So I was playing pickleball this morning here in sunny Columbia, MO and thought a guy playing on the other court was Lucas Kunce. Lucas Kunce is running for US Senate against one of the top five worst men in the world, Josh Hawley, and seems like a decent guy. He’s from Jefferson City, a half hour south. I stood next to him once at a fundraiser while he talked to my wife about gun policy. His policy positions jibe with my preferences and values and with reality. Most important, he’s not Josh Hawley, but so is the ham sandwich I would vote for before Hawley.
At any rate, it wasn’t Lucas Kunce. I knew it couldn’t be him because what would he be doing playing pickleball on a Sunday morning in the heat of campaign season and he didn’t seem tall enough. Then when he and the man he was playing with needed people and I was sitting out over at my game, I went over and played with him and confirmed that he really wasn’t Lucas Kunce, and told him that from a distance he kind of looked like he was. His response was to say no and say he just moved here and to ask if that’s how people pronounce Kunce.
I hope it was.
I tell this fairly boring story because I was excited to meet Lucas Kunce, which means I was excited to meet someone running for national office from Missouri, which means I think that I must believe he has a chance to win. Polls says he does, and while I don’t trust polls much, I do believe that he’s an appealing candidate (even John Goodman says so) who’s got good comms people and some fight in him and that Trump’s increasing inability to not seem like an unbalanced malignant narcissist will prove to be a down-ballot drag and that Missouri has never been as red as it’s recently seemed, gerrymandering and all. Like Trump, Hawley has the ability to convince the current GOP base that he’s on their side, but the rest of Missouri might not be buying what he’s selling.
If you’re not from here, or from another red state, you might not understand how remarkable it feels to be excited to meet a candidate for national office from your state who might actually win. If you haven’t endured years of being represented by people who believe that all you need for a good political ad (other than bigotry and xenophobia) is blowing things up, or shooting them, or lighting them on fire, you might not sense the weight of this moment for us.
This morning’s non-encounter brought the moment home to me. Sure, I’m filled with dread like always, as the GOP isn’t even trying to hide their attempts at ratfuckery, but the sinking feeling of just a month ago, when Biden had not yet stepped down from the campaign, is gone, and now I have to admit that to myself, and not just in terms of the presidential election. If Missourians give money and knock doors and turn out, we could have people in office from our state who give a shit about it for a change. Democrats from Missouri for a long time had to be careful not to stray too far left, and recently that’s not been enough. But it’s possible that neither is the case any more; a certain kind of left populism seems to be having a moment and the momentum driven by defense of abortion rights may finally prove too much for the Gerrymandering Old Party, here and across the country, meaning Democrats can be Democrats here and win.
I hope so.
Samuel Cohen 
Was the choice of ham as your sandwich ingredient intentional? Viz.,
https://missouriindependent.com/2024/08/15/why-are-you-so-weird-lucas-kunce-taunts-josh-hawley-during-squabble-about-debates/
It was, though that’s the saying, but I was going to make it explicit with a clip from the ham breakfast but didn’t want to be a ham