About Last Night: Overreaction Wednesday Edition
There were several notable election last night, meaning there is reaction — and overreaction — this morning:
Kentucky:
Democrat Andy Beshear has declared victory in a tight race for Kentucky governor, but incumbent Gov. Matt Bevin says he will not concede – at least not yet.
With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Beshear had a lead of 4,658 votes out of more than 1.4 million counted, or a margin of 0.3 percentage points.
Republicans won many races across the board in Tuesday’s election.
CAMERON WINS ATTORNEY GENERAL: Republican Daniel Cameron was elected Kentucky attorney general, becoming the first African American in the state’s history to win the office. Cameron was backed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Donald Trump.
ADAMS WINS SECRETARY OF STATE: Republican attorney and former elections board member Michael Adams won the race to become Kentucky’s next secretary of state. Adams played up his conservative connections and expertise in election law to overcome the more well-known candidate, former Miss America Heather French Henry.
HARMON WINS AUDITOR: Republican Mike Harmon won reelection as Kentucky auditor. Harmon defeated Democrat Sheri Donahue, a cybersecurity expert who audited weapons projects for the U.S. Navy. Harmon, a former state representative, said his job since getting elected in 2015 has been to “follow the data” wherever it leads.
BALL WINS TREASURER: Republican incumbent Allison Ball won a second term as Kentucky’s treasurer. Ball defeated Democrat Michael Bowman, a bank executive and former legislative aide on Louisville’s Metro Council. Ball, of Prestonsburg, said in her first term as treasurer she has been a watchdog of taxpayer dollars, has stopped fraud and embezzlement attempts and promoted financial literacy.
Virginia:
CNN
A Democratic trifecta in Virginia
Democrats cemented a new reality in Virginia on Tuesday: For decades a Republican stronghold, and then a swing state, the commonwealth is now controlled by Democrats.
The party won majorities in Virginia’s House and Senate, gaining full control of the state government for the first time in two decades.
The victories put Gov. Ralph Northam and Democrats in the legislature in position to pursue a progressive agenda — including gun control measures, which a majority of Republicans had blocked, and a higher minimum wage.With the “trifecta” of the House, Senate and governor’s office, Democrats will also control the redistricting process after the 2020 Census, drawing the new maps for congressional and state legislative districts.
That was a key focus for the party in the wake of state-level losses during former President Barack Obama’s administration. Each trifecta represents a foothold that can be used to bolster the party’s ranks in Congress and to cement their status as the majority party in statehouses for another decade.
Mississippi:
Mississippians on Tuesday elected (mostly Republican) statewide and district leaders for the next four years.
An at-a-glance look at statewide and district race winners from Mississippi’s general election Tuesday, based on unofficial results. Bold indicates declared winnersGovernor
Hickingbottom, Bob (CST) .3%
Hood, Jim (Dem) 46.6%
Reeves, Tate (GOP) 52.2%
Singletary, David (Ind) 1%Lieutenant governor
Hosemann, Delbert (GOP) 60.2
Hughes, Jay (Dem) 39.8
Attorney general
Collins, Jennifer Riley (Dem) 41.99%
Fitch, Lynn (GOP) 58.01%Secretary of state
DuPree, Johnny (Dem) 40.89%
Watson, Michael (GOP) 59.11%Treasurer
Green, Addie Lee (Dem) 38.99%
McRae, David (GOP) 61.01%
I agree on Kentucky. On the other hand, Virginia is a big deal that everyone will hand wave away because of some weird non-sense reason.Report
Sounds about right.Report
Virginia represents the continued consolidation of the NE urban corridor, which is a big deal to me for assorted reasons. I put Bevin in Kentucky in the same group with Kobach in Kansas last year and Moore in Alabama in 2017 — it’s possible for the Republicans to run such bad candidates that the suburbs rebel, even in states considered deep red, and swing the statewide vote. Four years ago I thought Edwards in Louisiana was in the same group, getting to effectively running against the by-then-despised Bobby Jindal’s record; he may prove me wrong come the 16th.Report
I’m not sure it can even fairly be called NE anymore. Eventually it’s going to reach Raleigh.Report
It’s been the some combination of northeast, BosWash, urban corridor, and/or megalopolis since at least the 1960s.
The people who do this stuff professionally seem to think that Raleigh will be the north end of a Piedmont Atlantic megaregion.Report
Republicans got more votes in Virginia that Democrats did, so if it was 2020 Trump would have carried it. The did some recent redistricting so a few seats flipped. The caveat is that a large percentage of the seats on both sides went uncontested, so there could be a lot of people who didn’t even bother to show up, especially Democrats, who had far more uncontested seats (about 20% of them).
Trump could help by moving more federal offices out of DC and out to Kansas, South Dakota, and Alaska, effectively depopulating Northern Virginia and making Washington safer, just like Lincoln did.Report
I like it!
A centrally planned capital city built in the uninhabited interior, with the forcible relocation of entire populations.
http://www.aboutbrasilia.com/Report
Its always stupid to make a lot about a single data point or race.
But the trends do tell a story now, that there is considerable movement in favor of the Dems across the country.
Trump still has about a 50-50 shot at re-election.
But I feel better today than yesterday.Report
I think measured pleasure is a sensible reaction. I am especially tickled that repeatedly running at the ACA in Kentucky is one of the elements that may have cost Bevin his race. Also Trump campaigned in Kentucky for him and may have come up short. Really not much in the way of bad news from the results today.Report
The theory I think makes the most sense is that Trump helped Bevin more than he hurt him. Democrats just want Trump to be an anchor and in some places like Virginia and the PA suburbs, he is.Report
In KY that is probably an accurate take.Report
Bevin did more than that. At one point I think he was going to require people to get jobs or lose their health care benefits, or some such thing. “Yo, governor, they’re on disability because they’re disabled.”Report
I mostly care about Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania:
That is bad for Republicans.Report
I don’t know from Philadelphia, but here in CA, I watched as the GOP stronghold of Orange County slowly turned from red to blue over the course of a decade.
It wasn’t a shock election, or a one time scandal. It was just what we are seeing over the country, demographic shifts to which the GOP wasn’t able to adapt.
For example, OC has a very large Vietnamese population from the postwar diaspora. The first gen were/are staunchly Republican. But the second gen are mostly Dems. Partly as the memory of Communism fades, but also because of the white nationalist turn of the party.
As we’ve mentioned here many times, it didn’t have to be this way. The GOP could have made different decisions- Prop 187 in the 90s, the Tea Party in the 00’s; Trump in 2016;.
And the future isn’t written either. White nationalism has always been a potent force in America, and that isn’t changing anytime soon.Report
The GOP’s response to being a rump party in California is to double and triple down on the things that made them a rump party.Report
This is a side effect of the ‘Every politician believes every group, both their own constituents and any other group including the entire country, is more conservative than that group actually is’.
The result is that basically everyone goes more conservative when they lose. The left and the right. Regardless of whether or not such a shift is even _slightly_ helpful to getting back into power.Report
New Poll Shows Democratic Candidates Have Been Living in a Fantasy World
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/11/poll-trump-beats-democrats-swing-state-biden-warren-sanders.html
That piece is by Johnathon Chait, certainly no Conservative. And he has decent poll numbers to back it up. Buckle up, ’cause it is going to be a bumpy ride!Report
Sure, but, concretely, there was more good news for Dems last night than good news for Republicans. The good news for Republicans that I’ve seen all takes the form of tea leaves.Report
It is a good piece and I agree with it; Chait is nakedly trying to push his point that a more moderate Democratic nominee than Warren is a good idea despite what the twitterati may assert. Of course, in this case, Chait is kind of rowing with the currents. Biden is still leading the polls. If he wasn’t so old and so Biden-y he’d probably be ten points further up.Report
One outlier poll confirms my priors says poster with a pathological hatred of Democrats and another poster who wants it to always be the DLC forever.
Democrats won on progressive agendas in Virginia and won.Report
Heh, I kind of doubt M4A was on the list of campaign policies the Democratic Party of Virginia ran on.Report
They ran on the Medicare expansion, abortion rights, the environment, gay rights, and the ERAReport
So basically standard Democratic policy, no problem there.Report
Which is much further to the left than anything Democrats ran on from 1994-2012 depending on how you look at it.Report
“Standard Democratic policy” that would’ve been to the left of every major Democrat running for POTUS in 2008.Report
Everyone from Biden to the left of Biden is running to the left of the Dems in 2008. I’m not denying the field is running to left to varying degrees. It remains to be seen if it’s a good idea. Warrens numbers are no longer marching upward, but this could just be a pause. It’s way too soon to say.Report
Ky Republicans to fight this like hell
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2019/11/will-the-kentucky-gop-simply-steal-the-governorship-backReport
I’m not sure what they’re thinking, because Bevin losing is probably a win for Republicans. He’s a Libertarian nutcase who supports cock fighting, primaried Mitch McConnell, and probably learned about conservatism from a coloring book. When he first appeared on the scene I figured he was a sleeper agent sent here by Hillary, and haven’t shaken that notion. Much of the time I think he’s just a Steven Colbert pretending to be arch Republican to see how extreme he can go with his shtick.
What other Republicans, other than missionaries, have four Ethiopian children on top of their other six? Now we all know that when a normal Republican goes to Ethiopia they come back with a bunch of dead giraffes or lions, not a passel of young ‘uns. But we’re afraid that if we say anything about it, Bevin will come back with a bunch of stuffed elephants and the head of an extinct black rhino, say something stupid about it, and make us look really bad.Report
Bevin was never a loyal Party member.
He is now just a blurry image on the podium next to Trump.Report
If you’re not a fan of police unions, there’s good news from last night:
Report
Some context:
SF has the first DA election without an incumbent in 110 years. The main contenders were and are Suzy Loftus, a career ADA and Chesa Boudin, a public defender. Chesa’s parents were in the Weather Underground and he was raised by Bill Ayers in Chicago. His parents are also convicted felons. He ran as a reformist DA like the one in Philadelphia. The police unions* spent hundreds of thousands campaigning against him in a stealth campaign.
He is currently neck and neck with Loftus. Mail in ballots need to be counted and rank choice voting performed. The other two candidates were eliminated.
*I thought Jaybird did not like police unions and would welcome their hatred but apparently he prefers playing Fox News and raising bogey men specters.Report
Saul, I *DON’T* like Police Unions.
I *DO* see this as good news.
Now I’m not particularly inclined to think that getting rid of them won’t have unintended (unpleasant) consequences… but I am one of the people who sees this as good news.
Even without having the context you so graciously provided.Report
Also I think her husband is a police officer.Report
Suburbs across the United States went against the GOP:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/11/republican-party-suburbs-kentucky-virginia/601504/Report
Kentucky only has two real suburban areas, Louisville and Lexington, and they’ve always leaned strongly Democrat, even when many other parts of the state broke with them and supported Abraham Lincoln. The elite horse folks will never change.
All but two of last night’s races were approaching 60-40 Republican, even though the state usually keeps Democrats in those state-wide posts.Report
You’re not going to count the Kentucky part of the Cincinnati metro area? 440,000 or so people in 2016. The entire Lexington-Fayette metro area was about 510,000 at the same time. I haven’t looked at the county totals for the two governor’s elections, but the red/blue county maps for 2015 and 2019 show a large swing towards the Democrats this year in those Cincinnati suburbs.
I agree with you that the Bevin result was an outlier from the other statewide races. Another case, I think, that shows that a sufficiently bad Republican candidate can lose, even in deep red states.Report
We all pretend Northern Kentucky doesn’t exist. It’s up there somewhere but we never even see weather forecasts for them. I figure that’s because they all watch Cincinnati news stations instead of ones out of Lexington or Louisville, so our local stations just write off that market.
Trump used an effect like that to campaign in Wisconsin by running ads on Minneapolis stations. Hillary’s folks were just looking at spending and events by state and didn’t realize what he was doing, despite being from the North East where cross-state media effects would be pronounced.
Anyway, I’m hoping Bevin’s loss has a bigger effect on New Hampshire when he goes home and runs for the US Senate up there, because otherwise he’ll probably keep making trouble down here.Report
It was an outlier in deep red states that were never going to vote Democratic anyway. But the Republicans lost Virginia and the PA suburbs and that spells bad news for 2020. Losing Cinncinnati and Indianpolis suburbs might spell disaster for Congressional Republicans in 2020 too.Report
The Republican lost Virginia, but got more votes there than the Democrats did. Some would blame gerrymandering.
KY election results that drills into county data.
Even in the counties around Cincinnati, the Republicans won 60-40 in the other races. They just hated Bevin. Lots of Republicans hate Bevin. I’m happy he lost.Report
We had a fun one in WA, with an initiative to roll car tabs (annual registration) back down to $30. It so far looks like it’s going to pass, with a pretty good margin. Can’t say I’m surprised, since a lot of people felt that the large hike the tabs took a few years back was dirty pool, and people complained loudly, and government basically said, ‘eh’.
I mean, $30 is way too low, but since the government wasn’t being responsive…Report