We lost fewer seats in the House of Representatives than any Democratic president’s first midterm election in at least 40 years.
And we had the best midterms for Governors since 1986.
The American people spoke.
— President Biden (@POTUS) November 9, 2022
Like we can parse over precinct level turnout and arbitrary measures of candidate strength or we can go with Occam's Razor and conclude America likes what Democrats are selling.
— Millard Fillmore's porcelain zither (@agraybee) November 9, 2022
Question: What do you intend to do differently to change people’s opinion…
Biden: Nothing.. the more they know about what we’re doing, the more support there is. Do you know anyone who wants to get rid of the change we made on prescription drug pricing? pic.twitter.com/sqzItAYKGK— Acyn (@Acyn) November 9, 2022
Biden is a class act pic.twitter.com/D5INYkkciu
— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) November 9, 2022
Lol ouch pic.twitter.com/CDVjZonQI8
— Acyn (@Acyn) November 9, 2022
Biden, despite his low approval rating and relative absence on the campaign trail, will likely be able to claim best midterm performance for an incumbent president’s party in 20 years, since George W. Bush’s GOP gained seats following 9/11: https://t.co/u0GjidZrmI
— Nancy Cook (@nancook) November 9, 2022
My hot take: liberal and moderate Dem voters were already becoming more disciplined about voting since 2016, but the Dobbs decision accelerated that trend. People who are looking at Biden's approval rating and judging him to be weak in 2024 are missing how Dem voters have changed
— Alex ????? ?? ????? (@JewishWonk) November 9, 2022
Biden is right to be confident & right to stay the course. America needs that kind of firm, lawful leadership. https://t.co/j5XkL2tZFz
— chatham harrison is tending his garden (@chathamharrison) November 10, 2022
Same day! https://t.co/lTIKDPKs64
— Jules (@julianaillari) November 9, 2022
— Tobin Stone (@tobinjstone) November 9, 2022
I dare, nay, I double-dare, actually to hell with it, I triple-dog-dare a mainstream newspaper, magazine, or news outlet to do a big feature on asking Republican elites to venture into urban & Rust Belt diners to ask average Americans why they voted Democrat in the 2022 election.
— Wajahat Ali (@WajahatAli) November 10, 2022
Baud
100% of Republican competitiveness at the national level is structural, not the will of the people.
Suzanne
Oh boy, yes. I am here, in an urban Rust Belt diner, ready to tell you the score.
Baud
@Suzanne:
“Dems are helping the people they’re supposed to help.”
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
rikyrah
The MSM was so mad at that press conference. They were madder than a muthaphucka, because all their prepared talking points were taken away by Election Night, but they continued to ask stupid questions. I love that 46 clowns them.🤗🤗🤗
Baud
The GOP is going to have a dilemma when Trump is indicted. They have to support him, but they really want him to go away.
elliottg
@Baud: And not one analysis I saw (except on twitter) pointed out without gerrymandered redistricting that the Supreme Court gleefully supported, Democrats would have held the House.
Baud
@elliottg:
There’s a slate article making that point. Nothing I’ve seen in the mainstream media.
kalakal
@Baud: They have a real dilemma no matter what happens to Trump legally. Without his cultish supporters they’re toast and Trump is only interested in being star of the show. If any of them are ‘mean’ to him he’ll throw the toys out of the pram.
Suzanne
@Baud: OH MAN. They all want him to be indicted SO BAD.
They all want him gone, but no one wants to be the one to do it, as it’s political suicide for a Republican. They want something or someone else to do it and then each presidential hopeful wants to be the one to grab the diehard MAGAs.
As much as I want him indicted…. maybe it would be funnier to let him start a campaign and watch the knives come out first? I’m rooting for maximum injuries here.
Gvg
Glad we have a good warrior. Wish we had a better media.
Off topic, I am hunkered down waiting out Florida’s latest hurricane, a November straggler. It is totally weird to have a chilly hurricane that you prep for when it gets dark early. One of my cats is hyperactive in the mornings and she is bouncing off the walls and the bed, and trying to see out the windows.
sab
@Suzanne: In Ohio diners things haven’t changed much.
Baud
Here’s an interesting stat. Joe Biden got more votes in Florida in 2020 than Ron DeSantis got in his landslide win on Tuesday.
(TFG actually attacked DeSantis about the total vote count, and for once he was telling the truth.)
ETA: Not to suggest that Florida hasn’t become a solid red state.
Steeplejack
@rikyrah, @Baud:
Good morning! 🙏
Betty Cracker
I think the fellow who tweeted that pundits are missing a change in Democratic voters is correct. The 2000 election was a clue-by-four upside my disgruntled lefty head back then, and the 2016 election seems to have served that function for a new generation. (If they promise not to fuck up again, I won’t even bother pointing out that before the 2000 election, there had been no candidate who won the popular vote but lost the electoral college since 1888, whereas in 2016 it had happened just 16 years prior, so they should fucking know better…)
In other news, Tropical Storm Nicole knocked out our power awhile back. We heard what sounded like two transformers popping in rapid succession. Looks like the eye will pass just south of us. Lots of wind and rain!
trucmat
As always Democrats will gather millions more votes but be rewarded with too few seats due to our unfair system. The system must be reformed. Impossible? It’s impossible if we think it is.
Of course we first need to accomplish the other imperative for keeping our freedom, which is to destroy Fox News as a source of insurrection and misinformation. Until that’s done we’re going to stay an angrily divided nation. Fox News is truly the enemy of a free and rational America.
Betty Cracker
@Gvg: We were remarking on the chilliness of the wind last night — it is weird to have that in a tropical system! Stay safe!
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: Astute. Succinct. Accurate. You’re hired!*
*Says no US mainstream media outlet ever.
Betty Cracker
brantl
I love it when Joe takes on of these bullshit questions, looks at the reporter like he’ sn idiot, and tells him the God’s-honest truth.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Beautiful scenery. Stay safe!
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
Stay safe🙏🏾
Geminid
@JewishWonk’s take echos that of Rachel Bitecofer last Sunday:
Frank Wilhoit
@Baud: But at the state level, that is emphatically not the case. The crisis is a highly asymmetrical object and thus looks different from each viewing angle, but I think more and more it is looking like a crisis of federalism. And we don’t have a recipe for that. Even the much-trailed Constitutional convention would only shove it under the rug and trample on it. In hindsight, that may be all that the 1787 Constitution did either.
rikyrah
Now we have Republicans talking about raising the voting age.
26th Amendment, muthaphucka😠😠
kalakal
@Betty Cracker: Pretty much what it’s like here, it’s about 50 miles to the east. Main concern is power. Any trouble with flooding around you? Stay safe
Brit in Chicago
@Suzanne: I’m with you. In fact I’d go further: my dream scenario for 2024 is that Trump is nominated but that his narcissism and incompetence are so obvious that not only does he lose but also the losses go way down the ballot (reverse coat tails) and the R brand is irredemably tarnished. I know, I know, but a guy can dream, right?
lowtechcyclist
Make that sixty years, in all likelihood.
Obama got swamped in 2010, ditto Clinton in 1994. Carter actually had a pretty good first (and only) midterm in 1978, losing only 15 House seats (and 3 in the Senate), so the Dems still were comfortably in control. But the likelihood that we have a net loss of 15 or more House seats this year is looking rather small right now. LBJ lost 47 House seats (and 3 Senate seats) in the 1966 midterm.
JFK remarkably lost only one House seat, and gained 4 Senate seats, in the 1962 midterm. There’s an exceedingly slim chance we could do that well in the House, but it’s not the way to bet, obviously. And we may gain one Senate seat if everything breaks our way.
zhena gogolia
@elliottg: Have we lost the House?
kalakal
@Brit in Chicago: Pretty much my dream too, watching him lead them to oblivion, seeing their faces as the spineless weasels know they’re damned with him, damned without
Matt McIrvin
@zhena gogolia: Not yet, but honestly it’s more likely than not based on the state of current races. The Republicans will have a minute margin, one that will be hard to exploit. But I think we have a better than even chance of holding the Senate.
Biden’s qualifiers are doing a lot of work in his tweet–I think the closest comparison to this election might be Clinton’s second midterm in 1998, when it turned out voters didn’t actually like the Republicans’ quest to get him and what was expected to be another red wave was a wash. Of course 2000 was not a great year, after that, so to some extent it’s a warning not to get too cocky.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Dems actually picked up a few House seats in 1998, perhaps because it was the best economy in 30 years.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@rikyrah: Well the MSM has only themselves to blame because the likely voter models have been off in every election since 2016.
Betty Cracker
@kalakal: Our power is still out. It was on when I got up hours ago, so I had my coffee, but poor hubby was awakened by the transformers blowing up and missed that window.
He lit out a while ago to see if he can find coffee and biscuits in town. (I could have made some on the grill, but he didn’t want to wait and can be a crabby sumbitch in the morning, so I did not remonstrate.)
No flooding worries — the river level is down a bit since the rain from Ian, so it should have plenty of capacity to handle this.
You stay safe too, and I hope your power does not fail.
Ken
So they’ll fill in “Pennsylvania”. It’s the parts of the mad lib that aren’t blank that are the problem.
“We spoke with voters in this _____________ diner, and their concern with the hot-button issue of _____________ spells big trouble for Joe Biden and the Democrats.”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I am still amazed how the pundit’s still don’t get that Dodds decision is like Dred Scott, it potentially fucks over everyone.
Brachiator
@Baud:
A recent article suggests that gerrymandering may sometimes backfire on Republicans.
Republicans can lose big if a district is more purple than deeply red.
Chief Oshkosh
@Betty Cracker: So, is Nicole God’s way of telling Floridians that they fucked up in this election by voting nearly all Republican?
Seems like someone at Fox Lews should be asking, maybe have some freak preacher on or something.
Hope you stay safe and dry.
JML
I hate that we’re likely to lose the House (not a done deal yet, but really not looking good). The GOP won’t have anything resembling a governing majority in the House and it’s going to be a total shit-show as the various extremists and factions eat each other desperately clawing for attention and power. But the real problem is they’re going to have actual investigatory authority again and a fig leaf of cover that it might actually be legitimate. Our idiot DC media will breathlessly lap up every garbage investigation of Hunter Biden, Merrick Garland, Hillary Clinton (you just know they’re going to go after her again), Kamala Harris, and anyone else that bothers them in life. There won’t be evidence or reasons, but they’ll give a megaphone to the worst kinds of cranks and conspiracy theories and there will be way too many fools that will believe them.
On the other hand, the GOP has control of absolutely nothing in MN at a time when we’re sitting on a $12B surplus to be allocated.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
Saw a news story about a golf tournament delay in Florida because of rain. Did not realize that there was a big problem for a lot of people.
Hope you and others affected stay safe.
different-church-lady
@rikyrah: C’mon, be fair: stupid questions are the only ones they have.
Leto
Trumpov Whisperer Maggie Haberman saying on Twitter that Trumpov is blaming everyone for advising him to back Oz, especially Melania who really backed him. Surprised I was able to type this with how hard I’m laughing at that.
Suzanne
@sab: I am sure, if they went to a diner in Cleveland in a black neighborhood, they could find plenty of people willing to tell them to stuff it.
different-church-lady
@Suzanne: Which is why they don’t go there.
Baud
@Suzanne:
It’s like you don’t even understand what the media means when the talk about the Heartland.
EarthWindFire
@rikyrah: What do they think will happen when the kid turns 21? That they’ll say, Hey, guess I’ll vote for the people who took my right to vote for the last 3 years away? Their grasps for power get dumber and dumber.
Brachiator
Yep. Copy this to the Bernie bro left as well.
I love it.
Also, since we are now down to counting actual votes and some results may not be known until Friday or later, media pundits who love to speculate and make predictions are temporarily on hold. The relative silence is very nice.
I checked on CNN. Because election officials are asleep, they keep flogging day old news. Even a 24/7 news cycle has to yield to the real world.
Rusty
@Betty Cracker: I agree too that Democratic voters have changed. Anecdotally there seems to a lot less flirting with third parties and wasting votes on Greens or anyone else that doesn’t have a chance to win. The mainstream Dems I know (myself included) are no longer shy about pushing back on people who advocate for third parties, or spout “the parties are the same” bs. That has resulted in a more disciplined party that doesn’t waste votes and is more likely to show up and vote in off year elections. We still have a ways to go, but it’s a good trend!
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: The conventional wisdom is that they’re not playing their gerrymandering close enough to the margin to get stung by that effect. But that’s assuming everyone can predict the partisan lean of the district with enough accuracy, which is probably not the case any more if it ever was.
I’m more concerned about DeSantis’s tactic where he lays traps for voters, where they get told they can vote and then are arrested for felony voter fraud after the fact–that has the potential for a chilling effect that just drives huge numbers of people away from the polls, whether they’re in real danger or not, and I suspect it was a factor in the big Republican swing in Florida. It reminds me of the way that, under Trump, the government would invite people to meetings about normalizing their immigration status and then ICE would arrest them when they showed up.
cmorenc
@Baud:
…which has a lot to do with the demographics of northern snowbirds who retire to Florida from bluer locations. The growth of the Villages over the past 20 years is a major factor in why Fla. has gone from being a razor-close swing state to majority red.
Baud
Trigger warning: Shocking news alert.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: The Boebert race shows it’s always possible.
Baud
@Brachiator:
I caught Kornacki this morning talking about the outstanding House races and how the Dems “need to go on offense” to win certain districts.
Don’t tell him the horse race is over.
gene108
@Betty Cracker:
When I was in high school, 30+ years ago, I remember the EC being taught as a quaint relic that didn’t really affect election outcomes, because the popular vote winner wins the EC. There were issues in the 19th century, but they were worked out.
The only reason we’re stuck with the EC now is Republicans don’t seem to be able to win a national popular vote for President, and the EC is their only chance at winning the White House.
Ken
Obviously they treat it like Social Security, and keep raising the eligibility age.
Geminid
@Brachiator: I expect that some of the Republican gerrymanders will start breaking down later this decade due to demographic and political shift. This happened in Texas in 2018, when Colin Allred and Libby Fletcher flipped suburban seats outside Dallas and Houston. That same year Lucy McBath flipped a seat in the Atlanta suburbs, Sharice Davids flipped one in the Kansas City suburbs, while Wexler, Spanperger and Luria won Republican seats in Virginia. These wins were all on maps drawn by Republicans in 2011. I think Dem pickups in Pennsylvania and Michigan were also made on Republican maps.
This year the shameless gerrymandering effort by Ohio Republicans may have blown up in their faces. The seats won by Marcy Kaptur and Emilia Sykes were drawn to be Republican friendly, but they turned out not friendly enough. And the Republican vote in Ohio’s 1st CD was weakened so much the shiftless Chabot was knocked out.
A less ambitious gerrymander could have saved Chabot’s seat, maybe even put another of the districts into the R column. Instead they went 0 for 3.
Ken
@Baud: Good lord, that is inane. Did Kornacki describe what “go on offense” would be, now that all the votes are cast and it’s just a matter of counting?
Matt McIrvin
@gene108:
I think they could still win a popular vote–it would just take the right kind of panic that drives people back to Republican Daddy happening at the right time. Bush actually got a narrow popular-vote majority in 2004, and if the election had happened sooner after 9/11 it’d have been a landslide.
But the odds are against them in general.
Emma from Miami
@Baud: Wow. They discovered the Pacific Ocean.
lowtechcyclist
@Brachiator:
It all depends on how good you are at packing the other party’s voters into a few districts, and then how greedy you get.
Take a 50-50 state with 5 Congressional districts. If the Rethugs can make one district 90-10 D then they can make the other 4 districts average 60-40 R which is pretty secure. If a couple are 57-43 they’re still not going to flip in a wave year.
But say it’s got 7 districts and they can only get that one district 80-20 D. Then if they try to grab all 6 of the other districts, those other 6 are going to average 55-45 which means some will be 52-48 or 53-47, and in a bad year or with demographic changes they could easily wind up losing 3 or more of the 6, plus the one that they’re intentionally giving away.
While if they’d tried packing 2 districts rather than 1 to be heavily D, they’d probably have been able to hold onto the other 5 forever.
Matt McIrvin
@Ken: Maybe he’s imagining Brooks Brothers Riots–the kind of election interference and conspiracy-mongering that Republicans do when it’s close.
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
One California city considered lowering the voting age.
The measure is losing 54 percent to 45 percent.
But measures like this may be considered again in future election cycles.
Mai Naem mobile
I think the Dems’ GOTV has gotten better as well. Granted I am in AZ but I easily got a dozen calls/texts for GOTV. Pretty sure I missed people at the door a couple of times because I had literature left behind.
I hope Sam Alito is sitting and crying at home. Hope he lives in Maryland where he has a new blackity black governor and a brown female lieutenant governor. I hope the Dems use abortion as the new GOTV ballot issue for states going forward. Beyond the votes, its going to be need to done to save the lives of women.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Ken: Maybe he’s referring to the Georgia runoff
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: Yep. DeSantis choreographed the voter fraud accusations to maximize fear, no question about it. He didn’t need to do that to win, but it’s part of the authoritarian playbook that he’s running to the letter.
Mai Naem mobile
@cmorenc: cut their Medicare and they’ll run back to the Dems so fast it’ll make your head spin.
Matt McIrvin
@Mai Naem mobile: 2020 was a tough year for Democratic GOTV because we were taking COVID precautions that the Republicans weren’t. It was a unique handicap.
Baud
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
No, the statement was made with regarding to the remaining uncalled House races.
Baud
After looking up the Florida numbers, I’m interested in seeing what nationwide turnout was and how it compared to 2020.
lowtechcyclist
@cmorenc:
But if it was mostly GOP voters that were leaving the Midwest for Florida, then the Midwest should become bluer. But it sure doesn’t look like that’s what’s been happening.
tobie
We are (rightly) focused on the House and Senate but the state house wins in PA, MN and MI are so important. Dem voters filled out the ballot from top to bottom. We’ve now started to reclaim the state legislatures that the GOP held.
Ken
When Balboa did that in the 1500s it was a great boon to the Polynesian peoples, who until then had been carrying their canoes thousands of miles.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Does that mean ballot curing? I saw something on the internets last night about signing up on-line, but I was jet-lagged and can’t remember where I saw it.
Baud
@Mai Naem mobile:
Yeah, we won’t have the numbers needed to codify Roe. Sucks for women in red states, but it keeps the issue alive for 2024.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Knock me over with a feather.
John S.
@cmorenc:
It’s not just the Villages. There has also been a large influx of South Americans from places like Venezuela and Colombia who are also leaning heavily towards Republicans.
The GOP has been relentlessly messaging fear of socialism and other scare tactics across Spanish language media for years, and it’s working.
South Florida has become much redder in the last few election cycles, and it ain’t because of old white people moving there.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: He didn’t mention that. He was really talking about the seats we needed to win to keep the House out of GOP hands.
Baud
@John S.:
If recent, they wouldn’t be citizens eligible to vote.
O. Felix Culpa
Has Ruckus been around? I don’t remember seeing his nym the past few days.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Some outside groups in Arizona and other states continued door to door canvassing that year, with appropiate precautions. Georgia Democrats mounted a vigorous in-person canvassing campaign for the Senate runoffs.
But I think by then the national party had rescinded its debatable ban on door to door campaigning, in October.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
Agree that this is shameful voter intimidation, but I don’t see anything that suggests that this had a huge effect on the Republican victory in Florida.
Baud
@O. Felix Culpa: I’m pretty sure I’ve seen his nym recently enough not to be worried. Like last few days.
lowtechcyclist
@gene108:
There was actually a chance – which the Bushies were preparing for by getting ready to persuade electors to switch – that Bush could have won the popular vote in 2000 while losing the EC.
I wonder how fast they’d have had a Constitutional amendment on the floor of the House to ditch the EC for direct popular vote.
JMG
It is possible that a Republican House majority will be like 218-217 or 219-216. In that case, weather delays for incoming flights at Reagan National could lose them the majority on important votes. And of course, there will be the usual retirements, indictments, and deaths that strike every Congress to help alter the balance. One more thing, aside from their gerrymandered gains, the only place the Republicans gained a brace of new seats was in the New York suburbs. THOSE new Congressfolk aren’t gonna be that eager to join in too many witch hunts or symbolic votes to outlaw furries and the like.They come into office knowing they’re anomalies.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I imagine the rule vary from state to state, and I think the appeal I saw for on-line volunteers for curing was specifically for NV, but FWIW, the margin seems to be Frisch by 68 votes
sdhays
@gene108: If Gore had won the EC in 2000 with W winning the popular vote, the Constitution would have been amended by 2004.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: If we had a Roger Stone in charge, we’d be looking to see where Democratic leads are narrowing and sending mobs to stop the ballot counting.
catclub
@sab: yes. Ohio and Wisconsin are depressingly red
Cacti
This was the first election that about half the Zoomers were able to vote, and they went +28 Dem.
Who would have thought that years of active shooter drills and “AR-15s for everyone!” would influence how a generation votes? Apparently not Republicans.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@lowtechcyclist: Rural areas have been trending deeper and deeper red. This is outcome of an effort to flood these areas with GOP propaganda, from the expansion of cable Fox news into these areas to domination of radio stations with Christian and Sinclair owned right wing radio. It took a lot of time these efforts to really pay off for the GOP, but here we are.
ARoomWithAMoose
@Matt McIrvin: We should probably wait until the demographics on the voters gets worked out before declaring one clever authoritarian trick or the other as the cause. I’d like to see if the Dems even ran GOTV operations in urban strongholds here. Losing Dade county would suggest not.
cmorenc’s comment about the midwest retirees steadily pumping up the grumpy old whitey vote is valid. The number of huge age 55+ developments in the middle of nowhere popping up over the last 20 years is sublime (not just the villages, there’s the whole ocala -> inverness SR200 crazy, Polk county is seeing the same, as is the I-75 corridor).
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist:
There was an even greater chance in 2004–Bush had a slim popular majority and he almost lost Ohio and the election.
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
I still say there has to be grounds for a lawsuit here to prohibit this shit. Whatever the Florida voters intended when they overwhelmingly voted to give ex-felons the right to vote, there can’t be any plausible argument that they intended this kind of shitshow.
Baud
@catclub:
Wisconsin is blue for state level officials. Not legislature or Senate.
John S.
@Baud:
They have been coming for years. There is a phenomenon known as the “Great White Flight” which has been happening in South Florida for decades.
The white folks move north to places like Port St. Lucie or other parts of the state while there has been a steady influx of immigrants from South America and the Caribbean.
Deathsantis in particular has courted these communities in an attempt to create some sort of Cuban Voter 2.0 because the younger Cuban-Americans were starting to slip away from the GOP.
p.a.
@Mai Naem mobile: maybe not: the fable of the cardboard box, curtain rod and roast sparrow…
kalakal
Not politics
Hubble may be old but it can still wow.
Thanks to gravitational lensing it’s captured 3 stages of an 11 billion year old supernova in one snapshot
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/hubble-captures-3-faces-of-evolving-supernova-in-early-universe
EarthWindFire
And eventually their fantasies of dead people voting come true. How sweet!
oatler
Fox says it right out loud:
https://www.joemygod.com/2022/11/watters-complains-young-people-dont-hate-biden/
p.a.
@O. Felix Culpa: ditto Baud: I’ve seen his/her posts
schrodingers_cat
@John S.: Let’s focus on immigrants when Rs get over 60% from the default demographic.
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
It wasn’t that slim a margin, it was about 2.5% nationally. And in Ohio too.
And given that the Kerry campaign had made the bet that Ohio rather than Florida was where they’d try to win the 2004 election, and threw everything into Ohio that they could, my take is that Ohio wasn’t really that close, that minus 2.5% was as close as they were going to get.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Baud: Yes, they aren’t eligible to vote. However, they are becoming integrated with these communities and sharing their horror stories of the collapse of their left wing governments. Thats going to have an impact.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: And the state by state demographic breakup would be helpful as well.
Geminid
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: At least at this point those rural districts are in the Republican column and are no longer points of vulnerability for Democrats. I think Colin Petersen in Minnesota was the last of the old rural Blue Dogs to fall, in 2020.
Now the suburbs are the battlegrounds the two parties fight over for a House majority. I think demographic change there favors Democrats. Reporters who want to track political dynamics would do well to skip the diners and interview folks at Starbucks instead.
John S.
@oatler:
Its always projection with these assholes.
That’s exactly the Fox News model right there for old white people.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Brachiator:
I just read something where white suburban women voters went more Repub this time than 2 years ago.
Somebody (probably here) calls them White Karens.
Betty Cracker
Someone on Twitter made a great point about the coverage of DeSantis’s reelection vs. that of Gov. Whitmer in Michigan. DeSantis is being heralded as a Republican savior for winning in what is, let’s face it, a solidly red state that he personally gerrymandered, whereas Whitmer won in a true swing state and MI Dems flipped the statehouse blue for the first time since the 1980s, and she’s not getting anything like the accolades showered on DeSantis.
There are legit factors that contribute to the lopsided coverage, e.g., Florida was a rare bright spot for Repubs when their red tsunami failed, DeSantis is running for president in two years, etc. But possibly misogyny and GOP bias contributed to the disparity.
schrodingers_cat
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: The DSA association hurts Ds with these groups. When the DSA took over the Nevada party apparatus in 2021 they changed the state party symbol to a guillotine.
John S.
@schrodingers_cat:
Yeah, because that strategy is working great in Florida.
Immigrants are not some monolithic voting bloc. Different groups in different places vote in completely different ways.
Republicans aren’t ignoring immigrants because they receive less than 40% of their votes. In fact, Cuban voters have been the key to Republican victories in Florida for a long time, and they are now trying to run up the score with other immigrant communities like Venezuelans and Colombians.
Democrats ignore them at their own peril.
O. Felix Culpa
@Baud: Good. I didn’t notice his nym in the post-election commentaries, and he’s usually active in those threads. Quite possible I missed it, though.
Cacti
@John S.: The bad news for Jesse:
9 million more Zoomers will be voting age in 2024. About 3.6 million of the Fox demographic will be dead from natural causes.
tobie
@John S.: I imagine the evangelical church has played a huge role in shifting Latino voters rightward.
I also believe many Latinos are in the same trades as many white tradesmen and have some of the same grievances. Remember McCain’s call out to “Tito, the builder”? They don’t like taxes, think of themselves as America’s job creators, feel others are lazy freeloaders whom they’re supporting with the sweat of their brow, etc. And they have talk radio running all day.
SFAW
@Baud:
“And we HATES that, Preciousss. We HATES that forever!”
Eolirin
@lowtechcyclist: Their kids are also leaving, to places like CA.
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I think it’s too soon to have reliable demographic data.
Cacti
@John S.: The electoral map has changed. 2020 showed that as goes Florida…so goes Florida.
Florida has been a landing pad for every right wing caudillo for 60 years now. The fact that its politics would start to reflect that surprises me not in the least.
Baud
@John S.:
Apparently, the inroads that the Texas GOP were said to be making with Hispanics near the border didn’t help them this time around.
Brachiator
Some CNN exit poll tidbits from the Georgia Senate election.
Walker got more than 50 percent of older voters, age 45 and older.
He also got 57 percent of married voters.
Walker got around 70 percent of the white vote (men and women) and about 37 to 40 percent of the vote of Hispanics, Asians and others. He also got 12 percent of the vote of black men and 5 percent of the vote of black women.
Hopefully some of these groups can be peeled away by December.
Baud
@Brachiator: Hopefully, a lot of those folks came out for Kemp and will stay home in the runoff.
John S.
@Baud:
But they will keep trying. And if the Democrats take outreach for granted, one day the GOP will be successful.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Baud:
I can’t find the damned link so yeah, can’t verify that statement.
I brought it up because white women in the burbs are so often pointed to as a big Democratic “get” and always still vote for Repubs. If Dobbs didn’t change that, nothing will. Jury’s still out.
I still like “White Karens” tho.
H.E.Wolf
Postcards To Voters has addresses and talking points for Raphael Warnock’s Dec. 6 runoff campaign.
I’ve got my first 5 addresses (I like writing multiple small batches), the 3 assigned talking points (they provided two sets to choose from) and plenty of stamps.
If you’d like to jump in:
email [email protected]
or text JOIN to Abby The Address Bot at 484-275-2229
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: If Rs gain a tiny percentage of a predominantly non-white group it is discussed endlessly in the media. But when 72% white women vote for Kemp over Stacey Abrams. We hear crickets.
In our politics
Only Ds have agency
D losses are to be blamed on some minority group for voting insufficiently for Ds
Unsaid conclusion: These are your scapegoats hate on them not the Republicans or the demographic that keeps them in power or the media that simps for Rs under the guise of being neutral.
– signed Republican humping media
sab
@Suzanne: Interesting article in our local ( Akron) paper. They interviewed a number of young black men who normally don’t vote (why bother) and this time they did because we had a city charter amendment to establish a citizen police review board with actual teeth, and not under control of the mayor or city council.
A lot of people are still seething about the slaughter of Jayland Walker with no police accountability.
Leto
@Betty Cracker: They elected women to the top three spots: Gov, Attny Gen, and SOS. They might not be getting the same accolades now, but I think we’re seeing three rising national leaders in the making.
Brachiator
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I will be looking for stories about this. There tend to be significant splits in the white women vote by education and marital status.
Immanentize
Check out the pic.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Good point. Also, Whitmer has been the subject of kidnapping plots. You would think the media would find that story somewhat interesting.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Brachiator:
Pre-election: “The elephant in the room is white and female”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/05/white-women-have-been-voting-against-their-reproductive-interests-for-years
Sanjeevs
@tobie:
Could be due to Dobbs.
Democrat voters finally paying close attention to state houses.
Matt McIrvin
@John S.: I found the near-total opposition to immigration during the Trump era weird just because my instincts about Republicans date from the Reagan years, and in those days, immigrants from Communist countries who were attracted by his strident anti-Communism were a key part of Reagan’s coalition, and he made a big deal out of welcoming them. The popular nation-of-immigrants rhetoric about the US was uncontroversial at that time; it was just a question of which immigrants you liked. You didn’t have a Stephen Miller driving the administration to reject it completely.
This is just a return to that form–there aren’t nearly as many Communist countries out there to get immigrants from, but we do get them.
Betty
@John S.: Apparently the residents of Miami-Dade prefer rightwing authoritarians.
John S.
@Brachiator:
That’s kind of my point right there. The difference between a Warnock victory and a runoff is getting this kind of result while also keeping their majorities with white voters — especially rural and older voters.
ETA: Its just simple math. Democrats need to keep doing what the Republicans are doing: shore up their core voters while peeling off enough of the other party’s core voters to tip the scales.
Immanentize
@Baud: Lady bits, Democrat, serious public servant.
Not.gon.hap.en.
sab
@Suzanne: If they went to a black diner in Cleveland they would probably find that nobody voted at all except for the older women. Cleveland voter turnout tends to be under 15%.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Yeah, I thought that was interesting too. The post-election analysis on that should be fascinating. I generally find what happens after an election more interesting than what happens before it — the data is more solid.
Will also be interested in seeing what happens with the FL Dems organization. Everyone is howling for the chair’s head.
Brachiator
@Baud:
I never count on voters staying home or being too discouraged to vote. People have felt energized in the past election cycles.
If Georgia is critical to Democrats keeping or Republicans gaining control of the Senate, I would see both parties trying hard to get out the vote.
I don’t know what Democrats did to try to appeal to Hispanic and Asian voters, but they need to do more of it.
Geminid
@John S.: I think Virginia’s growing number of 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants was one factor in its shift from red to a purplish blue over the last three decades.
Another factor is the state’s increasing proportion of the college eductated. Fifty years ago, a majority of that demographic voted Republican. That has changed, and now a higher proportion of college educated residents correlates with more Democratic votes.
These trends correlate in turn with the state’s growing economy. I’d like to say this growth is due to our superior business savvy and work ethic, but a lot of federal tax dollars from 49 other states get spent here and that is a factor too.
Matt McIrvin
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: We don’t need to win a majority there, just gain on the margins. That happened in 2020 vs. 2016, I think.
Frankensteinbeck
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
They also don’t care as much about Republican anti-immigration stances, because they see it as affecting Those People, the other Latino ethnicities they don’t like. I don’t know the details, but I am told that’s a Thing with both Venezuelans and Cubans.
Gin & Tonic
There was an election? Who won?
Immanentize
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
There was a great discussion about this in Propane Jane’s feed over the last day. It all started with a number of white women — people who are solid Ds and good reads — started in on “women did it!” posts and memes. Women of color pointed out that white women went more for Republicans than in 2020 in many places.
My one fear is that this looks not unlike the suffragist movement, the first wave feminists, civil rights movement, etc. In which the well off white folks claimed the successes that belonged to more than them. It’s like we have that firmware built in, but it needs to be updated.
Betty
@John S.: My understandingis that Spanish radio run by rightwingers has outsized influence over Latino voters in South Florida.
kalakal
There’s a few other factors that could make Florida less of a DeathSantis lock.
It’s becoming a lot more expensive to live here making it a lot less attractive to wingnut retirees who are often on fixed incomes. Many of them move here because of the weather and the fact their pension goes further. As property prices soar moving here eats deeper into any windfall they get from selling up back north. Insurance is getting harder & harder to get and crazy expensive. If the MSM want to big up inflation they could anguish about how in their Great White Fuhrers paradise home insurance inflation is between 25 & 100%. DeathSantis & Batboy before him have spent years doing nothing about the issue, as storms become worse its already rumbling, soon it’s going to blow up in their faces
Thanks to DeStupid and his boosting anti vaxxers/ Moms for Liberty the place is on the verge of serious Measles & Polio outbreaks. Tiny coffins lead to big hate for Pals’o’thePlague. Childhood vaccinations are plummeting & Honest Ron & his fruitcake Surgeon Generals are cheering it on
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: In the 1970s-80s my western NoVa neighborhood started out lily-white, filled with defense contractors with faux-redneck kids with lifted trucks, and deeply, deeply Republican. I saw lots of immigrants start to come in while I was there, and now it’s a very diverse neighborhood, lots of Middle Eastern and East Asian immigrants, and deeply Democratic.
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic: Rhode Island won!
sab
@Ken: Did you see our Supreme Court results? We voted to end gerrymandering and yet in the next election we vote in three candidates who are fine with the legislature ignoring the state constitution. And DeWine gets to appoint the replacement for the retiring judge.
schrodingers_cat
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: The elephant doesn’t like to be identified. The defensive responsive usually is
#not all white women.
Immanentize
@Betty Cracker: Stacy Abrams might be available to head up the Florida Dem party?
Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
@tobie: The Dem takeover of the PA House isn’t a done deal yet, we’re hopeful. If it happens it will stop the Rethuglican’s back door around the Governor’s veto power. They have found it easier to amend the State Constitution than to override a veto.
*To amend the PA Constitution requires both the State Senate and House passing the amendment in two consecutive sessions of the the legislature and then having approved by voters. But they can have it on the ballot in the April primary when non-affiliated voters aren’t likely to bother to go to the polls. So amendments usually pass.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Matt McIrvin:
I hear ya. Having lived in a county in central Misery for 22 years and watched the margins go from 60/40 Repub to 80/20 Repub, I wish nothing more than to see those margins to go back to the former. The same idea applies to the White Karen vote.
Given the GA governor vote, it again comes down to basic, old fashioned, ‘Murkin racism at work, uteri be damned. The variation on LBJ’s classic comment about white voters doing anything, including hurting themselves, to prevent “those people” from getting or achieving anything remains true to this day.
JMG
@Betty Cracker: Everything you said about DeSantis vs.Whitmer is true, but there’s another, profoundly stupid reason he got more coverage. Florida polls close early and in praiseworthy fashion they count votes quickly. This gives reporters, analysts and pundits more time to form their takes, and once the narrative takes hold…
Immanentize
@Geminid: And yet, Youngkin.
schrodingers_cat
My advice would be to keep the Squad and their mentor from campaigning in purple and red areas. Send Biden, Harris and Obama instead as surrogates.
Eolirin
@schrodingers_cat: I can’t find flat number for white women anywhere, but the numbers I can find suggest there’s no way white women are 70% Walker. White men always break harder, so whatever the combined number is, it’s lower for white women.
Warnock won women overall. He’s up in the vote count, and white people are two thirds of the electorate.
The problem, as it has always been, is white men.
sab
@Baud: He’s usually around in the middle of night.
kalakal
@Gin & Tonic: Grand Fenwick
Matt McIrvin
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Like I said further up, the Republican suburb where I grew up actually flipped blue because of demographic replacement. It’s every conservative ethnonationalist’s nightmare land.
schrodingers_cat
@Eolirin: Here you go
A majority of white women have voted R in the past few election cycles. One exception was one of Bill Clinton’s runs.
And I do agree that white men vote for Rs in higher percentages than white women.
Gin & Tonic
@Immanentize: Well deserved.
tobie
@Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!): sorry if I spoke too soon. No jinxing intended. I just think that Gretchen Whitmer and Josh Shapiro are some of the unsung heroes of this election. They had massive victories with long coattails in purplish states. I’m super impressed with what Ben Wikler has done with WI Dems. I hope strategists are looking at these successes.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: What’s the source?
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Eolirin:
As one, I agree completely. We can’t become a minority in this country fast enough.
Kay
@Leto:
Compare it to the fawning over DeSantis.
A very successful Democratic governor who (btw) met VICIOUS resistance from Right wing nuts including handling an attack on the statehouse and a kidnapping attempt. Three top slots in the state go to women (as you said) despite a DeVos family (very powerful in the state) who POURED in money to defeat them.
Whitmer didn’t just beat the Trumpists and insurrectionists. She beat the mainline, moneyed sector of the GOP – the real Right wing power in that state. That’s an interesting political story. Why won’t they tell it?
Michigan got the whole works from media/Republicans- the crime panic, the trans panic, the CRT/litterboxes in schools panic, the Chris Rufo “destroy public education” agenda PLUS a Michigan-specific billionaire family who backed it. Whitmer and the other women beat all of it.
Immanentize
@Matt McIrvin: The margin issue is key. Even people who were pulling for Fetterman we’re dunking on his “terrible campaign” after he won. But what I saw was that Fetterman ran what was basically an Obama 08 campaign.
The Bog Man said it time and again that his goal was to decrease the margins in every red/Trump county and get as many votes in blue counties as possible. Then, he did just that. He understood the % needed in each county to win. He won by reducing the GOP margins in the reddest counties. And he seemed pretty surgical about it too.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Matt McIrvin:
My dad was an Arlington County cop for 30+ years. I moved back there (lived near Huntington Metro) in 85 after college, left again in 96.
Yeah, your description of the region is certainly how I viewed it. We were just starting to see the changes begin when we left in 96.
But, in the absence of that influx, in those numbers, sustained over a long period, it would still be as you describe to this day, if not worse.
It’s another reason I’ve felt the modern GOP works so hard against immigration in general: it works against them in the long haul electorally.
Betty Cracker
@Immanentize: I doubt Abrams wants to move to this hurricane-blasted hellhole!
Seriously though, if I ran the zoo, I’d make Ione Townsend state party chair. She’s run the Hillsborough Co. (Tampa and environs) party for several years and accomplished a whole lot. I saw her in action when I lived in that area and was impressed with how she handled the various factions, fundraising, etc.
But she’s an older white lady from an area outside South Florida, so she probably has no chance at the gig.
@JMG: Good point!
Immanentize
@sab: sab, is there any chance DeWine will choose a normal judge now that he is done running for governor? Or is the rot too deep?
artem1s
The first question about voters thinking America is going in the wrong direction… I think we’re going in the wrong direction too – but has nothing to do with Democrats. I was really worried Biden was going to accept that framing when he first started. But instead he put on a master class on how to redirect those idiot false premise questions. I didn’t watch all the way to the end so he may have had some missteps. But for the most part he did exactly what Brooks has been begging for decades to get. He reframed the premise and gave a fact based answer without demeaning the listener and/or being preachy. He is very, very good at this. And he also gave those in the GOP who are tired of not being able to do any work for their constituents an opening. Taking back the House is going to send the GOP into chaos. Every faction is going to be vying for control. I think it’s funny that the MSM still thinks McCarthy is going to be Speaker. That was hardly a done deal even if the House had managed a red wave.
Cameron
@kalakal: Yeah, I would love to see Trump leading them like the final scene in The Seventh Seal.
Eolirin
@schrodingers_cat: I don’t accept random unsourced twitter images as valid. Where is that from and what is it actually representing?
Because I’m pretty sure it’s not Warnock’s race. There’s no way he’s at just shy of 50% of the vote with those numbers. Those could be Abrams numbers.
Matt McIrvin
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Immigration doesn’t have to work against the Republicans–as I said, immigrant groups have been key parts of their coalition before and in places like Florida they successfully court them now. Many have culturally conservative attitudes that the Republicans can appeal to. They just have to not be totally racist against them. But sometimes that’s very hard for them, apparently.
lowtechcyclist
From David Nir, director of Daily Kos Elections:
Sounds like an effort we might could take part in.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Georgia’s exit polls from NBC
Link here
Geminid
@Brachiator: The Mexican immigrants I’ve worked with and live among in central Virginia want what any sensible working class person wants: good jobs with good pay, decent medical care, and good education and opportunity for upward moblity for them and their children. Democrats need to demonstrate that they deliver in these areas for everyone.
That’s not to say that messaging and outreach should not be targeted to immigrants, just that policies that visibly benefit all working and middle class people are the key to winning their votes.
One important subset of Spanish speaking Americans are the native born who live in large numbers in Southwestern states. Lately, those in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley have been a particular target for Republicans and concern for Democrats. I have not closely checked out results in the RGV for this election, but I know that Democrats turned back challenges there in the 15th and 28th CDs. In the TX 28th , Democrat Henry Cuellar beat Cassie Garcia by double digits. This race was rated a tossup not long ago.
schrodingers_cat
@Eolirin: Its from NBC. It is the Governor’s race not the Warnock race. Check my first comment, I mention Stacy Abrams clearly.
emmyelle
@Rusty: “The mainstream Dems I know (myself included) are no longer shy about pushing back on people who advocate for third parties, or spout “the parties are the same” bs. ”
Thank you. This is the good work that must be done. Also, I recently heard that over the last 50 years, the percentage of respondents who agree that “both parties or the same” or “the parties are not different” bla bla bla has gone from 50% to less than 10%.
I’m always perplxed when I meet a white, educated, usually male-identifying person say “there is no difference between the parties” and when I push back I get “well, not on the issues I care about” which makes me wonder what they care about.
Soprano2
@lowtechcyclist: A lot of GOP’ers move here from places like CA, although liberals also move here from those places. My city is slowly getting more liberal; we now have three Democratic representatives in the state house. For about 15+ years it was one Democrat from around here. That happened because Republicans got the voters to pass term limits on the state legislature back in the early ’90’s. That had the effect of term limiting out a lot of older Democrats, who were replaced by Republicans. In 2020 another district was flipped by a D who won by 76 votes; she’s now my rep, and won easily this year even though the R’s tried to make her district more conservative. The 3rd D won by about 250 votes. All of them are women! It’s progress, slow but progress nonetheless.
Dadadadadadada
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
This is not true in all states and also becomes more nuanced when you look at marital status and education.
White Southern evangelical women also keep the national percentage skewed in favor of Republicans.
Immanentize
@Betty Cracker: I agreed with you yesterday and I do it again today. South Florida is such a mess demographically and for voting purposes (not to mention deeply politically corrupt) that a good Florida Dem strategy would be to not prioritize it and basically “let them fight.” Then focus on the rest of the State more.
Or maybe create two Dem zones — The Debbie Wasserman Schultz south of Tamiami Trail zone and, well, Florida.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: That’s governor. Warnock obviously did about 5 points better with voters.
James E Powell
@catclub:
Although my beloved home state Ohio has gone Alabama on us, Wisconsin has a Democratic governor & voted for Biden/Harris.
I’m thinking maybe proximity to the confederacy plays a role.
Kay
In fact, the “wokeness” panic backlash that has been ginned up the last 3 years by everyone from the entire NYT team to university professors to substack pundits to Joe Rogan didn’t materialize at all in PA or MI.
None of it happened because it was never central to normal voters.
@matt_barnum Nov 8
The vast majority of parents remain satisfied with their child’s school, and that has remained true throughout the pandemic. I like to think of this as the parent–pundit gap, and it’s a long-standing phenomenon.
Shockingly perhaps, Bari Weiss is not actually representative of public school parents in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Wisconsin, like Michigan, re-elected their D governor- his signature issue? He supports public education.
sab
In retrospect, I have calmed down about Tim Ryan’s campaign. He was in a no win situation because white Ohioans tend to be such racists. If he was caught appealing to black voters he would definitely lose the appalachians he was courting. But black voters outside of his district had no reason to trust another white Catholic Irish/Italian man who seemed to be ignoring him.
I think he ran the best campaign that he could have.
I am looking forward to the Vances having to live in DC and visit Ohio when they could have continued happily as rich people in San Francisco.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: It is true nationally. For that matter in MA even white men vote D.
Dadadadadadada
@Brachiator: His victory margin increased like 40-fold from 2018 to 2022. That seems significant!
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Yes it is the governor’s race and that’s what I said in the first comment where I mention it.
Soprano2
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: It’s also because young people flee from them in droves, and not many new people move in to take their place. It happened in MO according to the 2020 census, more urban areas grew while rural areas shrank.
Eolirin
@schrodingers_cat: Yeah those are Abrams numbers, not Warnock’s. Warnock is 4 points better.
Cameron
@Baud: Well, shut my mouth. And put a mask over it, while you’re at it.
Baud
@Dadadadadadada: He got almost 600,000 more votes this year than in 2018. Crist got about 900,000 fewer votes than Gillum in 2018.
Eolirin
@schrodingers_cat: I missed the context switch, since we were talking about Warnock initially, apologies.
schrodingers_cat
@Eolirin: I was talking about Abrams not Warnock in my first comment. You inserted Walker and Warnock in the reply.
ETA: Don’t worry about it. I saw your last comment.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: You did! The discussion moved to Warnock.
Edmund Dantes
@Geminid: Ohio was not the GOP’s desired map. It’s the map they were eventually forced into (though it was still tilted their way) by all the wrangling with the state Supreme Court. Now that the state Supreme Court has flipped back to gop judge majority. They won’t have that problem. And can carve it back up the way they want while ignoring the redistricting commission.
Geminid
@Immanentize: Yes, Youngkin. It’s too early to say if his win was a one-off enabled by his own efficient campaign and his opponent’s slack one, or represents a trend.
I think it’s the former. We’ll find out next fall, when both legislative houses are up for election, and (finally) on a neutral map.
lowtechcyclist
@Dadadadadadada:
We’ll see. Certainly up through 2020, both of those states had been shifting the other way.
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: Is that 72% of white women, or 72% of white married women? I’m only wondering because from what I’ve read the voting patterns of married vs single women tend to be different.
schrodingers_cat
@Soprano2: It think its all white women. I have included the NBC link as well.
topclimber
Police the Police.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Chris Hayes made this point last night. The returns in FL color political coverage early. Remember in 2018 James Carville screaming about a Dem collapse because of returns in the FL Gov and Sen races
I thought Shapiro’s closing speech on Monday (?) night sounded like he had been watching a lot of Obama speeches. Funny that, it only took Dems six years to remember that Obama is actually pretty good at politics.
Brachiator
@Eolirin:
This is only because he got 90 percent of the black women vote and at least 35 percent of Hispanic and Asian women.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I did too. Very similar style.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@schrodingers_cat: In our state, even the white men vote D. Also, too, toxic people of all demographics vote R.
These are hidebound people having a derogatory effect on every American subculture. But the culture is turning against them. They’re vehement, not as numerous as us.
Get the good white women out. Don’t worry about the fools.
Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
I absolutely hate that question too! I always want to yell, “I hate the way the media is framing this as if only Dems have the ability to change things and rightwing fearmongering is inconsequential!” or something less polite.
Immanentize
@Geminid: I agree (hope strongly?) it was a one off. Youngkin pretended to be a person he most definitely did not turn out to be in office. We shall see!
Kay
@sab:
The rural vote in Ohio has changed. Democrats can beat 60/40 R margins in rural counties w/urban turnout. They cannot beat 75/25 R margins. That was Ryan’s operating assumption and it’s true. That’s what changed from 2012. Obama lost my county by ten in 2012. Biden lost it by almost 30. Ryan was never going to win the rural counties. What he had to do was reduce margins, and he failed. But he had to. They will not win until they do so to me that means “they wil not win” because reducing that margin would mean “becoming Republicans”.
Democrats should shift resources out of Ohio to NC and GA (and, IMO, FL, which I dont think they should abandon). Ryan was the test. It failed.
Citizen Alan
@Rusty: Let’s not get cocky. That is only because we are only 2 years away from an utterly catastrophic Republican administration in the rear view mirror. If Biden serves a full 8 years, we will see a resurgence in left wing spoiler politics in 2028.
schrodingers_cat
@Qrop Non Sequitur: Did you change your nym? You don’t seem like a new commenter.
Eolirin
@Brachiator: Yes, but white people are 66% of the electorate in GA. 72% seemed too high for that, but I skimmed over who the numbers were based on and was applying the wrong frame. That was my bad.
Another Scott
Chef’s Kiss
Cheers,
Scott.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@schrodingers_cat: I did change my nym
Kropadope/Kraux Pas/Kropacetic
Kay
@sab:
you know who DID reduce GOP rural county margins? Marcy Kaptur. But she’s a loved sort of “institution” in NW Ohio where Tim Ryan is not and at one point in her long career she had a substantial part of her district in rural areas. She’s a one-off, IMO, and specific to one part of the state.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@schrodingers_cat: Yikes! Did not know about that.
schrodingers_cat
@Qrop Non Sequitur: Thanks! I could swear that I recognized the writing style.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Cacti: Which is why the GOP has expanded their reach via Joe Rogan, etc. They are constantly looking for inroads.
Cameron
@schrodingers_cat: Damn. They come off as more radical than the actual Socialist Party.
lowtechcyclist
@kalakal:
That’s genuinely scary.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@schrodingers_cat: Of course of course. I like switching things up from time to time.
AM in NC
@lowtechcyclist: As I understand it a lot of young people with the ability to do so are also leaving rustbelt states for more economically vibrant areas, so the flight of youth from Iowa, Ohio, etc. is also leaving those states older, and thus redder, even with wealthy snowbirds leaving.
Cameron
@John S.: Though some of the GOPers need to learn to keep their mouths shut. I remember when Bush the Elder described some of his grandkids as ‘the little brown ones.’ He sounded like he was talking about rabbit shit.
hueyplong
@John S.: It looks like they’ve been brainwashed. This new generation is totally brainwashed.” – Fox News host Jesse Watters, last night.
Maybe their complaint is about some sort of misappropriation of intellectual property rights?
suzanne
@Brachiator:
Agreed. The splits are so significant and the cultures are so different that I don’t think “white women” is really a category at all. It’s like wondering how people who are 5′-7″ vote.
Kay
Wow, Exciting. And an amazing result given the trend of huge midterm losses for the party in power.
The best part is holding state governments. They’re the line that has to hold when the insurrectionists mount the next attempt in 2024 and we have WI, MI and PA.
lowtechcyclist
@schrodingers_cat:
Pardon me, but is that supposed to be a cite?
I find it hard to believe that Dems would ever win much of anything if white people voted 74-25 GOP as that tweet implies.
OK, now I see you’re talking about Kemp-Abrams in GA. Your comment
implied that you were talking about the national vote, over a period of decades.
Ohio Mom
@Baud: Ruckus commentated on the flood on his street during the rain storm the other day. Don’t know if I’ve seen him since but I can’t keep up with every thread.
Baud
@Kay:
🤞
schrodingers_cat
@lowtechcyclist: There is an NBC link further down in the comments which is where the graph is from.
Brit in Chicago
@EarthWindFire: You’re assuming the proposed raise would be to 21. What if they raise it to 70? (While they’re just making stuff up about the possibility of changing the consitution to do that, why not go further?)
Brit in Chicago
@Brachiator: The word “almost” is doing a lot of work in the passage you quote. (It’s not quite the same as “sometimes”.)
Geminid
@Cameron: I think posting that guillotine was a joke. But a bad joke.
The Las Vegas DSA recognized what Republican radicals see: that a small, well organized group can take over party institutions when a majority in a party are not attentive. I don’t know when Nevada’s state party elections are, but the “regulars” will probably give the DSA officials the boot then.
The Nevada DSA and it’s allies are not numerically strong. The way Representive Titus trounced Ms. Vilela, the DSA candidate, in the Las Vegas-based 1st CD primary showed this.
AM in NC
@Betty Cracker: EXCELLENT point. I am not a naive person, but I am consistently gobsmacked at how deeply misogyny permeates everything in a patriarchal culture. And man (see my language there?!), do we live in a male-supremacist culture.
Cacti
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: White men have been a minority in this country for a long time. They’re about 32% of the total population.
kalakal
@schrodingers_cat: Idiots! How old are these clowns? 6?
I’m sure that’s not in the Big Bumper Book of How to Achieve Power by Appealing to the Masses Through Effective Symbolism
The Moar You Know
@hueyplong: Yep. But please continue your campaign against public education. The kids totally have no idea who is acting against their best interests, because kids are stupid amirite?
We had more than a hundred kids show up at the last school board meeting – kids, mind you – to shout down the anti-trans bullshit the conservative board members and their hateful allies* were peddling.
*said hateful allies being a Chinese-American group known as “CFER”, who is demanding an end to affirmative action, which CA does not have, an end to DEI and an end to recognizing trans kids.
James E Powell
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
When I mentioned that, people got mad at me. But it’s right there in front of us every election. If things were different this time, I couldn’t be happier.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
We don’t vote nationally. Not yet. You have to look at states. And you have to look at other demographic factors.
Geminid
@Qrop Non Sequitur: I think I remember when you were “Krope the Former Dope.” Maybe you should be like Prince and go by, “The Commenter Formerly Known as Krope.”
Layer8Problem
@Qrop Non Sequitur: Obviously Balloon Juice needs a Blue Check™ system pronto.
Cameron
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: What they actually record from my vote, I don’t know. But for sure they’re efficient – I received my mail-in ballot on October 5.
Kay
@The Moar You Know:
I love them and NOT just because one of my kids is one :)
I genuinely think they’re an interesting group. I don’t know if you’ve hired one yet but it takes a little..adjusting. I used to worry about them so much because when I would listen to my son and his friends and my juvie clients their worldview was so dark (around climate change) but there’s a sweetness to them too where they’re really innocents.
Cacti
@James E Powell: Even within that group, education level is a large factor. High school educated white women are strongly Republican.
Ohio Mom
@sab: In contrast to Sherrod Brown, who lives in Ohio and visits DC.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: I agree. But its a quick take like a preliminary test while setting up an elaborate experiment and done all the time with other demographic groups.
Kay
@James E Powell:
People got mad at you, well I did, because lots of people vote against their interests (in our view). This isn’t unique to women. Every white man in this county who makes less than 100k a year voted against their self interest with Vance. The issue is “people voting against self interest”, not “women voting against self interest”. Women are people.
schrodingers_cat
@James E Powell: You and me both.
People who trace their ancestry to the biggest continent are a demographic group but treating white women as a demographic group is not kosher according to the #notallwhitewomen types
Qrop Non Sequitur
@Layer8Problem: Ill pay $7.99 for that and not a penny more.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Then are those who belong to other demographic groups not people?
Cameron
@schrodingers_cat: Identifying people as ‘Asian’ is even less useful than identifying them as ‘Hispanic.
ETA: That’s not intended to be a criticism of what you’re saying.
James E Powell
@Qrop Non Sequitur:
I did not know we could do that
Anyway
Married white women have long been a solid GOP voting bloc. Remember soccer moms? The big “ooga-booga-scary-terrorists – vote GOP to keep your children safe” – that was aimed at married white women.
SIngle women lean D.
schrodingers_cat
@Cameron: Indeed. But it still gives a rough picture of what is happening. We can and should dig in deeper, whether its Asians or white women.
James E Powell
@AM in NC:
This has been going on since I graduated from my suburban Ohio high school in 1973.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@schrodingers_cat: @Brachiator:
The biggest divide of all is rural vs urban. Rural women are almost all white, typically religious, and super Trumpy. I think that is part of the defensiveness. Urban white women don’t feel much kinship with their rural counterparts.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
The analysis was how did “independent” women break and “independent” women broke for Democrats. No Democrat is courting solid GOP women so a “white women” breakdown is not at all useful because it includes GOP women, just like a Latino breakdown of “40%” or whatever includes Latinos who are GOP. You’re not getting them.
Cacti
@James E Powell: They’re also leaving small towns.
Look up “Iowa brain drain” for a sad explanation of why the state keeps trending redder.
James E Powell
@Kay:
I never said white women were the only demographic to vote that way & I never applied that to every issue. I pointed out what has actually happened in elections: pro-choice women voted for Republicans, including Bush & Trump, who put the right-wingers on the supreme court. I don’t know why anyone would get mad at me for observing that & identifying it as a problem. I’ve voted straight D my entire voting life.
Kay
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
It’s more nuanced than that. Obama made inroads with white working class women. I saw it. It was a public part of the campaign in 2012. Remember the “nail techs” Romney kerfuffle.
We don’t know yet but I think youll see data on a shift of rural, white young women on abortion. They won’t be “Democrats” now, magically, but on that issue they’re more liberal than rural white young men. Democrats can make gains in that demo, which will matter on the margins. Obama did.
Citizen Alan
@Kay: Also, I’m tired of the pointless argument about people voting against their own interests. White supremacy is an interest. Evangelical supremacy over other religious groups is an interest. They are both examples of ruthless self interest, and it is impossible to turn some people away from them without persuading them that empathy and society are more important than the selfishness that motivates them.
Kay
@James E Powell:
It’s just every time abortion or womens rights are mentioned there is an immediate push to declare “women voting against their own interests”. Half of Democratic politics deals with people voting against their own self interest. No other group gets this assumed burden.
Old School
NBC also has an exit poll for the Georgia Senate race.
I’m curious if the polling is only from election day or if it includes early voting.
Scrolling down the interesting item to me is that the results show that voters feel that abortion should be legal. (Legal 53%, Illegal 43%). Of the voters who feel abortion should be legal, 75% voted for Warnock and 23% for Walker. So why the voters were sympathetic on that issue, they voted more on their feelings of inflation/immigration/crime/guns.
Mel
@sab: This, exactly!
I suspect that Vance will do everything he can to avoid doing anything at all related to the constituent service/ contact portion of the job. Fancy DC dinners paid for by lobbyists? Check. Greasing the wheels for a cushy wingnut welfare ride in the future? Check!
But listening to Jim and Marsha whose insurance won’t cover their kid’s cancer treatment? Too bad, so sad. Meeting with people concerned that Ohio bridges are literally crumbling? Boooorrring. Giving a damn about getting adequate funding for opioid treatment, Narcan, and mental health support for communities? Protecting rural and regional hospitals / public health clinics? Never.
I grew up on a farm in rural Ohio, but my family’s politics lean way differently than most of the neighbors’ did (thanks, Quaker grandparents and education!), and I think that there is something that Vance and the GOP might not be figuring in to the equation.
White rural and farm people here still exhibit a biit of clannish-ness. The good of it is that they will usually pitch in and band together to help a neighbor, a relative, anyone perceived as “one of their own”. The awfulness of it, of course, stems from the same insular, sense of “them” versus “us”, and produces the hateful racist, anti- immigration, anti-science rhetoric and violence of which the MAGATS tore off the lid.
Vance, in his pretend-Appalachian mode, played the “I’m one of you” game to get the votes, but I think he has no clue what makes the rural residents tick, and also no idea just how long they can hold a grudge and how vengeful they can feel if they perceive that “one of their own” has lied to them or deceived them for personal gain.
Will that be enough to get him voted out if he runs again, or will the Magat racist fear-biting talking points prevail again?
I thought about the situation with Manchin, repeatedly screwing over his constituents and yet getting elected time and again, but the Vance situation seems different in that Manchin is a masterful good-old-boy backroom dealer, and isn’t visibly afraid to be amongst his constituents/ disgusted by them like Vance appears to be. Manchin stabs them in the back, but he does it while appearing to be on their side and part of the community.
If Vance is as invisible to his constituents as we suspect that he will be, and the Trumper rage voters who elected him realize after a while that he despises them as much as they despise everyone else, he might not find the next four years to be the easy, lazy, guaranteed path to juicy political advancement that he was expecting.
Cacti
@Kay: I haven’t seen any exit polling data from Michigan, but I bet the vote on the abortion rights amendment would bear that out, with the R position losing by 13 points.
Dixon, the hardcore anti-choice candidate also lost by 11.
Citizen Alan
@schrodingers_cat: To be fair, lumping everyone who traces their ancestry back to Asia is incredibly stupid and short sighted. There is not a perfect congruence in the political attitudes of all Latino voters who originally came from different Latin nations. Lumping together everyone who came from Japan, China, India, and all the rest is just ridiculous.
Kay
@Citizen Alan:
My (little) sister argues that, and I think I agree. She says “this IS their self interest”.
Also plenty of Democrats “vote against their own interest” when voting for Democrats or liberal issues, it just depends on how narrowly you define “self interest”. I REGULARLY vote to raise my own taxes, as do hundreds of millions of others.
The Pale Scot
Open thread so
WTF is this girl wearing? Can it be any more “yea I can afford higher quality white trash gear”
Makes me miss working with FIT grads in NYC, not wealthy women who had a great sense of style
That ain’t it
She physically attacked a black woman and used the N word repeatedly. Don’t people understand that doing this kind of shit follows them for the rest of their life? Her career opportunities are now reduced to working for David Duke
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/09/us/university-of-kentucky-student-banned-from-campus-reaj/?dicbo=v2-30d58664d2f1ed66747ba1498d45f007&hpt=ob_blogfooterold
Citizen Alan
@Mel: Won’t happen. Republican voters don’t care that the people they vote for despise them so long as the people they vote for despise The Others even more.
O. Felix Culpa
@John S.:
Nothing personal, but where do you see this happening? What is the point of such a statement? From where I sit, past, present and future Dem GOTV activity all points to the opposite, i.e., taking NOTHING for granted. Why would it change? Have the Dems recently become lobotomized?
Omnes Omnibus
@Layer8Problem: I ain’t paying for that shit.
O. Felix Culpa
@H.E.Wolf:
Done. :)
schrodingers_cat
@Citizen Alan: As a predictor of voting patterns it has limited utility. But minority groups do suffer the same othering at the hands of the majority no matter where they come from. The same nosy where are you really from? How come you speak such good English questions. Or I am fond of xx group because of their cuisine and so on.
Kay
@Cacti:
It almost has to, given the numbers. One thing that has been super interesting to me in a rural law practice is how completely rural white working class women have accepted (or come out as) lesbians- gay women- specifically. Rural white men? Seething with resentment about gay women. Those two things are tied- the women in their group are “not only do I embrace my sister’s wife, I also might be gay” :)
There’s potential there. A flexiblity I don’t see in rural white men. I don’t know if Obama saw it or if it just happened he drew some of them, but he did.
O. Felix Culpa
@Brachiator:
Sigh. Not a Georgia voter, but my demographic makes me sad/mad/frustrated
sometimesa lot.schrodingers_cat
@O. Felix Culpa: Tell me about it. My demographic saddens me too (in the Indian context).
James E Powell
@Kay:
Today is a day of mostly good news & reasons for us Democrats to be happy, so I don’t want to argue. We can revisit it another day. Or not. If you want to be mad at me for pointing out that pro-choice women vote for Republicans without adding several paragraphs listing all the other people who vote against their interests, then I guess you will be.
O. Felix Culpa
@schrodingers_cat:
QFT.
Kay
@James E Powell:
I’m not attacking you (or probably I am! I’m punchy on this issue) but I don’t mean to. I think you’re a fair and great person and I almost always agree with you. I kneejerk defend women on this because they are the target.
I cannot explain to people how uncomfortable the loss of bodily autonomy makes me. It’s physical. I feel trapped. Having a sense of agency is central to how I operate in the world. I’d break the law for this and I’m a completely conventional middle class mom :)
suzanne
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Many college-educated white women probably never socialize with non-college-educated white women at all.
We talk about various groups all the time, like white people, men, working-class people, Boomers, Evangelicals, LGBT people, whatever. There’s always some valid criticism that group behavior is not monolithic. It’s valid but tiresome, because you can and should analyze trends in group/bloc behavior without making the category error that all people in a group behave a specific way. If you don’t look at the group behavior, how can you identify causes or influences on that behavior? #notallwhatever is dumb. Of course #notallwhatever.
I do think it’s interesting when discussing group behavior conceals more than it reveals. We have this discussion a lot about “the Latino vote”, because we increasingly recognize that the group effect is not as strong as many previously thought….and that nationality/”heritage nationality” is a stronger identity group. I think with white women, the bloc effect is not very strong. (Even if you counted all white women together nationally, I think they only favored Republicans by four points or so.) So other factors like educational attainment and religion need to be considered if you want your analysis to be accurate.
H.E.Wolf
I agree! See my comment at 124. We have a new Balloon Juice tradition of postcarding – let’s expand our numbers and use the time we’ve been given!
Kay
@suzanne:
But almost all college educated white women either work with or actually serve non college educated white women (law, medicine, education, all the social services, all small business). This siloing by educational attainment is exaggerated.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Mel:
I think he knows how they tick. I don’t think he cares. He thinks he’s better than them. He is well aware that being an ex-Senator has a TON of financial benefits. Winning or losing the next election isn’t that important. He just joined the club.
Mel
@Citizen Alan: I do hope that you’re wrong, but I am not harboring huge hopes that I’m right.
It’s just a feeling, having had family living in this area for nearly 200 years, that Vance might be poking a hornet’s nest that will blow up his chances of re-election.
I think that most politicians (think Massie, Manchin, etc.) who are screwing over the populace get away with it because they are long part of the landscape in that area, and because they have the grifty sense to not openly show their hand to the people they are hurting.
Vance will pull out all the dog whistles just like they do to work up the base and try to distract, but can he hold it together to interact with, sit with, pretend to give a damn about people in these communities? And when his utter disdain for them shows through, will that slice a big enough hole through the dog-whistle fog?
The anger that is generated in these small communities by a sense of being duped or done wrong by someone “pretending to be one of your own, then doing you wrong” is something that I have not seen in other states or cities where I have spent time, with the exception of some time teaching in rural Kentucky. I am just keeping my (very tentatively hopeful) eye on that factor as a possible stumbling block for Vance at the polls if he runs again.
Egorelick
@John S.: One issue w venezuelan immigrant community is that many come from the wealthier slices of that country. Some of these are the whitest, richest, most authoritarian people you can imagine. They’re narrative is the Left ruined Venezuela so they are more good than some gop.
artem1s
@Sanjeevs:
I think the state and local parties are finally figuring out that running away from minority, social and labor issues is why they’ve been losing at the state and local levels to begin with.
The Democratic dominated rust belt states lost a huge voting block when the big manufacturing unions started to vote with the GQP-F-you-I’ve-got-mine Party. SEIU is stepping up and becoming the dominant leader in labor issues. Younger voters in the service industries are beginning to see the advantages of collective bargaining. These Starbuck’s and Amazon shops unionizing is having an effect on how lower income workers view the Democratic Party. It’s no wonder the MSM couldn’t figure out a way to write about this election – it’s too multi-layered.
Mel
@H.E.Wolf: This sounds great! There is also an effort to phone bank and contact Nevada absentee voters to cure their ballots. It was posted in one of the night time posts, I think.
suzanne
@Kay: I would be interested to know how many college-educated people actually live in a neighborhood in which all (or most) of their neighbors went to college. In my neighborhood in AZ….. I knew many of my neighbors, and I think all but one of them had gone to college, and many to graduate school. I think that’s more indicative of a social cohort than having a coworker or a service provider who didn’t go to college.
Spawn the Elder changed high schools at one point. At the high school down the road, they talked about going to college allllll the time. When he changed to the high school near his dad’s house three miles further down the road, he said they only talked about community college and they talked about joining the military all the time. I think it’s a real thing.
artem1s
@Mel:
Man you hit the nail on the head there. Vance is essentially “King John” Kasich 2.0. The MSM keep trying to foist him off as some sort of partisan middle candidate. But he’s nothing but a opportunistic grifter. He is exactly as arrogant as you describe him -and just like Kasich it’s only a matter of time before he pisses off everybody on both sides of the aisle. Expect this asshole to be using the Senatorial hold “liberally” to hurt anyone he deems beneath him. He may even try to oust McConnell as Senate leader.
EarthWindFire
@Brit in Chicago: I assumed 21 because that’s why they’ve said so far. Source
Not so worried about them trying for 70. I don’t think the 3/4 of states required to overturn the 26th amendment would go for that plan but I could be wrong.
geg6
@Ken:
Oh, they’ll just keep going to Johnstown and Coudersport diners (as I saw major national news orgs do over the last several years) here in PA. Anywhere they can find old, angry white people to slag on Pittsburgh and Philly for being…well, you know…full of those people.
GibberJack
@Betty Cracker: Also, the media wants another Trump. The daily circus of criming and scandals made them matter. And lots of money.
Kay
@suzanne:
I just think it’s crazy to say college educated women who serve a lot or primarily working class women do not “know” them. Sure they do. If you’re a health care provider or lawyer or social worker you’re discussing their most vital and private interests. Are you in a book club together? No. But you’re speaking with them about serious issues in their lives for decades, teaching their children, doing their taxes, etc.
Working class women use services. College educated women provide some of those services. They not only “know” them- they serve them.
Some college educated women who work with and serve only other college educated people don’t know or interact with working class other than those working class who serve them. That’s not true of health care, social work, education, or some areas of law.
James E Powell
@Kay:
No worries. Love ya dearly. I am the same way on some issues.
H.E.Wolf
The Nevada ballot-curing project sounds great too! Thank you for re-highlighting it.
H.E.Wolf
We are mighty!
Even when my comment-quoting powers are non-functional. :)
Suzanne
@Kay: I didn’t say that they don’t know them. I said they don’t socialize with them, which I think is an important distinction. I think that the people you choose to spend your time with — and confide in, and talk about politics with — are likely to be of similar socioeconomic strata (and age, and religion, etc etc etc). And I would bet that most white women, if you look at their family and friend groups, are pretty bisected here.
Even if you are a healthcare provider, or an attorney, or a social worker, and you work with people different from you…. those relationships are not reciprocal. And there are boundaries about what you talk about in those relationships. I think what you’re talking about is probably much of why college-educated people vote Democratic, because they can see a lot of the systemic problems people face up close in many of their professional interactions. But I have seen plenty of exhortations for educated white people to “come get” their other white family and friends who vote the other (wrong) way, and I don’t know if they realize that most college-educated people probably don’t really have anybody to “come get”. I would never talk about politics with a client.
Ken
Some of the 23% may have felt that Walker will try to keep abortion legal for personal reasons.
lowtechcyclist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Thanks for boosting this. Just sent a contribution to the Adam Frisch campaign through ActBlue. That one’s close enough that it really could come down to cured ballots, and I really really would like to see Boebert evicted from Congress.
Kay
@Suzanne:
I think your line is too rigid. There is an absolutely common marital relationship where I live between one spouse who is not college educated but is trades or small business and the other spouse who is college educated in some kind of service work- education, health care, all religions (any ministry) etc.
In a lot of cases the non college educated spouse is making more than the teacher or nurse or assistant pastor and I assume they’re socializing together. If you’re in a super high dollar suburb or area of a city I suppose your life could be cmpletely siloed where you rarely encountered working class people unless they’re serving you, but MOST of the country is not like that.
Lawyer married to teacher. Common where I live. Teacher is in working class school. That teacher has worked with thousands of working class families on and with the central part of their lives- their children. That’s not bowling together but it’s profound and real.
Ken
The ones working and paying Social Security tax so the old guys can sit in a diner all day long?
Kay
@Suzanne:
And by “you” I don’t mean YOU :)
I know you’re not all siloed off.
twbrandt (formerly tom)
@Kay: Whitmer vastly outraised and outspent Dixon, though. According to this Detroit Free Press article from a couple of weeks ago, Whitmer raised a total of $36.4 million to Dijon’s $6.8 million, which is just nuts.
https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2022/10/28/gretchen-whitmer-tudor-dixon-campaign-cash-fundraising/69598833007/
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Kay: I hope you are right.
Soprano2
@Kay: We see the same thing in Missouri, too, although my city is slowly turning more liberal.
evodevo
@The Pale Scot:
Not at all surprised…covert racism was endemic there when I attended back in the late Sixties, and it never goes away. After Trumpy, a lot of these Karens have been enabled, and it shows….I’m just surprised that she is still in a dorm at the age of 22, by which time most of them have been moved into a local apt. complex by Daddy Dear…
Soprano2
This is true, but they can also privately look down on them. I had a friend who was a secretary in the MO Family Services division where the caseworkers were, who were all middle-class women with college degrees. She said the caseworkers got impatient with the women when they called about having to pay for things they were supposed to be able to get with vouchers, like milk and bread and eggs. She said she had personally been in a situation where paying $3.00 for a gallon of milk was a real burden, so she understood why the clients were upset, but the caseworkers made fun of them and couldn’t understand why having to buy a gallon of milk was such a big deal. So, knowing and understanding can be two different things.
Suzanne
@Kay:
Assortative mating via educational attainment has increased significantly in the last two decades. I think it’s an overlooked cause of a huge shift in our politics. And anecdotally, it bears out. Among the people I know in my age group who I socialize with, I can only think of only one couple where one person has a degree and the spouse does not. (My starter marriage was one of these, and the lack of alignment was a problem.) Even among socially conservative Mormons.
Oddly, what you described is….my marriage. Mr. Suzanne is a bilingual speech pathologist (aka the “speech teacher”) and he has been working in Title 1 schools his whole career. In AZ, almost every one of his students was a Dreamer or a citizen born to undocumented parents. Now he has more students in generational poverty. And he has had some of these students for years. So he definitely has that deep contact. And you’re right, it is meaningful. He has deep insight into their lives. But it’s not the same as a friend or family relationship, and those are usually where political issues are discussed.
But, where did he and I meet? Graduate school. Who do we hang out with? Friends we’ve made in school or at work. Who are all other people like us.
sab
@James E Powell: A lot of them come back eventually. I did. It has been very hard to get your first real job in Ohio, nefore you get experience. So those that can go elsewhere. But layer when you decide you want to own your own house you look at big city prices everywhere and decide that with the work experience you got in the big city elsewhere you can move back to the midwest and settle down comfortably.
Most of my nieces amd nephews did that. The white ones came back a gew years later. The asian ones stayed on the west coast.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Also 40% of college educated ww voted for T both in 2016 and 2020. So even if someone’s social circle comprises of 100% college grads, insisting that they are all D voters is a reach.
*Pew has this data, if anyone is interested they can look this up.
Suzanne
Here’s a dry (but good) paper on the topic.
And here’s a piece from the Atlantic, which is a few years old, but these trends have only continued:
Marriage Stages a Comeback (but Mostly Just for College Grads)
The fact that assortative mating via education leads to income inequality, which then geographically divides us further as we live in different neighborhoods and cities.
That’s how the bubbling happens.
Suzanne
@schrodingers_cat:
Literally no one here is making category errors. We’re describing measurable differences in cohorts.
sab
@Suzanne: A lot depends on the housing you can afford. I have a solid fancy private college degree and not one but two post grad professional degrees.
I live where I can afford to live and that is where I met my husband. (We just had our twenty-first anniversary.) Our neighborhood is very mixed. Educated wives who do nursing or accounting. Working class guys who build stuff or fix stuff. The guys need bookkeepers, who mostly are educated accounting wives.
With all my degrees, one of my huge advantages professionally was that I could recognize and accept and work with women who had lesser or no degrees and were a damn sight better at accounting than me.
It was totally unusual for them to be respected by the likes of me. It was totally unusual for me to meet professionals who were willing to explain stuff to newby me.