Tester wins in Montana, so it’s probably going to be a 54-46 Senate. If Florida and Arizona had gone the other way (barring a change in recount, which could change things in FL, less likely in AZ), it would have been an ok night. And Indiana, Missouri, and ND were always going to be tough.
This burns me up though: in Arizona, the Republican McSally is ahead of the Democrat Sinema by .9 with almost all the votes counted. The Green candidate, Angela Green, got 2.2.
Update. Apparently, there are still a lot of votes in Arizona (absentees, etc.), so Sinema still has a chance. She’d have a better one without that Green candidate though.
JMG
No, there are like over 400,000 votes outstanding in Arizona. Race far from over, like maybe days and weeks far.
mainmata
If we had a multiparty electoral system, I’d be happy to have a Green Party or even a Libertarian Party (though there really is no such thing). But we don’t live in that world. It’s a two party system and so third parties are just thoroughly useless spoilers. They should be shunned. If you want to embrace environmentalism (and I am one of those people), work within the Democratic Party to get your views represented.
Damien
Yeah, the belief in third parties is, no joke, one of the most clandestinely damaging. Actually, scratch that, thinking of voting as “protest” or as anything other than absolutely mandatory is the most damaging.
Mike in DC
@mainmata: 3rd parties are mostly special snowflake/unicorn bait, plus a “protest vote” for Ds or Rs disgruntled by recent events but not willing to flip blue or red.
Doug!
@Damien:
I think they could have their place. I think they may have a role in the short-term of future of New York State politics, where the Republican party went extinct last night but we have a truly shitty wing to our Democratic party and a third party (WFP) that I have respect for. But this Green bullshit….
Matt McIrvin
@mainmata: It looks like the ranked-choice system might get its first nontrivial test in Maine-02. And it sounds like, if the second round count puts the Democratic candidate over the top, the Republican may litigate to have the system thrown out. It’ll be an interesting test to see if these things are viable in the US.
kindness
The Bernie/Jill Stein contingent continues to sink a Democratic win. The part that really pisses me off is the very people who chose to vote for the Green (or write in Bernie) turn around and proclaim they weren’t the problem. The problem was a bad Democratic candidate.
Arrrrggh!
--bd
Gotta take the positive with the negative. Tester won by 4,210 votes. The Libertarian received 12,797 and there was no Green candidate. Mirror image dynamic there.
Marcopolo
So I am late to the post election stuff as I slept in after a long day yesterday then took the time to write an email to all my friends about last nights results. There are a lot of unhappy folks in MO right now. I’ll post that here but first. Apparently the President’s press conference has turned into a shitshow–I mean like more of a shitshow than normal. Wow.
Here’s the email I sent:
Not gonna sugar coat it–it was a pretty awful night for the MO candidates I supported. Claire lost. Cort lost (though I’d argue his 4% losing margin was actually amazingly positive looking forward). Only 3 of the 8 state house seats I was looking at flipped from R to D–two of those were near KC so you won’t hear much about them. That being said somehow Nicole Galloway bucked the statewide tide, all of my local state elected folks do represent my beliefs, and Wesley Bell is the new StL County Prosecuting Attorney, which will have as much as or more positive impact on the lives of low-income, minority, lbgtq folks as anything that happens in Jeff City or DC. Also, due to the success of statewide ballot initiatives Missourians will also see a higher minimum wage, hopefully cleaner government (I’m hedging on this since folks always seem to find loopholes to get around ethics reforms), and MJ is now legal for medical reasons (Michigan, which did this 10 years ago totally legalized MJ last night–they might provide a roadmap for us).
So there is stuff to celebrate.
Like I will now seriously start looking for a new dog since the Ds took back control of the House :). This was the biggest prize of the night! Ds won enough seats (30ish so far with a couple of them real surprises) that I would call the result a wave. There will now be oversight of the Trump Administration. And for those of you who know Matt & Cindy, they are really happy to wave goodbye to Scott Walker in WI. And Kris Kobach will not be the next Gov of Kansas. There were also good results in Iowa & Illinois & Michigan & Minnesota.
As for losing a bunch of Senate seats. It’s not great but the Ds did not have control of the Senate in the first place & it was just about as bad an election map for them this cycle as was possible. 2020 looks a lot better. If you were a Beto supporter, well, he actually came closer to winning than Claire. And he got 2 US House folks and a lot of state house & senate candidates elected in Texas & the Democratic party there actually now has a state infrastructure. I think we can probably also say TX is more purple than MO right now. That leaves FL & GA. I am pretty sure we have not seen the last of Andrew Gillum or Stacey Abrams. I sure hope not. Abrams helped Lucy McBath win the GA 6 house seat last night–if you recall this was the first special election after Trump won where Democrats spent a gazillion dollars & lost by two points and everyone was depressed. Well, they just came back and won it. And in Florida there are now 1.5 million potential new voters with the passage of a statewide amendment restoring voting rights to felons who have served their time. This should have an affect on elections there going forward as the vast majority of these folks are AA men.
There are quite a few other bright spots to last night but I want to specifically highlight two more: first, several million additional folks across the country will have new (or potential in the case of KS & WI) access to healthcare through Medicaid expansion ballot initiatives (and electoral results) that passed in ID, NE, UT. That is a bid deal for a lot of people. Second, Democrats won a lot (over 330) state legislative seats & flipped 6 state legislatures; in three states Rs now no longer have control over all three branches of gov’t. This will positively affect redistricting heading into 2020.
In closing, I think a lot of us wanted last night’s election to be a strong, sharp, clear and unmistakeable rebuke to Trump & his racism, and misogyny, and lying, and authoritarianism, and the Republican party’s embracing those things. We only got part of that. Instead, it looks like in most of the rural redder areas we saw folks who seem even more committed to lapping this toxic stuff up like mother’s milk. And so far there still does not appear to be any/ enough downside or consequence to Trump’s authoritarian & demagogic behaviors & non-stop lying about virtually everything. That is scary stuff.
I don’t have any answer to that but I can tell you that: 1) thinking last night was a big defeat is just wrong; 2) most takes you hear over the next week or two about what happened last night will be wrong, incomplete, or both; 3) this is a long long term effort, we need celebrate our wins, see if we can learn anything from the losses, and keep moving forward, though we will definitely be harder tested in MO. I’m optimistic, however, we can get a Medicaid expansion initiative on the ballot here as well as one addressing making voting in elections easier. Hopefully those will be two of the main goals we work towards in 2020 in MO.
TaMara (HFG)
I don’t know – I’m still not convinced those “green party” people would vote otherwise. Same with the libertarian party.
Glad for Montana, hope FL gets a recount and AZ keep racking up those votes.
gwangung
I believe in third parties if they can manage to win elections. Start small, work up to big.
CarolDuhart2
@Damien: And third parties get nothing for those votes. Not even a House seat. Not even a tranche of state house seats, Rarely become mayor.
And even if they managed to pull one out, there aren’t even enough in a lot of places for those parts of the government that are filled by appointment, so they can’t govern effectively.
They can’t see that a “Green Caucus’ in the Democratic Party could be a force for good. Inside the party, they could be appointed to the appropriate agencies, be judges, and what not. But they think that millions will flock to a party they haven’t heard of-ever.
WhatsMyNym
I don’t like our open primary in WA, but at least only two go through to the election.
NonyNony
@–bd: I was just going to post the same thing – Tester’s margin of victory in Montana is within the votes won by the Libertarian. In fact, I don’t think Tester has ever won an election with more than 50% of the vote – there’s always been a Libertarian spoiler that has given him his margin of victory.
To be honest – I’m starting to think we should be figuring out a way to funnel money to the Libertarian Party the way that the Republicans do to the Greens. If there was a Libertarian option in Arizona maybe the counts there would be different right now. What’s good for the goose and all that.
schrodingers_cat
@TaMara (HFG): I agree.
NCSteve
Can we please, finally stop acting like the Green Party is anything other than an adjunct of the Republican Party, a GOP ratfucking black op funded by Republicans that serves only the ends and interests of Republicans now? Can we please stop acting like Susan Sarandon is materially different from Ann Coulter?
The Green Party apparatus is as much the enemy as the RNC. It’s candidates are as much the enemy as Republican candidates. It’s shills are as much Republican shills as Megan McArdle or the twitter chick with the gun stuck down her yoga pants.
Their regular voters are as unreachable as your crazy Fox-toxxed Uncle Jake. The only thing that matters is hiving off the occasionals and new voters.
Greens hate Democrats more than Republicans, with all the fervor the far left always has for those to their immediate right. It’s time we stopped pretending like they’re an opportunity rather than a problem.
ruemara
I had relatively long twitter exchange with a Green Party advocate in one of these races, possibly Sinema’s. Their position is who cares if they’re spoiling outcomes for Dems, since they have to do this to get the matching funds to keep their party going. They’re constantly losing, but if they get enough vote percentages, they qualify as a party and can retain their existence. I’m disappointed in my Green Party past now.
And I’m actively pissing off former young followers by challenging their guilt over inactivity and smug hipster/POC wokeness “I reject this system!” idiotology and blaming others for “vote-shaming”.
@NCSteve: Considering how often they’re getting funds from the GOP &/or out & loud GOP big money donors, no. They’re not the Green Party of the EU.
realbtl
Checking in from Montana, my local RW rag had Tester losing this morning. I’m savoring the thought of all the sad faces now.
Platonailedit
The corrupt racist pos is still ranting and raving at the press. Last night did not go down well the scum.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I’ve talk to Green politicians, they are the left mirror of the tea tards, in a Greenies mind, they are moral ones so it’s unpossible for them to do anything unethical.
TenguPhule
there is no fucking god.
Spanky
@NCSteve: Relatedly, maybe DougJ can start fundraising for Libertarians in strategic races.
Barbara
@JMG: Looking at the result county by county last night, Sinema won the second largest county, which includes Tucson, by a substantial margin, and while she also won in Maricopa, which is to Arizona what Las Vegas is to Nevada in most years, she was ahead by a very small margin. That’s probably a big enough universe to have a chance of changing the outcome, but I don’t know how probable it is.
Ivan X
Ok, I have a snarky contrarian view on this.
First, her last name is Green, so her party choice is appropriate.
Second, we can’t lose our minds about third parties, because they exist, always have existed (at least in my 30 years of voting), and presumably will continue to exist. They’re just the cost of doing business, like shoplifters in a retail store. You can’t say “We would have hit these sales targets if only for the shoplifters.” They exist, so you have to build that into your business model.
Every now and then a high profile third party gets enough attention to exceed their usual take, and we can rightly get upset about it. But we can’t just get worked up over Greens getting 2% because we can’t just wish them, or their voters, out of existence. No more reason, anyway, than just being mad at the 1% of Republican voters for not voting Democratic.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@CarolDuhart2:
That actually the entire point, they need to justify their behavior because it’s “pure”.
TenguPhule
@Ivan X:
Stores spend lots of money to deter shoplifters. And when they catch them in the act, examples are made of them.
TenguPhule
@Ivan X:
says who?
Omnes Omnibus
@Doug!: Angie?
Barbara
@ruemara: “So you admit you feel ashamed for not voting.” I would probably something like that, as in, deliberately not accepting the premise of the complaint rendered, no doubt, in an incredibly cry baby mewling whine.
TenguPhule
Oh JFC, Trump is trying to fuck over Pelosi already.
Elizabelle
Nancy Pelosi doing a press conference. Wearing hot pink. Read a quote from Ronald Reagan a few moments ago.
Now speaking of asking GOP to drop their assault on pre-existing conditions as a show of good faith.
Ivan X
@TenguPhule: And yet, they still have shoplifters.
Elizabelle
And the first question from the press is about “possible Democratic overreach” with the investigations.
Yer liberal press.
TenguPhule
Trump says he would take a ‘warlike posture’ if House Democrats investigate him
And there it is. Fuck bipartisanship.
We do not negotiate with Nazis.
TenguPhule
@Ivan X:
And yet, the stores never say “oh well, we’ll always have shoplifters, therefore we should do nothing to keep those shoplifters out of OUR store.”
Gelfling 545
@Doug!: After WFP’s shenanigans with Cynthia Nixon I have my doubts about them. I don’t think anybody actually likes Cuomo, possibly even his blood relatives, but, Jesus, Governor of NY is no job for an amateur. Good ideas (which was all anybody seemed to say in her favor) are a dime a dozen and useless if you have no clue how to go about getting them enacted. I’ve gone off the whole third party idea as they only seem to mess up elections for Democrats.
TenguPhule
@Elizabelle:
McConnell will smile, nod and do the exact opposite.
Barbara
@TaMara (HFG): I think this is the main point. You can’t assume that your own candidate would pick up those votes. Many wouldn’t bother to vote at all and there would be splits among those who did. I am sure there are races where it makes the margin of difference, but it’s hard to pinpoint. Maine grew so frustrated with three candidate elections that effectively stymied the majority of voters that it moved to ranked choice voting. That could be one way to deal with the phenomenon, though it’s unlikely to be accepted in many states. Maybe over time.
Mnemosyne
@Marcopolo:
Last I saw, Abrams has not conceded and the number of uncounted votes could still force a recount or run-off.
I’m going to send her some cash when I get paid tomorrow to help facilitate that.
satby
@Ivan X: who often are prosecuted and go to jail. Hence, held accountable.
Gravenstone
@NonyNony: Bonus that I believe the Lib candidate tried throwing their support behind the Republican a couple of days before the election. Guess Libertarians don’t take instruction from the top very well.
JR
@TenguPhule: not in the stores where I worked. Was never worth the effort or paying for full time security. You just kick the bums out.
CaseyL
Tester prevailed, so we keep that seat. Florida headed to a recount if Scott’s margin drops below 0.5 (is currently at 0.6) – which would mean recounting all the votes, i.e., for Governor as well. I read there are still 100K ballots to be counted, but don’t know whether those are from Dem or GOP strongholds.
The Moar You Know
@TenguPhule: I have a better plan: we open the House session with nothing but investigations and don’t put up one single piece of legislation. Hastert child molester rule time. Anything the GOP house puts up gets the garbage bin.
Make the GOP Senate do it all. Then they have to write it to our satisfaction, or the government can just take a good long vacation.
The GOP has been trying to hold the Dem party hostage over legislation and budgets since Newt and that weapon can and should be turned right back in their faces. They won’t stop otherwise.
Gravenstone
@Gelfling 545:
Bernie Sanders says Hello!
TenguPhule
@The Moar You Know:
I completely endorse your sentiments.
We have a fuckton of unused legislative gunpowder and its not going to get any fucking drier then this.
TenguPhule
@JR: Walmart says hi.
sherparick
@mainmata: It is what primary are for. If you are voting for a party that never breaks 2%, take a fucking hint. Its not them, its you who are the problem.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
The San Francisco mayoral election used ranked-choice, and you could see the flaws in the system. The number 2 and 3 candidates asked their supporters to only select one of them as the second choice candidate. If everyone had gone along with it, it might have prevented the front runner (and eventual winner) London Breed from winning a close contest.
TenguPhule
Platonailedit
Marcopolo
@Mnemosyne: Well, in my defense, I did say I was pretty sure we hadn’t seen the last of Abrams. On a more serious note both she & Lucy McBath are looking for donations to fund recount lawyering. There will probably wind up being quite a few more candidates who will need to raise money for the recount fights now-Sinema comes to mind.
So I also took the time to write a couple of thank you emails to state house candidates I helped out with who lost. It is not necessarily something people think about but if there is a candidate you know & like please consider letting them know they are a hero (or your preferred description) for running for office.
TenguPhule
Another norm, shredded.
Interesting times.
TaMara (HFG)
@The Moar You Know: I approve this message.
Damien
@gwangung: This is exactly what I’m talking about, though, because third parties will literally never be viable in this country. Simply due to political science it is impossible, and that’s thanks to our first-past-the-post election style. Now, if we were to implement IRV or some other ranked choice system, then maybe.
But I don’t see us doing that anytime soon.
wasabi gasp
Picking up a “third time’s a charm” vibe. #winning
Omnes Omnibus
@TenguPhule: Do find a way to be negative.
Ivan X
@satby: first, often, not always. Second I don’t see how this applies to an election. The shoplifting metaphor, like any metaphor, can be stretched to breaking. I’m simply arguing that if some people are going to shoplift successfully, you have to build in those costs, like any costs, into your profit model. I could have alternatively cited any built in expense you think shouldn’t be there. That some shoplifters are caught and prosecuted is besides the point, or so it seems to me, for the purposes of claiming that there’s not much we can do about third parties getting a small slice of the vote. The point is we need to be winning by enough to compensate for them.
lamh36
UGH
Other than Abrams and Gillum…this is the one I was looki for the most!!!!
Handel hasn’t concedes to McBath!!!!
This is the one I was looking for most!!!
https://twitter.com/politicalinsidr/status/1060244818960506881?s=21
ruemara
@Elizabelle: When people started coming at Pelosi for saying “bipartisanship”, I said they needed to pay attention to how the press is going to frame anything other than claiming bipartisanship as bitter angry dems. Folks need to stop getting angry at Dems and stay angry at the media.
@Ivan X: They’re getting enough voters to election people in direct opposition to their purported goals. IDC if it’s 1-5% when we needed that margin of victory to win.
The Moar You Know
@TenguPhule: I’d take that deal in a heartbeat. There’s no one in the US Government who leaks as much classified as he does.
trollhattan
@kindness:
It’s no coincidence that Stein and Flynn were at Vlad’s table in 2016. They know it’s easier to peel off Dem voters via 3rd party candidates than Republicans, “Libertarians” notwithstanding.
Boussinesque
@TenguPhule: what the fuck is he on about? We haven’t leaked anything illegally, it’s just his ass thinking that anything politically damaging about him and his corrupt-ass enablers in Congress is automatically bad and therefore illegal. Bring it on, asshole, and we’ll see who comes out of this ahead.
TenguPhule
@Omnes Omnibus: If Trump is kind enough to tell us his evil schemes in advance I see no reason why we can’t take advantage of that.
trollhattan
@The Moar You Know:
“Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi!”
How much damn money did Issa the Gowdy spend chasing that turducken?”
Spanky
OT (because it’s BalloonJuice), but …
Scouts in disarray!
I actual don’t care very much, so long as it doesn’t disrupt my Thin Mint pipeline.
Ridnik Chrome
@Mike in DC:
As much as I dislike Andrew Cuomo I could not bring myself to fill in the dot for his Green opponent. After 2016 the Greens are on my permanent shit list.
eemom
I thought I read somewhere in the last week or two that the Green twat in Arizona was bowing out to help Sinema. Did I hallucinate that?
geg6
Things just get more surreal. Was talking on FB about the disappointment with the Florida vote with an old high school friend who just moved to Florida. I said something about how, now, Florida deserves the red tide that they have freely chosen for themselves. Another person we both went to high school (and is not among my FB friends) with jumped right on and started berating me about how awesome Florida is (she lives there) and how it now is even better after last night. I just replied that I don’t live there and I would never live there because of all the racism, pollution, red tides, dead sea animals, etc. but hoped she stay happy there. Then she came back, told me that I didn’t know anything about Florida and there is no racism there and that they wouldn’t have a lying, scheming, sockalist like me there anyway. I then asked her why she was so bitter and angry since she won. Now she’s doing the FB equivalent of screaming at me incoherently that she’s not the angry bitter one and there are no racists in Florida and why am I so angry and bitter? Very nicely answered back that I’m not angry or bitter, but pretty happy with how things went yesterday and I hoped she would find a way to live a more happy life. As of right now, I think she had a stroke. Ha!
TenguPhule
@Boussinesque:
The point is to squid ink a cloud of “might be something there” to get the “Both Sides do it!” meme embedded in casual voter minds that everyone in DC is corrupt and therefore Trump is just “being Trump” when it comes to breaking the law.
Its another sign that the political arena is breaking down into something much more energetic and violent.
ruemara
@eemom: No. But she did it too late to not be on the ballot. I was the spoilsport in saying that when it happened.
@geg6: you must have hit a nerve. thots & pears to her.
Chris Johnson
The trollskis are out in FORCE today. Damn, it’s amazing.
Thought I’d drop by and mention that on hard-lefty forums and such, the trollskis are fighting HARD to convince people that Beto was total shit and worthless.
Because he didn’t come out of nowhere, build a grassroots network, and FLIP TEXAS TO BLUE just like that.
Never mind how close he came: because he didn’t actually win, we’re supposed to ditch Beto. For reasons like ‘because Ted Cruz is so odious and horrible, that Beto is a complete worthless loser if he couldn’t beat Cruz’. Also, Beto is a betrayer of progressive ideals and sold us out, boo.
In TEXAS. Apparently Texas is default blue now and shame on Beto for losing a safe Democratic state?
Trollskis are with us, and have specific ideas on how we’re supposed to take all this.
Brachiator
Wait a minute. Angela Green withdrew from the race.
She did the honorable thing.
ETA: Quick add of link:
https://www.kyma.com/news/us-senate-candidate-withdraws-from-arizona-race/846431772
piratedan
@Barbara: speaking to the Sinema/McSally race, it’s not a huge surprise that McSally lost Pima County, she’s the outgoing Rep here in Southern AZ and we know exactly who she is…. Probably her most effective campaign ad was propping up a rural area nurse who stated that Martha McSally would never go after pre-existing conditions and Medicare because she supports those programs, which flies in the face of the actual deeds of Martha McSally who really did indeed vote to end the ACA pre-existing conditions clauses and has joined on board with GOP efforts to go after Medicare and Social Security…. who are you going to believe, this nice nurse with a stethoscope around her shoulders or the congressional record?
To be fair, its incredibly scary how well and how often just simply lying about what you did and what you support works in a campaign ad because those images and narrative stay with you and I actually know what a ruthless POS McSally actually is based on her voting record.
oldster
@Mnemosyne:
Stacey is not conceding, god bless her.
And this should be SOP for *all* Dem candidates.
Dammit, if the voters and the donors are going to fight to the bitter end, then I do not want the candidates folding before the bitter end.
Will this make a difference? Not in most races, no; if it looks like you lost with 95% of the votes in, then you probably lost. But I want to see Dems who FIGHT!
Too many Dems are too eager to be good losers, as though maybe the refs will give them a good sportsmanship prize.
Hell no. It’s too late for that–the refs are never going to like us, and the right-wingers are going to call us bad losers no matter what we do.
So be like Stacey: show us that you’re a fighter, and we’ll fight for you.
zhena gogolia
@Chris Johnson:
Oh, Gawd almighty.
lamh36
Beto may have lost, but his coattails!!!!
Martin
Losing ground in the Senate stings a bit, but there’s a lot of good news here.
Dems control the House, so while we don’t get a confirmation vote on candidates like Kavanaugh, there’s no reason why the House Judiciary committee can’t open investigations. That’s not a direct check on the Senate, but it does make it a fair bit harder for the Senate to operate. They’ll still vote to confirm, but they’ll pay a bit more for doing that.
Winning Governorships and state legs is more important. The only way the Dems get out of this hole is to fix the gerrymandering problem and we got a bit closer to doing that. 2020 will be key, and it’ll be a very favorable map for Dems, so we need to keep this effort going. The GOP held seats, but man was it a lot closer than it should have been. If we can keep this energy up, we’ll get there soon. FL will have 1.5m potential new voters in 2020. I don’t think that will help the GOP.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
“Here, I award you all my votes. Hugs!”
If only it worked that way. Maybe they can form a coalition government? Oh, wait.
ruemara
@Brachiator: She waited too long and was on the ballot. There’s not much you can do after that.
trollhattan
@oldster:
Never more than Gore in 2000.
Platonailedit
The scoldy congressional jeff fucking flake.
thots and prayahs, mothafuckah.
JPL
@lamh36: It’s an automatic recount within one percent. She is right at one percent, but by the slimmest of margins.
BTW Former HHS Secretary Tom Price’s wife Betty is positioned to lose her local house seat. In that race there is only 100 votes separating the candidates so that will definitely be a recount.
trollhattan
@Platonailedit:
Lucky us, we still have Ben Sasse to play Flake’s “concerned-about-party-decorum” role.
maryQ
They are actively rooting for the destruction of the country because they somehow think that their free-stuff-for-everyone fantasy will rise from the ashes.
Pretty sure that’s not how it works.
Brachiator
In Nevada, Dennis Hof won an election for Nevada’s 36th Assembly District Tuesday night by more than 7,000 votes despite being dead.
He was the brothel owner who ran as a Republican, and defeated Democratic challenger Lesia Romanov. Keeping his name on the ballot means that he will be replaced by another Republican.
JPL
@geg6: good answer
Martin
@The Moar You Know: Dems should open with single payer. It’d be interesting to see how they negotiate that downward.
TenguPhule
@maryQ:
Free stones and pollution for everyone.
Barbara
@Martin: They should take the opportunity to study how other nations do it and try to come up with a plan that could feasibly work.
bemused
@geg6:
Ha, Obama asked the same question recently.
I don’t get why they are so mean and mad when they win. Horrible winners. I guess it’s not satisfying enough to win. They have to keep beating their opponents to a pulp. Sadists.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
and as with Fuckface Nader twenty years ago, the irreversible damage the “Greens” will do is to the environment.
Emma
@lamh36: Excuse me. I am going to kvell loudly for an extended period of time. Those goat molesters have been a pain on the education world for years.
Damn. May have celebrated early. There are still more republicans than democrats on the board.
The Moar You Know
@geg6: I love the “why are you so bitter since you won?” question as it sends them into paroxysms of rage. My wife used the “I’m not saying Trump’s a Nazi, but all the Nazis think he’s a Nazi” line that Gillum busted out on DeSantis and I think it killed the person she was having a “civil discussion” with.
Platonailedit
Yesss. Except traitor nunes, did any other thug win?
Brachiator
@ruemara:
As I just posted, sometimes dead people still have their names on the ballot. The voters have to pay a little attention. And even had she not withdrawn, voters have to decide whether they see Trump as the danger that we think he is.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@JPL:
You live in GA-6, right? You have to be happy Karen “white powder” Handel has lost her seat.
H.E.Wolf
I’d love to see a BJ fundraising effort for State House campaigns in 2019. That’s where we can build the Democratic bench of future candidates with prior governing experience, ready to take office at the national level.
It’s also where we can maintain (and further build) our GOTV efforts.
I’m in for 2019! Later this month I’m going to ask our State Democratic Party how this lowly back-room volunteer can make a difference in the next 12-24 months.
trollhattan
Did not watch the Trump presser so did not know of this attack on Acosta (H/T Campos). At what point does Trump’s behavior cross over to criminal? (“At no point, that’s when” per Kavanaugh.)
Sloane Ranger
Just watched CNN Europe, Hala Gorani tonight. She is reporting that Rick Scott may have been premature in declaring victory. Apparently, the official results won’t be announced until Saturday and the most recent information is that Bill Nelson is within 0.6% of Scott with some votes still to count. If the difference can be shaved to 0.5%,that will trigger an automatic recount..
JPL
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Shocked is more like it. The other local house district race will send shock waves across the cityif the result holds.
James E Powell
It’s now nearly noon where I am and I’ve decided to put all my disappointments from last night (not many, but they exist) in a bag and throw them in the dumpster. As of today, we have to start working toward 2020. And too that end, my first act will be a letter to the Honorable Karen Bass in which I will explain that we, or at least I, do not want to hear about bipartisanship, working together with Trump or the Republicans. Instead, we need them to stop whatever can be stopped. They need to investigate the widespread corruption. They need to save the nation. Of course I will work a bit on the language, but that’s the basic message. I think every Democratic voter ought to do the same. The pressure to be the party of reconciliation and cooperation is immense, but it must be resisted or the whole thing is a farce.
bemused
@The Moar You Know:
Both good retorts which seem to throw them for a loop.
Mnemosyne
@Marcopolo:
I’m going to send some cash to Abrams when I get paid tomorrow, so I’ll send some to McBath while I’m at it.
Kent
Most of the talk on the news and blogs is about the Dems power to investigate in the house. But I think that overlooks the very real and greater power of the purse. Remember, all spending bills originate in the house.
Prior to this election we were at the point where the so-called “freedom caucus” was dictating spending priorities in the House which were then tempered somewhat by the Senate for everything they couldn’t do through reconciliation with 50 votes. So they were always pushing the envelope on things like defunding Planned Parenthood, cutting food stamps and other social welfare programs, defunding the ACA to the extent possible around the edges, defunding environmental protection and enforcement and an endless list of other things.
That all changes 180 degrees with Nancy Pelosi. Remember, the red state Republican Senators have some of their own very real spending priorities. The Farm Bill is the biggest one I think, but not the only one. There are defense contractors to grease, defense spending, and probably a lot of small legislative fixes to tax legislation, oil subsidies, and a bazillion other things on their donor’s priority lists. That gives the House tremendous leverage to build progressive priorities into every spending bill going forward. You want a Farm Bill Mr. Senator from North Dakota? Here is the quid pro quo, or there’s no Farm Bill and red state farm subsidies expire.
I’m all in favor of investigations. But don’t overlook the power of the purse. Money controls everything in Washington and the Dems now have tremendous leverage to push forward some progressive initiatives and protect the ones that already exist.
bemused
@trollhattan:
He physically looks even worse than he usually does. Maybe he fell asleep in the tanning bed.
germy
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@trollhattan: also, Yamiche Alcindor apparently
also from former Reid staffer Manley
The Moar You Know
@Martin: Think you missed my point. Dems shouldn’t open with anything. Let the GOP write all the legislation and budgets. Then we take it hostage. Just like Newt and every other Republican leader has done since 1994.
Bostondreams
@geg6:
Ask her why there are active Klan chapters throughout the state then. I know. I taught a bunch of kids in Levy County with Klan-member parents.
Tony Jay
First, congratulations on taking the House, those Governorships and all the State level seats. With the amount of vote suppression going on in Red States that’s truly impressive.
And secondly, given the truly awful Senate map this year keeping the losses down to two or three is pretty amazing. It may not feel it, and it may be hard to stomach scumbags winning when it’s obvious to anyone with an ethical bone in their body that the Party of Trump needs to be burnt and thickly strewn with acres of salt, but the people who voted for them don’t meet that very low bar. They are proudly deplorable and were eager to prove it. So they did.
It’s going to be a long, hard two years, but you will stake those fuckers in the end.
CTcygnet
Long time lurker here to say that the Republican candidate for Governor has conceded and Thank heaven for that.
ruemara
@Brachiator: I kinda felt they were bad choices beforehand, but that’s just me
Matt McIrvin
@Damien: As I said, they already did it in Maine–it got thrown out by the courts for constitutional reasons in the case of the governor, but they’re using it for House elections. ME-2 last night looks like it might be the very first nontrivial case, with neither major-party candidate getting to a majority, so the count of second-choice votes could determine the winner. And it’ll be interesting to see if a drawn-out legal battle over the legitimacy of the system follows, or if they can get people to accept the winner.
Jackie
@CaseyL: question: If Florida does a recount and Nelson and Gillum win, because Gillum ceded, would that prevent him from becoming gov?
TenguPhule
Khashoggi was murdered a month ago. Trump cozied to the Saudis.
JFC what a shitshow.
Brachiator
@The Moar You Know:
I thought that some bills must begin in the House. Ah,
Darn that pesky Constitution…
Mnemosyne
@Platonailedit:
Duncan Hunter won, but Rohrabacher lost, so it’s a bit of a wash.
Also, Steve Knight lost his House seat to Democrat Katie Hill. I have friends who worked their asses off for Hill and are now spending the day recovering from their victory party hangovers.
Matt McIrvin
@Tony Jay: The cheerful people at LGM are discussing the possibility that the Senate may be permanently lost to the Democrats for decades to come. Combine that with extreme constitutional hardball in the McConnell style and it could be a really serious problem–could mean that future Democratic Presidents will simply find it impossible to get legislation through, appoint any judges at all, or even appoint a Cabinet.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Huh. Sessions out. The Tweeter has tweeted. Thought it would take a few days.
Quinerly
Jeff Sessions out.
germy
@bemused:
I thought they just sprayed him all over.
Litlebritdifrnt
According to Twitler Jeff Sessions is gone!
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
Nah, I’m with Kent (for once). Democrats should pass their dream budget and watch the Republicans choke on it.
Matt McIrvin
@Jackie: Concession speeches have no legal weight at all, as far as I know. They’re just speeches.
geg6
@eemom:
Ballots were already printed. Happened too late.
TenguPhule
@Kent:
No we don’t. Republicans DO NOT CARE if Government works. Remember, these are the same folks that caused a government shutdown with control of Congress and Trump.
We are going to have to fight against the natural inclination of House Democratic leadership to treat this as a normal working relationship between two parties who only disagree in principle. No deals with Nazis.
germy
@Quinerly: Full name, please. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III
Quinerly
@Litlebritdifrnt: undated letter that began with “At your request…”
Brachiator
WTF: Sessions resigns!
Ladyraxterinok
@oldster: I think Gore should have fought. No GOPer in his position would have done what he did. Ditto for Kerry in OH.
They apparently bowed to the claim ‘for the good of the country.’ But really, WAS IT??
The Moar You Know
@TenguPhule: He will do nothing and everyone knows it. The Saudis are untouchable. That we didn’t send a nuke into Riyadh after 9/11 tells you all you ever need to know about the relationship between the two countries. They own us. Probably in a literal sense.
Hoodie
@The Moar You Know: the only thing republicans will introduce is moar tax cuts. Start with a combination of infrastructure, rescind upper end tax cut and make lower and middle end income tax cut permanent, along with an increase in capital gains rates for capital gains over a certain level, maybe an exemption for sales of closely held businesses below a certain size. Force McConnell to block it. Don’t try to PAYGO, that’s a shitty idea that plays into GOP narrative.
Kent
He seems to know NOTHING of of Congress works. The Senate will never in a million years cross over to the other side of the Capital to do any kind of investigation of the House ever. And vise versa. That’s just not how things work. For that matter, I don’t think they would have any legal authority to do so. These are independent bodies and they fiercely protect their independence. I doubt McConnell would want to open his chamber up to endless investigations by House committees so they aren’t going there, not ever.
But speaking of leaks. What can and SHOULD happen is that House Democrats can certainly investigate all the leaks that came from the House committees during the past 2 years regarding the Russia investigation and all the rest of the shit that they’ve been leaking. So no, Mitch McConell is not going to investigate House Democrats (as if there was even anything to investigate). But House Dems can certainly investigate what Nunes has been doing for the past 2 years.
Theoretically Trump could get his FBI to investigate House members. But they better have some serious felony offenses in their sights and not just normal tit for tat political nonsense.
TenguPhule
@Brachiator:
Senate must pass an exact same match otherwise it goes into negotiations.
C’mon, we’ve seen this action already.
Quinerly
Matt Whitaker will oversee the Mueller investigation. Sessions’ CoS.
Barbara
@eemom: Ballots are printed months in advance, for early and absentee voters. It does no good to bow out once your name is on the ballot. I doubt if she spent a lot of effort recruiting people to vote for Sinema.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: @Quinerly:
So the Mueller defenestration is nigh?
geg6
@lamh36:
Whoa! That’s pretty huge, with a national impact.
TenguPhule
@Kent:
Mitch Fucking McConnell says hello.
They will do this because its preferable to being executed for high treason, which is their only other option at this point.
Kent
@Jackie: He can un-conceed.
Cheap Jim
Sorry, I thought I was Johnny-on-the-spot, but everyone knows already.
TenguPhule
@Quinerly:
Excrement. Rotating tagline.
Quinerly
@trollhattan: September piece on Matt Whitaker. https://www.newsweek.com/matt-whitaker-rod-rosenstein-trump-fire-sessions-1140816
Quinerly
@Cheap Jim: undated letter that started “at your request…..”
Brachiator
@TenguPhule:
The suggestion was that the House should do nothing. This is not possible.
TenguPhule
@Brachiator:
Democrats write up a budget bill in the House that will never pass the Senate.
And then Nancy Pelosi looks McConnell in the eye and says “Fuck you, pay me.”
geg6
@Kent:
Yep. I agree. The power of the purse is just as, if not more, clarifying to your opponents as the power of the subpoena.
eemom
@Barbara:
But the idiots who voted for her had to know what she said about bowing out. And they voted for her anyway. Fucking idiots.
Stuart
Not exactly consequential, but I noticed that if Rohrabacher goes down, then WA-3 may be the only coastal Republican district on the entire west coast of the lower 48.
grandpa john
@Marcopolo: one of the best results observed is the gain in state and local elections, perhaps Democrats have finally beginning to get their heads out of their asses and are recognizing something that the GOP realized years years ago. If you want to control the national government, you first need to understand the need to control on the state and local level. For too long Dems have put too much emphasis national level elections and not enough on winning at the state/local level. One thing I notice here in looking at results, is perhaps the Democrats are finally beginning to address this.
rikyrah
@Chris Johnson:
Beto had coattails. What he built – FROM SCRATCH.
Phuck the trolls.
Beto absolutely rocks.
Stuart Frasier
Not exactly consequential, but I noticed that if Rohrabacher goes down, then WA-3 may be the only coastal Republican district on the entire west coast of the lower 48.
CliosFanBoy
fuck the Greens with a chainsaw…
Brachiator
@Hoodie:
The Republicans gave us pretty comprehensive tax reform, covering individual, business, estates and trusts. Even though much of it is crappy and slapdash, the Dems have to fix it. They can’t just focus on middle class tax cuts or rescinding the upper end tax cuts.
Tony Jay
@Matt McIrvin:
That would be a serious problem and a genuine constitutional crisis, which would be decided, in the end, by the will of the voters.
Solution – Get more voters. It’s the only way.
lgerard
Goodbye Jeff Sessions!
Kent
@geg6:
Yes, Republicans as a rule may not generally give a shit about how well government works. But there are most certainly spending priorities that they have. First and foremost the Farm Bill which reauthorizes all the farm subsidizes that go mostly to red states. They will need to deal. And frankly most of the real wingers in Congress were always in the House not the Senate. And they are all going to be sitting on the sidelines.
PJ
@Ladyraxterinok: Gore had more votes nationally, and, as it turned out, in Florida as well, but he conceded to Bush. Why? Did he just not give a shit, or was there something else in play? Bush, on the other hand, had his people working overtime, and illegally (see the Brooks Brother Riot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot) to make sure he got the Presidency. Fuck this decorum BS. With absentee and provisional ballots still to be counted, here’s less than .6% difference between DeSantis and Gillum, almost enough to trigger an automatic recount, so why did Gillum concede?
Kent
@Stuart Frasier:
I’m in WA-3. It is basically Vancouver which is purple (suburban Portland) surrounded by Kentucky. All the declining logging and mill towns throughout SW Washington like Longview and Kelso are pretty much the same as declining coal mining towns in eastern Kentucky. Same people, same politics. The broken down logging and mill towns around here full of meth heads and skinhead bikers look just like Appalachia. On the plus side, the blue parts of the district are growing and the red parts are stagnant or shrinking. But probably not fast enough. There are lots of right wingers fleeing Portland and moving across the river too.
SFAW
@lgerard:
And hello, AG Kobach!
With Deputy AG Hans von Spakovsky and Assistant Deputy AG Bradley Schlozman, no doubt.
Hoodie
@Brachiator: the point isn’t to fix it – that’s a suckers’ game that Dems constantly fall into. You can’t fix it until you control the narrative and both houses and White House. I would add reinstatement of SALT deduction. Dems have peeled a lot of upper middle class suburbs from gop, they need to push that advantage. Taxes are their hot button, but mostly only taxes that affect them. A lot of these people pay pretty sizable income taxes because their income is from relatively high salary. Find other sources of revenue that don’t come from income tax and aren’t regressive.
goblue72
@–bd: Pretty much. You can’t just cherry pick the effect of one third-party without discounting for all of them. Everyone harped on the Greens in 2016, but in a lot of races, the Libertarian vote was functionally close to the Green vote, basically cancelling each other out. If you want to imagine a world without 3rd parties, then you gotta imagine a world without ANY of them. And often, the fringe right parties and fringe left parties are about the same amount of roughly sized number of voters.
Plus, we can’t just assume that all of those Green votes would go to Team Blue (or all of those Libertarian votes to Team Red). Some might just stay home, or vote for the other guy, etc.
Sinema always had an uphill climb – its still Arizona, regardless of what the pre-election polls said, which were all clearly shorting the vote of rural/exurban whites. And probably doesn’t help matters that Sinema went from a Sanders-style left to Blue Dog Democrat in what seems the blink of an eye, which flip-floppers is never a good look when your strategy requires a base turnout.
Brachiator
@Hoodie:
It is pointless to talk about piecemeal restoration of bits of individual taxation.
And even here you leave out employee business expense, moving expenses, casualty losses, alimony (deduction and inclusions), kiddie tax, Section 199A, AMT, Pease limitations, Section 179 and Bonus Depreciation, restoration of personal exemptions, child tax credit thresholds and limitations affecting dependents with ITINs, and a few hundred other provisions.
The Republicans gave the wealthy every break they could in every part of the tax code they could think of. And saddled the country with an extra $1.5 trillion in costs as well. The Democrats are faced with more than just tossing middle income voters a tax cut bone. But note here, Trump will try to make it look this simple and accuse the Democrats of not caring about “the peoples” like he does.
Miss Bianca
@eemom: I thought I read that, too. Maybe she was already on the ballot and so people voted for her anyway, despite her Dem endorsement?
Miss Bianca
@Matt McIrvin: I think it’s a bit premature to come to the conclusion that we will lose the Senate for “decades to come”. After our clean sweep in CO of all the state-level offices and a Congressional rep majority, I think all it would take is for Hickenlooper to announce that he’s taking on Cory Gardner for the Senate, and Gardner is toast. That’s one Repub Senator down.
SFAW
@geg6:
Does cleek have a pie filter that can be used on Facebook? Because it looks like you need one for that “friend.”
Of course if he/she stroked out, I guess it becomes moot.
Platonailedit
@Mnemosyne: Excellent. Thanks.