House Democrats also were closely watching uncalled races in those states, as well races as Maine, Oregon, Washington and California, to determine whether they have a pathway to keep the majority. Even if they don’t, as many Democratic aides expect, there is a recognition from both parties that Democratic votes will be critical in a narrow House GOP majority.
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: November 12, 2022 Filed under: 2022 Elections, Afternoon Reads, cat art, caturday, Congress, Donald Trump | Tags: Arizona, authoritarians, Brian Klaas, Catherine Cortez Masto, independent voters, Katie Hobbs, Mark Finchem, Nevada, young voters 32 Comments
By Sandra Bierman
Happy Caturday!!
I’m completely exhausted! I spent most of my time since Tuesday glued to the TV and Twitter, obsessing on the vote counts. My eyes feel as if they are about to fall out. But democracy seems to be surviving for now, thanks to voters who clearly understood the danger and who didn’t like the Supreme Court trying to turn women into broodmares. And thanks to the young people who turned out to vote in swing states.
The New York Times: Young Voters Helped Democrats. But Experts Differ on Just How Much.
Preliminary figures indicate that Democrats, particularly in swing states like Wisconsin and Michigan, benefited from a strong turnout of young voters, aged 18-29, the age group that regularly shows the strongest support for the party — and regularly votes the least.
But less certain and much debated after Tuesday’s vote was whether the turnout was particularly strong this year, or more a continuation of support seen in the last midterm election in 2018 — which restored the party’s control of the House of Representatives — or the 2020 vote that elected President Biden and gave the party control of both chambers of Congress.
Tufts University’s Tisch College of Civic Life, perhaps the most assiduous tracker of young voters, estimated on Thursday that 27 percent of 18-to-29 voters cast ballots in midterm elections — and that 63 percent of them voted for Democrats in House of Representatives elections.
That estimate was based on a nationwide exit poll of voters jointly conducted by the three major television networks and CNN; those preliminary numbers will be updated with data from actual voting. The turnout rate for all voters was 47 percent, according to a preliminary estimate by the U.S. Elections Project at the University of Florida….
“What’s clear from the data is that young Democrats turned out,” said Victor Shi, the director of strategy for Voters of Tomorrow, a Generation Z-centered civics advocacy group. An analysis of early voting data, he said, indicated that young people had cast a million more Democratic votes than Republican ones. And he said that early voting by young Democratic supporters exceeded 2018 totals in three battleground states — Georgia, Michigan and Ohio.
Independents also broke for Democrats. Everyone except the crazies is sick and tired of Trump and his whining. The Wall Street Journal: Why Independent Voters Broke for Democrats in the Midterms. GOP candidates closely aligned with Trump turned off some centrists and in-play Republicans.
Lisa Ghelfi, a 58-year-old registered Republican in Arizona, voted for Donald Trump for president two years ago but has grown tired of his election-fraud claims. It is the main reason she voted for Democrats for governor, senator, secretary of state and attorney general this fall and plans to change her registration to independent.
“Not allowing the election to be settled, it’s very divisive,” Ms. Ghelfi, a semiretired attorney from Paradise Valley, said of the 2020 race. “I think the election spoke for itself.” She said she voted for Republicans down-ballot who weren’t as vocal about election fraud or as closely tied to Mr. Trump, yet couldn’t support Arizona’s four major Republican candidates because they echoed Mr. Trump’s false claims.
Republicans succeeded in one of their top goals this year: They brought more of their party’s voters to the polls than did Democrats. But in the course of energizing their core voters, Republicans in many states lost voters in the political center—both independents and many Republicans who are uneasy with elements of the party’s focus under Mr. Trump.
Control of the House and Senate, which had seemed poised to land with the Republican Party, is coming down to a handful of races that so far are too close to call, though the GOP remains on track to winning a narrow majority in the House. Republicans have won nearly 5.5 million more votes in House races than have Democrats, a tally by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report finds, as many voters were motivated by anxiety over high inflation and a low opinion of President Biden’s response.
Pierre Bonnard – Marthe à la Chatte, 1912
We are still waiting on Nevada’s Senate race, but it looks like Catherine Cortez Masto has a good chance to win, Right now, she is only behind Laxalt by 862 votes, according to Jon Ralston, with Las Vegas still outstanding. If she wins, the Democrats will control the Senate. Nate Cohn at The New York Times: Mail Ballots Around Las Vegas Are Likely to Put Democrats Ahead.
Democrats appeared on the cusp of securing control of the Senate over the weekend, as the counting of mail ballots in Nevada brought Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democratic incumbent, within 1,000 votes of overtaking her Republican opponent, Adam Laxalt, for the final seat the party needs to maintain its 50-50 Senate majority.
All eyes will be on Clark County, home to Las Vegas, which is a Democratic stronghold. Ms. Cortez Masto has led mail ballots tabulated after Election Day there by nearly two to one, a margin that would be more than enough to overtake Mr. Laxalt if the trend continues among the approximately 25,000 mail ballots that remain to be counted.
The bulk of the remaining mail ballots in Clark County are expected to be reported on Saturday (though the deadline to have all ballots counted is not until Tuesday). That could be enough to allow news organizations to project a winner, depending on the number of ballots counted and the size of Ms. Cortez Masto’s lead.
Most news organizations, including The Associated Press, are reluctant to call races when the leading candidate is ahead by less than half a percentage point, or about 5,000 votes in this case.
Even so, Ms. Cortez Masto would build a lead of more than 5,000 votes if she fares as well in the final Clark mail ballots as she has in those counted so far. She is also expected to have an advantage in the remaining mail ballots from Washoe County, as well as the more than 10,000 mail ballots that voters can “cure” after being initially rejected for a bad signature match.
Only a few thousand mail votes remain from the state’s rural, Republican counties.
From The Washington Post last night: Congressional Republicans panic as they watch their lead dwindle.
With control of the House and Senate still undecided, angry Republicans mounted public challenges to their leaders in both chambers Friday as they confronted the possibility of falling short of the majority, eager to drag Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) down from their top posts as consequence.
The narrowing path for Republican victory has stunned lawmakers from both parties, freezing plans for legislation and leadership maneuvers as they wait to see who takes control and learn the margins that will dictate which ideological factions wield power. Regardless of the outcome, the lack of a “red wave” marks a devastating outcome for Republicans, who believed they would cruise to a large governing majority in the House and possibly flip the Senate.
By Isabelle Breyer
The GOP faces a small but real prospect that it may not reclaim the House majority despite high pre-election hopes based on the disapproval of President Biden, record inflation and traditional losses for the party that holds the White House. Late Friday, Democrats moved one Senate seat closer to retaining their majority in the chamber as Sen. Mark Kelly won reelection in Arizona. Winning either in Nevada — which was still counting votes — or in Georgia, where a runoff is set for Dec. 6, would allow them to stay in power.
“It’s an unworkable majority. Nothing meaningful will get passed,” a dejected aide to a senior House Republican said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss internal tensions….
Outgoing Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) told The Washington Post he knew the evening of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that the GOP would have a difficult time proving to voters they should be in the majority in two years.
“By midnight on January 6, it was obvious that if we continued to sleepwalk down the path of crazy we’d face a rude awakening,” he said. “Instead of facing those facts, the GOP spent the last two years heading in the same direction and actively avoiding any internal reckoning. After Tuesday, we have no choice but to heed voters when they say that ‘the grass is green, the sky is blue, and by the way, you just got your ass handed to you.’ But waking up to that reality is going to be rough.”
Meijer lost in the Michigan primary after he voted to impeach Trump.
More good news for democracy: election-denying candidates lost bigtime. Last night Mark Finchem in Arizona went down to defeat. NBC News: Election denier Mark Finchem loses secretary of state race in Arizona.
Republican Mark Finchem, a prominent election denier, has lost to Democrat Adrian Fontes in the race for Arizona secretary of state race, NBC News projects.
Fontes, a former top elections official for Maricopa County, will succeed Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, the Democratic nominee for governor.
Finchem was among a host of GOP candidates for statewide office who have repeatedly cast doubt over Joe Biden’s presidential victory or falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump in Arizona.
Last year, Trump backed Finchem’s candidacy and highlighted his record of defending the stolen election claims. “Mark was willing to say what few others had the courage to say” about the 2020 election, Trump said in offering his public support….
With his loss, Finchem joins numerous other election deniers who fell short on Election Day. In Michigan, election deniers lost bids for governor, secretary of state and attorney general. Republican Doug Mastriano, a prominent election denier in Pennsylvania who was on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, lost his bid for governor, along with similar GOP gubernatorial candidates in Minnesota and New Mexico.
Other prominent election deniers in Arizona, including attorney general candidate Abraham Hamadeh and Kari Lake, the party’s pick for governor, are still locked in tight races with their opponents several days after the election.
Katie Hobbes still has a chance to win the governor’s race.
By Sandra Bierman
Republicans are angry with Trump for backing crazy, incompetent, far-right candidates. Liz Goodwin writes at The Washington Post: A red wave of criticism crashes into Donald Trump after midterm losses.
As Republicans grapple with their lackluster performance in Tuesday’s midterm elections, one man has begun to take on an unusual amount of criticism from his fellow partisans: Donald Trump.
Frayed Nerves Friday Reads: Vote Updates still Coming in
Posted: November 11, 2022 Filed under: just because | Tags: 2022 Midterms, Twitter Free zone 26 Comments
1917, Sitting Woman with Legs Drawn Up, Egon Schiele
Good Day Sky Dancers!
Biting nails is probably a national pastime for those still following the election. This is a nail-biter of an election! It looks like the Democratic Party will hold on to the Senate. The House is still in play. This is from Politico. “The path to 218: Why Democrats aren’t out of the race for the House yet. A district-by-district look at which party is favored in the uncalled races.” Some of the California House races are still out and quite close.
Republicans still have a wider path to the House majority than Democrats — but it’s narrowed a lot over the past 24 hours.
As the vote count continues, particularly in mail-heavy Western states, Democrats continue to win most of the contested races, keeping them in the hunt and meaning news organizations won’t declare a winner in the overall fight for the chamber.
Not all of the 32House districts that remain uncalled are truly in doubt: In some of them, one party is clearly favored, and Democrats are likely to win more of them than Republicans, according to a POLITICO analysis.
But that alone wouldn’t be enough for Democrats to snatch the House majority, with the GOP only seven seats away. Democrats would still need to win the vast majority of the nearly-a-dozen races that are truly in doubt.
It’s not impossible, but it’s not likely, either.
The Mad Woman, Chaim Soutine, c.1919
If the Republicans do get control of the House, there is no guarantee that Kevin McCarthy will be the next Speaker of the House. This is from CNN. “Kevin McCarthy faces rocky road to speakership as hardliners emboldened by GOP’s election showing.”
Members of the pro-Trump House Freedom Caucus are withholding their support for House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s speakership bid and have begun to lay out their list of demands, putting the California Republican’s path to securing 218 votes in peril if the party ultimately takes the House with a slim majority.
McCarthy and his team are confident he will ultimately get the votes to be speaker. But the conservative hardliners are emboldened by the likelihood of a narrow House GOP majority and are threatening to withhold their support – something that could imperil his bid or force him to make deals to weaken the speakership, something he has long resisted.
Rep. Chip Roy of Texas told reporters that “no one currently has 218” votes for speaker, which is the magic number McCarthy would need to secure the speaker’s gavel on the House floor in January, and said he wants McCarthy to list in greater detail his plans for a wide array of investigations into the Biden administration. And Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona complained that McCarthy seemed to backpedal on whether he’d be willing to launch impeachment proceedings into President Joe Biden or members of his Cabinet.
“I’ve heard from multiple of my constituents who question the wisdom of proceeding forward with that leadership,” Biggs said, adding that there needs to be a “frank conversation” about who they elect for the top job.
Members of the group are also pushing to make it easier for lawmakers to call for floor votes on ousting a sitting speaker. That is something that McCarthy is adamantly against and was wielded over former Speaker John Boehner before he eventually resigned.
Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado said it was a “red line” for her, but not everyone in the Freedom Caucus is united on whether to make that a hard line.
Boebert has pulled ahead in her race by less than 900 votes.
The race may head to a recount according to the Denver Post. “A thin-enough margin will trigger an automatic recount, but candidates can also request their own.”
Few votes separate Colorado’s congressional race between U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert and Adam Frisch, meaning whoever wins the heated election could still suffer through a recount.
Eyes across the country are watching the race, which could swing either way as counties continue to count straggling ballots.
If neither candidate gains a wide enough margin, election officials might not declare an official winner in the race for weeks, depending on how the process plays out. Not only would a slim margin of victory trigger an automatic recount but either candidate can also request a recount so long as they’re willing to pay for it.
The process could then extend into December.
Self-Portrait with Hand on the Forehead (Selbstbildnis mit der Hand an der Stirn), Käthe Kollwitz, 1910
Axios has good news at the state level, where many of the worst election deniers will not be in control of future elections. Also, a woman’s right to choose is a winning issue. “Democrats make quiet history with state-level gains.”
Overlooked amid frantic punditry about the “red ripple” in Congress: Democrats quietly won and defended majorities in state legislatures across the country, weakening GOP power on issues at the heart of the national political debate.
Why it matters: State legislative races are on pace to be the highlight of the Democratic ballot. If Democrats hold on to Nevada, this will be the first time the party in power hasn’t lost a single chamber in a midterms year since 1934, according to the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.
The big picture: The partisan battles over democracy and abortion rights — the two issues that dominated Democratic messaging this cycle — are shaped at the state level.
- Republicans have controlled more state legislative seats than Democrats for more than a decade straight, thanks in large part to a deliberate strategy the GOP hatched in 2010 to dominate the redistricting process.
- Even after Democrats’ stunning gains, Republicans still control more states and will have more total legislative seats. But this election shows Democrats are committed to playing the long game, says Daniel Squadron, founder of The States Project.
State of play: Democrats defended their state-level majorities in Massachusetts and Maryland and won governor seats left open after Republican retirements, securing a “trifecta” in both states. Helmed by a historic $50M investment from the DLCC, they also kept the Maine legislature, the New Mexico and Colorado state Houses, and secured a supermajority in both chambers in Vermont (which has a GOP governor).
- In Michigan, Democrats flipped the House and Senate to take complete control of the state government for the first time in 40 years. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer won re-election by double-digits, vaulting the rising Democratic star into the national spotlight.
- In Minnesota, Democrats also secured a trifecta after taking the state Senate.
- In Wisconsin, Democrats denied Republicans a supermajority that would have allowed them to override Gov. Tony Evers’ veto — the only thing standing in the way of a statewide abortion ban.
What we’re watching: Arizona, where Republicans have a narrow two-seat majority in both chambers, was another top target for Democrats. It’s still early in the state’s vote-counting process, but Democrats told Axios they’re hopeful their winning streak will continue there.
- In Pennsylvania, Democrats are just one seat away from flipping the state House.
The backdrop: Outside Dem groups — fueled by Republican threats to abortion rights and fair election processes — made unprecedented investments in state legislative races this cycle.
- Two groups, The States Project and the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), poured millions into state races in the final four weeks of the election. They targeted races with thin margins in Arizona, Colorado, New Hampshire, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
- Forward Majority, a Democratic super PAC focused on the states, invested over $20 million this cycle targeting 25 seats in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona.
- “We’re clawing our way back to power after 50 years of investment for Republicans and so much neglect for so long by the Democratic Party,” said Forward Majority’s president Vicky Hausman.
Pink Blouse, Amedeo Modigliani,1919
This analysis of our election comes from The Economist. “A Republican victory will be much smaller than Democrats feared. Several sorts of extremism may have prevented the party from securing a more convincing victory.”
Imagine if Noah’s prognostications about a world-ending flood had ended in a light shower. That is roughly the situation faced by Republicans who had been expecting a biblical sort of rebuke of President Joe Biden in the midterm elections. Despite clear voter discontent with Mr Biden and the pace of inflation, Republicans managed only a limp showing. As final results were being tallied, they looked on track to barely pick up the five seats needed for a majority in the House of Representatives (a typical loss for a president’s party in the modern era is 30 seats). That will be sufficient for Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House, to wrest the speaker’s gavel from Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader, and ensure divided government in Washington for the next two years. But it is hardly a spectacular showing.
The same is true of the contest to control the Senate, which may take weeks to decide, due to the need for a run-off election in Georgia in December. Taking the Senate would have required netting only a single additional seat—but it now looks likelier than not that even this low bar will not be met (see chart 1). Democrats never met the attacks that Republicans launched at them on crime, inflation, indoctrination of schoolchildren and immigration with a convincing or cohesive rejoinder. And yet the morning after the election there was, surprisingly, more need for Republican soul-searching than for Democratic recriminations.
Several sorts of extremism may have robbed Republicans of the marginal seats they needed to secure a more convincing victory. The first was over abortion, which became an immediate rallying cry for Democrats when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, the case that had established a right to terminate a pregnancy up until the point of fetal viability, in June. Although most Americans supported some limitations on the procedure, they also found bans pitched by many Republicans too extreme. In the suburban battlegrounds for the House, abortion proved a potent battering-ram for Democrats, who improved their margins in districts with lots of white, college-educated voters—previously a reliable constituency for the Republicans (see chart 2).
Self-Portrait (1886), Edvard Munch © Munch Museum
You may see the charts and read more analysis at the link.
Jonathan Chait-writing for New York Magazine–thinks “The GOP Revolt Against Trump Is More Serious Than You Think. It’s not going to be like 2016 or 2021.”
I’ve been telling people for most of the year that I consider Ron DeSantis to be the odds-on favorite — not a guarantee, not a prohibitive favorite, but the favorite — to win the Republican presidential nomination. Usually, they nod and then add something like, “But not if Trump runs, right?” “Yes,” I reply, “even if Trump runs.” Then they look at me like I’m crazy.
Tuesday night, my view began to look a little less crazy. The Murdoch-owned media, very much including Fox News, unleashed an undisguised propaganda blitz to convince its audience that Trump is the source of the party’s struggles and DeSantis represents its future. Trump’s angry response is a measure of how seriously he takes the threat to steer the base away from him. Many journalists registered surprise at the bluntness of the chorus blaming Trump. Yet the prospects for a DeSantis nomination, and the changes beneath the surface that have made it relatively likely, have not been fully appreciated outside the Republican world.
For one thing, the Murdoch-owned media, and many other legacy conservative-media outlets, like National Review, have never fully supported Trump. They defended him against Democrats while wishing the party would nominate somebody else. This has meant, in other words, that they would criticize some of his excesses, even while insisting the Democrats were worse. During moments when Republicans had the opportunity to wrest leadership of the party from his hands, like during the 2016 primary campaign and in the days after January 6, they would even savage him. But when his leadership of the party went unchallenged, they would mute their criticism and fall dutifully in line.
This pattern has led to an easy assumption that whatever misgivings Republicans express now will come to nothing. “We have heard this tune many times before,” Dan Drezner says, sighing. “It’s nice to hope that this time it’ll take,” writes the Bulwark, “But we’ve all seen this movie before. Many, many, many times before.”
This ignores a crucial difference. In both 2016, and the aftermath of the insurrection, there was no unified Republican alternative. The non-Trump candidates in 2016 infamously failed to coordinate, and even devoted most of their energy to attacking each other in the belief that the last non-Trump standing would automatically prevail. “Jeb, Rubio, Christie, Kasich, Walker… every one of these guys was as hyped as DeSantis is now. Trump beat them all,” argues Adam Jentleson. But that is the point – beating them all was easier than beating a single opponent with unified conservative movement support.
After the insurrection, a brief window opened to move on, but the party lacked any obvious figure to rally around. (DeSantis had yet to make the key moves consolidating his support on the right.) And in between these events, Trump was president.
I wish I could get over my premonition that the next two years will be stressful and will still be dominated by MAGA Republicans in Congress. I just do not want to go back to where turning on the TV means enduring crazy Gym Jordan, Sleazy Steve Scalise who could potentially be Speaker of the House to my dismay, Marjorie Three Names in a Committee Hearing, and Trump flying around the country with his HateFest events as he runs for president. Trump may find more time to roast DeSantis than “Sleepy Joe”, but it will still be that anxiety-inducing, stomach-clenching shit show. We’ll just have to see what nickname he gives DeSantis.
Happy Veterans Day to everyone that served!!!
So, what’s on your reading and blogging list today?
“Baby, I see this world has made you sadSome people can be badThe things they do, the things they say.”
Mark Knopfler
Thursday Reads: Election Aftermath
Posted: November 10, 2022 Filed under: 2022 Elections, Afternoon Reads, Donald Trump | Tags: "red wave", abortion rights, Joe Biden 22 Comments
The Yellow Cow, Franz Marc
Good Afternoon!!
I’ve been sitting here for awhile with my laptop open, staring into space; and I just realized that I’m kind of in a daze after the past few days.
Election day was much better for Democrats than I expected, even though I had read convincing arguments from Democratic polling experts Simon Rosenberg and Tom Bonier that they could do well. I actually included their predictions in my election day Tuesday post via a piece by Rosenberg.
My worst fears didn’t materialize, and that’s great; but we’re still in a kind of limbo waiting for results in Arizona and Nevada. It will also be a long time before California counts all the votes, so we may not know who controls the House for some time. In the Senate, we may not know until the December 6 Georgia runoff.
One thing we do know for sure is that abortion rights was an extremely important issue for voters in many states.
The New York Times: ‘My Main, Core Issue’: Abortion Was the Driving Force for Many Voters.
It was a driving force for a retired banker in San Antonio, an artist in Racine, Wis., an event planner in Miami Beach. It motivated college students and retirees, men and especially women. Even those who might usually skip a midterm election had been compelled to make time to cast a ballot.
Across the nation, voters felt an obligation to weigh in on what, for many, was a vital matter: abortion rights.
“Abortion was my main, core issue,” said Urica Carver, 41, a registered Republican from Scranton, Pa.
A single mother of six children, Ms. Carver, a caseworker for the state, said she would have most likely supported Republicans in the midterms. But the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade this summer magnified an issue that outweighed all others, she said. Abortion, she said, was a personal decision, and she would want her own daughters to have the option if needed.
Ms. Carver voted a straight Democratic ticket. “If they didn’t support that right, regardless of who they were,” she said, “they were not getting my vote.”
Two Poodles, Pierre Bonnard
Abortion played a larger role in midterm election results than even many Democrats, who had made it central to their campaigns, expected. Pre-election polls had shown Americans fixated on inflation and crime, with abortion still a concern but not as much of a priority.
Those opposed to abortion rights also said the issue moved them to vote. But in states with ballot initiatives that could affect abortion access, the issue drew more people who supported abortion rights, or did not want more restrictions.
In all five states where abortion-related questions were on the ballot on Tuesday, voters chose to protect access to the procedure or reject further limits. And in some places where the future of abortion rights were uncertain, Democratic candidates who campaigned on the issue fared well — particularly in Michigan, where voters re-elected the Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, and in Pennsylvania, where the Democrat Josh Shapiro won the governorship and the Democrat John Fetterman won the Senate race.
Read the rest at the NYT.
John Hendrikson at The Atlantic: How Abortion Defined the 2022 Midterms. Where Dr. Oz stumbled, John Fetterman only had to say Roe v. Wade. And so it went across the nation.
In red and blue states alike, reproductive autonomy proved a defining issue of the 2022 midterms. Although much preelection punditry predicted that the Pennsylvania Democratic nominee John Fetterman’s post-stroke verbal disfluency was poised to “blow up” the pivotal Senate race on Election Day, the exit polls suggest that abortion seismically affected contests up and down the ballot.
Concerns over the future of reproductive rights unequivocally drove Democratic turnout and will now lead to the rewriting of state laws around the country. In deep-red Kentucky, voters rejected an amendment that read, “Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to secure or protect a right to abortion or require the funding of abortion.” In blue havens such as California and Vermont, voters approved ballot initiatives enshrining abortion rights into their state constitutions.
In Michigan, a traditionally blue state that in recent years has turned more purple, voters likewise enshrined reproductive protections into law, with 45 percent of exit-poll respondents calling abortion the most important issue on the ballot. In the race for the Michigan statehouse, the incumbent Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, trounced her Republican challenger, Tudor Dixon, who had said that she supports abortion only in instances that would save the life of the woman, and never in the case of rape or incest. Dixon lost by more than 10 percentage points and almost half a million votes.
After the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision ended the federal right to abortion in June, many observers wondered whether pro-abortion-rights Democrats would remain paralyzed with despair or whether their anger would become a galvanizing force going into the election season. The answer is now clear—though, in fact, it has been for some time.
In August, just six weeks after Dobbs, Kansas voters rejected an amendment to the state constitution that could have ushered in a ban on abortion. That grassroots-movement defeat of the ballot initiative was a genuine shocker—and it showed voters in other states what was possible at the local level.
William James Webbe, The White Owl, ‘Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits,’ signed with monogram and dated ‘1856’
Right leaning Axios reports that anti-abortion groups think the problem is that Republicans distanced themselves from the abortion issues: Republicans’ abortion silence backfires in midterms, by Oriana Gonzalez.
The blame game has begun around what led to Republicans’ disappointing results in the midterms, with some outside groups zeroing in on the party’s lack of an abortion message.
Driving the news: Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a large anti-abortion organization with close ties to GOP leaders, slammed Republican candidates who distanced themselves from abortion bans and failed to clearly communicate their stance on the issue, calling it “political malpractice.”
The group said in a memo that to “win in competitive races,” candidates needed to focus on defining their opponents as “abortion extremists” and “contrast that with a clearly defined pro-life position centered around consensus such as pain-capable or heartbeat limits.” [….]
They specifically praised Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Gov. Ron DeSantis, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Sen.-elect J.D. Vance of Ohio, and Georgia Senate hopeful Herschel Walker, whose closely watched race is headed for a runoff.
Yeah, no. I don’t think that would have worked. The candidates who did talk about it mostly didn’t do well.
More points of view on what kept the anticipated “red wave” from happening
Noah Berlatsky at Public Notice: The red wave that wasn’t.
In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, the results of the 2022 midterms were still uncertain. Control of both the House and the Senate remained up for grabs; the latter may ultimately be determined by a run-off in Georgia in December.
We do know one thing though. Joe Biden has had the most successful midterm of any president in 20 years. The Democrats in disarray narrative looks a lot more like Republicans in disarray. The American people, it turns out, did care about inflation. But they cared about democracy too….
The Democrats currently have 50 seats in the Senate and a narrow majority of 224-213 in the House. Holding that, or losing a handful of seats in the House, may not seem like an impressive outcome. Usually, though, the president’s party gets clobbered in the midterms. Donald Trump in the 2018 midterms lost 40 seats in the House. Barack Obama lost a whopping 63 seats in 2010. In comparison, his 13 seat loss in 2014 seems relatively mild, even though it shifted control to the Republicans again. George W. Bush lost 31 seats in his 2006 midterm.
You have to go back to the 2002 midterm, in the rally around the flag aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, to find a midterm in which the president’s party made any gains. The Republicans that year picked up eight seats, solidifying their hold on the House. Before that, the president’s party lost control of the House in every other midterm election since 1978.
Biden’s achievement — even if he ends up losing a handful of House seats — is all the more remarkable because his popularity remains in the doldrums. Poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight has his approval at around 41.4 percent. That’s lower than Trump’s (42.2 percent) and or Obama’s (44.8 percent) at the same point in their presidencies, when they experienced catastrophic losses.
Biden’s low approval ratings and high inflation nationally led many pundits to believe that there would be a red wave in line with most midterms. Pundits said that New York governor Kathy Hochul could be in danger of losing her blue state to challenger Lee Zeldin. Analysts also suggested Democrats could lose a Rhode Island House seat they’d held since 1991, as Republican Allen Fung looked prepared to unseat Democrat Seth Magaziner. Colorado Democratic Senator Michale Bennett was supposed to be in trouble. So was Washington state’s senator Patty Murray.
Oops! The media’s favorite meme, “Dems in disarray,” might need revisions. Read more at Public Notice.
Cows, by Vincent Van Gogh
This is a “guest essay” at The New York Times by Sohrab Ahmari: Why the Red Wave Didn’t Materialize. Ahmari thinks the Republicans’ failure to help or even empathize with working class Americans explains their electoral losses.
A week before the midterms, a video circulated online of a Starbucks barista crying while explaining the need for a union: “I’m a full-time student. I get scheduled for 25 hours a week, and on weekends they schedule me the entire day — open to close.” The manager is bad, the staffing is inadequate and the stress is overwhelming.
The video should have elicited sympathy from anyone familiar with the lousy wages and grinding conditions that characterize today’s service economy. That was not, though, the response of the full spectrum of conservative media and personalities, from Fox News to The Daily Wire to Sebastian Gorka.
“Boo Hoo!” replied Media Research Center TV, a conservative media site. “This ‘person’” — the barista happens to be transgender, hence, I suppose, the scare quotes around “person” — “was in tears because they had to work eight hours a day on the weekend.”
Episodes like this may be one reason the red wave didn’t materialize, why Republicans failed to usher in a new dawn of prosperity for the multiracial working class that Republican leaders from Senator Ted Cruz to the House policy honcho Jim Banks say they want to champion. When it came down to it, the Republican Party offered ordinary American workers little that might have bolstered their power or leveled the economic playing field. That failure helped dash conservative hopes for a clean Republican sweep.
Read more at the NYT.
Some Republicans and pundits are blaming Trump.
The New York Times: Trump Under Fire From Within G.O.P. After Midterms.
Donald J. Trump faced unusual public attacks from across the Republican Party on Wednesday after a string of midterm losses by candidates he had handpicked and supported, a display of weakness as he prepared to announce a third presidential campaign as soon as next week.
As the sheer number of missed Republican opportunities sank in, the rush to openly blame Mr. Trump was as immediate as it was surprising.
Hunting Dogs in a Boat (1889) by Winslow Homer
Conservative allies criticized Mr. Trump on social media and cable news, questioning whether he should continue as the party’s leader and pointing to his toxic political brand as the common thread woven through three consecutive lackluster election cycles.
Mr. Trump was seen as largely to blame for the Republicans’ underwhelming finish in Tuesday’s elections, as a number of the candidates he had endorsed in competitive races were defeated — including nominees for governor and Senate in Pennsylvania and for governor of Michigan, New York and Wisconsin.
“Republicans have followed Donald Trump off the side of a cliff,” David Urban, a longtime Trump adviser with ties to Pennsylvania, said in an interview.
Former Representative Peter King, a Republican from Long Island who has long supported Mr. Trump, said, “I strongly believe he should no longer be the face of the Republican Party,” adding that the party “can’t become a personality cult.”
The chorus of criticism, which unfolded on Fox News and social media throughout the day, revealed Mr. Trump to be at his most vulnerable point politically since the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
The Washington Post: How Trump, infighting and flawed candidates limited Republican gains. This is one of the Post’s trademark gossipy reports with 5 authors and many sources, so you’ll need to go read the whole thing if you’re interested. Here’s the intro:
Florida Sen. Rick Scott made a plea to about 35 of his colleagues during lunch at the National Republican Senatorial Committee offices in early August: Send money to the NRSC from your personal campaign accounts. The candidates were in need.
The Republican outlook had gone from glossy to grim since the July campaign finance reports. Despite $5-a-gallon gasoline and a historically unpopular president, Democratic Senate candidates in pivotal states had big financial and polling leads. First-time Republican candidates propelled by former president Donald Trump, on the other hand, were viewed unfavorably in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Arizona and Georgia.
But Scott’s hopes of a united GOP response were dashed as soon as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) stood to address the same room: Send 20 percent of the money from their leadership PACs, he told the senators, to the Senate Leadership Fund, an outside group controlled by his own loyalists, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The implication, said multiple people familiar with the exchange, was that senators needed to choose sides in a months-long battle between the two Senate leaders about the best strategy for winning, a conflict that would have serious consequences in the fall.
Bull, 1911, by Franz Marc
At least one senator left the meeting frustrated that Scott had to come hat-in-hand so late in the campaign, according to people briefed afterward. Other senators raised private concerns broadly about how Scott had managed the committee. Others blamed McConnell….
From the outside, this year’s elections looked like a virtual Republican lock. Since Lyndon B. Johnson, new Democratic presidents have lost an average of 45 House and five Senate seats in the midterms. Republicans went to the polls Tuesday needing to gain just five House seats and a single Senate seat to take control, amid soaring inflation and broad dissatisfaction with the nation’s direction.
But behind the scenes, nothing came easy to Republicans this cycle, as their historic tail winds collided with the fractious reality of a political party in the midst of a generational molting. GOP leaders spent much of the last year fighting against each other or plotting against their own primary voters. They were hobbled by unprepared first-time candidates, fundraising shortfalls and Trump, whose self-concern required constant attention — right up to the eve of the election, when he forced party bosses to beg him once again to delay a presidential campaign announcement.
That’s all I have for you today. Please share your thoughts and links in the comment thread, and have a great Thursday!
Election Day Tuesday Reads
Posted: November 8, 2022 Filed under: 2022 Elections, just because | Tags: DOJ Civil Rights Division, midterm elections 2022, polls, train wreck 30 CommentsGood Day, Sky Dancers!!
The big day has arrived. This election truly has historic significance. We won’t know the results for sure tonight, but in a day or so we’ll have a sense of whether U.S. democracy can survive. I’m no expert, but this guy is:
No one really know whether to believe the polls, but the media has already decided that a red wave is coming. It’s also likely that results in a number of states won’t be clear for some time, and of course we know that Republicans plan to contest any losses and generally cause mayhem wherever they can. Here’s a piece from a couple of days ago on the coming confusion.
Charlie Mahtesian at Politico: The looming election disaster.
It’s time to talk about it out loud: This year’s election is going to be a train wreck. Not just Election Day, but the weeks and perhaps even months to come.
For starters, it might not be clear who controls the House for days, or longer. In the Senate, it could be weeks. In fact, if the polling averages are correct, we might not know who controls the Senate until after a potential early December runoff in Georgia.
But that’s the least of the trouble ahead. All the elements of a perfect storm are present: a rise in threats against election administrators and poll workers; outdated and overstrained election infrastructure; a brain drain of officials experienced with the complexities of administering elections; external cyber threats; and an abundance of close races that could extend long past Election Day as mail-in and provisional ballots are counted, recounted and litigated.
Then, there are the hundreds of Republican candidates up and down the ballot with a record of denying or expressing doubts about the 2020 presidential results — a few were even present at the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. At least a dozen candidates running in competitive Senate and governor and secretary of state contests refused to commit or declined to respond when asked whether they’ll accept the results of their races.
Great train wreck of 1918
A blowout Republican victory might remove many of the most combustible elements. But short of a red wave Tuesday, we’re looking at an ugly finish.
If those prominent election-denying candidates lose, it will not be graciously — remember, these are candidates whose political brands are rooted in their refusal to accept the 2020 election results, and their own high-profile and extra-legal efforts to overturn them. For them, the traditional pain and disappointment of defeat will be amplified because of the high expectations of midterm GOP success. And there are no party graybeards who will be able to talk them down — in fact, the post-election recriminations will likely find backing from party leaders and elected officials who fear antagonizing a base that’s been primed to believe the 2020 election was rigged.
The wellspring of these false claims, former President Donald Trump, is already laying the predicate — last week, he sought to cast doubt on the integrity of Pennsylvania’s results by claiming the 2022 results there are rigged as well.
Click the link to read the rest.
Another article on the upcoming confusion by Kelly Weill at The Daily Beast: These Counties Already Want a Recount and the Votes Aren’t Even In Yet.
The morning before polls opened in Cochise County, Arizona, a judge still had not ruled on how local votes would be counted.
On one side of the case were state officials and voters who opposed an effort to audit Tuesday’s election by hand. Arguing in favor of an audit were some of Cochise County’s Republican officials, backed by lawyers previously involved in a chaotic 2021 election audit in Arizona’s Maricopa County. Only on Monday evening—hours before the election—did a judge rule against a hand recount of the entire Cochise vote.
Train wreck in Iowa with hazardous materials, May 2021
Cochise, a rural county on the southern border, is one of several to preemptively call for an audit of its 2022 midterm vote. Although counties routinely review their elections, this new wave of audit enthusiasts is cozy with conspiracy theorists, and promotes methods like hand-counting ballots, which elections security experts describe as one of the most surefire ways to accidentally introduce errors into a vote count.
Hand-counting ballots is a bad idea, elections experts say. They cost more, take longer, and open opportunities for meddling from partisan kooks (see: the Maricopa audit, during which conspiracy-driven volunteers searched ballots for bamboo fibers, under the mistaken belief that ballots had been imported from China). Even without involvement from election truthers, hand counts are more error-prone than electronic counts. A 2018 study found hand counts to be less accurate than machine-counts, and a 2012 study found hand counts to have 2 percent error rate—a worryingly high margin that could tip elections, particularly in neck-and-neck races like several in this year’s midterms….
But Republicans are demanding hand recounts anyway.
Some of the loudest calls for preemptive audits come from Republican strongholds in swing states like Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Nevada. Officials in Pennsylvania’s Lycoming and York counties have already committed to hand recounts, although York County officials said it would only examine ballots from three of its 161 precincts.
York County’s decision to hand-audit its election came after a meeting between York County President Commissioner Julie Wheeler and Audit the Vote PA, the York Dispatch reported. ATVPA, an election-denial group, previously made headlines for an error-riddled “canvass report” of Pennsylvania voters. While conducting that survey, ATVPA volunteers knocked on doors and asked questions about residents’ votes, leading to York County locals accusing the group of intimidation and voter suppression efforts. ATVPA has also attempted to remove electronic voting machines in York County.
Wheeler, who did not return a request for comment on Monday, told CBS21 that the hand recount “is not tied to any election issues in the past. This is not an indication that we believe that prior election results that we certified are inaccurate.”
No, it’s an indication that Republicans want to fuck things up.
The DOJ is planning to monitor the polls in 24 states.
From the Justice Department website:
The Justice Department announced today its plans to monitor compliance with federal voting rights laws in 64 jurisdictions in 24 states for the Nov. 8, 2022 general election. Since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Civil Rights Division has regularly monitored elections in the field in jurisdictions around the country to protect the rights of voters. The Civil Rights Division will also take complaints from the public nationwide regarding possible violations of the federal voting rights laws through its call center. The Civil Rights Division enforces the federal voting rights laws that protect the rights of all citizens to access the ballot.
For the general election, the Civil Rights Division will monitor for compliance with the federal voting rights laws on Election Day and/or in early voting in 64 jurisdictions….
Monitors will include personnel from the Civil Rights Division and from U.S. Attorneys’ Offices. In addition, the division also deploys monitors from the Office of Personnel Management, where authorized by federal court order. Division personnel will also maintain contact with state and local election officials.
The Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section enforces the civil provisions of federal statutes that protect the right to vote, including the Voting Rights Act, the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, the National Voter Registration Act, the Help America Vote Act and the Civil Rights Acts. The division’s Disability Rights Section enforces the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to ensure that persons with disabilities have a full and equal opportunity to vote. The division’s Criminal Section enforces federal criminal statutes that prohibit voter intimidation and voter suppression based on race, color, national origin or religion.
On Election Day, Civil Rights Division personnel will be available all day to receive complaints from the public related to possible violations of the federal voting rights laws by a complaint form on the department’s website https://civilrights.justice.gov/ or by telephone toll-free at 800-253-3931.
Individuals with questions or complaints related to the ADA may call the department’s toll-free ADA information line at 800-514-0301 or 833-610-1264 (TTY) or submit a complaint through a link on the department’s ADA website, at https://www.ada.gov/.
Complaints related to disruption at a polling place should always be reported immediately to local election officials (including officials in the polling place). Complaints related to violence, threats of violence or intimidation at a polling place should be reported immediately to local police authorities by calling 911. These complaints should also be reported to the department after local authorities have been contacted.
See the list of cities and counties that will be monitored at the link above.
What polling experts are writing about this morning:
When we launched our midterms forecast on June 30, Republicans had a 53 percent chance of taking over the Senate from Democrats, and an 87 percent chance of taking over the House.
We could almost have turned our servers off and let that forecast stand. Today, in our final forecast of the cycle, Republicans have a 59 percent chance of winning the Senate and an 84 percent chance of winning the House….
First, let’s talk a bit more about that final GOP Senate number, 59 percent. It’s in an annoying zone as far as I’m concerned. If I met you on the street, I wouldn’t know how to describe the race. It’s on the brink between a toss-up and one that we say leans toward Republicans. And to make matters more confusing, that 59 percent figure comes from our Deluxe forecast, which includes the input of human expert forecasters like the Cook Political Report. The Lite forecast (essentially a “polls only” version) and the Classic forecast (polls plus other objective indicators) have Republicans as just 50 and 51 percent “favorites,” respectively.
I don’t want to blow off that 59 percent number. Deluxe is supposed to be the most accurate version of our model. To be blunt, 59 percent is enough of an edge that if you offered to let me bet on Republicans at even money, I’d take it. (If I bet on politics, that is. Which I don’t.) Still, Democrats holding the Senate, or the race coming down to a runoff in Georgia, would not be surprising in the least.
In the House, meanwhile, you shouldn’t round the Republicans’ 84 percent chance up to 100 or the Democrats’ 16 percent chance down to zero. Two years ago, Republicans had just a 3 percent chance of winning the House in our final forecast and yet came within five seats of doing so. The balance of the evidence suggests a national political environment that favors Republicans by only 2 to 3 percentage points. And the polling itself, if anything, has been a little tighter than that. (Democrats have a 25 percent chance to keep the House in the polls-only Lite version of our forecast. After the redistricting process, Republicans have less of an advantage from gerrymandering and district boundaries than they did previously, so a roughly tied national environment would lead to a highly competitive race for the House — see yesterday’s post for much more detail on this.)
At the same time, the upside case for Republicans has perhaps been understated. Our model puts the 80th percentile range of outcomes in the House at between a one-seat and a 33-seat GOP gain; and remember, 20 percent of the time, the number will fall outside that range. Just as it isn’t that hard for the race in the House to become rather competitive, it also won’t take much to turn it into a Republican landslide.
Similarly, just because we’ll start the night with roughly 50-50 odds in the Senate does not necessarily mean we’ll finish the night with the balance of power determined by just one or two seats. Fairly often, all the competitive races break the same way in races for Congress. There’s almost a 25 percent chance that Republicans wind up with 53 or more seats, according to our Deluxe forecast (and a 7 percent chance that Democrats do so).
Cohn attempted to test whether there are really Trump voters who refuse to take polls and so are invisible. They compared the results of a poll that paid participants $25 to respond with a traditional poll. You can read aboaut it at the NYT. if you’re interested. The gist is that paying people worked to get more responses:
The data is still preliminary, and it will probably take at least six months, if not longer, before we can reach any final conclusions. But there is one immediate difference between the two groups, and that is in the polls’ response rates: Nearly 30 percent of households have responded to the survey so far — a figure dwarfing the 1.6 percent completion rate in the parallel Times/Siena poll.
But do Democrats also refuse to respond to poll callers? I know I rarely answer calls from numbers I don’t recognize, and rarely respond to polls when they do get through to me.
One more from Simon Rosenberg, who thinks things are looking good for Democrats. Check out his election morning thread on Twitter:
Simon Rosenberg at NDN last night: On This 2022 Election Eve Would Rather Be Us Than Them.
So I just published an updated analysis of the 2022 election with a day to go. My bottom line – it’s a close, competitive election. Dems have checked all the recent intensity boxes – strong performance in 5 House specials/Kansas, spiked voter registration post-Dobbs, far superior candidate fundraising, big early vote performance. Rs haven’t checked any of these intensity boxes. Polls and early vote on balance have been far better for Dems in recent days than Rs. A red wave may be coming but it is not here yet.
Heading into Election Day I’d rather be us than them.
You can catch me talking about the 2022 elections in a new Politico Playbook Deep Dive interview with Ryan Lizza; a new Deep State Radio podcast with Cecile Richards; a MSNBC segment with Joy Reid; a Meidas Touch pod; a NoLie pod with Brian Tyler Cohen; and a memorable chat with the venerable Rick Wilson. You can find all of these via this link.
Some of Rosenberg’s analysis–go to the link to read the rest.
Dems Lead 50-39 In The Early Vote, Now With 4.4m Vote Lead
Using TargetEarly, the official data source for NBC News, we know the early vote is running between 8-10% higher than 2018, an election which had the highest turnout in almost 100 years. Dems are running way above both 2018 and 2020, something which is a very direct challenge to the red wave narrative. This is how the vote breaks down at this point in the last 3 elections:
2018 – 46%-45% (+1) – 600k vote lead
2020 – 48%-41% (+7) – n/a
2020 – 50%-39% (+11) – 4.4m vote lead
It should be noted this 11 point lead is with an electorate older and whiter than 2018 and 2020, and with two of the nation’s largest states, CA/FL seeing drop offs for Dems from 2020. All of this is very good news for Democrats.
Last night, citing the strong Dem performance in the early vote, famed journalist John Ralston called Nevada for Senator Cortez Masto. In what must be concerning to Republicans here is a list of states where Dems are currently doing better relative to 2020 than Dems are in Nevada right now: AZ, GA, MI, MN, IA, IN, NC, NE, NJ, NY, OH, PA, TX, VA, WA, WI. To be clear that means the early Dem vote “firewall” that led Ralston to call Nevada is actually bigger in all these states. This too is good news for Democrats.
The Washington Post has a new story today from Arizona today, “Some in the party worry their assaults on early voting could ultimately suppress GOP turnout,” where questions have begun to be raised about why Rs decided to try to turn their voters out on a single day rather than over 2-3 weeks, as Democrats are doing. It’s a good question, as having more time to turn out voters in an election with far more irregular voters is kind of a no-brainer. The weeks Dems have had to turn out our voters has built powerful early vote leads in these states that may just be too big for the Rs to match tomorrow, particularly if their enthusiasm for voting has waned, as this new NBC News poll finds….
In another worrisome bit of data for the Rs the variance from the final early vote results and the final election results in 2018 and 2020 was 2-4 points. Tomorrow Dems will enter Election Day with an 11 point lead, meaning Rs will have to have an Election Day turnout many magnitudes better than either party in the last two elections. Can it be done? We will find out.
We have a big day and night ahead, and probably difficult days and weeks will follow. Hang in there everyone, and please post your thoughts and links in the comment thread. Have a great day and, of course, vote if you haven’t already done so.
Mostly Monday Reads: None of them will come via the former social media source
Posted: November 7, 2022 Filed under: just because | Tags: 2022 Midterms, Are all Republicans Corrupt? Asking for a friend., delusional Republicans, Twitter Free zone 34 Comments
Emil Nolde, Mohn (Poppies), 1950.
Good Morning Sky Dancers!
Chief Twit suggested we return the House to what used to be a political party that shouldn’t be in charge of anything. His misogyny is on full display, as well as his hypocrisy. Twitter is obviously not impartial, and I can’t appear to block, mute, or remove the NAZI images he posts. I believe you can’t block him anymore, although it does no good because others will quote him. Kathy Griffin showed up on my Mastadon server because she’s permanently banned there for parodying his account. Yet, Ye is in full antisemitic mode, having been reinstated to the newest Truth Social/Parler platform is serving as a one-man ‘ish’ band.
I give up!
So, let me go back to my 2009 version of sharing my reads. Yes, this is more Emil Nolde. Beautiful, aren’t they? Hard to imagine a Nazi could create such beauty. While his admiration of Hitler was well-known, his art was still considered “degenerate”. It could not be shown in public.
Emil Nolde, Sonnenblumen und Rittersporn ,1935
This is from The Atlantic and written by Ronald Brownstein. “How a GOP Congress Could Roll Back Freedoms Nationwide. The rights reversal taking place in conservative states is just the beginning.”
If republicans win control of one or both congressional chambers this week, they will likely begin a project that could reshape the nation’s political and legal landscape: imposing on blue states the rollback of civil rights and liberties that has rapidly advanced through red states since 2021.
Over the past two years, the 23 states where Republicans hold unified control of the governorship and state legislature have approved the most aggressive wave of socially conservative legislation in modern times. In highly polarizing battles across the country, GOP-controlled states have passed laws imposing new restrictions on voting, banning or limiting access to abortion, retrenching LGBTQ rights, removing licensing and training requirements for concealed carry of firearms, and censoring how public-school teachers (and in some cases university professors and even private employers) can talk about race, gender, and sexual orientation.
With much less attention, Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate have introduced legislation to write each of these red-state initiatives into federal law. The practical effect of these proposals would be to require blue states to live under the restrictive social policies that have burned through red states since President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020.“I think the days of fealty [to states’ rights] are nearing an end, and we are going to see the national Republicans in Congress adopting maximalist policy approaches,” Peter Ambler, the executive director of Giffords, a group that advocates for stricter gun control, told me.
None of the proposals to nationalize the red-state social agenda could become law any time soon. Even if Republicans were to win both congressional chambers, they would not have the votes to overcome the inevitable Biden vetoes. Nor would Republicans, even if they controlled both chambers, have any incentive to consider repealing the Senate filibuster to pass this agenda until they know they have a president who would sign the resulting bills into law—something they can’t achieve before the 2024 election.
But if Republicans triumph this week, the next two years could nonetheless become a crucial period in formulating a strategy to nationalize the red-state social-policy revolution. Particularly if Republicans win the House, they seem certain to explore which of these ideas can attract enough support in their caucus to clear the chamber. And the 2024 Republican presidential candidates are also likely to test GOP primary voters’ appetite for writing conservative social priorities into national law. Embracing such initiatives “may prove irresistible for a lot of folks trying to capture” the party’s socially conservative wing, Patrick Brown, a fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, told me.
Untitled, Emil Nolde
Just getting Trump out of the White House and the republicans out of the majority is not stopping them. Neither is the unpopularity of all the abortion restrictions and the call for sensible gun regulations. It’s difficult to not get discouraged.
Cameron Joseph–writing for VICE–states that “This Election Could Be Just as Long and Ugly as 2020. Slow vote counts, close races, and a crowd of GOP candidates ready to cry “rigged” could lead to a scary election month.”
Republicans who are pushing misinformation about the election are running for state office across the country. And they’ve had two years to prepare to sow chaos this week.
Former President Donald Trump, his election-denying candidates, GOP operatives, and an army of conspiracy theory-believing activists are lobbing bad-faith lawsuits, attempting voter intimidation, and gearing up for disruptive protests to take advantage of slow ballot counts in this week’s midterm elections. And the closer the election results are, the longer it will take to determine a winner in key contests. Things could get very messy.
It will take days, if not weeks, to count enough of the ballots to know which side has won many of the closest, and most closely watched, Senate and governor races. That’s totally normal, and in many states it’s how things have been for years.
But that won’t stop bad-faith candidates—especially those who are losing—from using it to claim it’s being rigged against them, demand that officials stop counting ballots in places where mail ballots are counted late, and push their supporters to protest. Multiple Trump-aligned candidates have already strongly signaled they won’t concede, no matter the outcome.
And 2020 showed exactly how much damage can be done when one side decides to attack the election process itself.
Trump drove the country into chaos by refusing to accept his loss and incited violence to try to keep himself in power. Now, it’s not just Trump and his immediate circle. The prospect of political violence has only continued to grow since the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, with the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband just the latest in a long string of attacks on officials.
“I’m very concerned about the possibility of violence in the post-election period incited by losing candidates,” David Becker, a former Justice Department voting rights attorney who heads the Center for Election Innovation and Research, told VICE News.
Emil Nolde
Blumen (Flowers), n.d.
He continues by providing efforts by groups like The Oathkeepers in various states. The FBI is taking this seriously, which could also be why Republicans are after the institution as being “political.” From NPR: “Judiciary Republicans hint at investigation into FBI, DOJ if they retake the House.”
In a glimpse of what’s to come, House Judiciary Committee Republicans warned the FBI and Department of Justice that they plan to investigate both agencies if their party retakes the House of Representatives. And on Friday they released a 1,000-page report about whistleblower accounts of “a rampant culture of unaccountability, manipulation, and abuse at the highest level.”
Republicans will more than likely retake the House, and possibly the Senate, with the party heavily favored to win midterm elections in several congressional districts.
Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, who heads the DOJ, and another to FBI Director Christopher Wray requesting documents pertaining to committee investigations lurking in the not-too-distant future. The report, titled FBI Whistleblowers: What Their Disclosures Indicate About the Politicization of the FBI And Justice Department, alleges political corruption at the highest levels of the FBI, according to a House Judiciary Republicans press release. Republicans assert in the report that whistleblowers have brought to their attention, “allegations of political bias by the FBI’s senior leadership and misuses of the agency’s federal law-enforcement powers.” The report, while primarily focused on the FBI, also targets the Justice Department as well.
EMIL NOLDE
Garden Flowers, no date
The AP reports, “Jackson, in dissent, issues first Supreme Court opinion.”
New Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has issued her first Supreme Court opinion, a short dissent Monday in support of a death row inmate from Ohio.
Jackson wrote that she would have thrown out lower court rulings in the case of inmate Davel Chinn, whose lawyers argued that the state suppressed evidence that might have altered the outcome of his trial.
Jackson, in a two-page opinion, wrote that she would have ordered a new look at Chinn’s case “because his life is on the line and given the substantial likelihood that the suppressed records would have changed the outcome at trial.”
The evidence at issue indicated that a key witness against Chinn has an intellectual disability that might have affected his memory and ability to testify accurately, she wrote.
Prosecutors are required to turn over potentially exculpatory evidence to the defense. In this case, lower courts determined that the outcome would not have been affected if the witness’ records had been provided to Chinn’s lawyers.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the only other member of the court to join Jackson’s opinion. The two justices also were allies in dissent Monday in Sotomayor’s opinion that there was serious prosecutorial misconduct in the trial of a Louisiana man who was convicted of sex trafficking.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I believe we may be in the fight of our lives. This is from Reuters. Putin’s buddy finally states the obvious. “Russia’s Prigozhin admits interfering in U.S. elections.”
Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Monday he had interfered in U.S. elections and would continue doing so in future, the first such admission from a figure implicated by Washington in efforts to influence American politics.
In comments posted by the press service of his Concord catering firm on Russia’s Facebook equivalent VKontakte, Prigozhin said: “We have interfered (in U.S. elections), we are interfering and we will continue to interfere. Carefully, accurately, surgically and in our own way, as we know how to do.”
The remark by the close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin was posted on the eve of the U.S. midterm elections in response to a request for comment from a Russian news site.
“During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once,” Prigozhin said. He did not elaborate on the cryptic comment.
Prigozhin, who is often referred to as “Putin’s chef” because his catering company operates Kremlin contracts, has been formally accused of sponsoring Russia-based “troll farms” that seek to influence U.S. politics.
So, I’m thinking about going to my little old fire station down the street to vote. My social security check was deposited today. I’ll likely see lots of kids jumping on their school buses to head to their public schools. I will do this before I take up my role as a professor trying to ensure my students understand economics and the financial system without all the propaganda lies coming from certain politicians and their propaganda-based news stations. Let’s not normalize America’s NAZIs. I’m all up to listening to the next installment of Ultra today. This is surely one country in chaos.
What’s on your logging and blogging list today? Please vote BLUE and drag everyone you know with you to do the same!
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