Good news folks, the 2022 midterm elections are finally over, capped off with Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) once again prevailing in a runoff, this time for a full six-year term in the US Senate over Herschel Walker.
U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock fended off a challenge from Republican Herschel Walker to win a full six-year term that broadens the Democratic majority in the chamber after a turbulent runoff campaign that sharpened partisan divides in one of the nation’s most politically competitive states.
Warnock’s victory Tuesday was a rare bright spot for Democrats in Georgia after a midterm that ended in triumph for every other statewide Republican candidate, and his win prevented an outright reversal just two years after Democrats swept the U.S. Senate runoffs and helped Joe Biden win the White House.
The $401 million race was the nation’s most expensive. The victory gives Democrats 51 seats in the Senate, meaning they can claim a majority on committees and exert more influence without having to depend exclusively on Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote.
In a subdued concession speech Tuesday night, Walker made no mention of Warnock but urged his supporters to “believe in our elected officials.”
“There’s no excuses in life, and I am not going to make any excuses now because we put up one heck of a fight,” Walker said.
Warnock prevailed with a strategy that mobilized both reliably liberal Democrats and middle-of-the-road voters, including many in the latter bloc who split their ticket in the first round by also voting for Republican Gov. Brian Kemp.
The fundamentals of the Georgia senate race were very simple: a problematic celebrity candidate vs an incumbent who just won a tough, ugly race for the seat in 2020. The mitigating factors were the Republican disasterpiece that the 2020 runoff turned into for the GOP thanks to Donald Trump effectively suppressing the Team Red vote with his election denial nonsense, and that same Donald Trump hand picking Walker for this race. Herschel’s utter lack of any qualifications for office whatsoever mattered not to some of that base, of course, as long as he wasn’t a Democrat. Those Kemp-Warnock split-ticket voters speak volumes in a state like Georgia with changing demographics that will be a fascinating political watch for some time to come.
Anywho…
So, the great State of Georgia will continue to have an all-Democrat US Senate delegation. As will Arizona. As will Pennsylvania. Three states that will be key battlegrounds in the now officially underway 2024 elections. And all three have a common theme running through them that the GOP had better learn: running crazy/unqualified candidates in tight elections is going to rack up the loses. Oz, Masters, and now Walker weren’t just “they are not sending their best,” but candidates that were — by any objective measure and analysis from the go — likely to fail in otherwise winnable races. And wouldn’t you know who won the pony, that is exactly what happened. Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and others amounted to loss, loss, loss.
These losses have now cost the GOP the US Senate outright. The difference between the 50-50 senate of the last two years and 51-49 is massive. While the former has shared, equal committees with Democrat chairs, Team Blue will now have outright majorities. While the Senator Manchins and Sinemas of the caucus will still be headaches from time to time, the Democratic Party and the Biden White House won’t have to rely on VP Harris being the tie breaker as much. Whatever presumptive Speaker Kevin McCarthy can wrangle through the circus that is going to be the House of Representatives for the next two years will find a waiting, fully operational Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to temper, block, and make life miserable for Team Red. Which he’ll be happy to do, being no fool and knowing that the 2024 US Senate slate is going to be another tough hill to climb for his party.
Which brings us back to the GOP and whether they will learn anything from this midterm or not. Probably not, since the 2024 cycle will have a presidential headline, a heavy Trump plotline, and a party that is trying to work out its own mess as a subplot going against the flawed but entrenched incumbent President Joe Biden. You can’t successfully run crazy against known quality Joe Biden who, flaws and all, folks have grown accustomed to. There are gains to be had for the Republican Party in 2024, but the old sayings in politics had best be adhered: the candidate matters, all elections are local, don’t run crazy people.
We will see what happens.
Well deserved comeuppance for MAGA.
That said, Justice Sotomayor should immediately announce her retirement.Report
Agreed. It is past time that left wing justices act with at least a fraction of the political awareness that their right wing compatriots use.Report
Why? She’s only 68. Kagan is 62. Thomas and Alito are both in their 70’s. If she retires we don’t don’t gain anything but another liberal (and probably a woman) to replace … checks notes … a liberal woman.Report
Because it is better to have a justice in her 50s than her 70s if 2024 doesn’t go well for the presidency, the Senate, or both.Report
Some people worry that’s an age when complications from her type 1 diabetes are likely to start showing up. In broad statistics, age 70 is about when survival probabilities for women with type 1 diabetes start falling fairly dramatically compared to the population as a whole.Report
And she has 24 hour access to some of the finest medical care around. Hell look how long RBG outlived the statistics that were chasing her.Report
And look what happened when they caught up to her.Report
I’d prefer impeached, but I guess we’re talking about two different things.Report
Heh she’s pretty far down the list of the ones I’d impeach. The top of mine would be the one who can’t keep his wife from undermining the legitimacy of the place with her undignified activist antics. I even bet that deep down he’s the one keeping a big jug of pepto bismol in the CJ’s desk, not the wise Latina or whatever she goes by.Report
If Alito actually leaked his own opinion on the Dodd case he should go as well.Report
Would you accept that standard across the board? I would.Report
Eh, it’s probably not a resignable offense, no matter which justice did it. The thing was already written, and the only thing denied was the suspense, such as it was given the make up of the court.Report
It’s odd to live in a democracy (or democratic republic, or whatever you want to call it) and think that giving the public information about what is going on in the halls of power is somehow a bad thing.Report
We’ll likely never know who leaked it or why, but the leak showed a contempt for the system that I’d consider grounds for impeachment.Report
I’d consider contempt for the current Supreme Court a sign of paying attention.Report
In the end,
Warnock. Walker received 48.6 percent of the vote (just over 1.7 million people) despite being a massively flawed candidate on numerous levels at the least. There is also a lot of examples of him, like Trump, being a massively flawed human being. Yet over 1.7 million people still voted for him again. This raises the question of how flawed can a candidate be before it matters. The answer could be that at least on the R side, no flaw is too great for many but sometimes it is just enough.There are plenty of Democratic politicians with scandals and less than savory actions but in my adult life many of them were forced out of office when the scandal came to light. I can’t imagine a Walker-esque candidate surviving a Democratic primary with his baggage.Report
You mean Walker not Warnock, right?Report
Yes. Opps. I need an edit button.Report
Done.Report
I mean Walker. Sigh, coffee did not kick in yet.Report
My cousin, an Evangelical Christian born and raised in Georgia (from Macon, lives in Atlanta) put it thusly on Facebook: “I am much more worried about Warnock’s future than Walker’s past.” Folks like him are gonna vote for Republicans no matter what, and they’ll always make clear why. And frankly, I don’t think they’re being irrational, given the way parties and politics works in this country.Report
The thing about Trump that I thought folks could use against him (effectively) was based broadly around ‘Trust’. If you’re on Team Red, you just can’t Trust Trump.
Trump never did the work of building a movement; and even after he took over the brand, he kept all the proceeds and still never invested in anyone other than Trump.
Variously being reported:
“One other note: There has been $0 in TV spending from former President Donald Trump’s MAGA Inc. for the runoff, according to AdImpact. It spent $3.6 million in Georgia in the final weeks leading up to the general election.
By comparison, the Sen. Mitch McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund and One Nation spent a combined $82 million between the general election and the runoff.”
There are effective messages to Team Red die-hards along these angles … by whomever is building People, Networks, Policies and Donors. If that’s DeSantis, then that’s what will carry the day. But if DeSantis and/or other Team Red folks think Winner/Loser Memes will do it? It’s gonna be a slog.Report
That is an interesting fact and in a way kind of the perfect encapsulation of the Trump saga. GOP got straight up taken for a ride.Report
No time to find examples at the moment, but in the run-up to the election, a number of non-Trumpy republicans were posting about fundraising emails from the Trump machine that talked about how critical it was to support a given MAGA congressional candidate but that then defaulted the distribution of the dollars to be 99% to Trump and 1% to the candidate’s fund.
It seems so obvious though already, one wonders how many Trump supporters would be swayed by it being pointed out. But i guess the normies don’t pay as much attention as we do.Report
I don’t think it’s a ‘journalists will expose this to Republicans’ kind of thing… it will be a tool that a Republican could deploy against Trump after they’ve done the homework of building a competing network.
The odd thing about McConnell is that he’s such an uncharismatic insider who doesn’t really care about Republicans outside of how it impacts McConnell. Which is to say, his project is nothing like, say, Gingrich ’94 or even Reagan post ’64.
So pointing out his investments isn’t to say that McConnell will lead the way – because he’s a weird insider – just that there’s a ‘way’ that someone else could use effectively. But that someone else will be a Republican, not a pundit.Report
I think you’re exactly right. The non-expressly conservative press already believes Trump is corrupt and has been saying so since the beginning and Trump’s base does not believe or care about anything the non-expressly conservative press says anyway. So nothing new there.
But if I am a GOP donor I am looking at this and thinking I pay these people to get things done, not to siphon off every cent they can for themselves.Report
I suspect this is the root of Murdoch’s break with Trump at Fox.Report
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving party.Report
The glass half full is that Warnock won, the glass half empty is that it was so close.
Looking at the rightwing behavior overall generates my pessimistic view.
How are they reacting to being on the losing side of public opinion? By doubling down and growing ever more radical.
How are they reacting to being on the losing side of electoral battles? By refusing to accept the results and claiming fraud.
Not every time, not always, but enough to demonstrate that they so far show no signs of moderating, or compromising, or accepting the legitimacy of their opposition.
Which leads naturally to the question, “What is their end game? How do they see this working out in the long run?”
The logical conclusion to their efforts is to envision some sort of Balkanized, American version of Northern Ireland, where localized pockets of minority rule impose their cultural values on the majority.Report
Finger licking good! Biden did pretty good work with judges through the power sharing arrangement so it stands to reason he’ll go gangbusters on judges with an outright majority in the committees.
On the negative side, though, it seems America isn’t healing.Report
ROTFLMAOReport