U.S. Politics, November 2022: “I don’t know, you hear the same things I do”

can't believe he's finally become increasingly isolated

A Republican close to President tells me Trump has been increasingly isolated in recent days. Frustrated, avoiding major public appearances

— Robert Costa (@costareports) May 10, 2017

flat circle

i had come to terms with the likelihood that the GOP would take a decent house majority and then use it to pursue extremely annoying, if ineffective, benghazi-style investigations for the next 2 years, along with impeachment. but with a majority of only a few votes, i'm hopeful that even just the presence of a few non-orc GOP-reps would be enough to prevent the dumbest stuff from happening. and with such a tiny majority, on either side, any vote that requires unanimous single-party consent in order to pass will be difficult because it's difficult to get 218 people to all show up to the same place at the same time

Newspapers across the country highlighted a record-breaking election for Dems in the states! This is the first time since at least 1934 (and likely ever) that the president’s party hasn’t lost a state legislative chamber in a midterm year, much less flipped 3 chambers blue. pic.twitter.com/lSeGbyfP8j

— Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (@DLCC) November 11, 2022

Cortez Masto now only down 798 votes.

lol I just made $15 on a $20 investment in two hours just putting money in PredictIt for Dems to take the House.

Senate is going to be Dem.

With Catherine Cortez Masto consistently winning the mail ballots in Nevada by a two-to-one margin, Democrats might just be one large Washoe County mail ballot drop away from holding the Senate

— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) November 12, 2022

Gesundheit

This has probably already been said on this thread or elsewhere, and it may be too early to say (hubris), but actual voting seems to have worked against predictions that may have deliberately cast as pessimistic or relegated to the sidelines causes most dear.

been sorry

I wondered if the pre announcement of a wave was counterproductive apart from as incentive to vote against.

Like if one is setting out to destroy democracy surely one shouldn't gloat about it beforehand. Shades of the Bond/Marvel villain, like?

Well remember villains never think they’re the villains. But maybe more accurately, a slew of these useless candidates made the calculation that they could present themselves as heroes to people who didn’t think they themselves were the villains. This was not the wisest move.

xxxxps to Karl

The biggest fear about a Republican House is that they were going to use the debt ceiling and the threat of a US default to force Biden to agree to draconian cuts to Social Security and/or Medicare. They openly said this during the campaign and I wish the Dems made more of it!

yeah, i think they might still refuse to raise the debt ceiling (yet again). much more difficult with a slim margin, of course, but i believe that the last time they voted on it, october 2021, every single GOP house rep, all 209, voted against raising the debt ceiling. so...wouldn't be surprising if they go for it (yet again), especially considering that i'm not sure what else republicans are going to be working on in the house other than just being as awful as possible.

uuuuugh, not all 209. all 206. it was 219-206, according to my ultimate insider source on business, https://www.businessinsider.com/all-house-republicans-voted-for-us-to-default-on-debt-2021-10

Young Latino voters were a crucial voting bloc in slowing down the so-called Republican red wave in the 2022 midterm elections, according to early exit polls.

While Americans are still waiting to learn which political party will control the House and the Senate next year, initial data is showing that younger Latino voters, despite party identification, are boosting Democrats amid highly contested races.

The NBC News Exit Poll found that 68% of Latino voters under 30 voted for a Democratic House candidate on Election Day, even though only 43% of them identify as a Democrat. Thirty percent of young Latino voters favored the Republican House candidate.

When it comes to party identification, 37% of young Latino voters identify as independent and 20% identify as Republican, according to NBC News exit polls. Additionally, 41% of young Latino voters identify as liberal, while 34% identify as moderate and 25% as conservative.

The NBC News Exit Poll also echoed some analysis from CIRCLE, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University, which studies young voters.

Young Latino voters under 30, alongside young Black voters, showed stronger support for Democrats on Election Day compared to young white voters, according to the analysis by CIRCLE. Sixty-eight percent of Latino youth and 89% of Black youth voted for a Democratic House candidate. Among white young voters, the vote was 58% for Democrats.

"In close races, the big margins from young people, from youth of color, from young Latinos, can be really influential. Sometimes they can even be decisive," Alberto Medina, CIRCLE’s communications lead, told NBC News. "They can really either put a candidate over the top or keep them in the race.".

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/young-latino-voters-may-blunted-republican-red-wave-rcna56800?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma

Pls do remember its a lot easier to be an opposition party WRT the debt ceiling stuff. Dems are very good at voting to raise it every time to the poibt where it becomes v clear who’s obstructing

I really think that the student loan forgiveness thing bought Democrats a lot of goodwill from a crucial constituency.

some interesting stuff here: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/12/us/politics/midterm-elections-officials.html

particularly this:

Complicating matters in the Senate was the fact that Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, and Mr. Trump are not on speaking terms. After several first-time, Trump-backed candidates won primaries, Mr. McConnell complained over the summer about his party’s “candidate quality.”

Among his targets was Arizona’s Blake Masters.

During the summer, Steven Law, the head of a McConnell-aligned super PAC, told the financier Peter Thiel, who had spent millions supporting Mr. Masters, that Mr. Masters had scored the worst focus group results of any candidate he had ever seen, according to people familiar with the conversation.

Mr. Law’s group later canceled all of its Arizona television reservations. On Friday evening, Mr. Masters lost as the race was called for his Democratic opponent, Senator Mark Kelly.

and this:

In the Senate, the two top Republicans charged with winning the majority — Mr. McConnell and Senator Rick Scott, chairman of the Senate Republican campaign arm — seemed at times to be battling each other as much as the Democrats.
Mr. Scott had pledged a hands-off approach to primaries; Mr. McConnell preferred interventions. Mr. McConnell wanted 2022 to be exclusively a referendum on Mr. Biden; Mr. Scott put out his own agenda, which included putting Social Security on the chopping block, a position the White House used to hammer Republicans.

Nowhere was the dysfunctional relationship more apparent than in New Hampshire.

There, Mr. McConnell’s aligned super PAC had spent millions to stop Don Bolduc, a right-wing candidate, from winning the primary. He won anyway and was quickly embraced by both Mr. Scott and the super PAC.

Then, on Oct. 7, Mr. Scott’s cash-strapped Senate committee abruptly pulled all its remaining money from New Hampshire. Mr. Law, the super PAC strategist, was confounded by the party’s decision.

“Evacuated — without explanation,” Mr. Law said. “I’ve never seen that before, absent a scandal.”

The party said other groups were filling the breach, including Mr. Law’s super PAC. But two weeks later, Mr. Law canceled his remaining ads. Suddenly, it was the party that was confounded — and sure enough, the party committee reversed itself to go back on the air days later.

Mr. Law could only laugh. “I don’t know what to make of it,” he said.

The back-and-forth crystallized an almost comical set of misfires and wasted resources — and the larger problem in which Senate Republicans were so often at cross-purposes.

On Tuesday, Senator Maggie Hassan, the Democrat, comfortably defeated Mr. Bolduc.

New House math:

Dem called/likely (212), incl. #AKAL, #CA09, #CA21, #CA47, #CA49, #CO08, #ME02, #OR06
GOP called/likely (217): incl. #CA03, #CA27, #CA45, #CO03, #NY22, #OR05
Toss Ups (6): #AZ01, #AZ06, #CA13, #CA22, #CA41, #WA03

Dems need to run the table on Toss Ups for 218.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 12, 2022

put another way

If we take these trends seriously, then the Dem path looks something like this:
Hold the 214 where they're ahead
Flip CA13/AZ6
Flip CA22, which takes no stretch of the imaginable
Flip... something else: luck in OR5/NY22? surge in long-shot CA27/CA45? maybe CA41 reverses?

— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) November 12, 2022

OR5 is my district. It doesn't look possible to flip atm. We gave about $400 to the Dem candidate, first to knock off fucking Kurt Schrader in the primary, then for the general. Then the national GOP apparatus came in and spent a few million on attack ads, the contents of which were the usual cartoonish nightmare fuel for low-info voters, painting the Dem candidate as a monster - over and over and over again. They do this because it works. :(

OR5 looks unlikely but not out of the question

Outside of California, things are a little better for the GOP. In general, late mail in white CDs has been going well for them.
But Dems could flip AZ6, and... could really use OR5 somehow, too pic.twitter.com/qvOpBN1jpr

— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) November 12, 2022

(one potential upside of gerrymandering: voters want to defeat the odds / or do the actual counts make that impossible? but how could anyone allow that?)

Which CA districts are potentially vulnerable in 2024?

same as 2022?

are you fucking kidding me? getting email opens by making it look like a friend is about to k*ll themselves??? pic.twitter.com/jKxMnojRAQ

— mr. pussy (@nuns_on_film) November 12, 2022

There was one I got from the Bernie presidential campaign in 2020 that had the subject line “salivating”.

BernieFans

xxp Yeah, that's getting awfully close to an actual abuse tactic

Meanwhile, a small clutch -- like, per the thread, only 100 -- of protestors today outside of the Maricopa vote count. (That number alone shows the difference between two years ago and now, especially on a weekend.) Anyway, best post:

Lol everyone’s accusing eachother of being feds pic.twitter.com/NGyGmtGFJZ

— Tess Owen (@misstessowen) November 12, 2022

Cortez Masto now up by almost 5,000 statewide in Nevada's Senate race. https://t.co/f7YRTTzqcY

— Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) November 13, 2022

she's predicted to be the winner now

it's over

BREAKING: Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto wins re-election to the U.S. Senate in Nevada, NBC News projects. https://t.co/VcK8qzC128 pic.twitter.com/sDgaKpyY1F

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) November 13, 2022

what a relief

now get 51 next month.

judges

now Lake just needs to lose

yes

judges

definitely a bright spot. the admin has done very well so far

Biden has appointed judges at a faster pace than his predecessors (including Trump) even with a 50-50 Senate, and has built a judiciary that is more diverse in terms of professional experience (such as engagement on defendants' rights and civil liberties) as well as race/gender https://t.co/GvLIbgK7Wj pic.twitter.com/ooyxQwJzli

— 🤔Jake Laperruque🌻 (@JakeLaperruque) November 13, 2022

Divided States of America. 50-50 is a relief?

In this context? Very much so.

but it's so... sad

of all of the things in America that are sad, that is way down the list

that doesn’t even make top 10 of “sad” things

If Warnock wins and Dems get to 51-49 that will be even better for a number of reasons

Three huge differences between a 50-50 and 51-49 D majority:

1) Having a majority on each Committee versus power sharing/deadlocks requiring discharge petitions;

2) No single D Senator can hijack/block nominations; and

3) Ds can have *two* members absent and still hold votes.

— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) November 13, 2022

Also good because many of them are a billion years old and likely to drop dead any day.

true for both sides, as well, which reminds me that Grassley, 89, coasted to an easy victory