I am very pleased with the outcome yesterday, even with control of the Senate and House still up in the air. This was an amazing performance in an off year election for the party of a sitting President, especially with all the shit going on (inflation, etc.). So any way you spin it, this was a good day for Democrats, for the most part. Republicans and media hardest hit.
Locally, the election was a total fucking shitshow for Democrats. Republicans now hold 88 out of 100 seats in the WV House of Delegates, 30/34 seats in the WV Senate, and the governorship. It’s going to be a total shitshow, but somehow, they will blame Democrats for everything in the 2024 elections. I imagine the first thing they will do is make abortion illegal before you are even pregnant and issue a conceal carry permit to your non-existent fetus. We’re not too far off from me being the only Democrat left in the state, wandering around the hills and hollers like Hiroo Onada, unaware the war has been over for thirty years. I honestly have no idea what they will do that they couldn’t already do with their previous super majority, but I imagine it will be terrible and we will all be worshipping at the altar of tax cut jeebus and resource extraction.
In outstanding news, John Fetterman won in PA, and I have been talking him up for a decade and am so happy the entire country is going to get a taste of him and his amazing wife, and, of course, Levi:
i is honored 🙏 https://t.co/tidVkQo9uv
— Levi (& Artie) Fetterman 💙 🇺🇦 🗳 (@LeviFetterman) January 5, 2021
Also, it is now safe to check your fucking email accounts, although I am sure the Warnock runoff will cause the fuckers to start bombarding you again.
Alison Rose
LOL. Don’t give ’em any ideas, John!!
Emma from Miami
I live in Miami. Let us share a drink or twelve. The only downside is that we’ll wake up tomorrow with a bitch of a hangover and we’ll still be ass-deep in the shitshow.
Suzanne
You forgot about Levi’s sister, Artie.
Yes, I follow the Fetterdogs on Twitter.
JPL
John, I’m not ready for the nasty republican ads. I still think Warnock wins because Walker no longer has the coattails of a semi-popular asshole governor.
Phylllis
I do not know how that
assholepratgitfucker James Carville got my gmail address, but finding the unsubscribe button did put a stop to the onslaught.Baud
16 heroes fighting the good fight.
Baud
@JPL:
That’s my hope too.
Jess
Hahaha! I swear, every two hours like clockwork!
MazeDancer
Yes, there will be PostCards for the run-off.
Something of a deja vu. Checking the 2020 GA PostCard designs to see if any can be used again.
We have to wait until we see if the run-off determines control of the Senate or not. Hoping that Kelly and CCM will have won, so Warnock is just extra icing.
Michael Cain
The editorial staff over at Ordinary Times includes another couple of WV Democrats.
japa21
Already got my first email asking for money for Walker. I don’t have any idea how I got on a conservative mailing list, but I let them send me their requests just so I can reply “Fuck off”.
Burnspbesq
It’s hard to imagine Katie Porter losing to Scott Baugh, but there you go with Dems playing by rules Republicans refuse to acknowledge. She should have been the beneficiary of a truly awesome partisan gerrymander, but NOOOOOOOOO.
ALurkSupreme
@JPL: Agree completely.
Nicole
Warnock has already emailed me twice today asking for money the runoff. I realize I’m probably going to send him some money, but man, it’s gotten very, very old.
I’m hopeful that it not being on the same ballot as a governor’s race will be good for Warnock.
Baud
@Burnspbesq:
Oh, that’s sad. I thought she was ahead.
HumboldtBlue
hueyplong
Who knows what else will come to light about Walker before the runoff, or what he’ll say over these next 4 weeks?
eclare
@JPL: I think Warnock will win in the run-off. Y’all did it in 2020!
Eolirin
@Baud: She seems to be still, though a lot of vote is outstanding. It’s very close though right now. No idea where the remaining vote is.
Burnspbesq
I really thought Barnes had a shot in Wisconsin.
guachi
The United States needs to do something about gerrymandering. Democrats hold the House if districts are drawn in a nonpartisan fashion nationwide.
Baud
@guachi:
We tried. Blame Manchin and Sinema.
Kevin
Yep already got the Warnock email. Here in MO I feel largely the same as you in WV. Surrounded by red and frustrated and wondering why. I just don’t get it. Oh well I need a break from this shit for awhile. I’m gonna tone down my politics and enjoy the holidays.
schrodingers_cat
@guachi: That doesn’t explain why Ryan and Barnes lost their senate seats.
guachi
@Baud: States can do something, too.
Michigan passed a good redistricting measure. Ohio… didn’t.
guachi
@schrodingers_cat: Ryan and Barnes were running for Senator. So, no, gerrymandering in the House would not explain results in the Senate.
New Deal democrat
@guachi: “The United States needs to do something about gerrymandering.”
As usual whenever this comes up, unlike State legislative gerrymanders, Congress is explicitly given the right in the Constitution to determine the manner of its own elections.
Before the 1840s, Congressional elections were winner take all at the Statewide level. So, e.g., Congress could create a proportional representation system, or at large seats that would be assigned whenever district election gerrymanders strayed too far from partisan affiliations.
schrodingers_cat
@guachi: Gerrymandering is the symptom, the disease is white supremacy and patriarchy. Those who have power are unwilling to share it and will employ any means to maintain that power.
Ohio Mom
@Burnspbesq: Katie Porter lost?!!! Phooey!! I hope this isn’t the last we see of her.
evap
@JPL: One of the reasons Warnock and Ossoff won two years ago is that Trump was in a snit and told Republicans not to bother voting in the runoff. This time I suspect he will campaign for Walker. I’m worried that he will drive up turnout for the GOP.
West of the Rockies
Hopefully, Charlie Crist will now toddle off to a later-life career in, I don’t know, making doughnuts.
Baud
@evap:
It’ll probably drive up our turnout even more.
schrodingers_cat
@Ohio Mom: The race hasn’t been called yet . She is ahead but it is close.
trollhattan
@Ohio Mom: Katie and her whiteboard and her minivan will be back. Rising star–maybe she runs for statewide office? Sends DiFi to retirement? [As if, DiFi’s now in a
fightnap to the death with Grassley.]Ohio Mom
@schrodingers_cat: Why did Ryan lose? I say he made some strategic errors in his campaign; Ohio Dad says he wasn’t going to win Ohio no matter what. Choose either or both.
Qrop Non Sequitur
I just learned my county ousted an odious MAGA Sheriff who has held the job for a long time. I had voted for his challenger in the primary.
I was always going to vote for the Democrat, but hearing about the election denialism and inmate abuse and federal civil rights violations had me really pulling for our new Sheriff.
trollhattan
@West of the Rockies: He was a horrid choice and evidently, Florida’s only known Democrat. He should return to his role as Roger Sterling.
evap
@Baud: Let’s hope! Emory University, where I work, made a big push to get students to vote. They even got the county to open an early voting site on campus. Let’s hope the students go back to the polls for the runoff. It’s on the last day of classes for the semester, so students should still be around.
Kay
@West of the Rockies:
Democrats are so mean to their losing candidates. Republicans embraced Trump even tighter after he lost the Presidency and Congress. That made him more of a “winner” in their…system.
trollhattan
@Qrop Non Sequitur: Sheriffs even of purportedly blue counties can be awful. I know, we just got rid of ours.
Ohio Mom
@schrodingers_cat: Whew. Ok, I’m crossing fingers, toes, etc.
@schrodingers_cat:
Qrop Non Sequitur
He’d be excellent in a display case for rotisserie chickens.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: The base believed that Trump didn’t really lose, therefore, he didn’t have any loser stink. This is one of the purposes of lying about election fraud.
JPL
@evap: They paid him to stay out of the state. I don’t know that his trashing Kemp will help Walker. Rumor has it though that Kemp offered to campaign with Walker in the last few days and Walker refused. He’s still tied to the election denier
If somehow we win both Nevada and Arizona, then republican turnout will shrink.
Southern Goth
One way of looking at this, Warnock will have the equivalent of 24 years worth of Senate races in two years.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@trollhattan: Here in MA, I’m pretty sure all the counties are pretty blue*, but we love us some status quo.
*there’s a county to the east of me I’m not sure about and my north of Boston knowledge is almost nil. But we always manage to send a full D Congressional delegation and maintain veto proof D margins in our legislature.
Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
Because of a nonpartisan redistricting scheme the Rethugs agreed to for some reason a few years ago:
Delk
Anti-Pritzker ads are still running. They were shitty ads before the election and even shittier today.
Martin
@Burnspbesq: Pretty sure she’ll win just fine. She’s +1 right now, with a return to mail ballots that were +13 for her in early vote.
She was -4 after election day in 2018. She won off the strength of late mail. I think this is the same Election Day lead she had in 2020. Honestly, it’s better than I thought we’d have.
OC is sitting on 292,000 ballots still to process, not counting what arrives in the mail today and the rest of the week. If those look anything like the 340,000 mail ballots that processed before Election Day, this could be her biggest winning margin in 3 elections.
Relax. CA has a very weird partisan shift pattern now, but my guess based on where things stand now, CA Dems roll in with the same number of D seats, and GOP loses one. And I think there’s a measurable chance Dems flip one or two still.
We’ll know a big more in a few hours. I have a thing tonight so I won’t have an update until probably about 10PM PST. We might get some of these 15 races called once the number of uncounted ballots comes into a bit clearer view.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
Ok, but what’s the excuse for GOP pols and pundits? They know he lost the Presidency and Congress.
No, I think they may have a different measure of “winning” and “winner” that is not recognized in the normal world.
PsiFighter37
@schrodingers_cat: Barnes lost because of just enough racism (I’m pretty convinced at this point that one of his white primary opponents probably beats Johnson). No other way to explain who those Evers/Johnson voters are otherwise.
Martin
@Ohio Mom: NO! She has not lost! She’s currently up 1 point with a lot of mail ballots still to count. Pretty sure she’s safe.
CA will still be receiving ballots until 11/15, so it’s not even clear how many ballots there are going to be to know what kind of margin she needs until next week. It’s good. She’s got this.
<shakes fist at burnsey for riling everyone up>
Matt McIrvin
@Qrop Non Sequitur: Also, sheriffs are less prominent officials in Massachusetts than they are in most states, because the county level of government does not do much–the sheriff’s office is mostly the prison police.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@Matt McIrvin: Despite never having been myself, I find myself very concerned with the treatment of prisoners.
PsiFighter37
@Martin: I dunno – it sounds like overall CA turnout is below 2018 levels. My base case assumption is that the only seat Democrats have a chance of flipping is CA-27 (Garcia) – but I would love to be proved wrong.
Ohio Mom
@Martin: I got it, keep hanging loose.
FelonyGovt
@trollhattan: Ours too, hopefully! (Los Angeles County)
Matt McIrvin
@Qrop Non Sequitur: It’s as bad a place as any to put a right-wing tyrant, certainly. But the whole “I am the law outside of the city limits” attitude doesn’t apply because there is no outside of the city limits.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@Matt McIrvin: In any case, congratulations to Paul Heroux.
🎶 And then a Heroux comes along… 🎶
dww44
@MazeDancer: How nice that outcome would be. Let’s make that happen!
Jackie
@japa21: I’d tell him every time you ask me for money, I send it to Warnock.
MisterForkbeard
@japa21: Got my first text from Warnock, asking for money that’ll be split between Warnock and the DNC. I gave.
I think he’ll win handily in the runoff, but who knows. Walker winning would be such an awful thing – it means that there are literally no disqualifications for Republicans. Are you an obvious token hire with brain damage who can’t string together two sentences, was blatantly hypocritical about Republican signature issues, had out-of-wedlock children come up during the campaign, (in the past) repeatedly threatened and tried to murder your wife, etc.? No problem! You too can be a Republican senator.
Scout211
@Martin: Thank you, Martin. I was just about to post that she is currently ahead with over 50% of the ballots still uncounted. Those will likely lean D, since they are mail-in ballots. So she should be fine. We hope.
Martin
So, one question I had because I couldn’t remember about CA counting – there hasn’t been a single vote count update statewide since last night. So it’s a statewide convention if not policy to report once per day at the end of the day from here on out.
Some of my uncertainty about what conclusions to draw about remaining votes is that I *think* all of the same day machine ballots are counted and reported, state wide – maybe with a precinct here or there having missed the last data dump last night because of keeping the polling place open late, or difficulty transporting the data to the county. But in the event that LA county has a large number of in-person machine votes still to count, those ballots could be more GOP leaning than the mail ballots.
The variation in partisan vote counting on Election Day is mainly a function of when larger/smaller precincts can deliver their votes and get them counted. That’s different in post election day mail counting. For USPS received ballots there should be no local variation – it serves as a way of randomizing the ballots and should reflect the overall partisanship of by mail ballots. There may be some variation if drop box and vote center ballots are processed in batches where one geographic region may get counted resulting in a partisan shift relative to another. But in the last two elections I wasn’t able to observe any meaningful variation in that way. Every data dump seemed to be pretty close to the overall distribution, so forecasts against yet uncounted ballots wound up being pretty accurate.
In my county, there’s 660,000 ballots already counted (about half early mail, and half same day machine) and there’s currently 292,000 mail yet to count (with at least some more arriving via USPS since we have a postmark deadline with a 1 week – 11/15 – absolute deadline). Of those 292,000 130,000 are vote center, 100,000 are drop box, and 57,000 are USPS received on Election Day. The 230,000 vote center/drop box will have neighborhood/city partisan variation, but the 57,000 USPS won’t. The vote center/drop box number won’t go up – they’re all collected, but the USPS will. Maybe by a lot.
dww44
@Burnspbesq: The apparent difference between the electorate in Wisconsin and, say, that in Michigan is mind boggling to me. Can anyone she’d light on that?
raven
@evap: Huh, last time I was there was to see the Dali Lama!
Martin
@PsiFighter37: Republican incumbent in CA-41 is 13 points behind right now. Riverside has 335,000 uncounted ballots (which is a lot).
2018 turnout in OC was 1.1M. Right now we have about 910,000 with some by mail still to come. My guess is yeah, we don’t reach 1.1M, but we may get over 1M. I can’t remember how strong the by mail receipts after Election Day were in 2020 – how quickly they fell off. It was 57,000 yesterday. I wouldn’t be surprised if we had 2 more days at that level and then it craters off pretty hard.
Tim C.
Yup, I know I’m probably preaching to the choir, but the GOP is shitting bricks right now. Yes, they will end up with a House majority, but despite a horrific environment for Democrats, it’s was pretty lackluster last night for them
And that was with them keeping Trump under a tarp for two years.
And now Trump is going to announce and suck up all the air in the room
And now Trump is probably going to get indicted at least twice.
And now Cletus will demand Trump takes his throne as God-King.
And now we will hold the line.
Scout211
Boebert and Frisch are now in a virtual tie 50%-50%. With 94% counted. Frisch is currently 62 votes ahead.
It looks like they will be headed for a recount?
SpaceUnit
So I keep hearing rumors that if Republicans take control of the House one of their first official acts will be to impeach Joe Biden. Has anyone heard what the pretext is going to be?
Turgidson
@guachi: I thought Ohio did pass some gerrymandering reform, but the state GOP, with it’s already-gerrymandered supermajority, just lawlessly ignored the courts when they were told their maps stunk. I could be misremembering.
West of the Rockies
@Kay:
Maybe Crist is a prince among men, but as a candidate, he seems as inspirational as kale.
West of the Rockies
@Qrop Non Sequitur:
Gross. I think I’ll become vegetarian.
Martin
I know the Dem strategy of helping promote extreme republicans in the primaries was controversial, but Dems won every one of those races.
MisterForkbeard
@SpaceUnit: “The border”, I think. Not with any actual data or charges, just “the border”. Maybe for not visiting personally.
mrmoshpotato
@Phylllis:
Could you tell him to suck an ass’s ass in the unsubscribe reason?
SpaceUnit
@Tim C.:
Right now trump is getting dragged by some pretty major right-wing media outlets including Fox News, The National Review, The Washington Examiner and the Wall Street Journal. They’re blaming him for the R’s poor showing.
Of course whether that will convince the MAGA hordes to move on is anyone’s guess. My guess is that it won’t.
Sister Golden Bear
@SpaceUnit: The pretext will be that he’s a Democrat.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@West of the Rockies: Apologies, it’s just that I could be indoors at 2 am during a cold New England winter and if I saw Charlie Crist, I’d feel compelled to put on sunscreen.
Qrop Non Sequitur
I’m still not even convinced they were doing this.
Turgidson
@Martin: Typical wrongheaded pundit circle jerk. The Democrats correctly saw GOP control of the House as a greater threat than a few backbenchers smearing shit on their faces and screaming about Qanon bullshit but having no real power. It’s not like the candidates who lost those primaries were good on any policies we care about or mavericks on….anything other than realizing Trump is a crazy asshole. They were just *marginally* less despicable.
The above-it-all clique of cynical centrist-ish pundits high in the smell of their own farts like Barro and McMegan just wanted something to latch on to to BothSides the fight for democracy. They’re fucking morons.
Pennsylvanian
@guachi: What would explain it is that people in Ohio are racist. I spent 4 years there and will revisit once I have knocked “visit hell” from my bucket list. Most of them save their white hoods for the voting booth, not the church potlucks.
Argiope
@Turgidson: Nope, you are not mistaken—that sums OH up nicely.
Martin
@Qrop Non Sequitur: Oh, they were definitely doing this. They didn’t hide it.
SpaceUnit
@MisterForkbeard:
@Sister Golden Bear:
I’m guessing they’ll just accuse him of being a poo poo head.
SuzieC
@Jess: It’s OK if Warnock bombards me. I will give until it hurts.
japa21
Okay, I am going to say a couple things that aren’t going to be appreciated by some people. Maybe most here.
A lot of people bought into the media and pundit predictions of a “red wave”. A lot of doom talk here. Only a few, like OO, myself and some others, were actually optimistic about the outcome.
Yes, the inflation (which isn’t as bad as the media makes out) was an issue, but other than that, looking at the political climate, this should have been an excellent election for Dems, picking up seats in the Senate and probably picking up seats in the House, and definitely not losing control of the House (still to be decided).
If the GOP takes the House or the Senate, democracy in this country will be on life support. We came close to what should have been a blue wave because of Gen Z. But if nothing happens over the next 2 years, will they be there for us in 2024? Or will they say, hey, look we voted and it didn’t make any difference.
Yes, I am glad it wasn’t a red blowout, but considering, the Supreme Court decisions, the horrible quality of GOP candidates across the board, the threats to Democracy, the continued embrace of Trump by the GOP, I am very disappointed it didn’t go better for the Dems and very worried about the next couple years.
Oh, and the US either needs a penile transplant or an amputation of its current dangling monstrosity (sorry Betty C).
mrmoshpotato
@Delk:
Assholes wasting their money. Also, Darren Bailey can really go fuck himself.
MomSense
John, this is by far my favorite post (not quite yet I suppose with so many ballots to be counted) election “take”.
I want to again express my gratitude for how the jackals stepped in last minute to help Governor Mills. It was so much fun trying to explain balloon-juice to my family and campaign staff. Left it with you’ve been hot aired!
I’m sure we will cover the take aways and the what nexts but for now I think it’s important to say how great it is to have a place to vent, worry, celebrate, support and just be with people who give a damn. I feel very lucky to have stumbled upon this blog all those years ago.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Any of those would be in the yahoo account which I barely even check any more. But the texts…
Just got an urgent text from Mary Peltola (Alaska). And earlier got one from Raphael Warnock. Both tight races heading for a runoff, so I’m going to have to dig through the sofa cushions and look for any spare shekels I can scrape up.
I have 1812 unread text messages, most of them political money pleas. Think maybe I should clean some of that out?
Qrop Non Sequitur
@Martin: The ads that are typically cited as evidence they were doing this, from a purely textual basis, opposed these candidates.
Unless they were relying on Cleek’s law to deliver the opponent they wanted, I say I’m not buying it.
brendancalling
I am NOT taking victory laps, except so far as my state goes—and BTW, beyond Fetterman and Shapiro, can I get a shout for Austin Davis, the first black lieutenant gov in PA history?? Democrats may flip the PA state house too.
But until the House races are called, until the Senate races are called, I’m still bracing for a loss. I’m not trying to be negative Nellie—we ain’t out of the woods yet. It’s the lull in the teen slasher film. I’m waiting for the other shoe.
Jeffro
Toomey states the obvious: trumpov has been a disaster for the GOP (via the WaPo)
Right now – NOW – is the time for the Dems to press hard and make noise. Which party was telling everyone that this corrupt orange clown would be a disaster? For the country as well as the GOP?
US!
US!!!
japa21
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Alaska will not have a run-off. Peltola only needs to pick up less than 5% of the other votes in the ranked choice voting to go over 50%.
Martin
@Qrop Non Sequitur: No, I’m saying various dem strategists admitted to doing this. The first instance of this I’m aware of was McCaskill picking Akin in 2012. We know she helped him win the primary. That’s well documented now.
This is not a theoretical.
Scout211
A good opinion piece by John Avlon at CNN. Opinion: It’s the extremism, stupid.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@brendancalling: Perhaps, given their underwhelming performance yesterday, a Republican Congressional majority might actually find a way to be useful to the nation and to their constituents.
Then I’ll wake up from my improbable dream.
Mai Naem mobile
Post election vibes – I am positive in general. I am satisfied with where Kelly’s at at this point. Hoping hoping hoping Lake doesn’t pull it out. She’ll be as embarrassing for the state as Palin was for Alaska. In Maricopa County I feel like it’s 2020 redux except I seem to know less where these last votes are coming from.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@Martin: This didn’t come to my attention in 2012. I know this years examples included Mastriano, but the ad I saw was explicitly anti-Mastriano.
You got links?
Amir Khalid
@SpaceUnit:
The pretext — it’s plainly not good enough to count as a reason — will be that the Democrats impeached TFG twice, and turnabout is fair play.
As for the charge, it won’t matter. There is really nothing to impeach in Biden’s conduct and performance in office. Even the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was the right thing to do, and whose chaotic execution was inevitable in the circumstances. So the articles of impeachment will be along the lines of “We don’t like your Demonrat face.”
Turgidson
@Amir Khalid: I would expect there to be one article of impeachment with three words: Hunter Biden’s Laptop.
Martin
@Qrop Non Sequitur: Here.
In McCaskills race, it was a bit more directly baiting voters into Akins, but this is a bit more subtle. But the underlying evidence is that a Dem spent money in a GOP primary, and you don’t do that unless you have a goal you are trying to achieve and its unambiguous who they were trying to boost based on who was named and who was not.
Martin
@Amir Khalid: Non-partisans hate political retribution. They’ll hate the GOPs constant bullshit investigations and the GOP constant preening during those investigations. They do it because it sells on Fox News, but Bill Clinton left office with a 66% approval rating. He hit his highest approval rating 73% during the impeachment.
Republicans have a knack at making normal people sympathetic for whoever they have their sights set on. If MTG and Gozar are steering the bus in the House, Dems are going to wipe the floor in 2024.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@Martin: The article provided states the campaign said it was not an effort to boost the candidate.
Assuming they aren’t being truthful here and they did want to boost Mastriano, the fact that the Cleek’s Law approach worked doesn’t speak well for Republicans.
dmsilev
@japa21: Honestly, it’s pretty rare for the party in control to pick up seats in either house in the midterms. It happened in 2002 because Bush was still enjoying his (unearned) post-9/11 popularity, and it happened in 1998 because the Republicans made absolute fools of themselves with the impeachment of Clinton. Other than that, you have the GOP making big gains in both 2010 and 2014, the Dems pretty much running the table in 2006, the GOP takeover of the House in 1994, etc. Compared to those examples, Democrats did very very well last night.
Suzanne
I have shared before that my cousin Aimee got re-elected to the Connecticut State House (111th district) last night. She won 55% of the vote, which was 6,179 votes. It absolutely cracks me up how many districts there are in Connecticut. Anyway, our family group chat has been fun today.
West of the Rockies
@Qrop Non Sequitur:
Charlie Crisp?
Southern Goth
The polls-only model at fivethirtyeight.com was pretty good. Select the “lite” version of the model in the lower left corner.
Seems like Silver’s “Deluxe” version should have converged more on the polls than it did. Like maybe it has value 3 months out from the election, but not so much closer to the election.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@West of the Rockies: Exactly.
Martin
@Qrop Non Sequitur: They’re not going to tell NPR that before the election. But the only reason to spend money in the GOP primary is to pick the candidate. That’s it. Whether they admit that to NPR or only to other Dem strategists (which other Dems have confirmed) doesn’t matter – the proof is in the dollars spent.
You seem to really want to believe that Dems don’t do these kinds of underhanded things (and it is kind of underhanded) but they aren’t idiots. They spent millions on a message, and they know the utility of that message, and they got the utility of that message.
JPL
@Suzanne: Congrats.
Spanky
@Martin: “Wipe the floor in ’24” has a nice ring to it.
Anyone mention Dana Milbank’s (!) WaPo article, “Biggest loser of the midterm elections? The media”. He names names, which is nice.
Citizen Alan
@Qrop Non Sequitur:
True. The most disgusting thing about this is that if the GOP has a one vote majority in the house and a 1 vote majority in the senate, they will conduct themselves as if they had a red wave whether they did or not. At a minimum, a one vote majority in the senate means that Biden will not be able to fill a single judicial opening in the next 2 years including the Supreme Court, And we all better hope to God that no cabinet level appointies need to be replaced.
SpaceUnit
@Amir Khalid:
Agree. The reason will be because we can and we hate you. But they’ll need to justify it with some imagined high crime or misdemeanor. Perhaps failure to secure the border, as was suggested earlier.
Spanky
@Citizen Alan: Yeah, I reeeely want Joe to be able to replace Clarence when he strokes out. Preferably before he finishes cooling in the box.
lowtechcyclist
@Nicole:
The good news, such as it is, is it’s just this one candidate asking you for money, rather than dozens. You might get a dozen emails a day, but you won’t get hundreds.
Geminid
@West of the Rockies: Crist did as well as anyone else would have. Val Demings did not do much better against Rubio, if any.
But I guess people will be trashing Demings next. Haw haw, what a loser!
Joseph Patrick Lurker
@West of the Rockies:
Totally unnecessary cheap shot by you because no Democrat was ever going to beat DeSantis. Crist did the best that he could under the circumstances.
MomSense
@brendancalling:
Shout the fuck out! We also elected our first black woman to the state senate, two Somali American women to the state house and a Somali American man as mayor of one of our largest cities. C’est incroyable!
MisterForkbeard
@Martin: I’m not sure that’s entirely true. You can absolutely spend money during the opposing party’s primary in order to define your opponents early.
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
With that many districts, I’d have figured each family would have its own representative. So instead of families fighting amongst themselves over an inheritance, they’d be fighting over which one of them gets to be the representative this year.
(OK, I know Connecticut’s not that small, I went to college there. But yeah, >111 representatives in one house of the legislature?)
Martin
@Southern Goth: It doesn’t. If the model converges on the result at only one point that’s just dumb luck.
If the models were good, they *must* get more accurate, not less. The models were garbage. I expect they’ll get worse until they come up with a mechanism to get decent polling response.
There’s the potential for a wisdom of the masses by averaging them together, but I’m now convinced that none of the public pollsters are willing to take sufficient risks to get ahead of demographic changes and as such they are *all* lagging. And average them together doesn’t yield any new wisdom.
I think there’s somewhat better work being done by in-house polling because it better reflects the job of the campaign. It can ask ‘what if we boost women turnout’ and poll against that model. It’s not just trying to measure the electorate, but measure the electorate in the form that it is trying to shape it to be. It’s risky, but you can’t be measuring the electorate as you expected it to be from 2 years ago. But it’s hard to blend those in because the way that you push leaners and whatnot is very different. They’re trying to also figure out what message causes them to lean.
In a conventional poll you could get some sense that your model was wrong and adapt it, but I think the response rate is so shitty that’s no longer possible.
Baud
I HAVE DONATED TO WARNOCK!
MomSense
@Suzanne:
Congratulations!!!
Suzanne
So.
Obviously the GOP knows now that Trump has to go, and he has to be beaten by another Republican. The problem is that no one wants to do that, as it’s political suicide. Everybody wants to be the one who sweeps in afterward.
I am just salivating at the thought of watching this shitshow.
I hope Trump announces his 2024 run tomorrow. LMMFAO.
Suzanne
@lowtechcyclist: They have ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-ONE DISTRICTS. What the fuck.
MomSense
@Baud:
ME TOO! HE CAN HAZ ALL MY MONEH!
Whatever it fucking takes. He is by far the most deserving human to be a United States Senator.
Frankensteinbeck
@SpaceUnit:
I try to keep up with wingnutty dialectic. They have several reasons they might impeach Joe Biden. Note that these are all fantasies, but they are Established Truth in large swathes of the Republican Party.
Biden is getting kickbacks from Hunter Biden selling US policy decisions to foreign businesses. By FAR the most popular theme and highest likelihood for a first impeachment.
Biden, HIllary, and Obama conspired with Ukraine to frame Trump for Russian collusion.
Biden, Hillary, and Obama illegally spied on the Trump campaign.
Biden has completely abandoned the southern border and is letting criminals flood across. Yes, they think the border is open and unguarded.
Complicity with Fauci in creating and releasing Covid-19 as an excuse to take authoritarian control of the US, and liberals in general to do so to the world.
Politicizing the DOJ, using it to punish Biden’s enemies, especially prosecuting Trump about the documents. Major detail: They believe Trump has a few declassified documents, and Obama has 3 million still-classified documents.
Wide scale election tampering. Unlikely to be the reason, because they know every time they try to get specific they get slapped down.
That’s the ones I can think of off the top of my head!
Kay
“In a tougher than expected fight”
SpaceUnit
@Baud:
That’s funny.
I donated to him a few weeks ago and I’ll shell out again for the runoff. I’m going to wait a bit though and make the bastard earn it.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@japa21: Maybe I’m misreading her money plea. Let’s see…
“But here’s the thing. Ever since Mary won the special election, Sarah Palin has been sowing seeds of doubt about the legitimacy of RCV… we have to be prepared to defend the legitimacy of the election… we’re aiming to raise $100K for our Election Defense Fund”.
So I guess it’s a legal fund, not about a runoff?
Geminid
From the Albuquerque Journal, two hours ago:
The 2nd CD covers the southern half of New Mexico. Democrat Xochitl Torres-Small flipped it in 2018, then Republican Yvette Harrell won their rematch in 2020. Last year Democrats shifted its boundaries by adding Albuquerque area districts and lopping off some in the districts northeast corner, so as to make the 2nd bluer. Evidently this worked.
Gabe Vasquez graduated from Notre Dame in 2011, worked on a startup company and for Senator Martin Heinrich before winning a seat on the Las Cruces City Council.
Skepticat
I just sent Warnock money without being asked. Much of my email today has been from candidates all over to whom I donated because they were in tight races where my paltry contribution might help. Sadly, almost all of them essentially said, “Thank you. I’m sorry I couldn’t win, but I’ll keep fighting for our values.”
It might not have been a red wave, but it swept out way too many excellent candidates in favor of total nutjobs. Sigh.
bmoak
@Ohio Mom: With the numbers out of Ohio, I don’t think Sherrod Brown has a chance to be re-elected in ’24.
Shakti
@Joseph Patrick Lurker:
Perhaps?
Crist used to be my rep. I got exactly ZERO calls or texts on his specific behalf. I got more calls and texts for Val Demings, school board members, and state legislature candidates, so don’t tell me it’s the money.
My parents swear up and down they haven’t given my number to political campaigns [even though the texts were like ‘My dad’s name’ keep florida free and vote for DeSantis and ‘my mom’s name’ elect Val Demings] but I kept getting robocalls and texts from DeSantis like he was an ex trying to hook up or I owed him money. No, the block button did not work.
I didn’t get a single postcard for Crist. I’ve been a registered Democrat for a while.
Gravenstone
@SpaceUnit: Breathing while a Democrat. They won’t bother with even that little pretext. It will be pure, spite-driven tit for tat.
WaterGirl
Apparently some of you guys are getting fundraising requests related to ballot curing from folks like Mark Kelly, Katie Hobbs and Catherine Cortez-Masto.
Definitely not asking you to donate, but if you’re inclined to want to contribute to ballot curing, I have temporarily repurposed the Election Protection thermometer for donations to those 3 people.
The thermometer is set to ask you if you want to share your info with the candidates, so this gives you an option for giving without getting added to more campaign lists. If you donate, remember to click Customize Amounts if you don’t want the automatic split between the 3 of them.
Baud
@SpaceUnit:
If their majority is super thin, I’m less certain they can get the votes.
SpaceUnit
@Frankensteinbeck:
Jesus. I’m tempted to laugh, but you’re probably right. It’ll be a QAnon shitshow orgy.
Ohio Mom
@bmoak: A thousand things can happen in two years. People might get sick of Vance and realize what they have in Brown. Gotta lot of other worries on my list to see to first.
lee
I feel ya. I’m in Texas and it wasn’t even close.
We’re planning on moving. More than likely to New Mexico
Martin
OC update. Not many ballots processed probably because they’re switching over equipment (waiting for all of the data to update) but all of the OC house races moved slightly in favor of Dems. So, my expectation of the return to mail ballots favoring Dems is holding. I’ll have to see how many ballots that represented (seems like just a few thousand) to be able to see if the races where Dems are behind have any chance to catch up.
More later.
guachi
It looks like the dump of mail votes in Clark County, NV is far lower than expected. So a much lower chance of Cortez Masto winning. That would put the Senate on the shoulders of Warnock winning again.
Martin
We need a betting pool on how many more abortions and/or kids show up for Walker before the runoff.
WaterGirl
@Geminid: So that’s a pickup! Right?
MomSense
@Martin:
INORITE It’s beyond fucking farcical. He is unfit in every way. It’s beyond embarrassing. It’s a goddamned crime.
Southern Goth
@Martin:
Eh, I would expect a model to get more accurate as more accurate data is available. That wouldn’t be dumb luck, that would be admitting that data further away from an event is less accurate than data closer to the event. I mean I would expect a forecast of the daily high for tomorrow to be more accurate than the forecast for a high three months from now.
Anyhow, the point was that polling wasn’t that bad this cycle, at least taken in aggregate. Also, it didn’t point to a “red wave.”
Kathleen
@guachi: The measure was good. Rethuglicans drawing the maps they wanted even after Ohio Supreme Court kept rejecting them and Rethugs suffered no consequences for ignoring the Court..
schrodingers_cat
@PsiFighter37: His embrace of the Vt senator was not particularly useful either.
Kay
@Ohio Mom:
Sherrod runs in optimal years too. 2006, 2012, 2018 and then 2024. There was no red wave and Democrats did much better than expected nationally in a midterm, but Ryan did not run in an optimal year.
Taken4Granite
@Suzanne: Pikers compared to New Hampshire, where there are 400 seats in the state House of Representatives. Supposedly there are only three larger legislative bodies in the English-speaking world: the US Congress and the parliaments of the UK and India.
Thus my town (population ~15k) elects four state reps of its own, and has a share of a fifth.
Suzanne
@Martin: LOL!
Kent
One random guess? Michigan is a more urban state than Wisconsin. Also more diverse.
In Wisconsin 30% of the population is considered rural which ranks it 19th in the country right between Tennessee and Missouri.
In Michigan 25% of the population is considered rural which ranks it 27th in the country right ahead of Georgia and Virginia.
In terms of race, Wisconsin is the 13th whitest state at 84% white. Michigan is the 24th whitest state at 77% white.
Those two numbers alone can probably completely explain the difference in results.
Kent
We got out in 2016. Looked at a bunch of states including NM and CO and ended up in WA. Have never once looked back.
different-church-lady
Why y’all giving these people your phone numbers?
James E Powell
@Kay:
You’re right, for the most part, but Democrats embraced Beto & Stacey Abrams.
different-church-lady
@Tim C.:
“Well, we’re just gonna have to start cheating even harder…”
different-church-lady
@SpaceUnit: C’mon, you know they’re not going to do that because they keep saying that’s what they ‘re going to do.
different-church-lady
@Qrop Non Sequitur: zombie lies gotta zombie.
Kay
@James E Powell:
True. I always think about how they savaged John Kerry who was running against a fairly popular incumbent.
Demanding!
James E Powell
@dww44:
Michigan 77% White, Wisconsin 86% White.
SpaceUnit
@different-church-lady:
Ha. I know you’re joking. They will do it because on the right all politics are now performative for the MAGA base.
Another Scott
@different-church-lady:
Oh ye of little faith. They’ll probably do it at least 70 times, given the opportunity. How else are they going to get invited on Fox News??
Grr…,
Scott.
Kent
@James E Powell: Yep, and Wisconsin is also measurably more rural.
Geminid
@Qrop Non Sequitur: Mastriano was going to win anyway. So was the guy who beat Peter Meijer in Michigan. Those ads just got the Democratic candidates’ licks in early.
different-church-lady
@Another Scott: I’m just trying to think like a pundit here.
brantl
@Martin: What the hell is underhanded about it, you emphasize what a crazy son of a bitch someone is, they choose to vote for him/her, and it’s YOUR fault? Horse hockey.
OGLiberal
@Kay: This is the lede:
“Senator Michael Bennet, Democrat of Colorado, was elected to a third full term on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, easily holding off a surprisingly strong challenge from Joe O’Dea, a Republican political newcomer.”
Kind of like….
“In Super Bowl XXIV, the San Francisco 49ers won 55-10, easily holding off a surprisingly strong challenge from the Denver Broncos.”
Writer is Carl Hulse, their chief Washington correspondent.
James E Powell
@Jeffro:
I don’t actually know, of course, but I do believe in some places Trump & Trumpsterism were a drag on the R candidates. Not in Ohio, obviously.
gene108
@guachi:
Ohio voters did pass a non-partisan redistricting referendum.
Ohio legislature ignored it.
Legislature got sued. Legislature lost the court case all the way up to Ohio SCOTUS.
Legislature ignored ruling.
I do feel sorry for Democrats in places like OH, MO, and FL where ballot initiatives passed, but the legislatures just refused to pass laws to fully enact those ballot measures.
Geminid
@Martin: Mastriano was going to win anyway. Those ads did not “pick” him, they defined him early and served a general election purpose.
Same with the ads in the Michigan 3rd. Keijer was a dead duck just like fellow Impeachers Tom Rice znd Liz Cheney were with no Democratic money spent against them. I’ve got no problem with Dems spending money to help Hilary Scholten soften her opponent up while the primary was not over.
Now, I’m not talking about you here, but- this issue is a staple for bad faith actors trying to undermine the Democratic party. It’s propagated all over by the dirtbag left.
Citizen Alan
@Kay: I didn’t. He was not my preferred candidate in 2004, but he did the best he could against an embarrassingly biased media. Anybody remember the wind surfing? Or the provolone cheese on Kerry’s philly cheesesteak sandwich? The Kerry loss was what made me finally accept that it wasn’t Clinton fatigue, that the media would never give a fair shake to any Democrat.
James E Powell
@bmoak:
Sherrod Brown may not run in 2024. He’s 70.
James E Powell
@Kay:
John Kerry almost winning was one of the biggest surprises of my political life.
Kay
@Citizen Alan:
I ended up liking him too, although I knew white working class in Ohio wouldnt get him at all. I liked that he seemed to know that, in a really nice almost self conscious way.
We worked so hard to give him Ohio. I wasn’t “on the internet” then but I was driving to polling places and gathering vote totals and I knew by 3 o clock that we would lose. Right wing religious were coming out in fucking droves for Bush.
I was completely unaware of the whole “exit poll” thing. By then I was feeding the volunteers. I later found out he was “supposed” to win Ohio. Yeah, no he wasn’t. Republicans loved Bush. He was popular. He was always going to be hard as nails to beat.
Citizen Alan
@Kay:
I remember that I started watching the election coverage that night. The 1st state was called for Bush, and then wolf fucking blitzer mentioned that according to polls the number one concern about voters was morals and values. And then I went to bed, because I knew that morals and values just meant gay bashing.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: Yes, the New Mexico 2nd is a pickup. And by a relatively young candidate, too. Gabe Vasquez graduated from an El Paso High School in 2001. He was born in El Paso, raised across the border in Juarez, and returned to live in El Paso as a teenager. He’s a 2011 graduate of Notre Dame.
different-church-lady
@Geminid:
Amen.
geg6
@Qrop Non Sequitur:
Having lived through this crazy election here in PA, I can say with complete confidence that Shapiro’s anti-Mastriano ads during the primaries were just his general election ads against him. The exact same ads ran this fall. It’s not his fault that the MAGAts decided that the ads were all the more reason to vote for Mastriano in the primary. They had the choice to not be stupid and they went with stupid.
gene108
@Qrop Non Sequitur:
The McCaskill 2012 strategy with Akins, which Democrats tapped into this year, isn’t so much relying on Cleek’s law, but rather to focus on advertisements that send a Bat Signal out to the crazies in the GOP that “hey, Mastriano (or whoever) is totally into your Big Lie, QAnon, One World Order, etc. conspiracy and wants strict anti-abortion laws, (Christian) prayer in school, etc.”, so that very large portion of GOP voters are made aware that this candidate is the one that totally aligns with their worldview.
Citizen Alan
@Kay: I remember my boss at the time (a fed judge appointed by Bush) said he hated John Kerry because he was offended that Kerry married a woman so much wealthier than himself. I wanted to ask him in 2008 what he thought of John McCain, who didn’t have a pot to piss in when he abandoned his wife and infant son to marry his mistress, the wealthy beer heiress whose family financed his early campaigns. But I still had to practice law in that district so I never did.
Have I ever mentioned that my personal definition of “wealthy” is “having enough money in the bank so that you can say whatever the hell you want to judges, Congressmen, and Senators without worrying if it will lead to ruin”?
Wombat Probability Cloud
@PsiFighter37: As a long-time WI resident, I agree. As I get older, it’s increasingly painful to see primary voters not factor electability into their decisions more than they do. Maybe it’s an urban/rural thing, with the urban votes going for the more ideal candidates, with less thought about they’ll do statewide. The racism is truly fucked up, but it’s a balancing act as to how to win now while also expanding the diversity of candidates.
GoBlueInOak
@Martin: California’s massive mail-in ballots, skewing solidly Democratic, taking days & weeks to count but delivering salvation in the end arrive like Gandalf at Helm’s Deep
Paul in KY
@Joseph Patrick Lurker: I think Lawton Chiles would have whupped him like a rented mule. Know of course that Mr. Chiles is long gone from the political arena.