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Month: November 2022

Orange lightning strikes twice?

Published by Tom Sullivan on November 10, 2022

We’re not out of this yet

Screen grab from NY Times.

Red wave it was not on Tuesday. Congress still hangs in the balance even as it appears Republicans will gain control in the House. The Senate is still a grab ball.

Arizona’s U.S. Senate seat looks increasingly secure for incumbent Democrat Mark Kelly even if Cook Political’s Dave Wasserman hasn’t “seen enough” to call it. Kelly leads Republican Blake Masters by nearly 100,000 votes with 30 percent not reported. A win in Arizona would tie Republicans and Democrats at 49 seats each.

Fewer than 20,000 votes separate Republican Adam Laxalt and trailing incumbent Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada with 20 percent of the vote left to count. Too close to call.

Should Democrats win Arizona and lose Nevada, the count will be 49 seats for Democrats and 50 for Republicans. Control of the Senate could come down once again to a runoff in Georgia. In this corner, incumbent Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock. And in the far-right corner, Donald Trump’s own draft pick, Herschel Walker.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes tweeted what we’re all thinking about that: “Trump should absolutely hit the trail HARD in Georgia for that Senate runoff. Basically camp out down there, try to really drive every news cycle.”

Trump could not resist the wall-to-wall attention, as Hayes winked. At least, he’s never displayed that level of self-control. Oh, the places you’ll go! Donald.

You won’t lag behind, because you’ll have the speed.
You’ll pass the whole gang and you’ll soon take the lead.
Wherever you fly, you’ll be best of the best.
Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.

from “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” by Dr. Seuss

So. How does Trump top himself? By screwing Republicans all over, by striking again in the same place he did on Jan. 5, 2021. Republicans lost a pair of runoff elections for Senate and handed control of a 50-50 Senate to Democrats (with Vice President Kamala Harris presiding).

As Politico called it the next day:

With control of the Senate at stake in the state’s two races, the president chose to spend weeks peddling baseless claims that Georgia’s electoral system was rigged, fueling an online movement to boycott Tuesday’s election. He demonized the state’s Republican leaders and fractured the local GOP.

If Republicans have not reached max-Trumpism yet, it’s close. Roger Stone complained to Alex Jones that many MAGAs are convinced that the election system is so broken that they see no point in voting. Now where would they have gotten that idea?

With a little extra Trump TLC, with a little more of the magic touch Dear Leader displayed during the last Georgia runoff, Trump’s MAGA fan club may not vote in the December 2022 runoff any more than they did in January 2021. Should Warnock win reelection, Democrats may not have the additional leverage they’d dreamed of for eliminating the filibuster and going all the places they’d like to go. But they will have held off what might have been an epic, midterm loss of power.

Conventional wisdom upended again. Damn you, Dark Brandon!

Trump may be your MAGA Deadhead’s idea of a manly man, a made-up TV celebrity backed by The Village People. But the insurrectionist far-right dreams of a real fascist strongman. They are still out there threatening to upend the republic.

Red-hatted MAGAs want Nuremberg-style Trump rallies. Fascists want power. To see their enemies crushed under heels. (That would be you, readers.)

We’re not out of this yet. Stay sharp.

Inflation fears inflated?

Published by digby on November 9, 2022

Eric Levitz has a typically smart column today about the election in NT Mag, some of which I kind of disagree with but will have to sit with a while to fully absorb.

This I thought was a fascinating analysis:

After the 2008 financial crisis, Democrats decided to enact a stimulus that the party’s own economists considered inadequate, in deference to concerns about the national debt. As a result, the unemployment rate remained near 10 percent when voters went to the polls for the 2010 midterms.

In 2021, Democrats decided not to repeat their mistake. Even before Biden took office, Congress had already enacted historically large relief bills, which had prevented the COVID crisis from triggering a depression. Nevertheless, with the virus still rampant, Democrats decided to err on the side of providing American households and state governments with excessive financial support, over the objections of many economists and commentators.

This was probably an unwise allocation of legislative capital. Given that Joe Manchin’s tolerance for new government spending proved highly limited, Democrats probably should have allocated more of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan’s funds to permanent programs and high-impact public investments, rather than one-off checks.

Still, the Democrats’ approach now looks much more politically defensible than it did 24 hours ago. For over a year now, polls have consistently found overwhelming disapproval of the economy and discontent with rising prices. This led proponents of full employment (like myself) to despair. In our view, paying for the real economic costs of the pandemic through inflation, rather than mass unemployment, was the just thing to do. It distributes the material burdens of the COVID shock more equitably instead of concentrating it on the most disempowered members of the labor force. But for precisely this reason, it appeared to be politically toxic: Since everyone feels the sting of rising prices, while only a minority of the public suffers from high unemployment, voters looked poised to punish Democrats for prioritizing tight labor markets over low prices.

If voters did this, however, the punishment looks awfully mild. Although there are many other variables that could explain the divergent outcomes, Democrats did far worse in the “low inflation, high unemployment” environment of 2010 than in the “high inflation, low unemployment” one of 2022.

It is possible that the Biden economy makes voters cranky without rendering them desperate for change. Yes, prices are annoyingly high. But wages have almost kept pace with them and jobs are abundant. It’s plausible that these conditions conferred a sufficiently strong sense of material security to prevent many swing voters from reflexively demanding change. (The fact that the GOP’s only explicit plan for reducing inflation is heinously unpopular might have also helped.)

It’s also possible that people just prioritized some other issues over their personal material needs, particularly since pretty much everyone who wants to work is working which makes everyone feel less desperate even with the high prices.

Maybe that old mantra, “job, jobs,jobs” is really the potent economic message. Inflation is terrible but high unemployment can be terrifying. And if that’s so I think we need to be concerned about the Fed’s crusade to break inflation with higher unemployment. We’d better hope they can curb this quickly and level off unemployment at a low level. It’s political poison and we don’t need that going into 2024.

No Thumpin’

Published by digby on November 9, 2022

And no shellacking either

In case you missed it, here are some highlights of Biden’s press conference. He was on his game today:

Will they have a majority or just a Marjorie?

Published by digby on November 9, 2022

However this comes out, Kevin McCarthy has his hands full. If he wins it’s likely he’ll have a single digit majority and Marjorie Taylor Green will be the most powerful person in the US Congress, a nightmare for McCarthy trying to keep his caucus together:

Republicans are still likely to take over the House of Representatives but McCarthy’s grasp on the speakership may be a struggle if a slim majority hands significant power to extreme right-wing members like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., according to several House GOP sources who spoke with CBS News chief election and campaign correspondent Robert Costa.

“A restless morn inside congressional GOP,” Costa wrote on Twitter. “Haven’t seen this level of anxiety and loathing since late 2015 as Trump ascended. Widespread consensus that McCarthy still in a position to be speaker if Rs win House. But his allies now wonder: at what cost? with what kind of power?”

He added Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the No. 2 Republican in the House, would most likely rise as a potential challenger to McCarthy should he start “shedding support” — even if Scalise isn’t interested in initiating a fight.

McCarthy, who planned a victory party in D.C. on Tuesday, predicted that his party would clinch the majority within hours while crucial races had yet to be called, The New York Times reported. 

“When you wake up tomorrow, we will be in the majority and Nancy Pelosi will be in the minority,” McCarthy said to a mostly empty ballroom early Wednesday morning.

Some House Republicans, like Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., are “just as happy with a slim majority” because it would benefit them, Politico reported. 

“I mean, look at what Joe Manchin has done in the Senate as the one deciding vote, right? I would love for the Massie caucus to be relevant. If there’s a one seat majority, my caucus has one person. It’s me. So I can decide whether a bill passes or not,” Massie told the outlet. “I’d be the wrong guy if you’re trying to find somebody who’s heartbroken that we don’t have a 40-seat majority.”

Far-right extremists like Greene and Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., both of whom have spoken at white nationalist conferences, would have more sway in a tight GOP House.

Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman said while McCarthy is expected to run for speaker, it may come down to him buying people off “with perks, favors and concessions.” 

In the case that McCarthy is elected speaker, the GOP agenda and messaging will be dictated by the “loudest, craziest voices on the right,” Josh Schwerin, a former spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Hillary Clinton, told Insider. He would remain “speaker in name only.”

Instead of passing legislation that can move in the dealmaking Senate, the group would instead remain focused on investigations into Democrats, appearing on Fox News and “getting Donald Trump to say nice things about them,” he added.  

But some are predicting that McCarthy may never become speaker at all. 

John Boehner couldn’t control the Tea Party caucus. Paul Ryan couldn’t control the Freedom Caucus. Kevin McCarthy couldn’t control his way out of a paper bag. It’s going to be a shit show.

Nancy Pelosi had a five seat majority in this congress. And she kept it together the entire time and managed to pass some massive legislation without any help from the Republicans. Let’s just put it this way: Kevin McCarthy is no Nancy Pelosi.

Let’s talk about that “messaging problem” m’kay?

Published by digby on November 9, 2022

A whole lot of hand-wringing Democrats who were publicly wailing about the allegedly terrible Democratic messaging need to take a hard look in the mirror. As former Republican strategist Stuart Stevens said on twitter:

Marcos at DKos had an excellent analysis on this today:

There were those of us insisting the dominant media narrative of a “red wave” was wrong. Kerry Eleveld, Simon Rosenberg, Tom Bonier, and I kept looking at the data and wondering where this fervent belief on the massive Republican wave came from. History, for sure. But it was clear as day that this wasn’t a typical midterm. As I wrote in late August, midterms suck for the party in the White House because 1) midterms are referendums on the incumbent president, and he can never live up to the hype of his campaign. Our broken political system means any president’s agenda will get hacked to death; and 2) supporters of the party out of power feel disenfranchised, which is a crappy feeling. They are extra motivated to do something about it. But this year was clearly different. 

1) How can we have a referendum on President Joe Biden, if the last guy won’t get off the stage (as FBI agents swarm around him)? Rather than a referendum, we have a reprise of the 2020 election. And no one motivates the Democratic base more than Donald Trump.

2) Are Democrats truly in the majority if an illegitimate and out-of-control reactionary Supreme Court is overturning decades of established rights, while gutting gun laws and shredding the ability of government to carry out its duties? Conservatives feel disenfranchised, but so do we. And our side doesn’t need manufactured outrages like critical race theory and Honduran caravans to motivate ourselves. Our outrage is real.

Those of us who argued this wasn’t a wave year weren’t riding hopium to our decisions. We weren’t even looking much at polling. Rather, there was hard data to point to: Democratic overperformance in six House special elections after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision and gangbuster voter registration numbers. There was no sign of a drop-off in Democratic performance. The nonpartisan pollsters all showed Democrats highly competitive in both the national House picture and in key Senate and governor races. 

As I write this control of the House hasn’t been decided, but when the prognosticators had assumed 20-40 seat Republican pickups, it’s a victory that we still don’t know who will control the House in January … and there’s a good chance it might still be Democrats!

Still, it was one thing for Republicans to push their wave narrative and another for the media to stupidly play along with it. But too many Democrats fell for the doom and gloom and fed into it. And they didn’t just assume Republican talking points, they all knew that things would be different had Democrats just done that thing that they cared about. We saw this from both the party’s left and centrist wings, stupidly assuming they knew better than what the data showed, because “the narrative.” 

Let’s start with Hillary Rosen.  [You can see what she said in the tweet above]

She said, “I am not happy, we did not listen to voters in this election and I think we’re going to have a bad night … when voters tell you over and over and over again that they care mostly about the economy, listen to them. Stop talking about democracy being at stake. Voters have told us what they want to hear, and I don’t think Democrats have delivered.” 

Note that Rosen was nowhere to be found Tuesday night as voters apparently tossed aside the Republicans’ economic message and responded enthusiastically to the Democratic message on Trump, democracy, and abortion. 

Next up, let me put on my fire-retardant suit as I point fingers at Sen. Bernie Sanders in his essay titled “Democrats shouldn’t focus only on abortion in the midterms. That’s a mistake.” 

[A]s we enter the final weeks of the 2022 midterm elections, I am alarmed to hear the advice that many Democratic candidates are getting from establishment consultants and directors of well-funded Super Pacs that the closing argument of Democrats should focus only on abortion. Cut the 30-second abortion ads and coast to victory.

I disagree. In my view, while the abortion issue must remain on the front burner, it would be political malpractice for Democrats to ignore the state of the economy and allow Republican lies and distortions to go unanswered.

Republicans wanted to fight this election on economic grounds. It was not an argument Democrats were going to win. Our best chance was to make the election about something fundamentally more at the core: our democracy and our rights. Gas prices go up and down. Inflation as well. But our rights? Our democracy? We only get one shot at that. So why would we play to the Republicans’ electoral strengths? 

Here is Justice Democrats, which also bought into the idea that Democrats were doomed. You know, because of “the message.” 

There is a weird tic that many political pros have that their issue is the most important issue, and if only Democrats spoke about their issue, all would be well. 

Now obviously I don’t disagree with the broader premise that Democrats are much better for the working class, and that it’s distressing when Republicans walk around pretending to be populists. But Democrats didn’t need to “reclaim” that title to win this election. Justice Samuel Alito and Donald Trump handed us the perfect tools to motivate our voters to the polls, allowing Democrats to sidestep the party-out-of-power’s traditional advantages with economic disenchantment. 

Now, had Dems spent the last year blaming Big Oil execs for higher gas prices, pointing to price-gouging and record profits as proof, then that might have been a different story. But it was a missed opportunity that Dems weren’t going to fix in the six months headed into the election, and luckily they didn’t have to. They might want to get on that for 2024, however, because oil execs now know how easy it is to tank Joe Biden’s approval numbers via price manipulation. But that’s a story for another day. 

Here’s a whole story of second-guessers a week out before the election because they couldn’t shut up to wait and see what the election results might look like before declaring defeat: 

Top Democratic officials, lawmakers and strategists are openly second-guessing their party’s campaign pitch and tactics, reflecting a growing sense that Democrats have failed to coalesce around one effective message with enough time to stave off major losses in the House and possibly decisive defeats in the tightly contested Senate.

Weird, turns out that tailoring messages to people’s states and districts might’ve done the job more effectively than forcing everyone into a cookie-cutter approach that, incidentally, would’ve played to Republican strengths. 

“If Republicans are going to attack on inflation, you should turn to them and say, ‘What the hell have you done?’ The answer is nothing,” said Senator Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania. “And I think Democrats should talk about that more.”

Um, Democrats did that. And then they pivoted to abortion and democracy. 

“The truth is, Democrats have done a poor job of communicating our approach to the economy,” said Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat from Michigan who is in one of this year’s most competitive races. “I have no idea if I’m going to win my election — it’s going to be a nail biter. But if you can’t speak directly to people’s pocketbook and talk about our vision for the economy, you’re just having half a conversation.”

Slotkin won that nail-biter, so it’s great that her message worked in a very difficult district. But Democrats staked their national campaign on issues that resonated with their core base and refused to play in the Republican’s chosen battlefield. And the end result? In the national exit polls, look at this: 

You know what’s funny? On that inflation question, the Republican advantage was an anemic 52-44 edge. So the Democratic message did make some headway. But on abortion? 

That is what Democrats were riding into this election. And note how immigration was fifth on the list? Turns out that issue played to the Democrats’ advantage, with 54% saying immigrants “help the country,” while only 37% said they “hurt the country.” 

Look, I have no problem with a postmortem that looks at the data and tries and figure out what went wrong. But if you’re going to be honest about it, entering that discussion without a preconceived ideological angle, then you need to wait for results, pore over the data, perhaps commission additional data, and then make a dispassionate assessment based on that information. 

But that’s not what any of the people above did. Remember Hillary Rosen saying, “When voters tell you over and over and over again that they care mostly about the economy, listen to them. Stop talking about democracy being at stake”? Yet only 32% of those voters—less than a third—thought the economy was the most important issue. 

And now look at Pennsylvania, where Democrats didn’t just sweep the governor and Senate races, but they are on the verge of picking up the state House: 

Abortion. See? Abortion! All those white men, including an embarrassing number of Democrats, who decided that the issue was “fading” would have cost us the election had we done what they asked! 

Anyway, all’s well that ends well, including egg on the face of ridiculous Democrats who surrendered the election before any votes were counted. All because Republicans set “The Narrative,” and the traditional media and prognosticators were unable to consider the data, the special election results, and the polling. 

QOTD: Jamie Raskin

Published by digby on November 9, 2022

[P]olling failed to capture the widespread feeling among Democrats, which grew after the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade and the Jan. 6 hearings over the summer, that their core democratic rights were increasingly at risk.

    “I think that pundits sometimes project onto the public a crude materialism, where all people care about is pocketbook issues in the narrowest sense,” Mr. Raskin said. “People understand how precarious and precious a thing constitutional democracy is, and they don’t want to lose it.”

    Everyone always assumes that materialism is just “the way people think” as if it’s a law written in stone. But people are complicated and are motivated by many things that have nothing to do with money. Good old Marxist theory only goes so far to explain how society works.

    There’s a lot going on in this country right now that goes beyond “the economy stupid” and it would seem that many Americans do understand that. When they start putting certifiable nuts into important positions of power and taking away rights, it gets people’s attention.

    The decent people have to work so hard for good

    Published by digby on November 9, 2022

    But they do keep at it

    Paper cutout family with house under a Medicaid umbrella

    This shows that even in the red states there is some hope.

    South Dakota voters on Tuesday approved a measure to expand the state’s Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act.

    The program, which takes effect in July and is expected to cover more than 40,000 people, passed with about 56 percent support.

    The Republican-controlled state, where lawmakers have long resisted Medicaid expansion, is the seventh in the last five years to do so at the ballot box — and likely the last to do so for some time.

    “We are thrilled by this victory, which took years of work, coalition building, and organizing to achieve,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, which helped pass the ballot measure. “Citizens took matters into their own hands to pass Medicaid expansion via ballot measure — showing us once again that if politicians won’t do their job, their constituents will step up and do it for them.”

    Opponents of Medicaid expansion tried to make passage of the ballot measure more difficult through a June initiative, Amendment C, that would have raised the voter approval threshold to 60 percent. That measure was overwhelmingly defeated.

    Under the American Rescue Plan, the federal government encouraged states to expand Medicaid by covering an extra 5 percent of the costs of the program, in addition to the 90 percent it covers for newly eligible individuals under Obamacare.

    The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates those incentives will send $110 million to South Dakota.

    Opponents of Medicaid expansion, including Republican Gov. Kristi Noem, argued the measure would cost the state in the long run, force lawmakers to raise taxes, and discourage able-bodied adults from getting jobs. Proponents, meanwhile, pointed to the program’s success in the 38 other states that have implemented it over the last decade.

    More than 17 million low-income Americans have gained coverage as a result of Medicaid expansion, a portion of the Affordable Care Act that was made optional as a result of a 2012 Supreme Court decision.

    Of course they still voted for Cruella Noem, one of the most heartless of them all so it only goes so far. But still …

    As for the rest of the states that have refused to accept the medicaid expansion?

    The South Dakota vote signals the end of an era for expanding Medicaid ballot box. Of the 11 states that still have yet to expand Medicaid, only three — Florida, Mississippi and Wyoming — have a voter-initiated ballot measure process, and none appear likely to take up the proposal in the short term.

    In Florida, a 60 percent voter approval threshold makes passing ballot measures challenging. In Mississippi, the state Supreme Court effectively threw out the state’s ballot initiative process. And in Wyoming, proponents are pushing to expand Medicaid through the legislative process rather than at the ballot box

    There are just a whole lot of people in this country who enjoy other people’s suffering. There’s no other way to explain it. And there are a lot of them. The good news is that there does seem to be more good good people than bad, just a lot fewer than I once thought.

    About that red wave

    Published by digby on November 9, 2022

    But don’t relax. The worst is yet to come.

    It appears the pollsters were more or less right in predicting a very close election, within the margin of error — but pundits and analysts were dead wrong in assuming that meant that the “hidden” Trump voters would sweep in and deliver a sweeping victory to the Republicans. They insisted that the “fundamentals” all pointed that way: The out party always wins in midterms and “it’s the economy, stupid,” along with “crime,” the great Republican bogeyman, meaning the Democrats were toast. Well, so much for that.

    As I write this, it looks as though the Democrats have a better than even chance of holding on to the Senate and even some statistical possibility they won’t lose the House. NBC projects a very narrow Republican majority of about 220-215 — with an estimated wobble of plus or minus 10 seats. Win or lose, there’s no red wave, let alone a “red tsunami.” If Republicans do win, it’s more like a tiny pink trickle, eking out a victory on the margins in an election they thought would end with a triumphant sweep.

    Over the next few days there will be many words written and spoken about what exactly happened and why the projections were so wrong. But I doubt that the media will do any soul-searching about listening to Republican operatives who whisper “secret” polling numbers in their ears in service to the “bandwagon effect,” or will start giving less credence to pollsters’ practice of fighting the last war instead of this one. That’s too bad. By allowing Republicans to play this deceptive expectations game, mainstream media pundits and reporters are simply  laying the groundwork for more ludicrous lies about voter fraud, which we’re almost to see rolled out after some close GOP losses. The media helped convince many Republican voters that their party was on the way to a major victory — without a whole lot of evidence to back that up — and will bear some responsibility if there’s blowback from the true believers.

    However this all ends up, Republicans largely failed to capitalize on one of the most promising political environments either party has had in years. Soaring inflation and Biden’s dreadful approval ratings alone should have destroyed the Democrats. Yes, the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was a blow to the GOP’s prospects but if they had fielded competent candidates across the board they could have finessed the issue enough to get past that. Let’s be clear about the X factor that led Republicans to defeat (or near-defeat, as the case may be). That was Donald Trump, with his endorsement of extremist candidates, his massive vanity and constant interference, his insistence on remaining the dominant figure two years after his conclusive defeat. That threw their entire midterm campaign off course. He’s an albatross hanging around the party’s neck, and he’s choking it.

    Republicans are not happy with him at the moment, to put it mildly. They see that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pulled off a big victory in Florida pulling all of his personally drawn House districts with him. If Republicans do end up with a House majority after so many losses elsewhere, that will be the biggest reason why. Florida is one of the only true bright spots on the entire map for them and they’re furious with Trump for how badly things look in the rest of the country. After all, he’s the one who painted himself as the big kingmaker.

    MSNBC’s Chris Hayes put it this way:

    He’s right. This is now the third straight election in which Donald Trump has cost the Republican Party winnable seats. Will that finally break the spell? You’d think it would, but we’ve been here before.

    Trump, of course, is just lying about it. He posted the following on Truth Social:

    174 wins and 9 losses, A GREAT EVENING, and the Fake News Media, together with their partner in crime, the Democrats, are doing everything possible to play it down. Amazing job by some really fantastic candidates!

    I don’t know whether he completely made up those numbers or if they have some notional basis in reality. But this was not a “GREAT EVENING” for Republicans. As is his wont, he lashed out at a couple of Republicans who lost, blaming their defeats on insufficient enthusiasm for his 2020 election Big Lie. He is preparing the base for his excuse for 2022: Republicans can’t win anything without him.

    Sadly, I suspect that a large and devoted faction of the Republican base would rather believe him than their lying eyes. By next week, this loss will be forgotten and the party will probably fall in line. Next week, you see, Donald Trump will maybe, sort of, kind of be announcing his next presidential campaign.

    That’s right, folks. The 2022 midterms aren’t even over — we might not have final results from Arizona, Nevada and California until next week — and the 2024 campaign has officially begun. Get ready: It’s going to be exactly as awful as you imagine. All the reporting suggests that Trump is loaded for bear and I can’t imagine this election night will make him back down. His instinct is always to hit back harder.

    It’s hard to say how this midterm dud will affect his main rival’s prospect. I’ve long believed that Ron DeSantis would ultimately decide to sit the 2024 race out. Why take on Trump for a bloody battle that will only leave him scarred or mortally wounded, when he can be governor for four more years and then go into 2028 as the frontrunner? Thing is, there will be a clamor among certain GOP movers and shakers for him to do it anyway. It’s increasingly obvious that Trump’s alleged magical powers are a complete fiction, and DeSantis may just decide his time is now. He’s not without ego, that’s for sure.

    Trump’s already gunning for him. After dubbing him “Ron DeSanctimonious” at a rally over the weekend, the ex-prez dropped this to reporters over the weekend.

    “If he runs, he runs,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. DeSantis to a handful of reporters traveling with him on his private plane — recently refurbished and put back into use — after a rally Monday night in Dayton, Ohio.

    But Mr. Trump added, in remarks published on Tuesday by The Wall Street Journal, “If he did run, I will tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering. I know more about him than anybody other than perhaps his wife, who is really running his campaign.”

    As the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser quipped on Twitter (referencing Trump’s famous quote about the ambassador to Ukraine in his “perfect phone call”): “Looks like Ron DeSantis is going to go through some things.” Regardless of what the Sunshine State’s governor decides to do, America is going to go through some things too. Again. 

    Pay no attention to the pundits behind the curtain

    Published by Tom Sullivan on November 9, 2022

    They insisted Republicans gained ground among Blacks and Latinos

    From the inbox friend this morning, even Ann Coulter gets how wrong that punditry was:

    Um, yeah.

    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott may have handily defeated Beto O’Rourke last night, but tales of Democrats losing ground among Latinos seems greatly exaggerated this morning, says Coulter.

    Election Results: Beto O’Rourke CRUSHES Gov. Greg Abbott in majority Hispanic border counties.

    New York Times graphic.

    Work harder and don’t be bamboozled.

    Congress still in the balance

    Published by Tom Sullivan on November 9, 2022

    Democrats overperform

    Washington Post’s landing page the day after.

    “The red wave that wasn’t,” declares Politico.

    “Have not been this surprised by an election night since 2016,” tweeted MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.

    The Senate hangs in the balance this morning with some key races still uncalled. Democrat John Fetterman defeated TV doctor Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania. It was Democrats’ first Senate flip of the night.

    “We can’t have a system where if you win, it’s a legitimate election, and if you lose someone stole it.”

    In Ohio, Republican J.D. Vance bested Democratic congressman Tim Ryan by five points. Ryan gave the classy concession speech no Republican from the Party of Trump would.

    “I have the privilege to concede this race to J.D. Vance, because the way this country operates is that when you lose an election you concede and you respect the will of the people,” Ryan told supporters. “We can’t have a system where if you win, it’s a legitimate election, and if you lose someone stole it.”

    The Post reports that voters reacted to GOP extremism and the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade after 50 years:

    Democrats showed strength in key battleground races Tuesday, potentially defying Republican hopes of sweeping victories in the midterm elections and leaving control of Congress hanging in the balance the morning after millions of Americans went to the polls.

    Republicans needed to flip five seats to retake the House and remained favored to take the majority after gaining some targeted districts. But the preliminary results reflected a closely divided country, with enthusiastic voters on both sides of the partisan divide. Republican efforts to tap anger over inflation and crime and strike deep into Democratic territory ran up against backlash over new restrictions on abortion and concerns about GOP extremism.

    NBC News reports:

    Thus far, election deniers have lost the races for governor in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin; the Senate in New Hampshire; and secretary of state in Michigan, Minnesota and New Mexico.

    They’ve won in the races for the Senate in Ohio and attorney general in Florida and Ohio.

    In many of the races involving election deniers, candidates sought offices with the power to affect elections; some ran in pivotal battleground states where presidential election results have an outsize impact on the Electoral College outcome — and thus who wins the White House.

    Surprises and expected disappointments

    In Georgia, Democrat Stacey Abrams lost her second bid for governor to incumbent Brian Kemp. The Georgia Senate race between incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock and Donald Trump-backed Herschel Walker is still too close to call with Warnock nearly a full point ahead with 95 percent of ballots counted. If neither reaches 50 percent, they will compete in a runoff on December 6.

    In Wisconsin, incumbent Democrat Gov. Tony Evers was reelected despite a shaky economy. Sen. Ron Johnson leads Democrat Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes by two points with 94 percent of the vote counted. So, a sprinkle of sanity beside cheese-head crazy.

    In Arizona, the race for governor between Democrat Katie Hobbs and Trump-backed TV personality Kari Lake is still in the balance. With nearly two-thirds of the vote counted, Hobbs leads by two points. Republicans and Lake are prepared to cry foul, having learned nothing from two years of election denial and losses in court challenge after court challenge. On the Senate side, incumbent Democrat Mark Kelly leads his race against Blake Masters by six points with roughly two-thirds of votes counted. More votes are still to come in this morning from Maricopa County. It’s significant to note that with Trump not on the ballot, the electorate may not hold a reservoir of Republican votes outstanding to help Lake and Masters.

    Here in North Carolina, former state Supreme Court chief justice Cheri Beasley lost her bid to replace Sen. Richard Burr to Republican election denier Rep. Ted Budd. Polling was close. But close is never enough for Democrats in the Tar Heel State. Yet, Democrats won seven of 14 North Carolina U.S. House seats reaching parity for the first time since 2011 when the GOP gerrymandered the state “with almost surgical precision.” Democrats lost two state Supreme Court seats. Coming voting rights cases? Good luck, Democrats.

    Republicans will not rack up the 30, 40 U.S. House gains projected in a normal midterm election. These are not normal times and normal rules do not apply. Republicans will take control of the House majority, but likely only narrowly.

    New York Times graphic.

    The future of abortion rights was on the ballot last night. Voters defied pundit’s and Republicans’ insistence that inflation and crime would drive election results. NBC News exit polling indicated differently. Abortion rights are a big effing deal, as President Joe Biden might say.

    Don’t move to Portugal just yet.