Jophiel wrote:
There's no evidence that cross-party voting as instrumental in Cantor's defeat anyway. He lost because the Republicans voted for the other guy, not because bored Democrats did so.
Yeah. Even if we assume every single person who voted in this primary but didn't vote in the last one was a Dem party crasher, Cantor should still have won by around 4k votes. And that seems remarkably unlikely. I have no clue how popular Cantor was in his district (among either set of voters), but at least his national persona seemed kind of placeholderish. He was a politician. He hit all the right talking points. Made the right contacts. Got the right endorsements. Etc. But I never saw him as someone who stood out. Now maybe that's just how you build a political career and advance into leadership positions in your party (I submit Boehner, McConnel, Pelosi, and Reid as examples).
Maybe the voters thought that an intelligent, educated, engaged person who actually cares about the issues (or hell, understands them for a start) was appealing. I know that most people like to think just in terms of what is best/worst for a given part, but aren't we always lamenting that our politicians seem to be more interested in playing the political game rather than doing the right thing by the voters? So along comes someone actually doing that, and in the Republican party no less. I don't see this as a loss at all. I don't necessarily interpret this in any sort of "Tea Party Resurgence" way either (Brat got very little support from that group). This was one candidate, who, for whatever reasons, appealed to the voters in the primary. So much so that he was able to unseat a much more powerful established politician.
If there's anything to read into this, it's the possibility that maybe this indicates a shift among voters to actually follow through on the whole "throw the bums out" idea. Not that this is always a good thing, mind you, but it's not always a bad thing either. If it makes politicians who think they are "safe" stop and actually think about their constituents a bit more, then it's a good thing for all of us, no matter what party we support.