Will Great Falls Dems Learn Or Continue To Lose?
On October 10th I posted my predications for Election Day 2024 on my personal Facebook page, which you can read here.
Here is a summary of those predictions with some added after-the-fact comments:
“Montana remains ruby red with all statewide offices being won by the GOP, including Gianforte winning by a lot over Busse.” Both correct. Not a single Democrat won a statewide office and the Busse/Graybill ticket lost in a blowout. (‘Get Your Montana Back’ will go down as the most pretentious, phony, ineffective campaign slogan in Montana history.)
“Sheehy beats Tester for Senate and the Republicans win both MT U.S. House seats – Eastern district by a landslide, Western district by a little.“ All three correct, except the Zinke margin was bigger than I predicted.
“State legislature remains firmly in the hands of a GOP majority in both chambers, but losing a super majority by a couple of seats.” Correct, mostly due to redistricting.
“Cascade County/Great Falls legislative delegation stays nearly all GOP with Dems flipping one of the open seats – not two.” Exactly correct. In the two open seats, Jane Weber (D) beat Hannah Trebas (R) and Rina Moore (D) lost to Melissa Nikolakakos (R). Republicans won every other seat locally.
“GOP keeps the three Cascade County Commission seats.” Yep.
“And finally (drumroll please) Trump becomes the 47th POTUS in a close win.” Correct, however I missed the margin again. It was a landslide, not a “close win”.
The day after the election I was asked by one of the local Democrats who campaigned hard but lost how I was able to predict the outcomes so accurately. It’s not difficult – just ‘read the room’, which in this case is the local and state political climate and the mood of voters.
And when it comes to the Great Falls and state Democrat Party I said the following in the last sentence of my predictions post:
“If Dems have any chance of winning again in MT and locally they’ve got to return to their common sense, working class roots and abandon the kooky, wokey nonsense that destroyed their brand and cost them dearly with voters.“
Will local Democrats make the necessary changes in their party leadership and messaging, or will they double down on losing?
My prediction is that they will do the latter.
