RI-SEN: Chafee won't run for U.S. Senate, cites poll showing 'uphill climb'

[RandySF]

ROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Former U.S. Senator Lincoln Chafee will not run for the office he once held after all.

Chafee said in an interview Tuesday morning that he was motivated to consider challenging U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse in a Democratic primary because of his dismay at President Trump’s election in 2016, and the factors that led to it.

But conversations with voters around the state and polling figures dissuaded him from what he once considered a 90 percent certainty.

“The appetite amongst Democrats to debate what went wrong in 2016 wasn’t there to the extent that I would have liked,” Chafee said.

Chafee said he felt the national Democratic Party was unfair to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, putting its institutional thumb on the scale in favor of Hillary Clinton, who then went on to lose to Trump. But Democrats, Chafee said, would rather look forward, rather than back at 2016.


http://www.providencejournal.com/news/20180529/chafee-wont-run-for-us-senate-cites-poll-showing-uphill-climb

[Hortensis]

1. Good! Chafee has ties to Manafort's circle in Ukraine.

Who knows what else, besides Mueller perhaps. Chafee, Nunes style, feels the Mueller investigation is a waste of money and refuses to protect it from his old colleagues.

And although he was a Republican senator, then a Sanders-type "independent," he moved Democrat to run for president and still wears our label. So thank goodness. Maybe he'll even become proudly "I" again now, hope, hope.

One of the glories and a huge problem with representative government is that anyone can run for office. We don't want smoke-filled rooms back, but for the most part the powerful men in them filtered out the Chafees, the incompetents, the wingnuts, the betraying scorpions, the traitors and criminals, and so on.

[brooklynite]

2. One D Senator I don't have to worry about.....

[Hortensis]

4. What are you thinking of, Brooklynite?

[brooklynite]

6. Absent a Primary challenge (which, honestly, this wasn't a significant one), this is a SAFE-D seat..

I'm tracking four prospective pickups (AZ, NV, TN, MS2) and eight holds (ME. MN2, OH, FL, IN, MO, ND, WV). I don't need another one.

[Hortensis]

9. Oh, of course! That he was even considering a

primary challenge this year, with the required challenger attack ads, etc., would have taken him off my list all by itself.

[mcar]

3. That was a bad idea from the start

This is not the year to primary sitting Democrats.

[Hortensis]

7. For sure! Sounds like the party's opposition

to him goes deeper than that, though, and for more than just one reason. He's still running second to Sanders in that Sanders already used up all our tolerance for his troublemaking behaviors. Sanders, unlike Chafee though, isn't arguing with the Republicans that the investigation should be wrapped up before conclusion.

"I am not a Russian spy'" ~ Linc Chafee (joking to press)

[mcar]

8. I didn't even see that one

[Cha]

5. Good.. I can tell by

reading this.. he's delusional.

[Gothmog]

10. Yeah