Rantz: ‘Congress Sucks’ candidate beat self-loving Socialist millennial

Joshua Collins is a Socialist congressional candidate who seemed pretty certain he’d make it into the general election. But, as of now, he’s losing the WA-10 race to a candidate running in the Congress Sucks Party.

Inspired by Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Collins wanted to become the youngest member of Congress. And his plan was to bring his Tik Tok brand of Socialism to various social media platforms. It was supposed to catapult him into a seat in the House. He knew it wouldn’t be easy, but he sure was confident.

“I’m probably one of the Leftists with the biggest platform, possibly in the country,” Collins insufferably flexed on the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH.

Since that demonstrably false, arrogant statement, I’ve been waiting to see the results of the race, knowing there’s not a chance in the world he’d make it past the primary. But he did worse than anyone could have imagined.

Who beat Collins? So many people

As of Tuesday night, Collins was getting demolished in the race to replace retiring Congressman Denny Heck. He’s currently in 15th place, not quite yet reaching 1% of the vote.

But slightly more embarrassing: Richard Boyce is outpacing Collins. Boyce ran under the “Congress Sucks Party” (which doesn’t really exist).

Collins raised $246,735 in contributions. That’s a remarkable feat. He did it via his social media platforms and it is commendable. But like so many other millennials, he doesn’t quite know how to spend effectively. Despite spending all but about $19,000, Collins only earned 1,185 votes at last count. That’s not a great return on investment.

I voted for myself, so that's at least 1.

— Joshua 4 Congress (@Joshua4Congress) August 4, 2020

It was the arrogance

I don’t mean to pick on Collins. He did something that few people would do by running for office. That’s something to be commended. But, boy, was he arrogant. To so nonchalantly humble-brag about your social media following rubbed me the wrong way. And, like too many millennials, he lives his life on social media to the point of becoming insufferable.

The youngest person in Congress right now is AOC, who's 30. I'm 26.

— Joshua 4 Congress (@Joshua4Congress) August 5, 2020

Kudos, he could have been 26 in Congress. But he isn’t even the youngest candidate running. Madison Cawthorn, 24, ran in North Carolina. Unlike Collins, Cawthorn won an upset victory for the House. That was an inspirational run.

Collins made everything about him. 

Self-indulgent post after self-indulgent post trying painfully hard to get tweets to go viral. Seriously: You can picture him painstakingly crafting what he thinks is the perfect tweet rather than actually talking to voters.

Anarchists rn: That's a nice eviction court you have there. It'd be a shame if something… Happened to it…

— Joshua 4 Congress (@Joshua4Congress) July 31, 2020

Reminding you once again that the number one cause of homelessness is landlords hoarding all the homes.

— Joshua 4 Congress (@Joshua4Congress) July 29, 2020

Evictions are violence.

— Joshua 4 Congress (@Joshua4Congress) July 29, 2020

Billionaires existing is not in the best interests of the people imo https://t.co/T8WfFOUIdg

— Joshua 4 Congress (@Joshua4Congress) July 24, 2020

Collins clearly had some success in getting likes and retweets. But he spent more time working on his online persona than he did connecting with his community. It’s why he did so poorly. He just couldn’t get offline. And, in the end, he turned out to be just another vacuous social media personality with no ability to inspire anything more than a few likes.

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