, on economic issues as well as social issues, or we'll keep repeating the cycle of the last two DEM presidencies-a brief time in the majority and then a GOP congressional takeover the party never tries to undo for the rest of the Dem presidency..

And I have no intrinsic problem with moderates...other than the fact that they tend to believe they have the right to hold the rest of the party hostage until every proposal is watered-down to nothing. If they would recognize that they are just one PART of the party, and not entitled to call the tune on everything, that would be much more workable.

BTW, if Quist hadn't been chosen, who the hell else was there? I'm pretty sure the people you've mentioned are basically the last three "centrist" Dems in the entire MT Democratic Party. The slates of "moderates" they've run for the state legislature have basically all gone down in flames.

Those reasons.

The nation is becoming more progressive, regardless of what people claim. Could we have had medical pot in like 40 states a decade ago, or same sex marriage? I am tired of getting pulled back down be people that insist they know better. I want to see the nation become a California, where being a liberal was a joke twenty years ago, moderates could get elected, now, republicans are becoming endangered there. Elect Democrats and stay on their asses to govern well and in our interest, once we get a super legislative advantage, elect more liberal candidates.

And part of the "staying on their asses" needs to be the option of primarying them if they are hostile enough to what MOST of the party wants.

To me, it's not about picking a place in some imaginary "center" of the spectrum to win in states that are more conservative. It's about recognizing that what a lot of conservatives value more than anything is practicality, and then presenting progressive ideas as the most practical solutions. Doing that, you can win over the voters who identify as "conservative" because to them, that word means "common sense".

I would want someone to quietly find a strong Democrat for his state and "encourage" him to retire and endorse the more suitable Democrat.

The recruitment of such a candidate would require at least floating the possibility of a primary challenge.

I am not ok with viciously beating people that are on our side up, then refusing to vote for them in the General. If there is one lesson that we should learn from 2016 is that gutting our eventual nominee only gives republicans hopes for victory.

And this should put an end to the meme that if we move left, we win in red areas...Quist was strongly supported by Sen. Sanders, but he still lost. A moderate candidate can win in states like this...but a visit from a liberal party leader is probably not helpful.

It was no surprise. The fact that chump won by 20 points and he still has like 85% of rethug support didn't surprise me. It the election was held in September then we might have seen more of a peel off. Slowly(much too slowly for my taste) chumps support is being peeled off. But it is too soon. I really don't see anything that will get people behind chump. If he gets us into a bogus war due to his negligence there are too many of us that will know he let it happen on purpose.

Montana is too red right now. And all the money they poured in for Gianforte was almost unsurmountable for Quist to overcome. I think Quist should try once again for the November 2018 election. And make himself known more in the state. GIanforte was a carpetbagger!

The thing I can never understand though, if instead of paying superpacs money to buy politicians so much money to get elected why not pay people more money and increase their profits with more people spending money on goods and services? So much money wasted buying politicians that could be put to better use. Improving our infrascture,education, etc.

Let's just stop and admit that the guy we had was not right for winning in that state. A moderate Democrat with a sound message likely could have won.

The little I read indicated that he was incredibly lightweight on the political side of things. I don't know much about Montana's political culture, but it does appear that they split their tickets often.

We'll get another shot at the Stone Cold Steve Austin wannabe. Does he have to run again next year since this was a special election?

I feel bad that voters didn't stand up against the guy after he assaulted someone. I dunno. They voted for Trump and they knew what he had done too, so I shouldn't be surprised. But the total lack of basic civility is painful for me to accept.

If an immigrant did what this guy did, they would deport him. But since it was a rich white Republican, they elected him to congress instead. Sad.