Cole asked about a red wave in a blue state last night. I don’t know about any other blue state, but I don’t see it happening here.
Apparently the thinking is that Governor Kathy Hochul is in danger because isn’t ahead in the polls by 20 points. That’s nonsense. Her opponent, Lee Zeldin is a remarkably unattractive candidate, but he does have a bunch of noisy supporters. I have yet to see a Hochul lawn sign, while dozens of Zeldin signs blight the lawns in my fairly blue but still somewhat Republican town. This is typical for Republicans in upstate New York. They consider themselves victims of the tyranny of downstate New York, when in fact their lives up here are subsidized by taxes from downstate.
The geography of this race is a bit different from the average New York race, because Hochul is from Buffalo and Zeldin is from Long Island. Normally, Democratic statewide candidates are from downstate. This matters in the primary, but not the general — I doubt that a lot of the solidly blue districts downstate are going to have voters crossing over to elect an anti-abortion prick from Suffolk County. Zeldin, La’Ron Singletary, the numpty running for the US House in my district, and other Republican candidates that I see around here just aren’t charismatic crossover-voter-inspiring candidates.
My guess about what’s going on with Hochul and the media is that she’s “foreign” by the insular standards of the downstate press who actually, in their heart of hearts, liked Andrew Cuomo. Hochul is a big part of the last couple of years of true Democratic rule in New York. Even though we have long been a blue state, Cuomo presided over a split Senate where he and a couple of turncoat Democrats could be the dealmakers, and in that role, he blocked a lot of progressive legislation. Now that both chambers of the legislature are solidly blue, we have a progressive state government with progressive policies like legalized cannabis and loud-and-proud support of women’s rights. There are a lot of members of the “liberal media” who are old, white, male and uncomfortable with an Irish grandmother from Buffalo. As far as I’m concerned, fuck them, collectively and individually. Hochul’s going to win, and they’re going to squirm.
Note also that Chuck Schumer is on the ballot and Chuck always wins.
As a final note, like a lot of you (I assume), this election weighs heavily. It really does seem like one of the last gasps of democracy and women’s rights in this country. It also seems that something that used to be more-or-less reliable — polling — isn’t anymore. The polls can be wrong in either direction. We just need to fucking fight.
UncleEbeneezer
As SwingLeft says “this election is within the margin of effort.” Canvass, phonebank, text, write postcards etc.
Math Guy
I am concerned that reporting polling results can discourage people from voting and, moreover, that some groups are using polls to do just that; discourage the other side from voting. All “conspiracy theories“ aside, polls are not a very reliable way of predicting the outcome of an election, especially when the elections will, in fact, be close. Vote. And let your friends and family know that you are voting so they feel more inclined to vote – you know, social pressure, tribe identity and all that.
Pharniel
Yeah. I’ve been having lots of feelz because here in MI the GOP candidates for Gov, AG & SoS were too out there for the GOP. But the “Family Friendly” reliable Rick “one tough nerd” Snyder style technocrats got caught up in a signature faking scheme and didn’t make it on the ballot.
It’s been A Lot.
schrodingers_cat
FWIW I don’t see any red surge in MA either.
Elizabelle
Thank you. I think this is media hysteria, dialed up to 11.
Ignore it. Tune it out. Work your social circle to vote, and do what you can (postcards, knock doors, text bank).
I really think we need to hit some of the newspapers and other media outlets HARD after this election. Save examples of their slanted headlines and reporting. Take screen shots. (Especially helpful with the FTF FNYTimes, which has corrected some stories, after the fact. That, to me, is rather slimy.)
Jinchi
I feel the same way about California. I don’t see any signs of a red-wave here. Democrats seem like sho-ins to win every statewide race.
Maybe it feels different in other parts of the country, with red states getting redder and blue states bluer.
In any case I’m happy with the record early vote turnout so far. The Republican brand works best when people stay home.
Served
IL seems to be mostly safe to me as well. The Rs nominated a bunch of completely repellent gasbags.
One area of concern is a Supreme Court race that could tip the balance to R. I worry that when people are generally dissatisfied but the out-party is clearly unelectable, they’ll take their frustration out on a down-ballot race. The usual suspects are pumping money into the Supreme Court race as well. It will be a nailbiter on election day, I’m afraid.
HeleninEire
I’m in NY and agree with all of this. NY will stay solidly blue.
Scout211
Meadows was ordered to testify.
He’ll likely appeal, but the tide seems to be turning, albeit slowly.
Alison Rose
Well, as much as the vanishing California Republican Party wants to believe otherwise, there’s no red wave happening in this state any time soon.
What has been interesting is that in the past week or so, I’ve started seeing YouTube ads from Newsom, not in support of a particular proposition this time or his own candidacy, but more generally about just voting to preserve democracy and basic rights. I’m wondering if those ads are being run elsewhere, too? Like, are people in other states (like, you know…Florida and Texas) seeing them on YT too? It feels like part of his push this year to reach out to voters in other states to get them to vote the right way on their elections in order to benefit themselves AND the rest of the country.
Barry A-H-S-S
That right there! That’s why all the horseshit about doomed dems. We’re –and have been for over a year–living in a PsyOps zone. The oligarchy and their crooked handmaids in the media are deperate to demotivate us, drive us down, make us agree to be defeated.
Stand up and roar! Vote, vote vote!
TaMara
Colorado will stay moderately blue. I’m a little worried about the state house races, I’d like to keep the Dems in charge, but just not sure how that’s going to play out. I do know that soon-to-be re-elected Gov Polis will veto anything too grievous.
Ignore the media for the next few weeks, for your own mental sanity. I watched 5-minutes of Kornacki on Ari’s show yesterday and couldn’t believe what I was hearing/seeing. He was all doom and gloom about how the Dems would lose the senate while standing in front of a board that showed what should have been SAFE republican senate seats all within the margin of error, but it was the Dems who should be worried?! I turned it off.
The only solid seat seemed to be Rubio, but I’d love to hear what Demming’s internals say about that – he had Rubio up by 6. Seems high. Any FL folk want to weigh in on that race? I’m curious.
oatler
Saw an amusing bit of GOP campaigning here:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/10/25/2131214/-Indiana-Republican-s-attempt-to-score-inflation-political-points-doesn-t-go-as-planned
Rusty
To follow on this and Cole’s post from last night, I think we underestimate people’s engagement with the substantive issues and make broad generalizations when voters are focused on their own lives. Yes, the economy broadly is good with very low unemployment. For folks that have a hard time finding a job, that is good. But the majority of people have jobs, so low unemployment is more abstract, but inflation is very real. It isn’t helpful to make fun of the cost of bacon, people are used to buying bacon and when the price shoots up they notice and having to cut back is taken as a decline in their life style. Same for gas prices, and the party in power typically gets punished for letting these things happen, even when they have no influence over events. I think this happens with a lot of other issues. Abortion is more abstract for a chunk of the electorate, feeling that crime is up is less abstract. Throw in single issue voters, anti-abortion, pro-gun, etc., and it’s always going to be harder for Democrats. Mostly people have worries and they want someone to “do something”. So the last governor race in VA, and this time where I am in NH, parents are worried about education. The Republicans are promising to “do something”. The fact that it will be a tiny rise in spending a big expansion of vouchers that will actually take money away from the public schools are the details most voters miss. The Republicans are promising to “do something”. If in the end the electorate doesn’t like it, they will vote for the Dems, or get focused on some other issue where they want someone to “do something”. In two weeks it will be all over but the crying, and I expect to need some tissues. Then we pick ourselves up and start the fight again.
Betty Cracker
I have no idea what will happen in the election, but to riff on a conversation that was happening in the morning thread about doom and gloom demoralizing voters, if that’s so, why do Dems (Repubs too, I assume) bombard donor inboxes with doomy messages begging for money?
Do they figure anyone who cares enough to donate money will show up anyway, or is the idea that doom and gloom demobilizes voters bullshit? I mean, it can be annoying, granted! But is it actually dangerous to a preferred candidate’s political prospects? I am skeptical.
PS: I just got a text from FL Dems inviting me to an event in Miami Gardens, which is hundreds of miles away. Not gonna make it! But I let them know our votes are already banked, so maybe they can invite someone in Ft. Lauderdale.
Cameron
@Alison Rose: Alas, only YouTube political ads I’m seeing here in FL are for Ron DeSantis.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: Nor do I. I see some local Republicans shitposting on MA Dem politicians’ Facebook pages, but they always do that.
James E Powell
@Jinchi:
My only California concern is turnout. The three southern California congressional races that I talk about repeatedly are winnable if and only if people vote. I am feeling positive mostly because we have mail voting & we do not need to convince people to give up time & travel to a polling place.
I’m hoping the texts I’m sending have some impact.
JPL
Evangelicals are about to be tested in their beliefs, if this is true.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: My guess is that doom and gloom motivates the party faithful while it turns away normies. I have no data to back this claim except for the behavior of candidate fund raising emails.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: I assume they’ve got all the messages A-B tested to the hilt and have determined empirically that that appeal gets them the most money.
The thing is, I doubt that testing probes what OTHER effects the messages might have.
Alison Rose
@oatler: What, don’t you always park your car ten feet away from the pump when you fill up?
Baud
@Betty Cracker: There’s unfortunately a science to email solicitations. To the extent I look at my spam filter, I don’t find a consistent message in the emails, and I think that’s because the science tells them that different groups of people respond to different messages when it comes to fundraising. I have no idea if the email messaging affects turnout, however.
Alison Rose
@Cameron: You have my deepest sympathies. If I had to look at that man’s face multiple times a day, I might gouge my eyes out.
Gin & Tonic
I could see bad things happening here in RI. The Governor, Dan McKee, who was Lt. Gov. under Gina Raimondo who left for a Cabinet job, is dull. His challenger is a rich carpetbagging Republican woman, Ashley Kalus, who’s not conspicuously a Trumpist and who is spending a fortune. We (like Mass) have elected Republican governors before, and it could happen again. In CD 1, David Cicilline will win in a walk, but in CD 2, the incumbent Dem, Jim Langevin, is retiring, and the Dem candidate, Seth Magaziner, has a long association with Clinton-world which is not a net positive, IMO. His challenger, Allan Fung, a former mayor of one of RI’s cities, is also well-funded and has a chance. Both he and Kalus could draw some “see, I’m not a bigot” votes. Neither Senator is up this year.
Baud
@Cameron: YouTube really wants to get you to pay for ad-free premium.
MazeDancer
The majority of NY State voters are not going to vote against abortion.
What I see happening is hate-filled white men, getting louder and more hate-filled. And the folks who have always voted GOP really wanting everything to stay as it always has been. So ignoring that crazy people have taken over their party.
Privileged people from NYC are steadily taking over housing. But not all of them have transferred their voter registration Upstate. But they are still Dems.
And women are pissed. Still pissed. Forever pissed. And voting in numbers too big to ignore.
jonas
At least until Clarence Thomas issues a stay…
I think this may have been briefly mentioned by one of the front pagers the other day, but I can’t believe the fact that Clarence Thomas — who’s own fucking wife was directly involved in TFG’s Big Lie scheme — had the absolute chutzpah to block Graham’s testimony in the Georgia probe. I guess ever since Dobbs the court’s right wing pretty much feels invincible and has absolutely no fucks left to give. It’s an absolute disgrace and if some liberal judge had done anything like this with a conflict of interest that glaring, it would be lighting the rightwing outrage machine like pure jet fuel for the next five years.
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: & @Baud: Yep — I’m sure they A/B test the hell out of it. Also, if you’re begging for money, telling people you’re broke and in dire straights is obviously better for that purpose than waxing Pollyanna. Still, I wonder if there’s an unintended effect, if the folks who say doom-and-gloom materially harms turnout are correct.
Van Buren
I live on Long Island and work in Brooklyn. A month ago I would have said NY will be a blue wave. Now I am not sure. All I hear from women is fear of crime, nothing about reproductive rights. I am a bit uneasy…
Jerszy
If only there were some way to get New York to fake/pretend going MAGA without actually risking ceding any power to them.
Because winning over all of New York is the key, ego holy grail for TFG. If he believed that he had *that* state ‘coming around on’, ‘won over’, and ‘following’ him, he wouldn’t even bother with the expense and effort of running for any office.
Matt McIrvin
In Massachusetts, the main change I see is that the Republicans have screwed themselves over in the governor’s race by going for a Trumpy loyalist instead of the usual Nice Polite Republican for the NPR set, so current AG Maura Healey is heavily favored to take the governor’s office back for the Democrats. I’ve seen no signs of that budging.
And basically no other races in the state are getting significant polling, now that some of the seriously contested primaries are over. The Senate seats aren’t up this year. It’s possible that a red wave is going to slip in under the radar, but I haven’t heard serious concerns about it.
catclub
@Cameron:
Can I direct LOTS of DeSantis youtube ads to me – at great cost to desantis? No I don’t live in Florida, but i would be happy to waste his money.
jonas
Even if Hochul prevails over Zeldin — and I’ll be shocked if she doesn’t — a close result will still send orgasmic tinglies through the state and national MSM. It will be taken as a bellwether that Dems are utterly doomed in 2024 and should appear in public with nothing but sack-cloth and ashes from here on out.* The Morning Edition coverage of it will make you want to rage vomit, I guarantee.
In the meantime, I don’t think Schumer even has a Republican opponent. If he does, I have no clue who he/she is.
*ETA, as opposed to the *real* story, which is that Republicans might have had a real shot at flipping the state house if they had nominated a moderate, non-Trumpy Republican to take on Hochul but those don”t exist anymore
gene108
There was a regional Republican wave, in southern most NJ, in the 2021 elections. Republicans picked up some state legislator seats and knocked out long time incumbent Dems.
What this means for 2022 and beyond is turncoat Jeff van Drew (NJ-02) is probably safe for the foreseeable future. Otherwise, I don’t think there’s a lasting impact.
I do think many liberals down play the rise in crime’s impact on people’s sense of safety. Living in an area close to Philadelphia and Camden people do feel more concerned about what they see on the news. It’s not 1992 level crime, but it’s still enough of an uptick for people to be concerned.
Spanky
@JPL: “Vote for Herschel. He’s fertile!”
TaMara
@Betty Cracker: Having been with Balloon-Juice for many, many election cycles now, the wisdom seems to be this:
“It’s looking good for Democrats, oh, no! This positivity is going to suppress voter turnout, they’ll think it’s in the bag.”
And
“It looks bad for Democrats right now. Oh no! The doom and gloom is going to suppress voter turnout.”
This is NOT a diss on BJ commentators, they are usually just pointing out what our media dolts are saying.
It’s all good for John McCain, if you get my drift. LOL
Baud
@gene108:
That’s not limited to crime. We tend to down play any issue that we (often correctly) believe is hyped by the media. I understand why, but the media hypes issues because people respond to the hype, and we need to figure out some way to deal with that.
Betty Cracker
@TaMara: Haha, that sounds about right.
PS: link to a McSweeney’s bit posted in the earlier thread: If I Emailed My Mom Like Democrats Email Me. (Will resonate with those who get bombarded with begging emails nonstop.)
Kelly
Oregon seems vulnerable to a red wave. But polling is thin, redistricting has stirred our Congressional Districts so past results may not apply and the richest man in Oregon is spending millions on independent AND Republican Governor candidates. The right to an abortion is in Oregon’s constitution so R’s are using the good old “settled law” blather to dodge questions about federal abortion restrictions and scrubbing their websites. Seems to have defused the issue here. Federal law preempting state never comes up. Republicans skirt the election denial issue with statements like “Biden is the President but nobody knows if the election was stolen”. The R’s imply Oregon ran an honest election but the Dems cheated in other states. Portland is a criminal hellhole in rural minds and has been at least since I was a teenager in the 1970’s. Pleasantly surprised by what a safe, comfortable city I found when I moved there in 1980. Homeless camps are a big issue across the state. Housing is expensive and getting more expensive fast. “Make those people go away but don’t spend a dime of my money!” Sort of an undercurrent of the Democrats have been in charge forever and the STILL haven’t brought me the pretty moon.
Living out here in the western Cascade foothills in a 75% Trump voting precinct I have trouble judging how much trouble we’re in. Here hoping the city folk save us all.
sdhays
@jonas: Now, now. Pointing out that Supreme Court Justices are making rulings on cases where they have a direct conflict of interest delegitimizes the Court and makes the Baby Jesus cry.
schrodingers_cat
@gene108: That Defund the Police nonsense is still biting us in the butt.
Matt McIrvin
I’d like to see some politician try to make a connection between the anti-immigration push of the last several years and price inflation, but it doesn’t entirely jibe with other liberal messaging so crafting it will take some care. Republicans blame every damn thing from crime to COVID on “illegal immigrants” but this is one where the causation pretty clearly goes the other way.
Princess
@JPL: My fear is that eventually GA GOP will throw up a fake story of a Walker abortion in order to discredit ALL the stories, kind of like Avenatti did (Unintentionally I suppose) with Kavanaugh. This may be that story. So I am wary. Now, Allred should be able to discern a phony from a real story, but still.
Almost Retired
No sense of any impending red wave in California, insofar as the state Republican Party still lies a-moldering in its grave.
I’m increasingly confident that we can flip the one and only Republican seat in Los Angeles County (a district that includes the somewhat upscale suburb of Santa Clarita, and the struggling High Desert communities in the Antelope Valley).
I’m writing postcards for the Democrat Christy Smith and fighting the urge to add “and why the HELL do you live in the Antelope Valley?,” because I suspect that might be counterproductive.
Tony G
“This is typical for Republicans in upstate New York. They consider themselves victims of the tyranny of downstate New York, when in fact their lives up here are subsidized by taxes from downstate.” Yup, that sounds about right to me. I live in New Jersey and I’ve usually worked either in Jersey or in NYC, but about 10 years ago I found myself working for about 18 months in an IBM software support center in East Fishkill, New York. It was about 70 miles north of New York City, but it might as well have been Alabama. The (all white) guys that I worked with were pleasant enough in everyday life, but they were in another world. Many of them had actually never been to New York City, and they envisioned it as a dystopian hellhole filled with criminals and indolent minorities. I guess they had seen “Escape from New York” and had figured that it was a documentary. They were convinced that their hard work was subsidizing New York City when, in reality, the money was flowing in the opposite direction. This was a few years before the Rise of Trump, but I imagine that many of them are in the MAGA cult now.
Matt McIrvin
…so is the “red wave in blue states” worry basically just about Oregon? Oregon is kind of unusual, or maybe it’s better to say it’s an extreme case of certain national trends like the usual urban/rural divide.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: There may well be a difference between what works for fundraising and what motivates marginal voters. And, fwiw, the panicked emails actually annoy me more than they motivate me to give. I prefer concrete proposals, like “If we can raise $X by the end of the week, we will find a new blah, blah, blah.”
Mike in NC
Zeldin being from Long Island explains a lot. What a godawful place.
Was there shortly after Obama was first elected and kept overhearing from the suits staying at our motel how he was going to destroy the economy because he was one of “those horrible people”. Every other person I ever ran into on Long Island was a clone of Archie Fucking Bunker.
gene108
@Betty Cracker:
I don’t think the average independent voter or low info voter gets flooded with emails and texts asking for money, because they don’t donate to campaigns, unlike people like us.
The largest group of voters, especially in a mid-term, are non-voters and/or erratic voters. Democrats need the non-voter to become a voter and the erratic voter to turnout, in order to win a mid-term. Republicans have a larger pool of regular voters.
The non-voter and erratic voter have a default state of “why bother voting”. Negative coverage just reinforces their disillusioned world view and makes it less likely they’ll turnout.
JPL
@Princess: Same! I did hear that local republicans were surprised when the last one came forward, because they did not know about that one. ???
I’m going to wait for proof, and hope that he doesn’t have proof that he was out of town.
sdhays
@Kelly: How come red state voters don’t want the moon? Do they just not think they’re worthy?
Matt McIrvin
The Democrats I know all vote but they don’t necessarily vote for all the down-ballot races–there’s this sort of good-liberal worry of “do I really know enough to make an educated vote here?” So I’ve been trying to get them to do that.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: God, I hate those people. At least for partisan races.
Matt McIrvin
@sdhays: Republican voters are satisfied with “sending a message”, that is, for their candidates to have the right vibes.
They know they’re not going to immediately get the autogenocidal bloodbath they really want. But if the candidate makes noises that sort of imply he’d like it too, well, that’s pretty cool.
sdhays
@Matt McIrvin: There have been some concerns about Nevada too, but I don’t know.
I’d like to know more about what’s going on in Iowa with Grassley below 50% approval and his challenger tied with him in some recent polls. With so little reliable information, people could choose to obsess over those tea leaves too.
“Is there a Dem wave brewing in Iowa???” is just as valid a question as any others, IMHO.
gene108
@Princess:
Allred seems to court high profile cases. I sometimes wonder, if she’s attention seeking and if that’ll override sound judgement.
Tony G
@Mike in NC: By a sheer, amazing, coincidence, more than 25% of New York City police officers live in Long Island.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: Our left flank is always trying to sabotage us. That letter with all the tankie talking points that got 30 signatures from progressive representatives is but the latest example.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I don’t hate them. I understand where they’re coming from. It’s just not strategic.
To be fair, it’s worst in primaries, or in non-partisan local races where you actually do have to do some research to figure out which City Council or School Committee candidates are the wingnuts. Voting well in those races is actually hard! But there’s also some resistance to the idea that voting a straight party ticket is smart.
Some spoiler campaigns seem to be fueled by an idea among some progressives that they have a deontological duty to vote for the best candidate even if they know it will have a perverse effect. But that’s less of a problem than down-ballot undervoting.
Kelly
R’s ranting on Portland’s imaginary crime crisis often say Portland defunded their police. The actual Portland Police budget is up a several percent every year.
schrodingers_cat
@Kelly: DSA left exists to provide fodder to the RWNJs. They are a team.
Rigged elections was what they said when HRC won the nomination.
TaMara
@gene108: So far, all indications are that turnout in states with early voting has exceeded expectations. And early voting has in the past favored Dems.
But those who want to be all doom and gloom will be that way, regardless. Me, I’m going to go enjoy the day, do what I can to get out the vote, and ignore the rest.
Beautiful day today. Bit of snow tomorrow!
UncleEbeneezer
@Scout211: The tide has been in this direction all along. Trump (and his people) have been losing in courts consistently. That’s one of the things that makes all the Garland-Must-Retire handwringing so damn annoying. Aside from Judges Nichols and Cannon, the nonsense arguments of Trump and his minions have largely been treated as nonsense, and DOJ is steadily moving towards more access to potentially incriminating evidence to make it’s cases.
Tony G
@Matt McIrvin: In fairness, I usually know next to nothing about the New Jersey candidates for State Senate, State Assembly and county positions. But I always vote for these positions, just mindlessly voting for the Democratic Party candidates, because I assume that even the worst Democratic Party candidates are better than their Republican counterparts. Recent ads for Republican candidates for these positions confirm my suspicions — just repetition of MAGA gibberish. What baffles me, however, is the local town candidates. They don’t belong to a party and they all say the same thing. Sometimes I know the person, and I can therefore like (or dislike) the person accordingly.
Tony G
@schrodingers_cat: It’s an article of faith of some on the “left” that the Democrats and Republicans are a duopoly and that both are equally bad. I can excuse that thinking in a twelve-year-old, but not in someone older than that.
Hungry Joe
I’ll read another article — or comment — about Dem doom and gloom if and when somebody can explain how it’s going to do anything other than make me depressed. Instead I’ll spend the time walking a precinct or two for nearby Mike Levin, who’s rumored — by doom & gloomers, of course — to be threatened, and writing postcards for House and Senate races outside California. (My rep is Sarah Jacobs, and she’s safe. And new. And good.)
There’ll be plenty of time to mourn if this goes badly. Right now there’s still time to keep that from happening. Let’s leave it all on the field.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: A lot of the people who signed that letter are solid Democrats. Pocan and Moore from WI, Raskin. Just off the top of my head. There is a whole weird thing going on with the way that letter got published. I would not read too much into it.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: That Ukraine letter was an interesting case, more interesting than it initially seemed. I think what really happened there is that the progressives had an abortive collaboration with some isolationist-right types back in the summer, which they ultimately decided not to go ahead with… and then those isolationist-right types used it to ratfuck them in the final days of the election campaign.
It wasn’t smart behavior, but I don’t think it was malice on the Democrats’ part.
The Moar You Know
My sole concern here in the great state of CA is my local school board races. There is an insane amount of GOP money being spent on every local school board race. Also a lot of spoiled, shitty parents and a lot of lingering resentment about how COVID was handled (it was handled great, as far as I’m concerned). So I do have concerns, locally.
As far as the state in general I don’t see any sort of “red wave” at all. The GOP is reduced to running third-tier candidates for all the statewide positions, as it’s hard to talk any politician who gives a shit about their future into taking a sure “L” on their record.
Ruckus
@oatler:
That dude is full on putz.
He doesn’t even have a clue how to fake it.
Matt McIrvin
@Tony G: “As City Councillor, [Candidate] will be in favor of good things and steadfastly opposed to badness!”
Layer8Problem
@Betty Cracker: Thank you for that. I sent it on to my partner, ’cause it precisely hit two of our irritants at once.
hells littlest angel
I live in a reddish area of a purple district, and I’m not seeing a lot of Republican enthusiasm for Zeldin. I think it’s because they’re still mad about 2020, and can’t be bothered to drag their elderly asses into the front yard to hammer in a sign. Anyway, I fail to understand the hysteria over Hochul’s mere 7-point lead. If fret you must, fret about Nevada or Georgia or Arizona — alternatively, don’t fret, vote.
Cameron
I’m flooded with texts and emails (and would be with phone calls, too, if I bothered to answer). I’m baffled; I don’t have a pot to piss into or a window to throw it out of and all these groups think I have money? Where do they get this idea? I’m not really angry, just a bit annoyed.
Ruckus
@Rusty:
The Republicans are promising to “do something”.
They always do promise this. They never say what it actually will be because it will fuck over most people, and they know it. They have been doing this my entire life, and I’m a geezer. Of course they promise to do something because that’s what people want, but far, far more importantly is to remember that ALL POLITICIANS promise to do stuff, that is their job. Rethuglicans never promise to even attempt to fix the issue for the voter, they promise to do “something.” At the end of the day we have to discuss what they are going to do to screw over everyone because whatever they prepose will screw over everyone but their sponsors.
Matt McIrvin
@Ruckus: Nixon has a secret plan to end the war.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
The war ended, didn’t it?
Cameron
@Matt McIrvin: Yes, it turned out to be so secret even he didn’t know what it was.
Skepticat
Checking out potential homes to buy (difficult with a hot market but a very cool budget), I’ve been driving around a lot of southern Maine. If I had the money I’ve spent on gas for the search or political donations, I probably could afford a better house. There are way too many LePage and tRump signs, though they do make it easier to decide what areas to avoid living in. I’m just trying to convince myself it’s just a form of yelling, as they’re wont to do. I’m stressed about the country as a whole. It’s raining like the hammers of hell at the moment, but I’ll vote tomorrow, blue no matter who.
dave319
Funny it is that no reporters have thought to challenge Lee Zeldin’s GOP boilerplate “Crimecrimecrime because Demonrats!” with the demonstrable fact that per capita crime rates are highest in Republican red states. Jesus babies, the columns could write themselves…
Jackie
I’m completely ignoring the polls and recording tv programs so I can FF through commercials AND Kornaski AND any pundits discussing polls. My regular hour long programs are becoming 30-35 mins lol
Myself, I think polls this election season especially, are unvaluable – due to Roe/Dobbs AND J6. We don’t see this discussed much, but Americans of all political affiliations are worried about losing our democracy. We’re inundated with Trumpy types and MAGAt telling us J6 wasn’t a big deal. But, from what I’ve read, *normal* republicans and most independents are still shook up about how close America came to losing our right to free elections, and are disgusted to witness the loss of a peaceful transfer of power.
So I’ll be watching the results on Election Night and will be interested THEN on what the polls reveal.
jonas
Bummer that neither O’Rourke or Abrams look like they’re within striking distance of flipping TX or GA at this point. Both Kemp and Abbot are horrible, but how Texans can still look at Abbot and go “why there’s a mighty fine leader and governor!” is simply beyond me, especially when Beto’s on the menu. Abbot has overseen, with utter incompetence and disdain, any number of man-made and natural disasters in Texas, from power outages to school massacres and not done shit about any of it. But that’s good enough for Texans, apparently.
Matt McIrvin
@dave319: If you say “crime rates are highest in red states” they just take it down to the city level, where the highest crime rates are often in cities with black Democratic mayors. Because, of course, these cities have been continuously and systematically fucked over for a hundred years. But they can usually find some level where a Democrat is involved.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: The CPC’s website and Twitter account very enthusiastically promoted the letter when it was released Monday. The CPC staff seemed ready, while a number of the signers say they were blindsided. So I think it was an inside job, perhaps with outside influence.
I think by now CPC members know details behind that letter’s release. That would include both the 30 who signed it and the 67+ who did not. So do interested members of the larger Democratic caucus. But with the midterms approaching they all just want to put this affair behind them for now. I think Congressional Democrats will air this matter out after the midterms.
BruceFromOhio
@TaMara: This.
Ohio state gov is a fascist shithole. Ryan’s got a ghost of chance for US Senate over Thiel’s rentboy, from what I hear the Ukrainian ex-pats may be the determination there. Ohio lost a congressional seat after the census in 2020 because people are sick and tired of living here, and the illegal gerrymandering guarantees whatever remains shall be solid red fascist soulless ratfuck criminals until the sun burns out, save for the few tiny blue oases that remain around the cities. There never was anything to measure any kind of ‘wave’ against, red or blue.
One of the TeensFromOhio got a very nice handwritten postcard to get out the vote, and all of us are headed to the polls going straight D. As the Jem’Hadar said of Lt. Worf after besting him in hand-to-hand combat, “I can kill him, but I cannot defeat him,” my attitude, contributions and votes will stay blue forever. Fuck these fascist assholes and the idiots that put them in power.
Suzanne
@gene108:
Agree.
Nothing tempts me to go off-grid more than all the fucking guns and mass shootings and crime and shitty behavior. I don’t care about drug use and I don’t want simple possession to be criminalized. I don’t blame immigrants. But the lack of safety that lots of people feel is really corrosive.
My office is in Philadelphia, and there used to be a Starbucks one block away. The chain closed it because the workers were getting harassed and people were doing drugs in the bathrooms. Spawn the Elder worked in a grocery store during early COVID and he was supposed to enforce masking. Hell no. Everybody has a fucking gun.
Layer8Problem
Our household decided to avoid the political articles in the Times and Post and cable news, which is exclusively MSNBC here, until at least some decent interval after the election. Our side channels (like this one) give us more than enough information without either demoralization or blowing sunshine up our skirts, and the mood around here is improved to say the least.
Ruckus
@Cameron:
They just ask everyone for money. Text and email cost is extremely low per hit so they just flog them. It’s also less costly than mailing postcards, although I get a bunch of those as well, mostly local stuff, because they can easily get mailing lists.
I have zero idea what the hit rate is for getting money from all this but it must be something because I get a lot of emails. I don’t give my phone number to many people so I don’t get a lot of texts but I still get some, most from people that I have no idea how they got it.
Jackie
This: A detailed article that points out the hypocrisy between a temporary disability vs incurable TBI.
“Axios’ Emma Hurt reported that “The two Georgians answered a range of questions about abortion, inflation, Vladimir Putin and student debt relief. But they also faced questions about various controversies in their personal lives.”
As if both candidates – one who suffers mental health challenges that have reportedly led to violent threats and was “alleged to have preyed upon veterans and service members while defrauding the government,” and one a sitting U.S. Senator and pastor – were pretty much the same in ability and cognition.
“So John Fetterman, who will recover his mental acuity, shouldn’t be a Senator, But Herschel Walker, who has no mental acuity and never will, should. Is that the Republican line today?” asked Joe Conason, Editor-in-chief of The National Memo.”
https://www.rawstory.com/critics-blast-hypocrisy-of-attacking-fettermans-debate-performance-while-supporting-herschel-walker/
James E Powell
@Baud:
I don’t know if there is a way to deal with it in the context of a campaign. Crime – or more often “Crime” – has been a fairly reliable issue for right-wingers my whole life despite the fact that actual crime has gone down steadily for many years. And I would add that there is no evidence that right-wingers’ policy responses reduce crime.
Princess
@jonas: I’ve seen recent polls, like this week, that put both those races in striking distance. Beto especially. And I don’t think you can look at GA turnout and say Abrams has no shot.
im on record as being pessimistic, but Nate Cohn the NYT pollster says that with the polls he’s seeing, anything can happen. Anything.
Cameron
@Ruckus: I know it’s what they do, I just can’t figure out why they would think I have any money. And same deal with texts – where’d they get my number? I sure don’t give it out freely.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: This is one of the problems with all those offices we vote for that we really shouldn’t be, like public administrator. Someone who isn’t even qualified for that job because she couldn’t get bonded got elected to it here in my county several years ago! It was a big mess, they had to put the Democrat who’d had the job for decades back in it. That should be a hired office, not an elected one.
I’m having to listen to “A Million Dreams” from “The Great Showman” and “Together” because we’re performing our parts from memory for a big shindig here Saturday night. Kill me now, please…….
Citizen Alan
@JPL: That implies that evangelicals could fail fail a moral test more completely than they did in 2016.
Kropacetic
@Citizen Alan: Find me a moral test that they didn’t design themselves that they won’t fail and get back to me.
James E Powell
@jonas:
Because they hate people like Beto & they know Abbot hates them to. The country is filled with ignorant, hateful bigots and we just have to do our best to outnumber them at election time. In some places, it’s just not possible. For now, Texas is one such place.
Alison Rose
@Cameron: They’re not sending the messages thinking “Cameron for sure has $100 to give us.” They don’t look at people’s bank statements or something. They send these things to literally anyone and everyone for whom they can nab phone numbers or emails.
Omnes Omnibus
@Soprano2: Early USers ( post-Founders, Jacksonian democracy) went all in on democracy. Everything was elective, including the officers and NCOs in militia units.
Baud
@James E Powell:
I agree. I think we need a broader approach. There are certain issues commonly viewed as conservative, like crime, also national security, where our message tends to be reactive rather than proactive IMHO. We haven’t yet gelled on what we want to say policy wise about those issues, in contrast to, for example, abortion, or LGBT rights, or the right to vote and fair elections. That adds to the bias against us when those issues are in the forefront of voters minds.
(I think we also had problems with our economic message, but we’ve gotten better in that area.)
Matt McIrvin
@Omnes Omnibus: A lot of this “elections for everything” craziness came from Progressive Era reforms, I think. Turn of the 20th century. Where I live we have elections for register of probate. We don’t have elected judges, which is increasingly unusual.
JoyceH
@James E Powell:
That’s what frankly baffles me. As an outsider to both states, it’s just gobsmacking to see that both Texas and Florida are considered safe holds for the Republicans. Both governors are not only unpleasant, obnoxious people personally, but they’re just blatantly BAD governors, who have literally killed hundreds if not thousands of their own constituents either through their actions or their negligence. Do the voters just not CARE? Do they not remember when people FROZE to death in their own homes, and that nothing has been done to fix the situation?
Immanentize
Let’s have a thread about the red to blue wave hitting some once red states.
Tony Jay
Anecdotal, but the guy I found mouthing “Oh, boy!” this morning as he stared at his face in a bathroom mirror like he’d never seen it before was pretty damned persuasive.
“What year is it?”
“It’s 2022”
“2022? Trump fled to Russia yet?”
“Uh… not yet.”
“Right. Okay. So it must be… October?”
AliceBlue
There was a diary on DKos a couple of days ago with a link to an article in which several polling firm reps were quoted as saying “We have no idea who’s going to vote. Anything is possible.” Ann Selzer says that polling is a dying business; it’s getting more and more difficult to contact people.
As for candidate emails here are the one that drive me bananas:
“New poll shows that _________ has pulled ahead! Send $10.00 to keep up the momentum!”
Ten minutes later:
“Oh no! New poll shows that ___________ is behind! Send $10.00 to help catch up!”
Same candidate.
lowtechcyclist
@Citizen Alan:
They already did – they failed the pandemic. Despite being supposedly “pro-life,” they didn’t give a damn about a million people dying of Covid here, and 15-20 million worldwide.
zhena gogolia
Good thread.
StringOnAStick
@Kelly: The only places I see R candidate signs is the rural areas near Sisters and of course Redmond is more red, but Bend looks even bluer than I’ve seen before and the D’s were great about getting a voting guide flier to every D registered household so we can take all the local and city races too. At least I hope so.
The governor’s race concerns me and I think the biggest issue the R’s are hyping on at every level is homelessness and wanting them to go away, but no plan at all about how they’ll do that. I think they’d really like to propose a Final Solution, but aren’t crazy enough yet to do so. Probably by 2024 though…
gene108
@Cameron:
Campaign donations are recorded by the government by law. They are public record.
Donating through ActBlue, or some other platform, at the least requires submitting an email address, which gets added to the info that’s required to be submitted.
Campaigns look at possible donors from the info reported to the government, and whatever they can get from donation platforms to build out their e-mail and text lists.
Baud
@JoyceH:
Like Pharaoh, their hearts have become hardened.
UncleEbeneezer
@JoyceH: Both states are still majority-white (TX just barely, which is why it’s always on the cusp of flipping) and in the South. That makes it tough.
Kelly
They’ll settle for bussing the homeless out of state. The kindest R’s will dump them somewhere warm like California.
James E Powell
@JoyceH:
The voters who vote for DeSantis & Abbot do care, just not about those things. As has been pointed out here & elsewhere many times, they enjoy the cruelty, they thrive on the suffering of others. We have to face it that they are not good people. We cannot change their minds or their voting behavior. We have to outnumber them at elections.
Bokonon
The media’s focus on horserace polling is lazy reporting – but it is also safe, since this way the reporters and editors don’t have to take tough positions or chose sides. They just stand back and track the EFFECT of the politics and tactics that are going on instead of diving into SUBSTANCE.
Maybe this is the end result of the GOP continually complaining about the media being biased – or maybe it is the fear of calling BS when the GOP’s platform (and supporters) are not reality-based. But the bulk of the TV and print media and online reporting in this election cycle has been notably shallow and bad and risk averse – at a time that demands the exact opposite.
FelonyGovt
@Almost Retired: I’m doing the exact same thing!
Barbara
@zhena gogolia: I think what you are seeing here is one part existential dread and one part bafflement at the idea of physical infirmities. It’s yet another manifestation of the lack of diversity in any meaningful way or category of those working in media. They discount or devalue the opinions or influence or even the inclusion of women, people of color and those with any kind of obvious infirmity.
ETA: I didn’t watch the debate live, but I looked at clips and I thought Fetterman did fine. E.g., the response on immigration and DeSantis’s stunt with Venezuelan asylum seekers. I also saw that Olivia Nuzzi reared her head to pile on, and every time someone tells me that I should read her work I find that it rarely rises above mean girl gossip columnist fare. Am I missing something?
Bokonon
A lot of the voters seem to consider this to be the regrettable side effects of pursuing the correct policies (and preserving low taxes, keeping a strong economy, and resisting socialism). Sh!t happens, people die … it’s sad, and we can offer thoughts and prayers. But above all, they rationalize that the Democrats would ALWAYS BE WORSE, and NEED TO BE KEPT OUT OF POWER at all costs. Even if it means voting for repellant and dishonest GOP politicians who do demonstrably lousy jobs serving the public interest.
James E Powell
@Bokonon:
Because there’s a conflict in every human heart, between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil, and good does not always triumph. – General Corman
Salty Sam
I don’t know where you’re from jonas, but your statement there tells me you’ve not spent enough time in the Lone Star State to get to know Bubbah. There’s lots of Bubbahs here (to be fair, they’re everywhere).
I spent some time in northern Arkansas back in 2006. Our host was putting on a breakfast in the factory we were working in- a TV was playing, GWBush was on, stammering and yammering about freedom, and our host looked up at the TV, got a little misty-eyed, and said, “Now THERE’S a straight shooter!” I almost choked on my coffee.
I’ve long had to become accustomed to being the only liberal in a roomful of Bubbahs. You just have to remember the quote: “…these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.”
ETA- I’m not giving up on Beto (or Abrams) yet! There’s enough anecdata out there about voting lines full of women and young people to counter the MSM “Drumbeat of Democratic Doom”.
bupalos
Can we puhleez stop with the “last gasp of democracy” stuff? It’s not as motivating as it is paralyzing, and it’s simply false. Yes, we could lose another election. Totally possible. Yes, the R’s would use that to further rig elections and attack rights and freedoms and further fuck with institutions. Yes we’re currently working against political gravity.
No, that’s not the “end of democracy.” There aren’t any forevers or permanent rest stops here. It’s just a question of what direction we’re traveling. It would be another political step back along the lines of the political steps we’ve been taking for the last 20 years…even as we take a lot of social and cultural steps forward. And yeah, we’re coming to the point where citizens are going to have to actually DO STUFF beyond continually and forever WATCHING and treating politics first and foremost as entertainment and social identity and a backdrop to consumerism.
But no, democracy isn’t ending just because a bunch of incompetent ideological choads catch the car.
We’re a lot stronger than that.
bupalos
@James E Powell: I can’t disagree with this more. And I have no idea how so many liberals have turned off their brains and are going with the idea that the reason for this global slide towards authoritarianism is because people are just fundamentally bad.
It’s nonsense. It’s mental surrender. People are people and always have been. They can turn into Nazi’s, they can turn into humanists, they can turn into anything in between. When your society starts producing a bunch of Nazi’s just about the worst thing we can do is this kind of ‘determinism of evil’ thing.
James E Powell
@bupalos:
Okay. I hope we can disagree without becoming enemies.
I have a lifetime of experience listening to liberals & Democratic leaning people say things like “We can explain to them that. . . ” & “Surely they can see that . . .” & “They must realize that . . .” only to see these right-wing voters go out & vote for meanest, cruelest bigot on the ballot, year after year after year. I think it’s fair to judge people by what they do & these people vote for others to suffer.
Alce _e_ardillo
I actually feel somewhat positive about our chances. We have a terrific candidate for State Senate in Michelle Ostrelich in my district, running a good shoe leather campaign against a Republican who has been sleepwalking for the last 20 years. I’ve seen more lawn signs for her than for all Democrats combined in my neighborhood. Does it mean much? Who knows? But it feels good.
bupalos
@James E Powell: You definitely can’t “explain it to them.”
We have to be a lot more realistic than that. And this isn’t about what is fair or whether we’re entitled to judge. Who wants to judge them? The reality is that we on the left without exception have various privileges and advantages that allowed us to become who we are. And these same things that allowed us to grow to a more mature politics allow us richer lives. Allow us a deeper experience of life in more facets.
Some of those things fall under the luck of birth, some of them fall under the luck of later circumstances, some of them fall under effort (though the motivation for effort requires its own lucky circumstance.) But the real point is WE ARE THE LUCKY ONES.
The way our right wing citizens lash out, the kind of society they seek, the kind of magical religion they fall to- these things are evidence of their poverty and need. Imagine wanting the empty nihilistic things they want, and what your life has to look like to want them. Imagine that culture of nihilism forming around you. We need to stop hating these people and telling ourselves lies about them. As a society, we have failed them. They are both victim and evidence. Even as they make more victims themselves. If we want to actually make a better world for ourselves, we will start by thinking about making a better world for them.
Nancy
Guess what? There is a Hochul sign in my neighborhood, Mr. Many Multiple Names.
Nancy
@Nancy:
Not in my yard. It’s in some other intelligent person’s yard. Was just trying to share some good news.