About Last Night: Beige Trickle Election Results Edition
While the West keeps counting votes, and Georgia looks likely to head to another runoff, plenty from the 2022 midterms election results to discuss.
So, discuss
ABC News live feed here:
Ballotpedia results/calls here:
November 9
3:38 a.m.: Incumbents Richard Bernstein (D) and Brian Zahra (R) won re-election to the Michigan Supreme Court.
3:18 a.m.: Missouri voters approved Amendment 3 to legalize marijuana.
2:40 a.m.: California voters rejected Propositions 26 and 27. Proposition 26 would have legalized sports betting at American Indian gaming casinos and licensed racetracks in California. Proposition 27 would have legalized mobile sports betting and allocated tax revenue to an account for homelessness programs.
2:20 a.m.: Incumbent Dave Young (D) defeated Lang Sias (R) and Anthony Delgado (L) in the race for Colorado treasurer.
2:19 a.m.: Incumbent Tony Evers (D) defeated Tim Michels (R) and independent write-in candidate Seth Haskin in the general election for governor of Wisconsin.
2:15 a.m.: Incumbent Gretchen Whitmer (D) defeated Tudor Dixon (R) and five other candidates in the general election for governor of Michigan. By winning re-election, Whitmer became Michigan’s first governor elected from the same party as the sitting president since 1990.
2:04 a.m.: Incumbent Janet Mills (D) defeated former governor Paul LePage (R) and Sam Hunkler (I) in the general election for governor of Maine.
1:52 a.m.: Voters in California approved Proposition 31, which upheld legislation to ban the sale of flavored tobacco products.
1:48 a.m.: Incumbent Brad Raffensperger (R) defeated Bee Nguyen (D), Ted Metz (L), and Brenda Nelson-Porter (write-in) for Georgia Secretary of State.
1:39 a.m.:
Incumbent Mike Lee (R) defeated Evan McMullin (Independent) and five other candidates in the general election for U.S. Senate in Utah.
John Fetterman (D) defeated Mehmet Oz (R) and six other candidates in Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate election. Incumbent Senator Pat Toomey (R) did not seek re-election.
1:36 a.m.: Incumbent Brian Kemp (R) defeated Stacey Abrams (D) and three other candidates in the general election for governor of Georgia.
1:23 a.m.: Incumbent Kathy Hochul (D) defeated Lee Zeldin (R) in the general election for governor of New York.
1:03 a.m.:
Democrats retained control of the Maryland State Legislature, meaning the state became a Democratic trifecta. Previously, it had a divided government.[1]
Democrats retained control of the Massachusetts State Legislature, meaning the state became a Democratic trifecta. Previously, it had a divided government.[2]
1:02 a.m.: Incumbent Gov. Tim Walz (D) defeated Scott Jensen (R) and eight other candidates in the general election for governor of Minnesota.
1:00 a.m.: Republicans won all three seats up for election on the Ohio Supreme Court, with Sharon L. Kennedy (R), Pat Fischer (R), and Pat DeWine (R) winning seats.
12:52: Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D) defeated state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R) and three others in the general election for governor of Pennsylvania.
12:46 a.m.: U.S. Rep. Ted Budd (R) defeated former state supreme court justice Cheri Beasley (D) and seven others in the general election for U.S. Senate in North Carolina. Incumbent Sen. Richard Burr (R)—who first took office in 2005—did not seek re-election.
12:38 a.m.:
Incumbent U.S. Sen. Patty Murray (D) defeated Tiffany Smiley (R) in the general election for U.S. Senate in Washington.
Incumbent Henry Cuellar (D) defeated Cassy Garcia (R) in the general election for Texas’ 28th Congressional District.
12:33 a.m.: Wiley Nickel (D) defeated Bo Hines (R) in the general election for North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District, flipping the seat to Democrats for the first time since 2010. Incumbent Rep. Ted Budd (R) did not run for re-election and ran for U.S. Senate in North Carolina instead.
12:15 a.m.: Steven C. Johnson (R) defeated incumbent Lynn Rogers (D) in the race for Kansas treasurer. Rogers has held the office since 2021.
12:00 a.m.: Republicans flipped control of the North Carolina Supreme Court, with Richard Dietz (R) and Trey Allen (R) winning seats.
November 8
11:53 p.m.: Incumbent Maggie Hassan (D) defeated Don Bolduc (R) and Jeremy Kauffman (L) in the general election for U.S. Senate in New Hampshire.
11:49 p.m.: Iowa voters approved Amendment 1 adding a right to own and bear firearms to the Iowa Constitution.
11:47 p.m.: State Sen. Jennifer Kiggans (R) defeated incumbent U.S. Rep. Elaine Luria (D) in general election for Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District.
11:44 p.m.: Incumbent Sharice Davids (D) defeated Amanda Adkins (R) and Steve Hohe (L) in the general election for Kansas’ 3rd Congressional District. This race was a rematch of the 2020 general election, when Davids defeated Adkins 53.6% to 43.6%. Hohe also ran that year and received 2.8% of the vote.
11:40 p.m.: Alabama voters approved a ballot measure ratifying the Constitution of Alabama of 2022.
11:35 p.m.: J.D. Vance (R) defeated Tim Ryan (D) in the general election for U.S. Senate in Ohio. Incumbent Rob Portman (R), who was first elected in 2010, did not run for re-election.
11:30 p.m.: Incumbent Marcy Kaptur (D) defeated challenger J.R. Majewski (R) in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District.
11:00 p.m.: Incumbent Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D) defeated Yesli Vega (R) in the general election for Virginia’s 7th Congressional District. Spanberger was first elected in 2018, defeating then-incumbent David Brat (R) 50.3% to 48.4%. Before that election, a Republican had represented the 7th District since 1971.
9:37 p.m.: Rep. Neal Dunn (R) defeated Rep. Al Lawson (D) in the general election for Florida’s 2nd Congressional District. This was one of two U.S. House races in 2022 that had two incumbent representatives running for the same congressional district.
9:30 p.m.: Maura Healey (D) defeated Geoff Diehl (D) and Kevin Reed (L) to win the general election for governor of Massachusetts. Gov. Charlie Baker (R) did not run for re-election.
9:00 p.m.: Wes Moore (D) defeated Dan Cox (R) and four other candidates to win the general election for governor of Maryland. Larry Hogan (R) was not able to run for re-election due to term limits.
8:35 p.m.: Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D) won election to the U.S. House of Representatives to Florida’s 10th Congressional District, which is the district currently represented by Val Demings (D). National Journal described Frost “as the first Gen-Z candidate elected to Congress.”[3] Frost completed Ballotpedia’s Candidate Connection survey in 2021. Click here to read his survey answers.
8:25 p.m.: Incumbent Ron DeSantis (R) defeated Charlie Crist (D) and Hector Roos (L) to win re-election as governor of Florida.
8:20 p.m.: Incumbent Marco Rubio (R) defeated Val Demings (D) and seven other candidates to win re-election to the U.S. Senate from Florida.
Maryland legalized pot.
Missouri legalized pot.
North Dakota legalized pot.
South Dakota legalized pot.
Arkansas legalized pot.
Colorado legalized magic mushrooms.Report
I’m in the process of applying for my carry permit and I noticed that the state police website includes an exception on the (no) illegal drug use certification for medicinal marijuana prescriptions. Maybe next time I look it will be changed again. I can’t help but feel like the country has come one step closer to that old libertarian dream of a married gay couple defending their weed farm with legally acquired firearms.Report
But here is the actual country you live in, right now:
Then the gay couple visits their 12 year old relative in prison, chained to a bed where she is being forced to carry her rapists pregnancy to term.
And they then go to a secret drag show, but find it has been cancelled, for fear that a mob of Proud Boys will come and beat the patrons.Report
Chip, only you would come in with this kind of take on a morning where you should be experiencing feelings of cautious optimism.Report
Yeah but those ain’t white dude concerns.Report
You might be interested in CNN’s report on demographics.Report
If this is the best Republicans can do in a midterm that should have been very good for them…Report
I imagine that there is an opportunity for Republicans to say something like “We didn’t do the best we could have done. Instead, we effed up and effed up bad. What did we get wrong?”
I mean, *I* think that they effed up and effed up bad.
Maybe they didn’t. Maybe they put their best feet forward and did the best they could have done and it would not have been possible to do better than they did.
I imagine that the people who effed up and effed up bad would find that thought to be comforting.Report
I think Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro are fine with saying that the GOP effed up and effed up bad.
I suspect their solutions are to continue to encourage the things that result in those outcomes while claiming that they’re only losing because the GOP isn’t committed enough, though.Report
“We don’t need to change!” is diametrically opposed to “We effed up”.
Something out of the 12 Steps is what I’m saying.Report
For someone who loses very narrowly, the most logical conclusion is “We just didn’t try hard enough!”
And even as it stands, by weeks end we may see the GOP hold both houses of Congress, a majority of statehouse, many with trifectas, and they already control the courts.
What possible reason would they have to change, and to what?Report
I would actually say this is a bit of a blind spot for you Saul. Lots of white dudes have wives and other women in their lives who are important to them, and believe it or not we actually care about their well-being.Report
Racializing this is a glaring flaw in both your and the identarian lefts worldview, Saul me lad, it’s both incorrect, counterproductive and titanically hypocritical.Report
If this tweet is correct, white voters over 30 are still heavily GOP: https://twitter.com/reesetheone1/status/1590218228835704832?s=20&t=4nCdNb-OsTTv_x8BjB_AaA
There has always been a contingent of voters who basically thought for their children, “It is not an abortion, it is a D&C” and then was happy to smash the boot down on everyone else.
For weeks and weeks on end, we heard middle-aged dudes, often white dudes, completely ignore Dobbs and state it was all about the pocketbook materialism issues. There are lots of people who seem to default to the GOP because they see it as the white party. This is not the fault of the identitarian left. It is the fault of the GOP for deciding on the Southern Strategy to get Nixon elected and continuing along.Report
This isn’t about the GOP or the right- they did go for the southern strategy and embrace the racists when they abandoned the Democrats back then. This is about us and the left.
The entire point of the civil rights movement from its very beginning was to eliminate differential mistreatment and immiseration of people based on racial characteristics. Also, from the very beginning their opponents always cast it as an effort not to accomplish those worthy goals but to simply continue oppression only with a different racial caste as the oppressed. When the identarian left (and you) indulge in this lazy thinking and sloppy rhetoric, which is only useful as choir preaching pablum on social media, you are doing the racists work for them and implicitly saying they’re right. They are wrong. And when you talk like this, you’re wrong too.
If you can swap “white dude” out of the sentence for “Black dude” or “Jewish dude” and that ensuing sentence would make any right-thinking person melt down then the whole sentence and thought is simply garbage- regardless of the ethnicity used in it.
You’ve been right on a lot of predicting of stuff about today’s election- more right than a lot of us here. Good on you. On this thing, though, you’re wrong and you should stop it- you’re better than it.Report
How dare you say it’s white dudes who don’t care about Dobbs or LGBTQ issues!
Black dudes, Jewish dudes, Asian dudes, dudes of all types are indifferent to those issues.Report
Well I’m a white dude and I care (oppose) Dobbs very much and likewise there’s no scarcity of women who think Dobbs is great or even insufficiently harsh on abortion.
And it bears noting that it is white liberal dudes melting their brains on twitter and like placed venues who’re the largest proponents of identerianism and the mush brained thinking that comes with it. Maybe matters are more complicated that that set would like to admit.Report
There is a gender gap with women being a little more pro choice than men but it’s hardly what’s driving differences on the issue. White men in particular aren’t an outlier on the subject either. The split is ideological.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/13/about-six-in-ten-americans-say-abortion-should-be-legal-in-all-or-most-cases-2/Report
You’re right, but Saul isn’t wrong to note how the pundit class is not very representative of the country as a whole.
Most of them, the David Brookses, the Jonathan Chaits and Marc Thiessens and Bret Stevenses…the editors who assign the news a d decide what gets covered and what doesnt, do in fact tend to be older whiter dudes who lead comfortable lives.
The desperation of a trans kid, or a minimum wage teenager with an unplanned pregnancy in a small Alabama town is as remote to them as the concerns of a Pushtun villager.Report
Hey far be it from me to defend the paid pundit class. Saul definitely called it and deserves his lap of I told-ya-so’s around here. But given the historical trends, Biden’s popularity ratings, and the inflation situation this isn’t one I’m ready to kill anyone over.Report
I wouldn’t put John Chait here because he is a partisan Democrat. Albeit a cranky one sometimes. I was mainly thinking of the Nate Silvers and Nate Cohens. Mainly Nate Silver who is patting himself on the back instead of thinking “where did all these Democrats come from?”Report
If we’re going down this rabbit hole, I’d observe that the pundit class is also heavily over represented with Jewish people. I assert that factoid means absolutely nothing at all but if we’re pulling the lid off this kind of identarianism pap nonsense we should acknowledge it goes in all directions.
Certainly, our current pundits and media class are isolated from most of the population. That’s because they’re either older holdovers from another media era or are young wealthy (or with wealthy connected relatives) overeducated idiots who’s parents are happy to pay for their soho loft and brag to their neighbors about junior working at the Post or the Times. They have a lot in common with university professors in that they’re all over networked smart people desperately inventing identity stuff to try and scrabble momentary advantage in their endless fight for larger slices of an ever-diminishing pie for themselves.
Absolutely the travails of a trans kid or pregnant minimum wage teenager is remote to them but at least those people are currently fashionable whereas a rural Christian addicted to fentanyl or a laid off worker in the Midwest are not only alien to them but also distasteful and outre. And then they fret and wonder such people despise them and ignore their pronouncements in favor of the blathering of naked grifters on the rights dedicated media propaganda wing.Report
The question isn’t what your pundit looks like but whether he’s capable of empathy. A pundit who lacks empathy is going to miss a lot anyway, so there’s no benefit in sticking by him.Report
Sorry, but it’ll take more than that to cheer me up today.Report
Heh, way to lean in to the narrative.Report
Chip’s narrative doesn’t change based on reality, so it doesn’t much matter. Honestly, I’m not depressed today. I predicted we’d take the House but not the Senate – I’ve been saying all along that PA should be ashamed of itself in general but that the Oz nomination could cost us the Senate. I thought we’d clean up on governors, though, so that surprised me.
I do think that most neutral observers will blame Trump for the poor GOP night. I expect he’ll run, lose some states in the nomination process, form a third party, and get 12% to DeSantis’s 36% and Harris’s 46%. But I’m probably just feeling overconfident in my forecasting ability today.Report
Ummm.. cite?Report
Google Proud Boys crashed Drag Queen Story Hour at a local library. It was part of a wider movement
I assume we don’t need to bother with the “child rape victim being forced to carry her rapists pregnancy to term” because we’ve talked about that plenty.
Here’s a story about a pregnant woman in Alabama held in jail for no other reason than she was a drug user and might endanger her fetus.
The woman, Ashley Banks, was arrested on charges of chemical endangerment of her fetus. She admitted she had smoked pot the day she learned she was pregnant, around six weeks into the pregnancy. Despite being ordered to attend rehab, the rehab center refused to take her, saying she didn’t meet a level of need that would warrant treatment. This left her stuck in jail, even after she developed a pregnancy complication that left her bleeding for weeks.
But not to worry- the God-fearing Christian government was only defending life dontcha know-
After a certain point, Banks alleged, she had to sleep on the floor. She spent those three months living in unsanitary and stressful conditions—conditions that increase the risk of pregnancy complications—despite not yet being convicted of any crimes. (In addition to the marijuana, she was arrested for having an unregistered gun and for failing to appear in court for an earlier property theft charge.) She continued to sleep on the floor until she was released by a judge in late August.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/09/alabama-jail-pregnant-woman-fetus-marijuana.html
Had I been aware of this story prior to my original comment to InMD, I might have included the “where the pregnant woman is being held in jail for an unregistered gun” thing but maybe it would seem over the top.Report
I could quibble over calling Drag Time Story Hour a secret drag show, but I feel like that might be splitting hairs.Report
MN got the trifecta which means odds are Minnesota will legalize pot this cycle. Only the GOP senate held it back before.Report
Didn’t SD legalize once before, only to have it negated through executive or legislative shenanigans?Report
Don’t know about SD, but Montana legalized medical some years back by statutory initiative. Over the years after the legislature passed this law and that law restricting it pretty much out existence. Was about five years after the first initiative, I think, when the voters passed another initiative and wiped out all of the legislature’s restrictions.Report
You cannot parody Donald Trump: https://twitter.com/kenanmalik/status/1590324169027506178?s=20&t=hZdzYwzRfW3DiXrSYGzIjw
“Well, I think if they win, I should get all the credit. If they lose, I should not be blamed at all.”-Donald TrumpReport
The good news for me is that a lot of Republicans who could have won Lost! The bad news for me is that they lost to Democrats. Ah Democracy. And then there’s Alaska.
As I mentioned in the other thread, there was a moment of lucidity on Fox as they started to see that Republicans were defecting from MAGA++ candidates in sufficient numbers to actually tank Republican chances in the Senate.
To whit:
Georgia:
*(R) Kemp got 2.1M votes
(R) Walker got 1.9M votes
New Hampshire
*(R) Sununu 320k / 555k (total)
(R) Bolduc 249k / 553k
OH (Despite OT sentiment, I don’t put Vance in ++ category, but interesting none the less)
*(R) DeWine 2.51M
*(R) Vance 2.15M
PA (requires different cross-comp since both MAGA lost, but ++ lost bigger.)
*(D) Shapiro 2.86M
(R) Mastriano 2.19M
*(D) Fetterman 2.58M (significantly underperforming Shapiro)
(R) Dr. Oz 2.44M
Arizona at this time doesn’t have sufficient data to make any inferences.
At this time, it looks like Team Red has a bead on 50 seats (47+ AK, UT, WI) and Team Blue 49 (48 + AZ) — control will vest with the GA runoff (assuming Warnock stays below 50%). Which means that Team Red squandered seats in GA and NH outright, and probably PA owing to MAGA++ electoral politics – that is, actual Republicans didn’t vote for MAGA++ candidates even when they voted for other Republicans. Even seems probable that ticket splitting happened… there are three types of voters…
Contrarian take: The Red wave was stopped by Republicans.
* = won election
++ = post 2016 MAGA confection running as Trump spawn.Report
The best thing that could happen when the dust settles is for MAGA to be conclusively shown to be a liability. It won’t come close to fixing even a quarter of our problems but I think it’s the key necessity to get us off the ride we’ve been on since 2016.Report
The thing about ‘Intra-Party-Reckonings’ is that they rarely play out in public the way we would expect. As I note below, I have no idea how the RDS/Trump factions settle the matter.Report
I doubt we will see anything public. Pretend it didn’t happen seems more likely.Report
The GOP elite have always known MAGA is a liability. But to dump MAGA they’d have to accept being pretty much guaranteed to lose at least one electoral cycle as they MAGA voters punished them for dumping MAGA candidates. They’d rather pocket the MAGA votes and cut taxes.Report
Yea, I guess the question is whether is is enough of a loss. They certainly seem to have ‘lost the vibe’ as the kids are saying these days. Deservedly.Report
Nowhere near enough of a loss. They still most likely end up with the house. So they’ll try and force Biden to cut spending by holding the debt ceiling hostage. Obama’s absolutely worst decision in his entire Presidency was negotiating on that issue.Report
A 240-195 congress can hold the debt ceiling hostage.
A 218-217 congress can’t.
The Republicans are a *LOT* closer to a 218 majority than a 240.Report
That is kind of what I’m hoping, is that even if McCarthy wins he ends up loathing every second of it.Report
Who is the Whip? That’s the guy that is going to need to be put in a rubber room at the end of February.Report
Steve Scalise of Louisiana.Report
If the Minority Leader becomes Speaker, the Minority Whip will probably become Majority Leader.
Also, “Who Is…THE WHIP?”, Action Comics #135, worth $42,000 in good condition.Report
Jacob DeGrom.
(Lifetime 0.9985 WHIP)Report
Who says there will even be a Speaker by the end of February? Winning requires an absolute majority of House members present. Kevin McCarthy will vote for Kevin McCarthy. Some Dems will remind people that Pelosi once promised to step down after the 2022 elections.
There’s no obvious candidate who is going to emerge with a majority.Report
I mean I hope you are right but even with a bare bones majority a GOP majority could simply refuse to schedule a vote on the debt ceiling increase. Without a vote scheduled it couldn’t be raised. Though, hmmmm, I may be forgetting a method- could the dems acting in concert with a handful of responsible GOP critters force a vote on the debt ceiling despite GOP leaderships objection? House rules are not my forte.Report
A one-vote majority might not even be able to keep a speaker.Report
When the leftmost Republican and the rightmost Democrats were all sprinkled together in the middle of the map, I think I could have come up with a speaker that would have appealed to the middlemost 200ish congresspeople.
I can’t imagine that happening in the current year.Report
This is like a brokered convention scenario. Everyone talks about them but it never happens. I think in the case of a compromise Speaker, it’s actually *never* happened.Report
Concur on Obama. I’m just hoping Jaybird is right, that the majority will be so slim they won’t have the discipline or the cover.Report
Though it would make my life heel at work, I’ve reached the point that I want the Republicans to tank the debt ceiling. I dare them to. The economic chaos that would unleash would dog them to the ground for at least two generations. And they deserve it.Report
But you know who doesn’t deserve it? The people who will suddenly lose services and support they rely on. And that is more important than sticking it to the GOP.Report
Much of the GOP political machine intends to hurt those folks anyway. And those people keep voting for the GOP politicians who make these irresponsible threats. The GOP won’t stop until its clear that’s no longer a path to power. I see no other way to make them in the modern era then for it to occur and let the chips fall.Report
If the US actually blew through the debt ceiling we’d have either a constitutional crisis or a fiscal crisis like we can’t imagine (and possibly both). The worst hit would be the poor though everyone would suffer. It’s not worth it just to make the GOP suffer.Report
They’ll also continuously hold hearings that make the Benghazi ones look almost serious.Report
They will, I agree, but I strongly suspect that, for good and ill, those hearings are mostly tuned out by the electorate.Report
It bodes ill if your worst-case scenario is negotiation with a majority.Report
Indulging that hostage taking was a terrible error and led to an enormously larger amount of hostage taking, a downgrade on the US’ credit rating and then a lot of struggle and grief before that run of idiocy partially subsided. Refusing to “negotiate” on the subject of the debt ceiling was always the sensible position- if the GOP wanted cuts they could fight it out in budget arguments or, *gasp* maybe pass cuts themselves when they are in power. Funny how they never get around to that.Report
The ticket splitting is the interesting thing.
I think it means that Trump owns the losses.Report
Rationally, yes. Narratively? Pretty sure that won’t happen.
Eyes naturally turn to RDS and I have no idea how the internal Team Red knife fight will work out.Report
He 100% owns them. Especially if Warnock wins I have to think everyone will be looking at the difference between Kemp and Walker as the benchmark Trump negative effect.Report
Rational people? Yes.
Others? They’ll blame Walker and his misdeeds (that they 10000% assured us never happened and even if they did were not misdeeds in the run up to the election) or they’ll blame Oz being a bad candidate (after strongly telling us what a vastly superior candidate he was to Fetterman).
But that will only come after they blame Democrats/immigrants/judges/whomever for stealing the elections.Report
I’m not saying we should expect the kind of learning that results in a lot of introspection and public analysis of what went wrong. Just the kind of learning that comes with touching a hot stove. You don’t need to know the details of how your range works to realize it was a bad idea.Report
Have you ever met any Republicans?
If you gather together a hundred Republican voters and party activists (I mean the real ones, not the ones we have here at OT) you’ll find that most of them think the 2020 election was rigged against Trump, some others who think busloads of illegals are voting, while others will tell you matter of factly that Covid was a Chinese plot with Bill Gates and that the vaccine is killing thousands of people and that Joe Biden is forcing children to get sex changes and use litter boxes in school where they are given lectures about how to hate themselves for being white.
Exactly what lesson do you think people like this are going to learn from touching a hot stove?
I think the most logical conclusion is that they will blame (((George Soros))) for making them touch the stove which was made hot by transsexual illegal immigrants.Report
You base this on the Republicans you hang out with in LA?
Or is this based on “I remember voting for Reagan in 1984 and extrapolate out from there and that’s what I’d think if I still voted Republican and so therefore that’s what other Republicans must think?”Report
There are some people who when they think of their opponents, they picture the three worst people they’ve ever met on the other side. Chip’s maybe worse than that, picturing the worst interpretations of the three worst tweets he’s ever seen.Report
I talk to Republicans constantly, especially the ones I’m related to. I’m not going to pretend I don’t get into disagreements with them or that some aren’t credulous to some of the dumber stuff coming out of right wing media. But they are also people, the same way my much more Democratic partisan wife is a person, not a stereotype from twitter. Usually I’m struck by how much more aligned we are on this or that than we would have thought. I had a long conversation along those lines with my very Republican father on the whole student loan thing the other week.Report
And yet the politicians they vote for refuse to publicly walk across the aisle and support the stuff that would bridge those gaps.Report
I notice that no one is disputing my characterizations.
Everything I listed are things said by either an outright majority or leading influencers like candidates and elected officials.
There is a continuing problem especially on mainstream media outlets where pundits launder Republican extremism and radicalism to make it seem palatable.
As I’ve demonstrated here repeatedly, if you just quote Republicans accurately, and just report their actions and policy proposals, most people are aghast and disbelieving.Report
You’re trolling, right? I mean, every comment has basically disputed your characterizations.Report
Eh, the comment that said “are you basing this on what you are like and extrapolating out to everyone else?” wasn’t disputing his characterization at all.Report
Every assertion was the actual stated position of prominent Republican lawmakers or commentators.
No one here has even tried to dispute them.Report
Trump is apparently blaming people around him for getting him to back Oz: https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1590370778188763137 . This is pretty obviously pathetic — while I’m not going to get my hopes up, it seems like this election is giving him the stench of a loser.Report
Guy who couldn’t make money running casinos is a loser you say!?Report
I mean, obviously there were already a million reasons not to support Trump, but from a political POV, his main benefit for most of his supporters was to stick it to the elites and the Libs. He pretty obviously failed here at his core competency, in a way that DeSantis and a few others very obviously did not, and he’s being whiny about it to boot. This may not be the death blow but it has to at least peel off a little more support.
ETA: oh i just clicked on Jon Puccio’s link, and that’s much more peeling than I could’ve even hoped for…Report
He won him nomination initially with a plurality. If he runs and he has more then one opponent he can do that hat trick again. The GOP apparatus knows this.Report
This has always struck me as the weakest cheap-shot. Atlantic City didn’t stand a chance after Indian gaming took the reins. The city has next to no draws, and the casinos are a tiny stretch of beachfront property in the middle of poverty. A lot of companies, including Las Vegas casino operators, lost a lot of money there.Report
And yet Trump’s casino was the only on to go bankrupt and then recently get demolished. Go figure.Report
The Sands has been bulldozed, The Atlantic Club is empty, and the Claridge and the Showboat aren’t casinos any more. I think MGM bailed before construction, and the Dunes was never completed. None of those sound like windfalls. But sure, if you want me to say that one of Trump’s favorite business strategies is declaring bankruptcy, obviously true.Report
Nope. I spent a lot of time in AC in the 90’s. I saw it. AC struggled but trump , who was the biggest fish as he told everyone, went massively bankrupt. All the other companies grew and gambling is big business. Plenty of big and small casino’s survived. Trump failed hard at the business where the house always wins. Only his name survived. Harrah’s, Bally, etc….all there and grew into LV, riverboats, etc.Report
This strikes me as very easy to notice.
Like, a well-timed “have you no decency, sir” against the clay feet would bring down the statue.Report
“I have decency. I have more decency than you could you’re indecent, Jaybird. You’re Indecent Jaybird. Oh, look over there, it’s Indecent Jaybird.”Report
That shit is funny when you just won a fight against Clinton.
When the last victory you had was six years ago?
It’s that Simpson’s “I didn’t do it” gag.Report
I’m with you. I always hated his style. I think a lot of people put up with it because he was winning, or because they thought his style was necessary to win. His brand was “winning”. His policy was “win”. He coped with is 2020 loss exactly as well as could have been expected. I don’t know when the stink of failure is too strong though, and shaming him has to date had the opposite of the desired effect.Report
My favorite line is the swipe at Melania… ‘not one of her better suggestions’
Now… if this were a proper Agatha Christie novel, Melania would ‘fall’ to her death down a flight of stairs wearing Ruby Slippers.Report
There’s an anecdote about Jimmy Carter reaching out to all the Democrats who lost races in – I don’t remember if it was ’72 or ’74, but probably the former because not many lost in ’74. They became a loyal and active base for him. The Republican who’s on the phone with the most-qualified closest losers from yesterday is a smart fella.Report
Biggest winner and loser of last night.
https://www.electionbettingodds.com/GOPPrimary2024.htmlReport
“…who has the Fetterman seat to award to whatever “Generic Democrat” is willing to suck his cock the hardest.”
We’re all just cool with this sort of discourse?Report
Not sure I believe rankings that have Pence all the way up at 4%.Report
I had a post that disappeared?Report
How many states have run-off rules like Georgia? I’m trying to figure out how I feel about them.
On the one hand, ensuring the winner of election enjoys support from more than half the electorate means you are more likely to find someone with broad support.
On the other hand, we get results late and you may get a smaller and/or less representative sample from a separate, later election.
Georgia gets the headlines because they’re going to have this hit twice now in quick succession but I’m curious if this is a more widespread rule than I realize but just tends not to come up because someone crosses the 50+% threshold in the general.Report
There is at least one other but I can’t remember which one now.Report
Georgia seems to have runoffs a lot. If memory serves, they’ve come up in Louisiana and they used to in Alaska, but that may say something about those states’ politics.Report
My personal take is that Run-offs are good in a ‘Blanket Primary’ system where there’s a 1st vote for everyone that is narrowed to the ‘Real’ election… which could pit two candidates of different factions of a similar political compass against each other. There are flavors of this, I think, in CA, AK and WA.
Absent a Blanket Primary I’d default to an ‘instant run-off’ aka Ranked Choice Voting for the reasons you cite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpartisan_blanket_primaryReport
…enjoys support from more than half the electorate…
Does that include the case where the candidate wins 51% of a 49% voter turnout? Georgia probably won’t be that bad on turnout.Report
1. 18-29 year olds broke extremely hard for the Democratic Party. Something like+28 or +29.
1a. My cohort of 30-44 year olds was slightly Democratic at p+4. 45 plus were Republican by +11 to +13.
2. What is something that is more likely to happen to a woman between the ages of 18-44 and very unlikely to happen to a woman over 44? Pregnancy!!!
3. What are most pundits/pollsters/forecasters? Well-to-do white dudes in middle age.
4. What did they forgot? DobbsReport
“What are most pundits/pollsters/forecasters? Well-to-do white dudes in middle age.”
Stats?Report
Democrat Katie Hobbs is leading Republican Kari Lake in Arizona governor’s race with a little more than half of precincts reporting, and though much could change as ballots are counted, the GOP nominee is already casting doubt about the election results.
She didn’t even wait until she’d lost; her motto is “Lie early and often.”Report
A lot of west-coast seats have not been called because of mail ballots. I suspect there will be some pick ups in California for the Democrats. WA-3 looks like it is switching. Democrats have a strong chance of retaining OR-5 but the Republican currently has a narrow lead with 30 percent of the vote uncounted. There is a reasonable chance that Boebert will lose narrowly and Democrats might gain CO-8.Report
From what I have read the critical one to watch based on mail-in is still Nevada Senate. Allegedly while the polls are closed there are still days worth of those to count.Report
Either way, Koz’s enormous wave of unaffiliated voters rising up across the Southwest and sweeping in Republicans by large margins didn’t happen. My long shot prediction of Arizona flipping from red trifecta to blue is still alive.Report
That’s just because not enough Real Americans had their votes counted . . . or some such BS.Report
It seems that America is not actually healing.Report
Little Texas? Perish the thought!Report
Nevada won’t be called until the weekend or early next week. I imagine many California House races will be the same. Oregon and Washington might call today or tomorrow. Arizona, no clue on when it will call.Report
An interesting analysis from Seth Abramson: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1590356939745087488.htmlReport
The conclusion:
I will be interested in seeing how the cultists respond. “Blaming Dear Leader” might not be on the table but “oh, I’d love to show up to the cult meeting, but the kids insisted on family board game night” certainly is.
I’m not going to look for Public Loud Recrimination. I’m going to look for slow fizzling.Report
You miss the obvious reaction: “the election process is so tainted that we’ll never win again”.Report
Yes well the truth is they clearly need to offer Americans a different vision then they are to get elected again.Report
My prediction is mildly annoyed amnesia.Report
Hot take: Part of why R’s got hurt is they have never grappled with the fact that Trump lost the popular vote twice. Once to famously not great speaker Hillary. Trump and his shite have never had a majority but the enthusiasm and side loader’s of bs fooled R’s into thinking they had large majorities. This is of course bolstered by R’s always assuming they are the One True American’s who all good people believe. R’s hitched themselves to a loser who needed a weird bank shot and the EC to win. Chain yourself to a loser, you gonna lose when you should have won.Report
A friend who is a traditional conservative says, “The urbanization of America means the Republican Party will never win the national popular vote for President again.”Report
Not until they actually decide they would like to win over the majority of Americans.Report
This is one of the things that confuses me about US politics. In New Zealand, the National party has much stronger support in the country than in cities, but it still works to win votes in cities, because that’s where all the voters are.
I assume this is a product of the US’s primary system, The National party’s MPs choose its leader, so they can pick someone who want sot win elections, while Republican politicians get appointed by the party’s most extreme supporters.Report
Outsiders may miss this, but the US is pretty nearly split down the middle. If you look at what we’re discussing after the election, it’s all single-digit percentages of cast votes or of legislatures. Democrats do ok in rural areas and Republicans in cities, and suburbs carry the victories. We just don’t describe it that way, because it’s not dramatic.Report
Here’s a pretty good (albeit dated) visualization of what I’m talking about:
https://www.norc.org/Blog/pages/sparks-post.aspx?BlogId=89&BlogId=89Report
It is a product of demographics and being a very multi-cultural society. Despite the accusation of being “idenitarian”, the GOP is largely a white, nominally Christian, rural-exurban-some suburbs party. In the United States, cities are dominated by people who are anything but those things.Report
That’s pretty much what he says. When he lived here in Colorado, he pointed out that the Republicans were doomed unless they adapted to things like, all the new majority urban/suburban Coloradans have a very different attitude towards what the public lands are for. Colorado Democrats are winning all of the major statewide elected offices this year by 12-18 percentage points.Report
In local SF propositions, I am happy to report Prop J and Prop H passed with flying colors:
1. Prop J turns JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park into JFK Promenade for pedestrians and cyclists and it keeps it free from cars and parking. Same for the Great American Highway, at least a portion of it.
2. Prop H times municipal elections to correspond with Presidential elections years instead of off-years. This is a very sensible election reform. Mayor London Breed declared it her bete noir and a “DSA power grab” to her shame/Report
This is the good stuff here. I want to hear about everybody’s local ballot initiatives.Report
Nothing much here. Marijuana won statewide in MD. We continue our national death spiral.Report
I love how legalizing marijuana – which rights a fundamental racially based wrong – is seen as a national death spiral.Report
Stupid people smoke pot, become stupider. It’s a vicious circle.Report
Don’t forget Drag Queen Story Hour.Report
If marijuana is legalized, cops will have to claim they smelled fentanyl.Report
California was largely sensible (IHMO):
Explicit rights to abortion and contraception
No legalized sports betting, Native american or otherwise
Increased support for arts and music in public schools
No additional regulation of dialysis
No new tax to support EV purchases
But then we had to ruin it by keeping flavored tobacco illegal.Report
No additional regulation of dialysis
This one was huge. Good for them.Report
Austin had a similar proposition to H a couple years ago, and “DSA power grab” was the gist of one of the common criticisms of it.
I guess DSA just stands for “people who want more people to vote” now?Report
Even *I* don’t vote in odd-year elections.
If someone in power can get 500 of his/her closest friends to vote in an odd-year election, they’ll control the process.Report
Around here, most people vote in odd year elections.
Gives us a lotta power in town politics.
“They vote. If they want their crosswalks repainted, they’re Getting their crosswalks repainted.”
Not voting is for people who don’t care about small-ball.Report
I vote in odd-year elections because of peer pressure (or at least domestic pressure), but I’d rather not.Report
I vote in odd year elections because they are elections and voting is a civic responsibility. Just like voting in even year elections.Report
This year I voted for an amendment to our city charter to stop having city elections in April of odd years, and have them at the same time as the usual November general elections. We have vote by mail; I don’t care if it takes me two evenings at the dining table to finish marking the ballot or not.
(It appears that said amendment will pass overwhelmingly.)Report
The Democrats now have the trifecta in Michigan and Minnesota. Pennsylvanian Democrats and apparently are close to flipping or have flipped the one of the houses in Pennsylvania.Report
There are apparently lots of ballots left to be counted in Nevada according to Jon Ralston. CCM and Sisolak are not out of the running yet. Ralston has pointed to numerous elections decided on dozens or hundreds of votesReport
It seems almost inconceivable that Masters could beat Kelly in Arizona or that Kari Lake could actually beat anyone but I can’t make myself be optimistic. Nevada is just pure heartburn. If we can get both then we don’t have to hold our breath for the likely GA runoff.Report
Kelly is pretty safe. Hobbs has a much tighter margin but hopefully a coattail effect from Kelly. Nevada is going to be a ride. I have high hopes for Warnock.Report
I also can’t imagine Warnock will lose to that idiot, but I don’t want to wait 2 months for the runoff.Report
The runoff is December 6thReport
Wasn’t Warnock sworn in later than the rest of the new members because Georgia’s runoff certification happens several days into January?Report
AZ used to have a pronounced blue shift after Election Day, a la California. They changed the rules on when which ballots could be counted starting in 2020 and the shift disappeared, at least that year.
I called AZ for Biden about the same time Fox did, because I said, “Okay, blue shift adds 100,000 votes to Joe’s lead from here.” I got the binary outcome right, but the blue shift didn’t happen and the result was very close.
I’m rooting for Hobbs and the legislature for two reasons: (a) I believe the AZ Dems are much better on policies on fire, water, and the oncoming climate change crash that are the problems Arizona needs to deal with, and (b) another thing for me to harp on to show Koz that he has no idea about politics in the western states, and should stop pretending that he does.
Yep, I’m that petty.Report
Yeah, yeah. GOP wasn’t spectacularly great anywhere, but the West is the least of our problems. We didn’t get enough to solve our problems in other areas, but based on the election the GOP is on the upswing in every western state except Colorado and maybe New Mexico.
It’s the Rust Belt that killed us, PA and Michigan especially, and to some extent Ohio.Report
Which is really fascinating since those areas gave Trump his win in 2016. What do you think that tells you?Report
You don’t get off that easy.
One of the two great geography-based electoral stories in the US for the last 30 years is the very large and ongoing swing of the American West from red to blue. You predicted an end to that, or at least a temporary strong reversal. As indicators you said CCM and Kelly were dead Senators walking by large margins. Bennett’s seat was in play. Instead Bennett’s going to win by 14 points; Kelly’s going to win by five or six; CCM is going to squeak it out.
You were just wrong. In a midterm election, with a president whose approval rating is negative, the 30-year trend just kept creeping along. You’ve got no sort of coherent or predictive story about what’s happening in the West.Report
No no. The one who’s not getting politics in the western US is you. Colorado is on a 30 year blue trip but the West is bigger than just Colorado. And even in Colorado, the GOP is still competitive statewide. Barely competitive, but still. Certainly no worse than Va, and GOP won the governorship there just a year ago now.
If I were in the mood to be optimistic (and I assure you I am not), you don’t have to look very far for signs of optimism in the West. GOP won the governor’s race in Nevada, they won new House seats in Montana and I think in California. (edit: or to put it better, I think they won new seats in Montana and Texas, and kept their seats in California where the Demos lost in reapportionment)They flipped seats and increased representation in Oregon and Arizona. They improved margins in California. They got no problems at all in Utah, in contrast to what some libs were thinking.
America lost some big races as well, and beyond a doubt those hurt. But given what happened in other places in the country, we’d love to do this well in the Rust Belt.Report
You just keep telling yourself that. Over the last 30 years, every state in the contiguous West that has experienced explosive suburban population growth — California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona — has seen steady and cumulatively large erosion of Republican influence. In New Mexico the erosion happened without the population growth. In Utah the erosion hasn’t happened despite the population growth, but the early warning sign is up: progressive ballot initiatives that pass despite Republican opposition.Report
The recent drop from Clark County was good news for CCM: So in a new batch of 14,092 mail votes counted in Clark County:
– Cortez Masto received 9,158 votes (65 percent)
– Laxalt received 4,269 votes (30.3 percent)
CCM’s margin was greater than 2-to-1.
She should be getting batches from blue leaning parts of Washoe County as well. Solsnik is probably going down though.
Phil Knight burnt his money. Kotek wins. WA-3 looks like it will flip.Report
What/who are you following for these updates?Report
John Ralston of the Nevada Independent: https://twitter.com/RalstonReports/status/1590595387005337600?s=20&t=NLpmJ_TCzgKJUW1bGdRZ6Q
And the NY TimesReport
Thank you!Report
Let it be known, that Lauren Bobert, in an R+6 district, in a midterm year, with a massively underwater President, is in a deadheat race to stay elected. That is how toxic Lauren Bobert is.Report
Another one who you, Chip, and Philip thought was the center of the new Republican Party. You guys all might take some time to celebrate that you’ve been misreading politics for years.Report
Keep trying to save face like this. It’s charming in its own way.Report
Well, come on, what would have been their/your falsifiable condition for saying “the threat isn’t anything near what I imagined”, if not exactly this outcome?Report
The fact that some of the threat actors have been run out of office – or appear to have been – is indeed good news. As you kept noting up til Tuesday, all the fundamentals and historicals pointed to an opposite outcome. So until Tuesday we saw – rightly I think – the persistence and perhaps expansion of the threat. That Donald Trump is STILL the presumptive GOP nominee says there’s still a threat.Report
“As you kept noting up til Tuesday, all the fundamentals and historicals pointed to an opposite outcome.”
When? Seriously, I may have considered it, but I hardly ever make predictions, and aside from the shock of inflation I don’t think I’ve talked about any of these things.Report
Nothing? This is such a weird thread for me. I post as much as nearly anyone, but it’s like I’m talking to people who’ve never seen my opinions before.Report
It might be very tight but it is possible that the Democratic Party could keep the trifecta. That would be sweet politically and a major miracle. It will also coincidentally prevent the world economy from collapsing on itself because the Republicans can’t play games with the debt ceiling.Report
They aren’t gonna keep the house, surely we don’t live in that bright a timeline.Report
The other thing that could happen is 218-217 which would be hillarious if the Democrats keep a united front.Report
We aren’t worthy!Report
The Times projects Republicans won or are leading in enough districts for 221 seats. I think some of the seats they are leading in will be red mirages especially in CA.Report
Democrats win CO-8 and are ever so narrowly ahead in CO-3 with 99 percent of the vote counted. Colorado might have a 6-2 Democratic caucus.Report
The last night dump of votes from Nevada went 65-35 for CCM. Washoe county has gone from light red to light blue. John Ralston predicts that if current pace happens and it could even get a bit slower. CCM wins the race: https://twitter.com/RalstonReports/status/1590595387005337600?s=20&t=NLpmJ_TCzgKJUW1bGdRZ6Q
The majority of outstanding votes are from Clark and WashoeReport
An interesting visualization:
Report
John Ganz argues that liberal cringe saved the day: https://johnganz.substack.com/p/could-this-really-be-the-end
“In those nearly psychotic moments after election day in 2016, I thought the answer to Trump was to fully embrace dangerously corny levels of American liberal patriotism and Aaron-Sorkinism to create a kind of left-Reaganism. Over the next few months, I regained sanity and a healthier sense of irony, became moderately cynical and disillusioned again, but the moment of insanity was correct in its basic outlines: That was basically what #Resistance liberalism turned out to be. In 2020, cringe won. In 2022, it has won again. It’s easy to roll ones one’s eyes at the “battle for the soul of America” stuff and assume voters care more about their pocketbooks, but there’s a good reason Biden kicked off his campaign in Charlotesville. Now waving the Bloody Shirt of January 6th apparently still works. And truly thank God for that. If this stuff had no appeal to voters and they lost any kind of patriotic hopes for the country, we’d be in really bad shape. “Report