GET BENT, TRUMP!! A Midterm Election Postmortem
While the Senate seats in Nevada (trending GOP) Arizona (trending Democrat,) and Georgia (who even knows?) are still up in the air, I think I can give my postmortem of what is, under any valid reading, a disappointing midterm election result for the party out of power.
In brief before I go long, I have broken down the big winners and the big losers to three each. The big losers are, obviously, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, and Kevin McCarthy. The big winners are, obviously, Ron DeSantis, Joe Biden, and Pat Toomey.
As that last one almost surely surprises anyone who doesn’t understand Pennsylvania state politics, let’s start with that one, shall we? I’ll keep going up by increasing obviousness until we get to the man-child himself.
Dr. Oz was a horrible candidate for a statewide race in Pennsylvania. The man is a carpetbagger from New Jersey, of all places. Pennsylvanians have an unofficial pastime where we make fun of New Jersey for being terrible in almost every conceivable way. It could almost be a competitive burn battle on ESPN 8. Beyond that, Oz is stuffed to the gills with horrific unfavorables within the state. John Fetterman, by contrast, is the well-liked sitting Lt. Governor. His stroke did not change that in any considerable fashion, especially since it happened many months ago. An October surprise? Different world. But we don’t live on Earth-Two where Mitt Romney won in 2012, do we? On top of everything, Doug Mastriano, a January 6 true believer who was at the U.S. Capitol during that mob temper tantrum, won the primary for the gubernatorial race. Josh Shapiro, his opponent, is the current sitting state Attorney General. Before the candidates for the GOP announced, I assumed Shapiro would lose, as he enacted all of current Governor Tom Wolf’s at least modestly unpopular COVID policies. But when your opponent is a complete and total whackadoodle with no money, almost anyone can win. That dragged down Oz further. Maybe Oz would have won if Toomey had run for governor or something…
Why is Pat Toomey a winner here? The only Senate seat currently held by the GOP that flipped this year was Toomey’s. If he hadn’t been bogged down by the man-child into retiring after only two terms, he almost surely would have cruised to reelection, like Rob Portman would have in Ohio. Toomey also only served three terms in the House before self-retiring from that and then coming back five years later to win the Senate. He was my Congressman, actually. I was there when his successor won on Election Day 2004, at Charlie Dent’s victory party. I was 14. That was a good night.
Back on topic: Pat Toomey gets the last laugh here, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Kevin McCarthy, who will likely have a small Republican majority in the House come January, is favored to become the next Speaker of the House should that all pan out, but I wouldn’t bet on it personally. Steve Scalise, who survived an attempted assassination by a far-left crazy man, is probably the best foot forward for marketing purposes. And everything is marketing after all. The young gun from New York is a little too obsequious to the man-child and less battle-tested. I doubt she leap frogs Scalise. Kevin always gets on his knees for that man-child, so I have a feeling the knives will come out publicly very shortly.
Kamala Harris will not be elected president at this rate. The Democrats are stuck with Biden as he got lucky with a favorable Senate map in an otherwise bad year for Democrats. He will glide to the nomination for president unless some development regarding his health prevents it. Even so, I doubt Kamala Harris wins the primary under those circumstances. Big LBJ 1968 energy coming off of her in such a scenario.
Joe Biden gets his victory lap for having a better midterm than Obama ever had, which is so funny to someone whose first eligible voting election was 2008. That goofy bastard did better than the golden child? Hilarious. I strongly dislike Biden for several reasons, his time as Senate Judiciary Chairman highest among them, but it’s funny, man.
Ron DeSantis is currently the best option for Republicans for president in 2024. This should be obvious to absolutely everyone, so I’m not gonna spend much time here. He won re-election by 20 points! The red wave pretty much materialized in all of Florida and a few select spots across the country. Lee Zeldin probably deserves RNC chair after his good fight in New York for governor. He almost surely flipped some House races to the GOP, just like DeSantis did in FL. But Zeldin still lost, unfortunately. The wave did not crest early enough for him to benefit electorally. DeSantis is the big dog going into 2024 and it ain’t particularly close.
I have delayed the inevitable far too long: DONALD TRUMP, YOU PETULANT MAN-CHILD SUPREME, GO POUND SAND!!
Come on, Russell, tell him how you really feel! This is a family publication. I unfortunately cannot. But I swear like a drunken sailor over on Twitter. Check me out there if you so desire. Absolute chaos. But, you know, that’s a good thing.
Donald Trump is the biggest loser in all of this. Obviously. It is his fault and his fault alone for the unnecessary losses the GOP suffered on Election Day. His hand-picked candidates lost in races a normal Republican would have won easily. The ones that did win underperformed other statewide Republicans within the same state. J. D. Vance won, but nowhere near as thoroughly as Mike DeWine crushed the governor’s race. Hershel Walker is in the fight of his life against Rev. Raphael Warnock, a race that shouldn’t even have been close considering how easily Brian Kemp won the gubernatorial race and Brad Raffensperger won the Secretary of State race. But, of course, Warnock is a Senator in the first place because of Trump’s never-ending 2020 tantrum. And Kemp and Raffensperger won with Trump trying to sink them in both the primary and the general. The man is pathetic.
Trump used donations from saps to build a massive war chest, which he mostly refused to use to support his own hand-picked candidates who won their primaries. And look what happened! Trump will almost surely sink Hershel Walker in the runoff when he makes his “big announcement” that he’s running for the presidency in 2024 on November 15th. He does not have it in him to willingly endorse DeSantis, being he has the largest ego I may have ever seen in a public figure, although Obama would probably make it a fight. Not decided in the first round, in other words.
I could keep banging the drum, but DeSantis is the GOP’s best bet for 2024 as it stands right now. Tim Scott would make an excellent VP pick in my always so humble opinion. Let’s chest kick Donald Trump off the nearest cliff in such a way that his cult fan base doesn’t egg him on to do a stupid third party bid or something equally infantile and destructive. The media at large wants the Trump train to continue until the heat death of the universe. They seemingly no longer regret creating this monster. I fear the GOP will not be rid of this virus until Trump is six feet under. With the advances of modern medical science, that could be 20 years or more away. Imagine that and weep.
Always love the local color-PA. I myself lived right by the ballpark in Alexandria VA where Scalise was shot. I heard all the ambulances going by which made that more real for me and I sympathize w Scalise for the shooting, even tho he is too extreme for me.
I recently started going undercover on truthsocial and on it almost all various pols talking heads and regular-not-famous-people are all in for trump, in a universe they live in where Tuesday was a GOOD day for trump. Tbf maybe 3-5%? of the not-famous people have started to post ‘let’s move on’ stuffReport
Trump was an idea instigated by the Hillary Campaign.
“Who is the Republican no one could vote for?”
She moved heaven and earth to get him elected (some of that was stupidity).
Trump’s friend got two dead men elected (one for PA senate, one as a Congressman) — on zilch for funds, as the DNC had bailed early on PA. Now he’s getting promoted to a place where he can get more done (and by “more done” we mean more sabotage).
Ain’t dead yet, dudes.Report
It didn’t help that the party didn’t tell him to pound sand in 2011 after all that Birther business.Report
The more time goes on, the more obvious it seems that the 2012 election and the post-mortem was a major inflection point in Republican party politics.
They openly acknowledged that one course of recovery might be to moderate on racism and culture war issues.
But instead they chose Trump.
I’m not saying it will result in their political failure. In fact it might lead to a long period of their absolute power.
But 2012 was the last time anyone could think of the Republican Party as a normal political party, that is, a party which has as its unspoken foundations, the respect for democracy and the rule of law.Report
He could have been gracious or at least quiet, but nope. You do have to admire his consistency.Report
CNN has called both Arizona and Nevada for the Democrats, which technically makes Georgia superfluous.
I was going to make a summary of the House, but honestly…well, let’s just say that the Republicans seem to lead in 10, and need only 7…except a lot of these leads are fairly close with absurdly small amounts of returns in.
Like, CA-13 has them leading by 84 votes with only 46% reporting, for the absurd example.
That said, the Democrats are barely leading in just as many races.
In the races that actually _seems_ to be numerically close to finished, Republicans have three or four, depending on where you draw the line. (Sadly, one of those is Boebert, barely, but that’s 99% counted and I have to honestly let her have it.) The Democrats seem to have three or four also.
So that would be something like Republicans 214 or 215, Democrats 207 or 208. Needing to get to 218.
The problem is that a large chunk of the _remaining_ seats, the ones that aren’t counted enough to figure anything out about are California seats, and all of are ‘close-ish’ now, and I’m feeling like late ballots will break Democratic? Maybe I’m wrong, but…the House race is not actually over yet. Call me optimistic, maybe i don’t know how California votes, but…it is at least going to come down to that.
Huh. CNN just literally called one for the Democrats while I was typing.Report
He can’t GET BENT. He IS bent.Report