2022 Midterm Election MEGATHREAD

[The Brain]

Also apparently Trump is threatening De Sanctis with releasing negative info about him if he runs against him for the GOP nomination in 2024. 

Isn't it common knowledge that DeSantis is a Republican?

[garbon]

Restricting political action to only voting every cycle isn't much more than apathy either.

I'm not sure on the extent to which widespread, increase civic participation would be a net positive. Do you have an examples in mind?

 

Are you seriously questioning the benefits of an increase in civic participation?

I think we always hold it as a truth but in line with what OvB said, I'm not sure that more day-to-day involvement in politics would be a panacea.

[jimmy olsen]

DeSantis won reelection in a landslide while some of Trump's most prominent candidates lost, so the fight between them is going to get heated

[FunkMonk]

Seems the Rs barely made a dent. The Trumpy candidates got their asses handed to them. Rs should still take the House but with such a small majority it might be impossible for them to get anything passed.

Meanwhile, DeSantis has turned Florida into Texas. 

Apparently the Democrats took complete control of the state government of Michigan. First time in 40 years

Seems all the ballot measures to protect abortion access won as well.

[FunkMonk]

https://twitter.com/MikeSington/status/1590284025234862081?t=1Z7pMA42QNENCXoRSV-vEA&s=19

Fox News on the election results: "This is an absolute disaster for the Republican Party."

 

[Josquius]

I haven't done a deep dive yet but a lot of commentary along those lines of things going very well for sane people.
Looking at the numbers it still looks pretty nasty for the dems? Or are there enough sensible republicans left to keep things going?

I wonder whether we might have a situation similar to the UK with brexit where in much of the country you can't publicly express you're against it for fear of being a social pariah (in America, with added guns); you're expected to tow the Trumpist line even if you can see its a load of bollocks and come election time, put that into action.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Nah, this night is unabashedly good for the Democrats across the board. America has an almost psychotic electorate, prone to voting against the party in power with an almost pathological zeal.

Bill Clinton who sailed to reelection in 1996, and was a fairly popular President throughout, lost 54 seats in the 1994 midterms.

This is an unpopular Dem President, one who I know very few people viewed with enthusiasm in 2020. He was basically the choice because everyone felt the entire rest of the Dem primary lineup were too far left for the country, so we get a guy who turned 80 in his first two years as POTUS. This is an economy that while not as bad as the pundits make it out to be, is struggling with inflation and gas prices, two things that are almost always fatal to the party in power.

Losing control of both Houses in the midterms is an entirely normal, and fairly routine part of our system. What is unexpected is polling was indicating a significant chance of a very large "red wave", meaning potentially 40 seat Republican majority in the House. Instead, the Democrats if I had to guess go on to barely losing the House and the Senate remains genuinely too close to call, with four races that may take a few days to determine and one of those four will likely have to be ran again as a runoff.

One might wonder "okay, but the Democrats still lost, isn't this the end?" Well, how you lose matters, right? If the Republicans had a dream of holding Biden hostage with the debt limit to force deep cuts to Medicare and Social Security...that scheme is immensely harder to pull off if you have say, a 5 seat majority in the lower chamber. Simply because fucking with the debt ceiling is seen as deeply undesirable even by some traditional Republican constituencies (Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce style Republicans.) Such a small Republican majority undermines McCarthy's ability to do really bad things like this because you'll likely have enough moderate Republicans to agree to support the Democrats in Congress on votes like the debt ceiling.

The way a lot of races went down some of the worst and most extreme Trumpy candidates very seriously underperformed. DeSantis meanwhile significantly overperformed. If you are Trump who was expecting to bully your way to a coronation, the nomination now seems at least like it could be seriously contested by DeSantis. Primarily because the country itself is suggesting it will continue to vote Democrat even when fundamentals predict it wouldn't if the Republicans are going to continue embracing Trump.

While it will be weeks before we have the kind of data that will tell us anything definitively, it seems entirely likely that Generation Z is going to emerge as a stronger political force, earlier, than anyone had expected. They broke harder for the Democrats than I believe that age cohort has ever done--+28 D is devastating for the future of the Republican party. Particularly when it appears this spread is over fundamental issues like abortion rights on which the Republicans have few options for moderating their positions without imploding their own coalition.

The GOP message continues to find resonance with the boomers and the small numbers of people alive from prior generations. Every two years more of those people leave the world and more of the youngest generation matriculate into voting age. This process was expected to take 10 years or more which meant even if it eventually worked to the Democrats advantage, it left the Republicans a large gap of time with which to dismantle our democracy. Now that is in doubt. With numbers like these it is reasonable to conclude a Trump lead Republican ticket in 2024--when, by the way, the electorate will almost certainly be younger and more diverse (midterm electorates are always older and whiter), will quite potentially be a serious weakness to the GOP.

This is good for reasons beyond blue team red team shit--it is good because for the craven operators in the Republican party who have embraced the party's worst instincts and ideas because of popular wisdom doing so was necessary for election now have a new path. If you actually see some level of moderation of Republican candidates in future cycles that is huge for the future of the country. In our system the idea of one party going away was not realistic, so actually seeing evidence that the dangerous party may need to consider moderating to protect its electoral chances is an extremely good indicator.

Probably the biggest take away from this is the Democrats seem poised to have a fighting chance to continue to resist the fascist take over of the country. It is still, depressingly, going to be a close fought battle whose outcome is uncertain--but this night's results at least suggest it won't be a blowout.

[The Minsky Moment]

Good news is that there a solid majority of Americans prepared to come to vote to defend democratic norms.  Bad news is that there is a solid 40%+ minority ready and willing see those norms torched if they don't get their way.  That's still Weimar Germany levels.

[The Brain]

If it's any consolation Weimar didn't last long.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I think a big issue is most of the country doesn't really understand democratic norms. We have a very uninformed electorate and many who don't understand the principles on which democracy functions. This is not just a Republican problem, I think even a significant number of Democrat voters are fairly ignorant / ambivalent of this side of thing. I think abortion very likely helped the Democrats a lot this year, and general distaste for Trump as an individual, I unfortunately don't think Bill Maher and other liberal scolds warning about democratic norms explains much of this (just my guess.)

[garbon]

Feels like it has awfully similar feel to Der Führer

[Caliga]

Seems all the ballot measures to protect abortion access won as well.

Yeah, I'm shocked Kentucky voted that abortion ban constitutional amendment down.  Figured it was a foregone conclusion it'd win.

[Caliga]

Also, to me these results say that if Trump wins the Republican nomination in 2024, he's pretty much guaranteed to lose the general.  I assumed he would even before last night, but I feel like that's solidified now.

[FunkMonk]

https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/1590341634709131265?t=LwT5CJNx7wvXcinf1TFc1w&s=19

"Trump is livid" and "screaming at everyone," after last night's disappointing midterm results for GOP, according to a Trump adviser. The adviser went on to slam the former president's handpicked contenders: "they were all bad candidates." "Candidates matter," the adviser said.

This adviser said it's unlikely Trump would delay his expected presidential announcement because "it's too humiliating to delay." But the adviser said there are too many unknowns at this point.

lol

[Caliga]