basquebromance
Diamond Member
- Nov 26, 2015
- 109,396
- 27,055
- 2,220
- Banned
- #1
i pray he wins. anyone but Greitens
excerpts:
Kunce (pronounced âKoontz,â he says, âand the other way will get you in a lot of trouble, so be real careful about thatâ) does not come from money. As he tells people on the campaign trail, he grew up in a working-class neighborhood of Jefferson City, the state capital, where medical bills related to his little sisterâs heart condition at one point bankrupted his family. But every year before school started, he and his siblings got to pick out new shoes from Payless. Heading into eighth grade, Kunce got a pair of spotless white Reeboks, a source of serious pride for a teenaged boy in the late 1990s. âIâm, like, strutting through the school, hoping someone will notice,â he recalls. Finally, a wealthier boy took note: âHey! Did you guys see Kunceâs new shoes?â
But the boy went on. âYou can always tell how poor somebody is when they get new shoes, because their socks are so gray and nasty.â
Kunce remembers spending the rest of the day trying to hide his socks, stuffing the tops into his shoes and walking uncomfortably on lumps of fabric. He was working so hard just to be cool. His parents were working so hard to afford that for him. And he remembers, in that moment, âjust this sinking feeling of, like, utter powerlessness.â
From there, back in the car, a self-conscious kidâs socks become a political parable that explains why Kunce thinks a state former President Donald Trump won by 15 points in 2020 might just send him, a Democrat who has never held elected office, to the Senate. He is seeking a seat Republicans have held since 1987, when Kunce, now a tall, long-limbed 39-year-old who favors hoodies and talks with his hands, was a toddler. But so many people around the state, he says, feel the same powerlessness he did as a teenager â that theyâre part of a system that insists on keeping them down, no matter how hard they try
Nine months ahead of the 2022 primary, he has attracted national attention and cable-news spots for his blistering critiques of the war in Afghanistan, where he deployed twice â Kabulâs collapse, he says, was inevitable; U.S. elites lied about the war for 20 years; and defense contractors got rich while communities like his hometown decayed. Last quarter, Kunce outraised all his opponents in the race, Republicans included. And no matter if the issue is war in the Middle East, agriculture in the Midwest or pretty much anything else, his appeal to unity is this: Whether youâre a Democrat or a Republican, youâre all getting screwed.
In this, he can sound remarkably like the more-famous Missouri populist who won a Senate seat with a similar-sounding message: Republican Josh Hawley. Kunce dislikes the comparison â he considers Hawley a âfake populist,â pointing to the senatorâs upbringing (son of a banker, private-school grad) and votes to confirm âcorporate judgesâ (he named Neil Gorsuch, though Hawley was not in the Senate when Gorsuch was confirmed). Donât even get Kunce started on Hawleyâs recent comments decrying video games and the state of American masculinity (Marines play video games, Kunce points out). But in rhetoric if not in backstory, it can be hard to tell the two apart. Although Kunce does not share Hawleyâs worries about corporate âwokeness,â both men blame multinational corporations, Big Tech, China and elites for what ails America in general and Missouri in particular. Both of them, furthermore, went to Yale â though Kunce emphasizes that he did so with financial aid. (Hawleyâs office declined to comment for this story.)
For an entire century beginning in 1904, Missouri was a famous political bellwether that picked the winner in every presidential election but one, when its voters went for Democrat Adlai Stevenson over Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956. âA mirror for the nation,â the Chicago Tribune called it in 2004, at the tail end of this period: âone part Dixie, one part industrial Detroit, a bit of Great Plains conservatism and a dash of the get-the-government-off-my-back-and-cut-my-taxes West.â Or as Slate put it that year: âIt is the swingiest of swingers,â where any discussion of politics likely contained âthe words âmicrocosmâ or ârepresentativeness.ââ
The Democratic collapse in the state came slowly, then suddenly, and the reasons people give vary. Missouri broke its president-choosing streak by voting twice against Barack Obama and has stayed Republican in presidential votes ever since. Ken Warren, a pollster at St. Louis University, believes race played a role in this but also notes that Obama eventually stopped campaigning in the state in 2008 after determining he didnât need the electoral votes, and he didnât personally return in 2012. In the same period, Democrats were getting further shellacked in a legislature where Republicans had taken control of both houses in 2003. (The state results came in tandem with the Democratsâ national shellacking in the 2010 midterms â a microcosm, if you will.)
Republicans also argue the state hasnât so much moved right as Democrats have moved left â the pro-gun, anti-abortion Missouri Democrat voter of yesteryear is simply a Republican now. âItâs clear national Democrats have abandoned Missouri,â says Steele Shippy, a senior strategist for Republican state Senate President Dave Schatz, whoâs also vying for Bluntâs seat. âMissouri Democrats have zero party infrastructure, traditional Democrat donors donât want to waste their resources, and they are in constant conflict with voters for embracing the socialist agenda being pushed by the DNC.â (Michael Butler, the current chair of the Missouri Democratic Party, concedes that party infrastructure in the state is ânot what it should be.â)
Then came Trump in 2016, and the state that supported one Clinton routed the other by nearly 20 points. Even Trump voters, though, were perfectly willing to vote for Democrats down the ballot. That was also the year Jason Kander â another Democratic veteran with a knack for media who, like Kunce, wanted Bluntâs Senate seat â shot to national prominence with a viral campaign ad in which he assembled an AR-15 blindfolded and said, âIâd like to see Senator Blunt do this.â Butler of the Missouri Democratic Party recalled seeing Trump signs alongside Kander signs in the Kansas City suburbs and even rural areas that year. âFolks try to say Trump voters wonât vote Democrat,â Butler told me. âBut thatâs just not true in Missouri.â Kander came within 3 points of unseating Blunt, netting hundreds of thousands of Trump voters in the state; without Trump on the ballot, he might well have won.
The Missouri electorate has since sent some other contradictory signals that Kunce holds up as evidence that the state, even now, isnât as red as it looks. Since 2018, Missourians have passed ballot initiatives to legalize medical marijuana, expand Medicaid and overturn a âright-to-workâ law opposed by labor unions. Meanwhile, the most recent St. Louis University poll, from over the summer, found that 73 percent of Missourians think the economy is not in good shape, perhaps underscoring the advantage of an economic message for a candidate like Kunce. On the other hand, slight majorities also thought the state government should ban abortions after eight weeks of pregnancy and that âcritical race theoryâ should not be taught in schools â both issues where Kunce trends to the left. The voter picture on pandemic restrictions is mixed, with voters about evenly split on how they rate the national response and mostly approving of their state and local response. Republican Senate candidates have spoken passionately against mask and vaccine mandates, but Kunce says he rarely hears voters bring up Covid. In any case, populist rhetoric seems to pay, at least for the GOP: Hawley beats Bluntâs approval rating by double digits.
Kunce wouldnât or couldnât name a single serving member of the House or Senate he admires or believes he resembles, professing not to follow Washington, D.C., personalities closely. For political models, he reaches all the way back to fellow Missouri Democrat Harry Truman â another veteran, of World War I, who desegregated the military, tried to get universal health care and, in Kunceâs view, fought for workers âand got pilloried for it.â
Among Democrats at the St. Louis senior center, Kunce also had an enthusiastic reception â up to a point. âYouâve got my vote!â one man said as he headed toward a cab.
Then he turned back with a follow-up question. âWhatâs your first name again?â
The Populist, Millennial Veteran Who Wants to Turn Missouri Blue
Lucas Kunce hopes his campaign against corporations and corruption can launch him into the Senate â and help Democrats win back the working class.
www.politico.com
excerpts:
Kunce (pronounced âKoontz,â he says, âand the other way will get you in a lot of trouble, so be real careful about thatâ) does not come from money. As he tells people on the campaign trail, he grew up in a working-class neighborhood of Jefferson City, the state capital, where medical bills related to his little sisterâs heart condition at one point bankrupted his family. But every year before school started, he and his siblings got to pick out new shoes from Payless. Heading into eighth grade, Kunce got a pair of spotless white Reeboks, a source of serious pride for a teenaged boy in the late 1990s. âIâm, like, strutting through the school, hoping someone will notice,â he recalls. Finally, a wealthier boy took note: âHey! Did you guys see Kunceâs new shoes?â
But the boy went on. âYou can always tell how poor somebody is when they get new shoes, because their socks are so gray and nasty.â
Kunce remembers spending the rest of the day trying to hide his socks, stuffing the tops into his shoes and walking uncomfortably on lumps of fabric. He was working so hard just to be cool. His parents were working so hard to afford that for him. And he remembers, in that moment, âjust this sinking feeling of, like, utter powerlessness.â
From there, back in the car, a self-conscious kidâs socks become a political parable that explains why Kunce thinks a state former President Donald Trump won by 15 points in 2020 might just send him, a Democrat who has never held elected office, to the Senate. He is seeking a seat Republicans have held since 1987, when Kunce, now a tall, long-limbed 39-year-old who favors hoodies and talks with his hands, was a toddler. But so many people around the state, he says, feel the same powerlessness he did as a teenager â that theyâre part of a system that insists on keeping them down, no matter how hard they try
Nine months ahead of the 2022 primary, he has attracted national attention and cable-news spots for his blistering critiques of the war in Afghanistan, where he deployed twice â Kabulâs collapse, he says, was inevitable; U.S. elites lied about the war for 20 years; and defense contractors got rich while communities like his hometown decayed. Last quarter, Kunce outraised all his opponents in the race, Republicans included. And no matter if the issue is war in the Middle East, agriculture in the Midwest or pretty much anything else, his appeal to unity is this: Whether youâre a Democrat or a Republican, youâre all getting screwed.
In this, he can sound remarkably like the more-famous Missouri populist who won a Senate seat with a similar-sounding message: Republican Josh Hawley. Kunce dislikes the comparison â he considers Hawley a âfake populist,â pointing to the senatorâs upbringing (son of a banker, private-school grad) and votes to confirm âcorporate judgesâ (he named Neil Gorsuch, though Hawley was not in the Senate when Gorsuch was confirmed). Donât even get Kunce started on Hawleyâs recent comments decrying video games and the state of American masculinity (Marines play video games, Kunce points out). But in rhetoric if not in backstory, it can be hard to tell the two apart. Although Kunce does not share Hawleyâs worries about corporate âwokeness,â both men blame multinational corporations, Big Tech, China and elites for what ails America in general and Missouri in particular. Both of them, furthermore, went to Yale â though Kunce emphasizes that he did so with financial aid. (Hawleyâs office declined to comment for this story.)
For an entire century beginning in 1904, Missouri was a famous political bellwether that picked the winner in every presidential election but one, when its voters went for Democrat Adlai Stevenson over Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956. âA mirror for the nation,â the Chicago Tribune called it in 2004, at the tail end of this period: âone part Dixie, one part industrial Detroit, a bit of Great Plains conservatism and a dash of the get-the-government-off-my-back-and-cut-my-taxes West.â Or as Slate put it that year: âIt is the swingiest of swingers,â where any discussion of politics likely contained âthe words âmicrocosmâ or ârepresentativeness.ââ
The Democratic collapse in the state came slowly, then suddenly, and the reasons people give vary. Missouri broke its president-choosing streak by voting twice against Barack Obama and has stayed Republican in presidential votes ever since. Ken Warren, a pollster at St. Louis University, believes race played a role in this but also notes that Obama eventually stopped campaigning in the state in 2008 after determining he didnât need the electoral votes, and he didnât personally return in 2012. In the same period, Democrats were getting further shellacked in a legislature where Republicans had taken control of both houses in 2003. (The state results came in tandem with the Democratsâ national shellacking in the 2010 midterms â a microcosm, if you will.)
Republicans also argue the state hasnât so much moved right as Democrats have moved left â the pro-gun, anti-abortion Missouri Democrat voter of yesteryear is simply a Republican now. âItâs clear national Democrats have abandoned Missouri,â says Steele Shippy, a senior strategist for Republican state Senate President Dave Schatz, whoâs also vying for Bluntâs seat. âMissouri Democrats have zero party infrastructure, traditional Democrat donors donât want to waste their resources, and they are in constant conflict with voters for embracing the socialist agenda being pushed by the DNC.â (Michael Butler, the current chair of the Missouri Democratic Party, concedes that party infrastructure in the state is ânot what it should be.â)
Then came Trump in 2016, and the state that supported one Clinton routed the other by nearly 20 points. Even Trump voters, though, were perfectly willing to vote for Democrats down the ballot. That was also the year Jason Kander â another Democratic veteran with a knack for media who, like Kunce, wanted Bluntâs Senate seat â shot to national prominence with a viral campaign ad in which he assembled an AR-15 blindfolded and said, âIâd like to see Senator Blunt do this.â Butler of the Missouri Democratic Party recalled seeing Trump signs alongside Kander signs in the Kansas City suburbs and even rural areas that year. âFolks try to say Trump voters wonât vote Democrat,â Butler told me. âBut thatâs just not true in Missouri.â Kander came within 3 points of unseating Blunt, netting hundreds of thousands of Trump voters in the state; without Trump on the ballot, he might well have won.
The Missouri electorate has since sent some other contradictory signals that Kunce holds up as evidence that the state, even now, isnât as red as it looks. Since 2018, Missourians have passed ballot initiatives to legalize medical marijuana, expand Medicaid and overturn a âright-to-workâ law opposed by labor unions. Meanwhile, the most recent St. Louis University poll, from over the summer, found that 73 percent of Missourians think the economy is not in good shape, perhaps underscoring the advantage of an economic message for a candidate like Kunce. On the other hand, slight majorities also thought the state government should ban abortions after eight weeks of pregnancy and that âcritical race theoryâ should not be taught in schools â both issues where Kunce trends to the left. The voter picture on pandemic restrictions is mixed, with voters about evenly split on how they rate the national response and mostly approving of their state and local response. Republican Senate candidates have spoken passionately against mask and vaccine mandates, but Kunce says he rarely hears voters bring up Covid. In any case, populist rhetoric seems to pay, at least for the GOP: Hawley beats Bluntâs approval rating by double digits.
Kunce wouldnât or couldnât name a single serving member of the House or Senate he admires or believes he resembles, professing not to follow Washington, D.C., personalities closely. For political models, he reaches all the way back to fellow Missouri Democrat Harry Truman â another veteran, of World War I, who desegregated the military, tried to get universal health care and, in Kunceâs view, fought for workers âand got pilloried for it.â
Among Democrats at the St. Louis senior center, Kunce also had an enthusiastic reception â up to a point. âYouâve got my vote!â one man said as he headed toward a cab.
Then he turned back with a follow-up question. âWhatâs your first name again?â
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