Warnock: "Just because people endured long lines … the rain and the cold and all kind of tricks in order to vote, it doesn't mean that voter suppression doesn't exist. It simply means that you the people have decided your voices will not be silenced." pic.twitter.com/KdNyIc3Ozc
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 7, 2022
Just called @SenatorWarnock to congratulate him on his win.
Tonight Georgia voters stood up for our democracy, rejected Ultra MAGAism, and most importantly: sent a good man back to the Senate. Here’s to six more years. pic.twitter.com/ibx5aprVs3
— President Biden (@POTUS) December 7, 2022
Georgia voters said they wanted a Senator who would fight for them—and made it a reality when they reelected @ReverendWarnock to the U.S. Senate. Congratulations, my friend. pic.twitter.com/uFKbyInyJL
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) December 7, 2022
And thank you @staceyabrams for your tireless work for Georgia voters. https://t.co/012Pr30yzz
— Sherrilyn Ifill (@SIfill_) December 7, 2022
Thread (from a fellow campaign organizer):
This is @quentinfulks – campaign manager for @ReverendWarnock. The guy who just won arguably the most difficult campaign of the cycle. He thread an incredibly tiny needle to win. Q deserves all the accolades coming his way tonight. All of them. pic.twitter.com/j5V70vFrjL
— Anne Caprara (@anacaprana) December 7, 2022
Big ups to everyone in Georgia who was willing to be a Democrat in a place where it wasn't easy to be a Democrat.
— ?? Simply Loving To Permanently Be Online ?? (@BobbyBigWheel) December 7, 2022
Herschel Walker was meant to be white conservatives’ trophy. A Black caricature, and a cruel example of what they could accomplish in a state they’ve rigged with voter suppression. Shame on them.
Congrats to Sen. Warnock. Congrats to all of us. https://t.co/FCZjN7e56S
— Ja'han Jones (@_Jahan) December 7, 2022
Not since Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1934 has a Democratic president in his first midterm election seen every sitting Democratic senator re-elected. Raphael Warnock’s win in Georgia tonight is historic for Senator Warnock — and for President Biden.
https://t.co/C4vtGi40un— John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) December 7, 2022
Area NYT people have not met any Republican primary voters. https://t.co/oKwKDnMfIb
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) December 7, 2022
Metro Atlanta poses a huge problem for Republicans in 2024 and beyond.
These counties keep getting bluer every election. And given that much of the shift is because of population growth and diversification, it may end up being quite durable.https://t.co/g9WLXBFWgg
— Ryan Matsumoto (@ryanmatsumoto1) December 7, 2022
"The defeat of Walker…culminated a disastrous year for Donald Trump, who set himself up as a Republican kingmaker only to watch his Senate candidates in NV, AZ, PA and now GA — as well as his picks for governor in AZ, MI and GA — go on to defeat" https://t.co/HNVXjnXsZg
— Trip Gabriel (@tripgabriel) December 7, 2022
Ten Bears
Manchin/Sinema flip in three, two …
MomSense
The news about Ted Cruz’s daughter is so upsetting. Police and ambulance were called to the house for a self inflicted stab wound to the arm – we can figure out what that means. The rumor is that she came out as Bisexual earlier this year. If true, my goodness what a courageous person with that father in that state. I sincerely send her love and support. The hell she must be going through.
evap
Just to correct one of the tweets above: In my dark blue Atlanta neighborhood it’s easy to be a Democrat. This is my 36th year in Georgia and it’s wonderful to have two great, progressive senators. May it ever be so.
raven
@evap: And all this handwringing among my blue friends about how many people voted for Walker! We can’t take one damn day to celebrate!
zhena gogolia
@raven: I think you have the same friends I do!
Congratulations, GA!!!
zhena gogolia
Query: Has Herschel Walker ever used the word “iteration” in a speech?
(I’m being mean.)
Jeffg166
The GQP will have a sit down to try to figure out why their voter suppression tactics aren’t working and how to correct them.
raven
From the Flagpole
LiminalOwl
When Mr. Owl went to bed, the percentages were 65-35 in Warnock’s favor; just before I did, the numbers said sonething like 51% Walker, 49% Warnock. I knew the count was certain to improve, but still. Thank goodness, and congratulations to Senator Warnock. And of course shame to white Georgia that it was so close.
(Did BJers talk at all about the college vote suppression that especially affected HBCUs? I meant to link the article last week but couldn’t find it again.)
raven
Jeffg166
@raven: It is shocking it wasn’t a blow out.
raven
@zhena gogolia: He actually gave his best speech in the entire campaign!
raven
@Jeffg166: If you are shocked you don’t have one single clue about this state.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
OT – an observation relevant to the Taibbi dump (I’m still suspended in the Twitverse, unlike Anglin):
The employees who were making content moderation decisions before Musk were acting in the best interests of the shareholders of their publicly traded for-profit company. They did this by protecting what they perceived as their revenue stream’s (advertisers) expectations regarding brand protection and quality of reach.
Those wouldn’t be protected by a steady stream of misinformation, white supremacy content and arguments over whether Hitler was a bad guy.
Thats the context of those decisions.
Now that Musk bought it to be a red pill white supremacy personal chewtoy, the context of moderation is in fact different – his moderators can do what he wants, to his personal cost.
raven
81 years ago today my dad was stainding in front of the YMCA in San Diego and they came on the loudspeaker and told sailors to return to their ships immediately. There were men who had been in the Navy for one day and they went to sea!
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@raven:
I personally don’t think he’s a deliberately evil man – just an unknowing catspaw of manipulative cowards.
brantl
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: Why not both?
OzarkHillbilly
Just gotta say, it really isn’t all that hard.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
Matt McIrvin
@raven: Can you imagine? My God.
raven
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: Well, the stuff about his treatment of women is pretty evil.
raven
@LiminalOwl: Yea because none of us white folks voted for Warnock. Is that broad brush you are holding heavy?
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: People don’t have a fucking clue.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: In Misery, Walker would have won by double digits.
Chief Oshkosh
Congratulations to GA and to us! GA has done it again! Along with Ossoff, GA citizens have two hard-working, smart, passionate, and compassionate legislators for another 4 years.
@Jeffg166:
This is exactly right. There hasn’t been a GQP leader in over a generation who even begins to maybe think about policy. Nope. It’s all tactics and stratergy [sic] for getting and keeping power. Peter Baker is a godammned idiot, demonstrated many times over, but his prattling about the GQP having a come to Jesus moment is ‘special’ even for him.
And I know it goes without saying, but fuck the fucking New York Times.
Frankensteinbeck
@Ten Bears:
Naah, not likely. They have nothing to gain. They still have significant negotiating power in the Democratic Party. As Republicans they are just part of a block. Their voting history is not at all Republican, it’s just preening asshole ‘no big stuff’ Democrat, and that is a giant difference from ‘no anything’. They lose their primaries as Republicans, so no gain for Sinema and a loss for Manchin there.
I guess it’s possible for Sinema, if only because she’s so bizarre, but together they can sink anything, and they’ll love “We just need one more! Please, we beg you!”
And if nothing gets through the House, Sinema has nothing worth switching sides to stop. Manchin ain’t flipping.
japa21
Today marks 48 years since Mrs. Japa said “I do”. I am the luckiest man.
Wanderer
Congratulations Senator Warnock. Four Senatorial victories in two years. Well done sir.
OzarkHillbilly
@japa21: Congrats, I feel the same about my wife.
Also, since we are discussing good news, say hello to Izara Muse, who entered this world at 11:26 AM on December 5, 2022. Her big sister is quite enchanted by her.
PAM Dirac
@raven: My Dad was sleeping in on a Sunday morning at Bellows Field when all hell broke loose. He ended up trying to shoot down planes with a pistol. It was obviously ineffective, but nobody had any better ideas. He said the planes were parked very close together to make them easier to guard, but that meant one bomb took out 2 or 3 and even if they could find an undamaged plane it couldn’t go anywhere because of all the wreckage. He as a 21 year old living the good life in paradise and then it all crashed down. They sent him to bombardier school in Texas and he ended up flying 45 combat missions in Europe.
Kristine
@OzarkHillbilly: congratulations 🎈 on the newest grandbaby!
Princess
It’s appalling that GA GOP voters selected Walker to be their standard bearer in the primary for senate. That’s all on them.
But I have to be honest. If there were a Democrat running against a standard Republican, a Rob Portman/Pat Toomey type, let’s say, and the Democrat had cheated, repudiated his children, threatened his wives, and couldn’t string a sentence together BUT would vote the straight Democratic line all the way down if elected. I’d vote for the Democrat. I like to think we wouldn’t be in that position but crooked Dems get nominated too, and if the House or Senate were close, I’d probably vote for them.
azlib
@Frankensteinbeck:
Agree that Sinema will not flip. She badly misread the AZ electorate and the Kelly win proved it. She has no where to go electorally. I predict the bipartisan immigration reforms she is working on will fail in the lame duck session. I do not see her getting the 10 Republican votes she needs for passage to try and burnish her centrists bona fides.
Biff Baxter
@raven: True
NotMax
Wow. A lot for a slot, n’est-ce pas?
marklar
@Princess: ‘I like to think we wouldn’t be in that position but crooked Dems get nominated too, and if the House or Senate were close, I’d probably vote for them.”
The difference is Democrats have sufficient shame such that fewer of such folks make it through the primary process, and even those who do end up sidelined relatively quickly (e.g., Jon Edwards, Al Franken). That being said, I’d still probably vote for them if the governor of the State was a Democrat, or was required to replace them with a Dem. A crooked D placeholder is better than a Collins, Scott, Romney, or Murkowski (and those seem to be heralded as the most ‘ethical’ Republicans).
Suzanne
@japa21: @OzarkHillbilly: Congrats to you both!
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@OzarkHillbilly:
Can confirm.
Suzanne
I am, of course, thrilled for Georgia. Do I wish it hadn’t been such a nail-biter? Of course, but politics is team sports these days. A shitty candidate on the “right” team will get a lot of baked-in votes, no matter how terrible they are. (I have only crossed that line one time, and it was very early in my voting life. The Dem candidate was terrible. And I still wouldn’t do it today.)
This really puts Warnock’s star on the rise. I can see great things happening for him in the future.
Matt McIrvin
Sinema will get primaried out in 2024 and then she does the “my party left me” act. I expect to see her get the Zell Miller/Joe Lieberman slot at the 2024 Republican Convention.
Geminid
I thought that Senator Warnock would win by 5% or more and clearly I was wrong. I think I underestimated what has been called “the Kemp machine,” and more broadly, the extent to which Georgia Republicans have organized conservative, white Georgians into a cohesive and reliable voting bloc. They almost succeeded in pushing a bad candidate across the line despite his obvious deficiencies.
In one respect, this tends to vindicate my belief that Stacey Abrams has been an effective organizing force. It’s true that she lost her race for Governor, but the result last night shows just what she was up against in her own contest. Five years ago the election of Democratic Senator, even one as superior to his opponent as Mr. Warnock was, would have been impossible. Ms. Abrams desrves a share of the credit for Warnock’s win, I believe.
Now, Georgians face a state government firmly controlled by Kemp and the well organized Republican party. Their gerrymandered Congressional delegation is two thirds or more Republican despite a close to 50-50 electorate. But politics are dynamic, not static. I’m not sure either set of electeds, particularly the Congressional delegagation, will enhance or even maintain their party’s strength moving forward.
I think that Senators Warnock and Ossoff can. Warnock is a charismatic and capable man who can continue Ms. Abrams’ work building Democratic strength among Black and white Georgians alike. Ossoff is slso a dynamic and attractive politician. And while Ossoff happens to be Jewish, his most salient feature is that he is young, only 35 years old. Ossoff provides visible representation that can help rally younger Georgians to the Democratic side.
Demographic changes are slow, but they are inexorable. I think these two Senators can help Georgia Democrats make the most of these changes as the decade progresses.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: Why do you think Sinema wants to maintain a career in politics? She’s the Palin of our side. She wants nice clothes and a media career.
Sanjeevs
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63885028
Immediate dawn raids, perp walks, get ahead of the story. All for a planned coup.
Meanwhile for an actual deadly coup, we still haven’t got around to sending around subpoenas for the ringleaders
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: I’m not sure Sinema will even seek reelection in 2024. Internal polling will probably show she will not beat Ruben Gallegos, her likely opponent, in a primary.
But regardless of how she leaves office, I think Sinema will be politically irrelevant going forward. She has no distinct personal following and is not an especially dynamic figure except in the minds of the Democrats who hate her.
Suzanne
@Geminid:
I think a lot of commenters here underestimate this in a lot of places. A lot of voting behavior is habit, too. If the GOP can embrace #teamnormal, I expect that they will get more competitive again.
prostratedragon
@OzarkHillbilly: Hey-hey!! Congratulations!
James E Powell
@OzarkHillbilly:
And in Ohio, the Republican clown won easily.
prostratedragon
@NotMax: Solid granite noggins.
Brit in Chicago
Take a moment to acknowledge the organizational work that Stacey Abrams did. It didn’t work for her (or hasn’t done so to date) but I’m sure it has made a lasting difference to Dem prospects in GA. Thanks, Ms. Abrams!
Geminid
@Suzanne: Republicans are more or less well organized in most red and many purple states. I think that the Georgia party stands out, though. The way Kemp crushed Trump-endorsed Perdue in the primary, by almost 3 to 1, demonstrated how cohesive their party’s voters are. Walker’s performance yesterday did also.
OzarkHillbilly
@Geminid: I wish we had a Stacey Abrams here in Misery. If nothing else, one would give me hope.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@NotMax: Yeah, that’s a lot of cabbage for a parking spot, but consider that Manhattan’s a lot more vertical than most cities (in large part because it’s tough to expand the borders of an island), so there just plain isn’t enough room for a lot of automotive parking.
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
A big ‘if,’ of course. What kept it close in Georgia is what’s still in the realm of normalcy for whites in that state.
And that’s what it’s really all about, of course: two very different visions of what should be ‘normal.’
LiminalOwl
@raven: I’m sorry, I wasn’t fully awake when I wrote that. I do know better, and I apologize for the broad-brush implication.
lowtechcyclist
@Brit in Chicago:
Absofuckinglutely!!
LiminalOwl
@japa21: Happy anniversary! And congratulations, both on the milestone and on still being joyful about it.
@OzarkHillbilly And congratulations to you as well.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@japa21: Then congratulations to you and to Warnock!
@OzarkHillbilly: Also congrats to gramps
Suzanne
@Geminid: I think that a lot of people forget that there is a contingent of white people who originally moved to the Sun Belt specifically because they are racist. In many ways, it was the national version of white flight. As you say, those changes away from that mindset are slow.
When I was a kid and we moved to AZ in the late 80s, I remember adults saying that “no one is native to here”. That ignores all of the people who are native to there, of course……mostly Latinos of Mexican descent and actual Native Americans. But they are right in that the vast majority of white adults who lived there at that time were imports. But that has shifted…..many of my classmates/age cohort were born there and many have stayed. It’s no accident that those changes are picking up some steam as that age cohort ages into voting.
Betty Cracker
Matsumoto nails it in the tweet above:
Growing metro areas are what make Southern states like Georgia competitive for Dems. States in the former Confederacy tend to have one key component of the Democratic coalition, black voters, but unless they also have big, diverse urban centers, they’re out of reach for now, e.g., MS, AL, SC.
North Carolina is probably the best bet after Georgia. Florida is also part of the former Confederacy, but it’s got a whole different set of challenges for Dems. Urban growth might not be enough here.
Kay
Crack journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss are now “uncovering” the actual names of Twitter employees! They made a phone call. I hope they’re both taking the rest of the week off. This level of journalisming work must be exhausting.
This is all so embarrassing for the anti-woke cottage industry of pundits. I told you they were morons. They’re just not very bright.
Chyron HR
@Suzanne:
She can start wearing some any time now.
Geminid
@OzarkHillbilly: One difference between Missouri and Georgia is that Georgia is economically dynamic and Missouri is not. When I look at how Ohio has gone from purple to red in the last 25 years while Virginia has gone from red to blue, the biggest factor I see is the two states’ relative economic growth. A prospering economy brings demographic changes favorable to Democrats, like more educated citizens and more first and second generation immigrants. Economic growth also can help make the natives, or at least their children, less cranky. Anger seems to be the Republicans most potent organizing force now.
It’s harder for a dynamic figure like Abrams to make a difference in an economically and demographically static state like yours. In Kansas, even as capable a Governor as Laura Kelly could only win reelection by a narrow margin. But on the Congressional level, maybe someone like Lucas Kuntz can flip and hold on to a red seat, like Sharice Davids did over the Missouri in the Kansas 3rd CD.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: Oh I don’t know, the repeated reports, including police reports of domestic violence and stalking seem pretty bad to me. Holding a gun to your estranged wife’s head and threatening to blow her brains out seems fairly evil…
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: Well, the convention speech could be the kickoff for something like a Fox News gig.
Steeplejack
@Chyron HR:
Meowch!
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: The actual margin was right in line with a lot of poll-based predictions of a 2-3% win. It looked like even more of a squeaker for much of the night because of the usual phenomenon where the in-person vote from urban precincts is reported late.
WaterGirl
@Suzanne: @Geminid: Voter suppression. Voter suppression has been brutal in GA. I hope the DOJ investigates.
Kay
This is what the whole sanctimonius antiwoke “intellectual” movement has become- all caps, incoherent-to-normal-people screaming on social media.
Read that sentence to a normie. They couldn’t make heads or tails of it. It’s far Right niche stuff.
Walker was babbling incoherently about “pronouns” to the far Right base while Warnock was telling Georgians he got them 600 million in road funding.
lowtechcyclist
@Kay:
I can only think that they saw the name ‘Jim Baker,’ immediately jumped to the conclusion that this was longtime DC and GOP insider James Baker, and instantly hit the panic button.
That James Baker is still alive, but he’s 92 years old, ETA: and if he’s going to be a player, FBI counsel would be way too low-level for him. They probably didn’t stop to find that out, though.
WaterGirl
@Brit in Chicago: Without Stacey Abrams we wouldn’t have gotten the Senate in 2020/21 and we wouldn’t have it now.
stacib
@Princess: For me, never in a thousand years would I vote for a candidate like Herschel Walker. A lot may have to do with how embarrassing he is, but there’s that whole gun-to-the-head of his ex wife and the denying of his own children. One of the things that make me proud to be a Democrat is that we don’t put up with that bullshit, and I believe would never slate a candidate who was so obviously unprepared for anything other than a padded room.
trnc
Yup. When do Baker and various others at the NYT do some soul searching on their own failures?
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: Tbf the Louise Mensch/Palmer Report wing of the Twitter anti-Trump resistance got about as arcane. It’s what some people do when they’re stuck with a losing hand–any strand of hope is worth grabbing onto.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah, I know. I was applying my special Geminid Predictive Model. It needed some tweaking for sure.
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: The snipe at Sinema was well done and well deserved.
hells littlest angel
I’ll credit Walker for a gracious (but typically incoherent) concession.
Kay
I’m disappointed there isn’t more celebration of the win. It’s GEORGIA! Democrats can now compete in Georgia! Of course it was close – up until two years ago it was a red state.
I sometimes think Democrats can’t handle the competition part of these races. That we will only be comfortable with 60/40 margins in every race. I hear this after every win “it should not have been close”. I don’t know what it means. We always have to fight for every state. None of them are gifts.
Hoodie
@OzarkHillbilly: I was taken aback by the level of organization in Georgia when I was in Atlanta a few weeks ago. Here in NC there is nowhere near the visibility for dem and progressive organizations. I think having a megalopolis like Atlanta helps a lot. We’re more fragmented here in NC between Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro etc. It was something I noticed when I moved here from Georgia twenty something years ago. Dispersed power has some advantages but it also can lead to parochialism, building little fiefdoms and working at cross purposes.
Jeffro
@Kay: it is depressing at times, to think of all that big-donor dark money flowing into GOP ‘think tank’ and ‘news organization’ coffers
but it’s also heartening at times to realize just what low quality work the donors are getting for their bucks! =)
John S.
@Chyron HR:
Her personal style seems to be that of a drunk teenager given 90 seconds to run through an outlet store with a shopping cart and grab as much merchandise as possible (a la Supermarket Sweep).
Soprano2
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Yep, that’s probably right unfortunately. Lots of R’s in my area would have held their nose and voted for him.
japa21
@Kay:
We sometimes forget that 50% +1 has the same result as 60/40.
Jeffro
@stacib: have to agree
The GOP candidate would have to be equally horrible for a Walker-like Dem to get my vote. (Not a non-zero chance by any means, given the state of their party!) But between the violence against women and family members, lying/hypocrisy about abortion, obvious puppet strings, and glaring mental incompetence, Walker was/is truly horrible. I couldn’t vote for that regardless of the stakes. I’m glad my party has actual standards, so that I don’t have to make that call.
Eolirin
@Kay: It’s because the candidates are so crazy and this isn’t disqualifying to Republicans.
There’s a big difference when the R candidate is semi sane even if pretty odious, like Kemp or Romney. Small margin wins there don’t feel bad. There’s a greater need to see super crazy or staggeringly incompetent candidates get repudiated in a more decisive fashion.
The failure for that to happen threatens any kind of rational basis for our electorate, which is kind of terrifying. But it’s always been thus too.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
Oh, I’m delighted.
After all those somber “we take ourselves incredibly seriously” editorials in the NYTimes the anti-woke “public intellectuals” are now reduced to screaming that everything is an FBI plot.
It was always poorly thought out garbage that had more to do with middle aged former “trendsetters” who cannot manage to age gracefully and must hold onto and direct all social norms. It was always about clinging to power and influence in service of their stupid “careers”.
It’s found its level. It belongs down with Alex Jones. It’s junk.
marklar
@lowtechcyclist: “I can only think that they saw the name ‘Jim Baker,’ immediately jumped to the conclusion that this was longtime DC and GOP insider James Baker, and instantly hit the panic button.”
I just checked his Wiki entry. It appears as if he left the FBI midway through the Trump Administration to become ” director of national security and cybersecurity at the R Street Institute a conservative think-tank in Washington, D.C.”
In other words, Twitter’s vetting was done by a right-wing operative. I don’t think this is the smoking gun that proves that the Biden administration (which didn’t even exist back then) overstepped its authority and violated the Constitution.
Then again, the narrative is now out there, and we all know how reading comprehension, confirmation bias and belief perseverance works with the Conservative mind. Sigh.
JMG
The closest parallel to Walker in Democratic politics this century is John Edwards. And when his misdeeds came out, he vanished without a trace.
Kay
@Eolirin:
I hear it with every swing state. It’s weirdly risk averse, like we’re deeply uncomfortable with the fact that this stuff is competitive.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: LOL! Wait until they hear about these things called company directories! Good lord, what a bunch of hot garbage.
@WaterGirl: Concur! I am so here for exactly that brand of cattiness.
@Kay: Re: celebrating the win — Josh Marshall commented on how astounding it is that Kelly in AZ and Warnock in GA both won special elections and then full terms under extremely challenging conditions. It helped that Repubs put up weak challengers, but you can’t blame Trump 100% — the Republican base wanted those candidates. Kelly and Warnock are able politicians.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay:
You can see it even in right-wing Supreme Court Justices who are, even in their own estimation, functionally something close to Kings of America, able to simply rule by decree, but that’s not enough–the people need to love and respect their actions and it burns them up that we don’t.
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: Me too. I say keep your eye on Crystal Quade, the House Minority Leader. She was my rep until this year, when I was redistricted into another female rep’s district. When Quade was first elected there was only one Democrat from SWMO in the House. Now there are three! It’s slow but I think inexorable progress. Quade will be term limited out next election; I’ll be interested to see what she does next. She knows how to win as a Democrat in my neck of the woods, which is quite an accomplishment. Sometimes I think Mel Carnahan’s death started the “breaking” of the Democratic Party in MO, plus as St. Louis has shrunk Democrat’s power has declined.
Matt McIrvin
@JMG: Rod Blagojevich came to my mind–outrageously corrupt, flat-out tried to sell a Senate seat, but the party dropped him like a flaming bag of poo when that came out.
dww44
@raven: this was a major win albeit it was nail bitingly close for much of the evening. It was huge because Dems overcame the structural voting impediments put in place by Republicans. Thankfully Warnock highlighted that.
OzarkHillbilly
@Jeffro: I posted this yesterday, so forgive me my repetitiveness: The biggest losers in the US midterm elections? Republican mega-donors
Still puts a big smile on my face.
Eolirin
@Kay: I haven’t been hearing the same things I guess. I don’t remember much hand wringing commentary about places like WI or NV this cycle, or even AZ, but I think the sweep there was enough of a relief.
We didn’t barely win anywhere else
But yes, to borrow John’s metaphor, it’s deeply disconcerting that tire rims and anthrax is competitive.
prostratedragon
@stacib: Who was that character on The Sopranos, Richie? I would not be voting for Richie. But indeed it’s hard to imagine that loose a cannon clearing waivers as a Democrat.
Soprano2
@Kay: That whole thing is absolutely ridiculous. Republicans seem to believe they are just one big revelation away from blowing the lid off – what, exactly? That all of their woes are due to Democratic manipulation constantly keeping them down? I think they are trying to find the “one weird trick” that is responsible for all of their woes, because they are unable to take responsibility for anything they actually do or say. In their minds those things aren’t the reason they and their ideas are unpopular; no, it’s some secret cabal of Democrats who are causing everything bad that’s happening to them. It’s ludicrous and unfortunately never-ending. It’s like that show about an island where there is supposedly a treasure they are on the brink of discovering, only they never do.
lowtechcyclist
@Eolirin:
This. While it’s arguable whether Al Franken should have been shown the door, at least he was the borderline case. As Democrats, we don’t have to worry about having to vote for someone genuinely reprehensible just to keep a Republican out of office.
Soprano2
@Geminid: I agree, as my area becomes more economically dynamic it is slowly becoming more liberal. Our school board and City Council were able to successfully resist most of the howler monkeys during Covid. We will be sending three Democratic reps to the state house (all women), up from just one six years ago. Our city just unveiled their next 20 year plan called Forward SGF, where they are thinking about quality of place as the best way to attract new people. Our area is also slowly becoming more diverse. It makes me have hope that we won’t be dark red forever! We also have three sizable universities here (one of them is Assemblies, though), including a state university that has done a lot in the past 10 years to make itself more attractive to students.
cmorenc
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
OTOH, Walker did do one thing very beneficial thing toward a more civil society last night: he gracefully conceded his election loss to Warner, in public.
Geminid
The terrorism induced power outage in Moore County, North Carolina has stayed in the news, at least in the CBS radio news. It was the second item in the 9am news this morning after Senator Warnock’s victory in Georgia, perhaps because of a new development: authorities found a deceased person in a Pinehurst home that had been without heat since Saturday evening. Cause of death has not been determined.
The third item was that the Yankees have re-signed slugging outfielder Aaron Judge, with a 9 year, $460 million contract.
lowtechcyclist
@Soprano2:
Yeah, I was thinking about St. Louis when Geminid was talking upthread about states with vibrant and expanding versus stagnant economies. Since I’m not familiar with that part of the country, I have no idea what’s happened to St. Louis, but I know the numbers say it’s really cratered. And it’s hard for Dems in MO to overcome that.
prostratedragon
@cmorenc: True. So not as ill a wind as some people.
Eolirin
@JMG: Isn’t it Eric Adams?
zhena gogolia
@JMG: And he was a highly intelligent, experienced attorney who would have been a fine VP.
kalakal
@japa21: Congratulations!
@OzarkHillbilly: And to you and yours also
Omnes Omnibus
@Ten Bears:
Bullshit.
prostratedragon
@Geminid: They need to catch that sniper. Even if the death be unrelated, serious penalties should be handed out if possible. I’ll bet the rifle has no legitimate civilian use.
Joe Falco
@Betty Cracker:
It cannot be emphasized enough that Georgia Republican voters had agency and could have nominated boring white man state ag commissioner Gary Black who would have not had the same issues Walker has (awful positions on the usual issues notwithstanding). Instead, a majority chose Walker for whatever reasons they had. No disrespect to Sen. Warnock, Stacey Abrams and every Democrat that organized and drove Warnock to victory, but I believe this contest was always the Republicans to lose. Georgia is at best a purple state and until recently Republicans typically won any run-off if it got that far. To paraphrase a memorable line from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the Republicans chose poorly.
Kay
@Soprano2:
THE FBI! HILLARY! CONNECT THE DOTS!
Elon Musk didn’t know who he was paying as Twitter general counsel? He had to hire Taibbi and Weiss to “uncover” the name of the lawyer Musk was paying?
Two of Elon Musk’s employees (Taibii and Weiss) “blew the lid off” another of Elon Musk’s employees, Baker.
Couldn’t Elon Musk just walk down the hall and look for the names of his employees on the doors? He needs this crack team of anti-woke warriors to compile an employee directory?
MomSense
@OzarkHillbilly:
Congratulations!!!
rikyrah
Thank you, Georgia. Rev. Senator Warnock now has a FULL SIX YEAR TERM. He can concentrate on being a Senator! Look what he did in just the 2 years when he was running all the time for the job! I am so happy for him. Nobody will steal my joy about this😒
Elizabelle
@Omnes Omnibus: Thank you! An audition for the pie filter, first comment.
I am very happy about Senator Warnock, and very interested in the German arrests. I saw SO MANY of those antivacc protests when I was over there. Kept hoping: “maybe they are protesting in support of Ukraine.” But no, it was always antivacc.
One of them, in Hamburg, very large and organized, and “in support of the children.”
That said, all kinds of support of Ukraine, in Germany and Spain. Blue and yellow decorations, welcome centers in the train stations.
Good morning, jackals.
rikyrah
@[email protected] (@david_darmofal) tweeted at 7:13 AM on Wed, Dec 07, 2022:
.@JoeBiden & @KamalaHarris just had the most successful first-term midterm since FDR in 1934. It’s amazing how many people with opinion columns or accounts on this app want one or both of them replaced on the ticket in 2024. Not gonna happen.
(https://twitter.com/david_darmofal/status/1600478505791238145?t=RtoIvUPA14bOfglT7uuoLQ&s=03)
Kay
@Soprano2:
The social unrest of the BLM protests and the pandemic drove these middle aged careerists insane. They were so comfortable, so conventional, so coddled, that street protests and government addressing a pandemic drove them right ’round the bend.
They want to go back to the safe-as-houses 1990’s, when they were young.
rikyrah
CLAP CLAP CLAP
CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP
Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) tweeted at 10:10 PM on Tue, Dec 06, 2022:
The Joe Biden- Ron Klain judicial makeover project continues apace for two more years thanks to Rev. Warnock’s critical win tonight, which gives Senate Democrats the breathing room to even more efficiently confirm Biden’s new brand of judge.
(https://twitter.com/brianefallon/status/1600341915936825345?t=TVLTpfmBObGetq3_IS4yQw&s=03)
Lapassionara
@lowtechcyclist: I live in a suburb of St Louis. There was an interesting article a few years back about the negative impact of corporate consolidation on the St Louis economy. I’m not sure when the DOJ stopped enforcing antitrust laws, but losing TWA and other major corporate headquarters has really had a negative effect St. Louis. This is a decades long trend, and it will be a while, imo, before the city recovers.
lowtechcyclist
@dww44:
I guess it was or wasn’t a nailbiter depending on how you were following the results. If you were watching CNN put up the running totals of the counted votes, sure it was a nailbiter.
If you were following Josh Marshall’s numbers peeps Twitter list, you were seeing the election nerds post the county-by-county changes between November and now, and things were really looking pretty good all evening. I went to bed at 9:30 figuring it would be next to impossible for Walker to win.
rikyrah
No lie told
Bougie Black Girl (@BougieBlackGurl) tweeted at 3:21 AM on Wed, Dec 07, 2022:
Raphael Warnock is an educated man of faith & who actually practices what he preaches. Herschel Walker is a stereotype & an abusive hypocritical man.
My twin @LaFemme_Negrita made a great point & said Warnock is who Black people are & Walker is who republicans want us to be.
(https://twitter.com/BougieBlackGurl/status/1600420205657661443?t=yIT3GIoTF1Rgqp0zRSCbDA&s=03)
cain
@Princess: Said candidate would never make it past the primary.
rikyrah
David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) tweeted at 6:35 AM on Wed, Dec 07, 2022:
Credit to @POTUS. This is no accident. Biden has also had the most productive first two years in office of any president since FDR. He deserves far more credit than he gets from anyone except…voters.
(https://twitter.com/djrothkopf/status/1600469134361272320?t=FV-yoep9XRxfQTaLf7i45g&s=03)
rikyrah
well……
Robert Brown (@truthtold8) tweeted at 9:51 PM on Tue, Dec 06, 2022:
The Warnock-Walker race results are like a Green book of places to avoid in Georgia.
(https://twitter.com/truthtold8/status/1600337282212384769?t=0_wqE41u5mEb7bLxuzijHw&s=03)
Suzanne
@Joe Falco: I agree with you.
Many of us said back in 2016 that Trump would damage the GOP brand long-term, and we were absolutely right. (And even so, this was a squeaker.) We were talking about shit like this.
Equally damaging is that a good chunk of the party, like Mitch McConnell and his ilk, saw this, and yet didn’t want to risk angering the MAGA douchebags. Craven and cynical and utterly gross.
rikyrah
doncalloway (@dcstl) tweeted at 7:47 PM on Tue, Dec 06, 2022:
Nominating Herschel Walker is maybe the greatest insult to Black voters in American history. Georgia Republicans picked a Black person with name recognition off the shelf as a response to Raphael Warnock being Black. Nothing more. They may as well have picked Flava Flav.
(https://twitter.com/dcstl/status/1600306065799000064?t=g6WCyDWJ-ZymZuBKmDpftQ&s=03)
Geminid
@prostratedragon: Yeah, they need to catch him or them. It wasn’t actually a sniper, though. The shooting was done at close range. A gate at one facility was taken off of its hinges for access.
Whoever’s caught will face a raft of federal and state charges, now possibly including murder. And while many discount the local sheriff, the FBI and the North Carolina Bureau of Investigation are the lead agencies now. And I expect Dule Power will offer a large reward if neccesary. Duke Power is likely the most powerful institution in the state, public or private, and they won’t take this attack lying down.
So I think that authorities will run the attackers down. My biggest worry now is that the criminal or criminals will go on a rampage if they sense the cops closing in.
Leslie
@rikyrah: I was looking at the FTFNYT page on the election, which has a county-by-county breakdown and the margin in each. 159 counties, and only two or three had a margin of victory that was actually close, within a couple of percentage points either way. Most of them had margins of 20 or more, and several went 75% or more to one candidate or the other. Really stark.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
about a year ago, in the most recent season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David was meeting with a trying-too-hard youngish Hollywood executive who invited Larry to dinner and says, “We had Bari Weiss last week. She’s fantastic.” I thought, oh yeah, whatever happened to her? It brought home how hard it is to be timely with TV jokes, what with delays in writing and production and what not.
And just one year later she’s co-starring with Matt Taibbi in a bad detective show about unlikely partners who solve imaginary crimes by reading the minutes of corporate meetings (that probably could have been emails)
geg6
@MomSense:
Yes, I really feel for that child. I keep wondering if she is the one who cringed and pulled away when he tried to hug her that one time on the campaign trail. I despise her parents, but my heart hurts for this young woman.
Kay
@lowtechcyclist:
I swear they do it deliberately. They want to give the impression that we are watching voting, but all we’re really watching is counting. It was always +3 or whatever it ends up to be.
OverTwistWillie
Texas carpetbagger goes to Georgia and scores. I’m sure Trump got his piece. Cruz and Graham? They got to roll around in Trump’s dung. It’s what they do, and they do it well.
Skepticat
@raven: With apologies to Shakespeare, “Nothing in his campaign became him like the leaving of it.”
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
“Jim who?” DA DA DUM- “Jim Baker, in house counsel”
It’s an incredibly boring answer so they have to scream “FBI!”every 20 seconds.
Wait until they uncover that Baker is probably NAMED on a lot of Twitter LEGAL documents! Not even redacted! Just bold as brass, his NAME, as counsel, on SECRET TWITTER DOCUMENTS.
They should go back to harrassing 22 year old social workers for the thought crime of “wokeness”. This employee directory stuff is too hot to handle!
jonas
@MomSense:
It is terribly tragic. I’ve seen comments elsewhere that she had recently been questioning her sexuality, but the sourcing on that seems a bit sketchy. As awful as Ted Cruz is in public, I will just say that assuming that a child’s mental health issues are some kind of reflection on the quality of parenting in a family is absolutely wrong.
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: Mine, too! And I hadn’t seen your comment from yesterday, so I’m glad you repeated it again here.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@cmorenc: you’re right, Walker did concede gracefully and with no hint of Trump and company’s “It’s rigged if I did not win”
I was happy to see that and he does get points for doing it the right way.
Jeffro
100% THIS
Qrop Non Sequitur
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: Aside from Kari Lake, I haven’t seen any of these candidates challenge the results. Maybe the fact that they all ran campaigns and likely became more familiar with the process allowed them to see for themselves that these voter fraud claims were hogwash.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: The Washington Post had county-by-county maps. If you looked at those, you could see that for most of the night, the majority of the count that was still out was Fulton and DeKalb Counties, metro Atlanta, and the votes that were already in from those places were stupendously tilted to Warnock. So it was close to a slam-dunk certainty that when the rest of Fulton and DeKalb reported in, Warnock would pull away.
But heavily-populated counties like that always take a long time to report–especially if people were in a 2-hour line when the polls officially closed because of Republican election fuckery. But as a former resident of Fairfax County, Virginia I know that even there, Fairfax usually reports late and it often flips the count late at night on close statewide elections.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay:
Exactly. The result was locked in at the moment the polls closed.
Steeplejack
@WaterGirl:
I agree!
Chief Oshkosh
@marklar: Al Franken?
Perfect example of the useful idiots on the D side who believe the agitprop from the likes of Roger Stone. So yes, Democrats do purge their own, and the Franken debacle is a great example of it going too far
ETA: The useful idiots AND the cynical power-grubbers. (Hi, Senator Gillibrand.)
Qrop Non Sequitur
@Chief Oshkosh: Agreed that we’re almost a little too eager to vanish one of our own who demonstrates some personal problems. Franken was kind of an edge case.
In the end, he made the choice to resign. I would have liked to see it go to voters but that’s how it goes.
zhena gogolia
@rikyrah: Flava Flav would have been better, actually.
OverTwistWillie
The margin? A decade ago Democrats we’re struggling to break 40% against Johnny Isakson.
jonas
@Lapassionara:
It happens all over the country. Unregulated capitalism and corporate greed leaves a region’s or state’s economy in tatters. Local voters blame liberals and immigrants.
geg6
@Suzanne:
Back in the early 80s, when the steel industry here in Western PA was going down the shitter, a ton of people moved to FL and this wasn’t the snowbird contingent. It was young people. And they told us all we were nuts for staying. Personally, I am not a fan of FL in particular or any state without seasons in general, so I was never tempted in the least. But my sister and a lot of my friends and acquaintances went. Over the next 25 years or so, many of them slowly came trickling back. With only one or two exceptions, the ones that stayed in FL were the assholes, the stupid ones and the ones with over-inflated egos. MAGA has a hold on a lot of people here in Beaver County, but, for instance, my graduating class from high school is majority liberal Dem for the ones who stayed and for those who left for places other than FL. When I look at FL today, I say to myself that we didn’t send them our best.
Jeffro
@OzarkHillbilly: I didn’t catch it the first time, so thank you. Puts quite the smile on my face, too!
I think I saw clips of some of the various Fox hosts and commentators saying “all that money down the drain” and similar. YES. That’s exactly what happened to it, Fox Clowns. (well, what Rick Scott didn’t take, anyway)
Maybe they should try doing something – anything – that’s actually popular and helpful, instead of suppressing voters and banking on their candidates’ name recognition.
jonas
@Qrop Non Sequitur:
I think they (and their lawyers) also saw how (un) successful frivolous voter fraud claims have been in court for Trump and figured it wasn’t worth it. Kari Lake’s team, including Dershowitz, were a little slower on the uptake and got their asses handed to them, including sanctions for the lawyers.
Matt McIrvin
@Omnes Omnibus: I do think a lot of the metro Atlanta vote came in after the official poll-closing time because people who were still in line at closing were allowed to vote, and some of those lines were very long.
jonas
@geg6:
Similar story in upstate NY. Quite a few younger families moving back from places like FL, SC, and NV. It’s fun living in these free-wheeling, low-tax states when your a pair of DINKs, but then you start a family and realize that it’s nice to have things like functional public schools, libraries, arts programs, special ed services, and the like and blue states start looking a *lot* better.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The families of my lower income juveniles sometimes see conspiracy everywhere in the county court system. They’re wrong- it’s not corrupt it just doesn’t work because packing 15 year olds off to jail doesn’t work and no one knows how to fix it- but I see why they go in that direction. They have little or no power anf this county is definitely ranked by class. It’s natural to believe that “upper classes” like lawyers and judges are conspiring against them or look down on them, but it isn’t true.
But what is the excuse of these substackers? They’re multi-millionaires with huge platforms. They’re on television and in prestige media constantly. How in the HELL have they convinced themselves they are victims, that their dumb opinions about “wokeness” or vaccines merit top secret FBI action? Who cares what they think?
Paul in KY
@MomSense: Having Ted Cruz as your father!!! has got to be a burden. I am very sorry for her situation.
Paul in KY
@raven: God bless all our heroes that terrible day at Pearl Harbor!
rikyrah
@raven:
My mother told me that they were on their way home from church when a neighbor came running out telling them that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. They all ran home and sat around the radio to listen for news.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: That doesn’t change the point. Reporters were describing the process of counting votes that had already been cast. The end result was always going to be the same, but they played it for drama and eyeballs.
Geminid
@jonas: I think the mother has had her own problems too.
Paul in KY
@japa21: Congrats! Today is also my parent’s 65th wedding anniversary!
Paul in KY
@OzarkHillbilly: Mucho Congrats, sir!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Baud
👍
Torrey
Late to the party, but I want to take a moment and appreciate our friends at Four Directions and Worker Power. I think it’s fair to say that their tireless work and boots-on-the-ground had a little something to do with this.
ETA: By which I mean, there’s absolutely no question in my mind that their efforts were a significant part of this. I’m interested in hearing from Four Directions, who keeps tabs on this sort of thing, about the connection between the margin of victory and the Native American vote.
OGLiberal
@MomSense: I may be giving him too much credit but my guess is that Ted presonally has no problem with her sexuality/gender identity, whatever it may be. But he can’t say that publicly and what kind of message are you sending to your kid when you’re hanging out with disgusting human beings like Marjorie Taylor? I mean, Ted’s disgusting as well but Marge is on a higher level of disgustingness. Hoping things work out well for that young woman.
ian
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
This. X 1000. I would not vote for a Democratic candidate that did this. I think it is appalling that the ‘pro-family’ party overlooked this. There needs to be lines of unacceptable behavior, and this seems like a pretty clear one.
lowtechcyclist
@geg6:
That trickle is gonna turn into a flood eventually. In the projected heat map of the U.S. for 30 years from now, peninsular FL is forecast to be basically too hot to live in.
zhena gogolia
Don’t know if this clip has been posted, but this is the one that’s making me cry:
Layer8Problem
@Baud: Back from your deep undercover work in Georgia, I see.
geg6
@lowtechcyclist:
MSNBC was just as bad, with Kornacki hyperventilating all over his map and everyone at the desk pretending to agree that it was so close! and a rollercoaster! and getting whiplash from the back and forth!. Total theater and bullshit. Josh has a good post up that anyone with any real interest in and knowledge about politics should stop watching tv on election nights because it’s all a drama for ratings and not serious political or voting analysis. I watched just about 15 minutes of the coverage and went back to HGTV while checking GOS and TPM on the regular. It was apparent pretty early on how it was going to go, but you’d never hear any of that on tv.
Amir Khalid
In case it hasn’t already been noted in these threads, TIME has named its Person of The Year: Volodymyr Zelenskyy & The Spirit of Ukraine.
OGLiberal
So, did Georgia count the votes too quickly or too slowly? Were too many votes counted or not enough?
The media have become such wimps in calling races these days. Not that it matters when they call but well before they did it was obvious there was no way Walker was going to win given where the outstanding votes were located. My teenagers could figure that out. And so could the media folks but they are so terrified of the wingnuts that they can’t make that obvious call. I went to CNN.com last night and the alert at the top said Warnock won but the main headline was “too close to call!”
White Republicans in GA didn’t want to vote for a black dude but Trump vouched for him and he helped the home football team a bazillion years ago. This time around Trump didn’t even try so no surprise that he lost and it really wasn’t close in the runoff. Also, Warnock is a very good candidate.
rikyrah
@Sanjeevs:
Throw them under the jail. Go Germany!
Frankensteinbeck
@Soprano2:
That they are the heroes fighting against a cartoonishly evil enemy.
rikyrah
@Kay:
I am so glad that he is getting clowned, and completely has discredited himself. So many of his previous defenders now see him for who he is.
Scout211
In other open thread news, Aaron Judge is reportedly not coming back to California.
9 year $360 million to stay with New York.
Big loss for the Giants. Sigh.
Amir Khalid
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
Some sort of vetting process would have helped the Republican party identify candidates with a problematic history. Or is this not done in America?
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It’s so, so great. The emporers, the Official Arbiters of what is “liberal” and what are “proper societal norms”, have no clothes.
I like to imagine the Zoomers within Twitter watching this with their cool detachment. “WTF with these old people freaking out constantly?”
geg6
@rikyrah:
My mother told the exact same story about that day. Within 6 months, my dad (only 17) was given his high school diploma a year early so that he and many of his male classmates could enlist.
Scout211
@Amir Khalid:
The Republican vetting machine is broken. It is now actually moving backward, in that the crazier and most awful candidates are the only ones who pass the vetting process. The Republican voters have spoken.
Ken
@Amir Khalid: It’s done, but we call it “the primaries” and the vetting is based on shaking hands, eating fried foods, and previous television roles. Little things like “wife-beater” or “Russian agent” don’t come into play.
It would be an improvement if the candidates had to pass the most basic of background checks, such as those used by the FBI for applicants. Or even the ones used by banks when you want a business loan.
Brachiator
It’s a beautiful morning. Congratulations to Senator Warnock. I feel relieved that the Democrats have this all taken care of.
Layer8Problem
@geg6: MSNBC is missing a serious entertainment win by not taking the Kornacki-cam and strapping it on his head, for the LOLs.
zhena gogolia
@Amir Khalid: Thanks!
stacib
@prostratedragon: Plus, in my head, I’m constantly hearing all the mocking I believe is happening amongst all those folks that did vote for Walker. Can you imagine the stuff they are saying in the privacy of their own networks (with lots of new descriptors of the “N” word)?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: I think Bari Weiss lost her cachet with the media elite when she signed on with that goofy fake university, but it will be a small mercy if she’s beclowned what was left of her reputation by teaming up with Elmo and Taibbi
Spanky
@Amir Khalid: Absolutely done in America … by SOME parties. But the GOP seems to have concluded that problematic pasts are no barrier to election. I wonder why that is?
Kay
@Brachiator:
Me too. Incumbency is a big advantage in the Senate too. He’ll hold that seat as long as he wants it.
Ruckus
@Jeffg166:
They may not be working because they are so repugnant to so many voters. There are quite a number of republicans on twitter who have seemingly woken up, become “woke” as one might say. They see the depths that rethuglicans will stoop to to elect an obviously incapable person to high federal office, they look at the policies that the current rethuglican party seems to want and they may be done with the bullshit concept of of rethuglican “leadership.” We are winning converts, as was done in CA a few decades ago.
cain
At one point we had made in-roads especially with judges and the GOP didn’t have a super majority in the state legislature – but they are back to super majorities so we’ve gone backwards.
The NC GOP are very fascist – they are out of their mind. Hell, they were so bad the NCAA banned them for games I believe (or it was the NBA, can’t remember)
Edmund Dantes
@rikyrah: remove the stupid fucking district court blue slips.
rikyrah
@Kay:
I am thrilled, Kay
Paul in KY
@Soprano2: ‘Crystal Quade’ sound like a drug or Lone Wolf McQuade’s crazy granddaughter.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I resent the hell out of them for what they dumped on public schools. It isn’t fair for these careerist assholes to drum up business for their “takes industry” using 50 million public school children.
Public schools have enough on their plate without these private school grads and parents weighing in. Go fix your own schools. Obviously they need fixing because look at the quality of the adults they turn out.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir Khalid:
Democrats do it.
Kay
@rikyrah:
By three isn’t close in a swing state! By three is the definition of a swing state.
rikyrah
@OzarkHillbilly:
Mine too :)
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Thnis is the quality of the work they do – it’s junk – the NY Post is the only outlet spreading it because it’s Alex Jones level garbage:
And they want to direct what’s taught at every US university? Oh, absolutely. Great Minds like this should be running everything, from public schools to colleges to public health. Purge the Woke and install these assholes.
oatler
@Spanky:
The new unhistory has “Democrat slave owners ” and Abe Lincoln Freedom Fighter, who is assassinated by Jewish Antifa.
Wapiti
@Lapassionara: Damn, that’s a very good point – monopolies mean that there are only a few winning companies. But that means a lot of smaller companies got crushed, and that means their headquarters communities got hurt as well.
Brachiator
A couple of political tidbits.
Apparently,every incumbent Senator won during the midterm elections.
And I just saw this on Twitter.
Interesting times.
The Moar You Know
@rikyrah: wait until you see what doesn’t happen to them. Germany has a history with this sort of thing and it’s not limited to Nazis, it is recent.
Sturgeonmouth
Kudos to Georgia voters and a big shout out to Walkers For Warnock! Given the narrow margin of victory, the organizing efforts of the abandoned offspring of Herschel Walker should not be discounted.
Mike E
@Hoodie: these urban NC islands are distinct political ecosystems if you will, left to fend for themselves due to a sclerotic NC Dem party still trying to reestablish themselves after a century of ups and downs. I can definitely feel a kinship with raven (and a little jealousy!) when two (2) Dem senators are elected in GA with slight margins and BJ peeps complain that they didn’t win big enough, heh. We have Tillis and Budd for crissakes! Watch SCOTUS give their imprimatur to NC rigged GOP district maps and we’ll hear all about how it’s on us blue voters for not trying hard enough, somehow.
@cain: TEA.O.P. repubs here with a virtual supermajority in the legislature and now control of our supreme court. If NC is a swing state we’re swaying in a stiff breeze these days, sadly.
Matt McIrvin
@cain: I see NC as in a similar boat to Wisconsin–a purple state trending blue, but also a “managed democracy” at best, dominated by a blatantly authoritarian Republican junta. But they both have Democratic governors currently.
rikyrah
I want the NH and
IA apologists to see THE WORK put in down South by
Democrats.
NH and IA are crying about TOURISM.
TOURISM. While Southern Dems are working for OUR RIGHTS.
One of the many reasons you don’t matter
anymore.
— Randi White (@RandiWhite)
Kay
It should be funny to watch Republicans embrace early and absentee voting now. “Ballot harvesting!”
The dopes figured out it’s better not to tell your voters that ordinary, modern voting process is an anti-GOP conspiracy.
Normal people like early and absentee vote because it is convenient and works with their schedules. I’m glad the freak show GOP finally figured that out, although it would have been fun to beat a couple more of them before it sunk in.
Matt McIrvin
Concerning Republican legislative majorities and elections, I wonder about public reaction/backlash if the Supreme Court actually ratifies the idea that state legislatures can simply override the results of federal elections on a whim, without sanction in law or judicial review–a fringe-right idea that suddenly became prominent with the 2020 election. I think the median American will not intuitively think this is right, or accept it if a state legislature actually does it. Of course they have to make noises about how they’re overturning fraud and have divined the true will of the people, regardless of how the votes were counted. But I’m not sure the Republicans yearning for this understand how it’s likely to shake out.
Geminid
@Kay: I think the last two elections will prove to be an inflection point. Democrats were hard pressed and a lot of our candidates lost close races. But more of them won. Senators Warnock and Ossoff, Senator Kelly in Arizona and Governor Kelly in Kansas, Governor Evers in Wisconsin, and Senator Senator Cortez-Masto in Nevada were just a few of those who won tough contests this year.
We won’t know for a couple more cycles if this year and 2020 were high water marks for the Republican Party, but i think that demographic factors will contribute to Republican decline. The electorate will become younger and more diverse as the decade progresses, to the advantage of Democratic candidates.
Just as importantly, Democrats are more united now than they have been for a long time. Republicans, the other hand, have a lot of internal conflict and rancor, and this will get worse before it gets better, I believe.
Elizabelle
@Amir Khalid: Fabulous news! And well deserved.
Time got it right, this year.
OzarkHillbilly
@lowtechcyclist: STL isn’t the basket case it’s made out to be. For starters, one needs to look beyond just the city itself to the larger metro area, which, according to the Wiki has a combined population of 2,820,253. And that is on both sides of the Mississippi. That being said, STL city (which is NOT a part of the county) does have real problems, many of which could be greatly alleviated with a little help from the state, which is not gonna happen in my life time. White flight continued long after the 70s and any hint at the state sending a little extra money their way is met with howls of protest at the very idea of helping out “those” people. That’s why they all moved out.
I know things are far better now than they were when I lived there (came out here in 2002). Benton Park where my son lives was a hardscrabble working man’s neighborhood for most of my years in STL but began to turn around in the 90s. At that time, one could easily buy a building for back taxes, but today my son’s very simple 2 story, 2 bedroom, brick house is valued at $460,000.
N St Louis on the other hand, is just a real sad story.
rikyrah
@Amir Khalid:
CLAP CLAP CLAP
EXCELLENT CHOICE
Hoodie
@Mike E: One of the reasons for the sclerosis is that the NC party relied on a good ol’ boy cadre centered in the backwaters of eastern NC that veered into petty corruption. That’s a reflection of the fragmentation of the state. It’s part of the reason we ended up with poorly vetted candidates like Edwards and Cunningham, because there is no healthy structure for generating statewide candidates. We’re lucky we have a Dem governor because Cooper was the only one from that legacy who managed to escape without being tainted. When everyone is basically living in the same house (like GA dems centered around Atlanta and its giant media market), it’s harder for that sort of thing to happen and easier to maintain something resembling a meritocracy.
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: We will see further escalation in attempts by Republicans to grab and retain power through procedural Weird Tricks and terrorist violence.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@jonas: Sonce when have Republicans let a little thing like a history of abject failure stand in their way?
rikyrah
@geg6:
My father was already in the Army – he had joined earlier in 1941.
My maternal grandmother knew that this would mean that her five sons were about to be drafted.
Joe Falco
@Geminid:
A minor correction: Ossoff won in the 2021 run-off. Thankfully, he didn’t need to run again this year as he’s already elected to a full term.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: North Carolina is a growing state with a dynamic economy. I think it is similar in this respect to neighboring Virginia and Georgia.
Wisconsin is halfway between Ohio and Minnesota, I think, in social, economic and political terms.
Brit in Chicago
@Geminid: About the sniper: it occurred to me that if people are missing their favorite TV shows, maybe they will start to see some reason for gun control. Dead kids don’t do it, but maybe TV shows will.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Warnock will be up in 2028 – a Presidential year.
Ossoff in 2026, but, I definitely like his chances.
Kay
@Geminid:
They over-interpreted Youngkin’s win as proof that a culture war against “wokeness” would play every cycle and in every state. I don’t think they can let it go – they seem to be doubling down with Musk and Hunter Biden’s private photos.
It’s amusing that the people who yelled the loudest about each and every covid mitigation effort are also the people who were so traumatized by covid they have gone completely insane.
Icky, uncool Democrats were supposed to be obsessed with covid! Meanwhile all the Democrats have moved on and the Right is still screeching about Fauci and the “lab leak theory”. They can’t move on.
Amir Khalid
TIME also named its Icon of The Year: Michelle Yeoh. Needless to say, as a fellow Malaysian I am proud of her.
Kay
@rikyrah:
That’s part of Sherrod Brown’s “secret”. His elections fall in presidential years :)
geg6
@lowtechcyclist:
Knowing these people personally, I doubt that will chase them out of the fever swamps. PA is definitely too woke for them now. They have been yelling this at me ever since Tom Wolf won the governor’s mansion. Now that we have a Dem gov, two Dem senators and Dem majority in the PA House, the Keystone State is most definitely NOT America, according to them, but a Soviet state.
cain
@Matt McIrvin:
NC is such a nice state – I visited a few times for a conference. It’s where Red Hat is and I know that the population is growing there. The demographics are eventually going to go against them but not yet. Having full control of the state – we’re going to have to work hard to push them out.
Geminid
@Joe Falco: Yeah, I got a little sloppy. Ossoff was one of the winners of close races in the two cycles I posited as inflection points, but not this cycle. President Biden was another close winner in the earlier of the two cycles.
James E Powell
@rikyrah:
I can’t speak for NH, but I’ve been to Iowa for caucus campaigns & there is a steady flow of local news stories featuring Iowans bitching about out-of-state people complicating their lives & the excess political ads.
Mike E
@Hoodie: no lies told! And thank goodness for Roy Cooper and his steady executive prowess, we’re gonna need him to be steadfast, strong and healthy to fend off the rising tide.
rikyrah
@Kay:
I am amazed by the level of voter suppression that’s obvious.
Coming from a state with:
Permanent Vote By Mail
Mail Dropboxes
Plenty of Early Voting Sites
Instant Voter Registration and Voting
A month of Early Voting
Election Day Registration and Voting
Georgia disgusts me.
rikyrah
@Amir Khalid:
Have loved her for years.
Geminid
@Brit in Chicago: It’s much more than missed TV shows. It’s been a major disruption in people’s lives. The local and state media reports will show this, if you look up “Moore County power outage.”
Hoodie
@Matt McIrvin: The analogy to WI is probably pretty apt, but I think you misunderstand NC politics. I think GA will more likely trend blue faster than NC because GA is anchored by Atlanta. There is nothing equivalent in NC. People who live in Raleigh know very little about politics in Charlotte and vice versa. They are pretty isolated from one another. Charlotte’s media market is a good chunk of SC. The GOP thrives in that kind of environment because hate and fear tend to unite better than hope. Hope requires trust, which is a very fragile thing. Hate and fear can get by on money and lies.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@rikyrah: My Canadian father was already in the North Atlantic hunting U-boats.
Elizabelle
New thread up.
Betty Cracker on President Zelenskyy (and the Spirit of Ukraine) as Time magazine’s Person of the Year.
artem1s
@Geminid:
Duke is also the worst environmental polluter in the state too and routinely put their customer’s health at risk. So they won’t give a shit about anyone who dies as a result of the outage. They only care about their equipment and their billing lost during the outage.
Geminid
@Kay: I have seen more bad takes generated by Glenn Youngkin’s win than any other election in my recent memory. That was actually one of the reasons I was hoping McAuliffe would pull it out. I could see the bad takes whooshing towards us like some asteroid.
But I am glad Republicans drew faulty conclusions from foungkin’ Youngkin’s victory.
rikyrah
About last night..
I do appreciate the petty of the election officials in the counties surrounding Atlanta.
How they wait until all the Red Counties have done their results…
and, then, they go…
” I don’t think so..”
and BAM…drop their results..
LOL
I will never forget in 2020, going to sleep, thinking of Georgia, and then checking Twitter as soon as I woke up, and folks were like FULTON dropped…
and put Biden ahead…
I remember tearing up as I read it.
Ivan X
@Princess: thanks for this self reflection. We don’t do enough of it and I think these are tough questions that many of us in blue oases don’t have to consider very seriously.
I’d certainly like to think that if there were a presidential Democrat on the ballot as obviously nakedly corrupt as Trump, I’d withhold my vote or even vote for the R instead, but, I mean, then I’m also voting for policies I hate and potentially supporting the appointment of more Heritage and Federalist judges. It would be a very unpleasant personal decision to make.
But, to the extent that this implies sympathy for the large number of Walker voters who perhaps held their nose, I can only go so far, since I have such loathing for what his party stands for.
Kay
@Geminid:
They do it every Virginia election. I was watching returns last night and Fox is STILL flogging the VA public school bathroom story. They just keep returning to that well. Walker went on and on about “pronouns” while Warnock was earnestly discussing his faith (interesting and I’m not religious!) and how to finance road works :)
I love it. I am absolutely gloating. I hope we get 500 more “wokeism” essays. Keep churning that shit out and we’ll keep beating your politicians.
Geminid
@artem1s: I know about Duke Power’s environmental record, the Iredale County childhood cancer clusters, etc. I still think they will be determined to make the attackers in this matter pay, and this has nothing to do with with their moral virtue or lack therof.
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah: How much of this “gee, either Biden or Harris or *both* must go in 2024 for REASONS” is due to the fact that they as a team *have* been so uniquely successful? We wonders, yes, we wonders…
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah: Flava Flav would have actually been a better candidate, in my partial, prejudiced and ignorant opinion.
Leslie
@Amir Khalid: Love her. Congratulations to her and Malaysia!
Matt McIrvin
@rikyrah: I think the reasons for that are more practical–it just takes longer to count all the votes in the city, especially if there were long lines of people still waiting to vote at closing.
marklar
@Chief Oshkosh:Al Franken?
I had second thoughts when typing that. Your point is well taken, but it does show how Democrats police themselves (and in this case, overpolice ourselves).
Matt McIrvin
One of the under-reported stories of the Biden administration is that they’ve been slamming through federal judge appointments at a record rate–faster than any President since JFK.
It doesn’t feel like it since Republicans now utterly dominate the Supreme Court and have been handing down one appalling ruling after another, but on the whole Biden is actually transforming the judiciary faster than Trump did. (Obama came in for criticism on this… but he was hobbled by the filibuster until 2013 for most positions, and for his whole administration on SCOTUS appointments; Biden is not.)
One thing this win means is that it’ll be that much easier for Biden to continue appointing judges. Legislation may be a dead letter apart from relatively uncontroversial stuff. But judges are important.
Soprano2
@Kay: Evidently the “big scandal” is that the deputy general counsel is doing the job he’s paid for, by vetting internal materials before they’re released to two people who aren’t even paid consultants for the company! OH, and he worked for the FBI before so they’re totally convinced that he withheld all the materials that implicated the FBI in whatever “wrongdoing” they imagine Twitter did. It’s all so ridiculous.
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: Sadly true. Even in 2022. Jeezus.
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: Clarence Thomas to replace Justice Marshall may have been worse and more cynicaller, IMO.
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: Well chosen, IMO!
Paul in KY
@Kay: Don’t jinx him, Kay!
Paul in KY
@Brachiator: Wow! What a stat. The first since FDR!
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
@Mike E:
Alabama resident here, completely agree. Our newest senator wrapped herself around SFB like a mink stole during the primaries and scrubbed all traces of it immediately afterward. She needn’t have bothered – this is the state that almost elected Roy Freaking Moore after all.
Sigh.
OGLiberal
@Geminid: Why did Youngkin win in what should be a reliable blue state these days? I get that McAuliffe was not a great candidate but he was a recent governor and, if I recall correctly, he was and went out as a pretty populate one. I’m sure wingnuts in Kansas and KY are also wondering why their governor is a Dem. (in KY I think it has a lot to do with the name….kind of like how the crazies in Alaska can throw up somebody every election year but Murkowski is still a Murkowski)
Matt McIrvin
@OGLiberal: I think that people perceive the governorship as a less ideological position than legislative ones: they imagine that moderate competence is what you want, and there are also way too many culturally liberal-ish people who value “bipartisanship” as a virtue in its own right.
Put those people together with the actual fanatics on the other side, and weird things can happen as long as the candidate gives off not-crazy vibes while actually running. Massachusetts has elected Republican governors most of the time for the past several decades–they didn’t this time because the guy the Republicans nominated went full MAGA. But I guess Youngkin was able to dial it back just enough, and claim that Democrats were the extreme ones.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Soprano2:
QFT
Ksmiami
@John S.: Ma’am, this is a Contempo Casuals…
Brachiator
@Amir Khalid:
I have been a great admirer of her work. First saw her in one of the Jackie Chan Supercop movies. Then I searched out other films that featured her.
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: Did you see that someone in the state legislature filed a bill to try to have a state board take over the St. Louis police department, with encouragement from the police union there? I guess they think they can somehow do a better job.
GibberJack
@jonas: Agree but the Cruzes are shitty parents for helping to create and enable the hostile and hateful environment their own LGBTQ child now must live in.
A doctor told me the suicide rate for LGBTQ children is 3-4 times higher than other kids.
What do they do now? “Oh we love you, dear. It’s only the other kids who are like you we want dead.”
Sacrifice their own child or Ted’s political career? You know the answer too. I am so sad for that poor child. For all our children.
Chief Oshkosh
@rikyrah:
I have long thought that IA and NH as the kick-off states was a stupid policy. But, I had not thought about it this way. Thank you.
Manyakitty
@OzarkHillbilly: mazel tov! Sending all the good vibes!
Geminid
@OGLiberal: To explain why Youngkin won I first look at the what. Joe Biden carried the Virginia by ten points in 2020; Youngkin carried the state by 2 points in 2021. Allowing for a non-presidential year electorate, my crude on-a-napkin calculation is that 1) Republicans added 3 points in extra voters, 2) Democratic turnout declined by 3 points, and 3) three percent of the total voters switched from Biden to Youngkin, accounting a six point swing. These were Independents, who make up a little under a third of the Virginia electorate.
How did this happen? One factor is that Donald Trump was not on the ballot. He was a potent get-out-the-vote force for Democrats, while voter roll analysis indicates that Youngkin brought out Republican voters who had stayed home in 2020. I think Trump actually depressed Republican turnout in Virginia, unlike some other states.
Candidate quality made a difference. I thought to the end that McAuliffe would win, but I did not underestimate Youngkin’s appeal as a candidate. He was glib and convincing, a tireless retail politician who spoke to countless groups of voters all over the state in groups from 30 to 300. A newcomer to politics, Youngkin started with “a blank canvas,” as veteran Richmond Times-Dispatch columnist Jeff Shapiro put it, and painted it in to his best advantage.
McAuliffe was in fact a good Governor. He has many good qualities, but he was easily typed as a professional politician because he lacks the intangible but important quality of authenticity. Tim Kaine, Mark Warner, and Ralph Northam have it, and any of those three would have beaten Youngkin easily, I think.
But I think it was the difference in campaign quality that really sank McAuliffe. Youngkin and his team ran a tightly organized, efficient campaign that made the most of his narrow path to victory. McAuliffe’s campaign was relatively slack and his messaging ineffective. Youngkin’s campaign machine ran in high gear from May on, but McAuliffe’s never seemed to get into rolling until the final weeks.
I think McAullife underestimated his opponent. A few weeks after the election, I started asking my Democrat friends if they thought McAulliffe had been overconfident. Six of six said they thought he had been, and a couple were vehement about it.
These are reasons I view Youngkin’s win as a one-off, and not a sign of a political shift in Virginia. Next year’s legislative elections will prove whether or not I am right.
Ramona Rosario
@Kay: Since a US Senate term is six years and a Presidential term is 4 years, and since 6 is not a multiple of 4, it cannot be the case that US Senator from Ohio Sherrod Brown has only faced election in presidential election years. He was first elected to the US Senate in 2006. He would next have been on the ballot in 2012 and then again in 2018. So far, the only presidential election he has run in was 2012. Granted that 2006 and 2018 were both Blue Wave elections for the House thanks to execrable GOP presidents. So, if your point is that Brown has been lucky to face election at times that were especially good for Democrats, then you are right. I take it that this was the spirit of your comment.