A silly slip of the tongue, obviously, but a fitting end to a brutal year for Arkansas' hapless outgoing Senator:
Sen. Mark Pryor: "My staff is simply awful...awesome..." https://t.co/BnJcOVvHTk
— Jose A. DelReal (@jdelreal) December 15, 2014Pryor sealed his fate by casting a decisive vote for Obamacare in 2009, which he's tried to defend ever since -- going so far as to call the law an "amazing success story" just before the 2013 implosion. Over the course of the fall campaign, Pryor referred to his Republican opponent as "superior Tom," and suggested that the man gunning for his job was afflicted with a sense of entitlement. This didn't sit well with some, considering that now Senator-elect Tom Cotton volunteered for combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan after graduating from Harvard Law. Sneering at someone with that resume for feeling "entitled" seems rather tone deaf and foolish under any circumstances; it seems mind-bogglingly stupid when the criticizer happens to be a scion of privilege and a Senator's son. Then again, sitting ducks sometimes struggle to hide their bitterness when they see their fortunes slipping away. Once the calendar flipped to September, Cotton built a solid lead over Pryor in the polls, with the final RCP average showing the Republican challenger holding a seven-point advantage over the incumbent:
Cotton's final victory margin? Seventeen points. Pryor won less than 40 percent of the vote. I'll leave you with a television ad Team Pryor was running in Arkansas exactly one year ago:
Curious: Did the Bible lead Pryor to kinda, sorta accuse Cotton of being pro-Ebola? While Arkansas voters may agree that "neither political party is always right," they appear to believe that one party in particular has largely cornered the market on being wrong.