I quit: an apology to the visionary Sarah Palin and the 2014 election.

Since 2008, Sarah Palin has been a household name, and the butt of an ungodly number of jokes.
Most of those jokes involve one of two things: shes a moron and she quit.

Now on the charge of her being stupid well:

BUT on making fun of her for quitting......well on that one we may owe Mrs. Palin an apology. In fact the last week suggests Mrs. Palin was merely a trendsetting ahead of her time.

See early last week Byron Mallott the Democratic Candidate for Governor of Alaska, basically the guy running for Palins old job, 1 uped her and quit before the election even happened.

Which means for the first time in the history of the State their wont be a Democrat on the ballot for Governor. 

And I bet your assuming the Democratic party of Alaska is FURIOUS right?

No actually they are freaking overjoyed.

You see, the Alaska Governors race was a 3 way race, and while the incumbent Republican was beating BOTH the democrat and the independent, polls suggested he would have a much harder time head to head with either one individually.

Oh and Mr. Mallott isnt out of the race, he was just announced as the candidate for Lt. Governor on the 3rd party ticket, basically ensuring his supporters wont vote Republican.

Which means Mr. Mallott may be on his way to successfully completing the very stunt that tragically ended the political life of the trailblazing Mrs, Palin, he may be about to win by quitting.

And a word of warning, this ISNT just another Alaska phenomenon. Its taking place ALL over the country.

It happened in Kansas this week too (sorta).

Democratic Senate candidate Chad Taylor announced HE too was quitting his 3 way senate race.
Now their is no "Lt. Senator" so clearly Taylor doesnt expect personal advancement from this.
But what he did expect was to totally fuck up the GOP's chances of taking the senate.

See most people believe the GOP will quite handily take the 6 seats they need to take the senate. In fact most polls only give the Democrats a 35-45% chance of retaining the senate (to be fair, this is similar to the 2012 numbers where Democrats actually gained seats)

The problem is that 55-65% chance of the GOP taking those 6 seats and the senate assumes the GOP wins all the seats they currently hold.

Kansas WAS one of their safest seats, despite having a very weak incumbent. The current senator was leading in the polls despite only drawing 36%, which is actually a winning margin in a close 3 way race.

But now, in a head to head race 36% is a landslide LOSS for the incumbent. You see the independent was a centrist, midway between the Democrat and the Republican, so its unlikely any of Taylors supporters would move to the Republican and not the Independent who is now the candidate most closely aliened with their views.

In fact the polls that have come out since Taylor quit have moved the Democratic chances of retaining the Senate up to 55-85% (no thats not a typo).

It seems that now needed 7th seat may be a "seat too far" for the republicans, especially with other should be safe seats (like McConnell's) more competitive then they should be.

EXCEPT it turns out the story has a twist......the person who oversees the election the Secretary of State of Kansas, Kris Kobach who is a Republican, is refusing to let the Democrat drop out claiming he legally can not drop out of the race.

Now in fairness, it does appear Kobach is legally correct. Kansas law only allows withdrawal from a race if the candidate would be unable to discharge the duties of the office. 

Now at the end of the day this may not matter much, even if his name is on the ballot, the law cant actually force Taylor to campaign or prevent him for campaigning for and endorsing the independent. But if his names on the ballot at all he will get some small number of votes....which could determine a close election.

But yet their is one more twist to go.  Taylor is claiming he actually talked to Kobach's office prior to announcing he was dropping out and got approval from the office to do it. Because of that, Taylor is indicating he may in fact sue.

If he does this could create a situation where the Republicans are actually in favor of the Democrats running, and the Democrats are in favor of not challenging the Republicans for the seat.

All in the name of quitting for that the entire party wins.

So yea like I said, I should stop making fun of Sarah Palin, it appears she was on to something when she quit........she was just too stupid to time it right or get an advantage out of it.