2022 Midterm Election MEGATHREAD

[Admiral Yi]

It's not at all ignorant.

[Valmy]

Warnock is going to win easily. I didn't have much anxiety about this one. Huge to have a 51-49. This means we only need 49 Democratic Senators to pass anything.

50.7% - 49.3%.
Not exactly a stunning victory.

I mean, considering the kind of guy he was facing.  Had Warnock faced a semi-decent Republican he might as well lost that run off election.  This is not that encouraging for Dems, imho.

I don't expect that to be the final margin, most of the remaining votes are heavily Dem. And this is the third staight Senate election the Dems have won in Georgia in almost the same way against three different opponents. In a state in the deep south where we were getting regularly pummeled a short time ago.

This is a very good result. The Republicans are a well funded and ruthless political machine. And the Dems have won three straight Senate elections on their turf. We need things to trend our way and start to win other statewide elections in Georgia and North Carolina...but this is good.

[Valmy]

It's not at all ignorant.

Well it's true that the sickness of the Republicans leads them to nominate candidates like Walker. That might make things slightly easier but it also makes the stakes much higher.

[Habbaku]

Warnock is going to win easily. I didn't have much anxiety about this one. Huge to have a 51-49. This means we only need 49 Democratic Senators to pass anything.

50.7% - 49.3%.
Not exactly a stunning victory.

I mean, considering the kind of guy he was facing.  Had Warnock faced a semi-decent Republican he might as well lost that run off election.  This is not that encouraging for Dems, imho.

Warnock faced a "semi-decent Republican" last time and won by a razor-thin margin as well. Jon Ossoff did the same.

It's very encouraging for Democrats. Victory isn't defeat.

[jimmy olsen]

Warnock is going to win easily. I didn't have much anxiety about this one. Huge to have a 51-49. This means we only need 49 Democratic Senators to pass anything.

50.7% - 49.3%.
Not exactly a stunning victory.

I mean, considering the kind of guy he was facing.  Had Warnock faced a semi-decent Republican he might as well lost that run off election.  This is not that encouraging for Dems, imho.

Raphael Warnock
Democratic Party
51.4%
1,817,465

Herschel Walker
Republican Party
48.6%
1,719,868

A 2.8% victory in Georgia seems to be quite good.

[OttoVonBismarck]

2022 is generally positive for the Democrats for the reason that in just the normal course of politics with an average President, you almost always suffer bad losses in midterms. In fact, I think excluding what is considered a fluke due to the "rally around the flag" effects of the post-9/11 midterms, there was 1 other midterm in the last 40 year where the Presidents' party didn't suffer really big losses. The GOP only winning the national House vote by around 3% and actually losing ground in the Senate, with not an "average" President, but arguably one who is below average (I mean in terms of popularity / approval, I am not assessing Biden's performance in office), is a damn good outcome.

On a bigger view of it, it means what many of us (myself included) feared in the further collapse of Democrat votes in many important swing states appears to have been arrested and even reversed. After 2016 there were justifiable worries that MN, PA, and MI which were key parts of Democrat national viability were going to continue drifting more red than blue. The logic was the Democrats had already seen purple rust belt states like Ohio drift to solid red and these other similar profile states were in danger of doing the same thing. That appears to not be happening, if anything the Democrats have grown margin in all three states, in Michigan for example they have done so substantially--now controlling the entire government.

Looking at the 2024 map it starts to be obvious how important this is, if Biden is still pretty solid in PA and MI, the Republican map just gets really hard. If they flip GA and AZ--their two closest losses, Biden still wins 276 EVs. If they lose all three of their closest results (that adds Wisconsin to red), they switch to losing the election, but the data out of Wisconsin is relatively positive--a fairly unpopular Governor (D) won reelection by around 3.5 points. A pretty bad Democratic Senate candidate lost to Ron Johnson by around 1%. Wisconsin will be tightly contested, but there is reason to believe Democrats remain strongly competitive there. (Note that unlike a lot of swing states Wisconsin has almost no "trendline", it has had a series of close Presidential votes, some less than a 1% margin, going back to 1988, which is a little unusual.)

How you feel about all this may just be a reflection of where you stood on all of this in an emotional sense. If you're someone who has been waiting since 2016 (or even 2010) for the "crazy wing" of the Republican party to finally suffer a massive defeat and be driven into the bowels of the earth never to be heard from again--well that is a fairy tale. That wing of the Republican party represents a very loud, very angry, very passionate ~35% of our country and they aren't going anywhere fast--about the only good thing about them is they trend old and are going into the ground at a higher rate than more reasonable political demographics, but that isn't a fast process. Once the "dam broke" so to speak and this wing of the party started to succeed in toppling establishment Republican leadership, they were never going to go back to passively voting for establishment Republicans who don't represent their angry, extremist views.

If you want to look for positive on that side of the aisle, really bad extremist candidates appear to now be hurting the Republicans chances of attaining power. This will and should have an important reformatory effect where you will start to see more Republican donors, powerbrokers etc work harder to try to keep these candidates from winning primaries, and even in some cases declining to offer them much support in their general elections. Over time this could help drift the GOP back toward reasonableness. Again, if you're wanting that Waterloo moment where the bad guy is driven off the field of battle in dramatic fashion and sent away to exile, that just isn't happening, but the process of slow correction to our civil society looks pretty much like this. Importantly, for that process to continue you need results like this to continue regularly every 2 years, and that is far from certain.

[alfred russel]

Raphael Warnock
Democratic Party
51.4%
1,817,465

Herschel Walker
Republican Party
48.6%
1,719,868

A 2.8% victory in Georgia seems to be quite good.

Really? What would you have considered to be an average result?

[alfred russel]

OvB, the problem is that this is now two straight election cycles that Democrats have failed to win any senate seats in states that Trump won in 2020 and lost 1 seat in a state that Biden won. If this is "success" then the party is headed to be a persistent minority in the Senate (Biden won 25 states and Trump 25, so winning in Biden states like Georgia isn't winning on enemy ground, it is just holding serve).

But the bigger danger is that Trump picking really bad candidates covered up major problems. Nate Cohn in the NYT found that MAGA republicans had a swing in republican vote of +0.7% compared to 2020. However, other republicans had a swing of 5.6%.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/16/upshot/trump-effect-midterm-election.html

You can see this in Georgia. Walker was a MAGA candidate, basically a political creation of Trump, and lost. There were 8 other statewide races in Georgia and Republicans won all of them (the closest race was actually the senate race).

Trump is unlikely to be the nominee in 2024. Him losing may cause the base of republicans to split as Trump throws a temper tantrum. The economy could also improve. Lots could happen. But the result is ominous for democrats if republicans can unify behind someone other than trump.

[celedhring]

Raphael Warnock
Democratic Party
51.4%
1,817,465

Herschel Walker
Republican Party
48.6%
1,719,868

A 2.8% victory in Georgia seems to be quite good.

Really? What would you have considered to be an average result?

Biden carried the state by 0.2%

[alfred russel]

Raphael Warnock
Democratic Party
51.4%
1,817,465

Herschel Walker
Republican Party
48.6%
1,719,868

A 2.8% victory in Georgia seems to be quite good.

Really? What would you have considered to be an average result?

Biden carried the state by 0.2%

How much do you know about Herschel Walker?

[OttoVonBismarck]

OvB, the problem is that this is now two straight election cycles that Democrats have failed to win any senate seats in states that Trump won in 2020 and lost 1 seat in a state that Biden won.

That's better than losing more seats. The Democrats were at serious risk of losing the Georgia seat and the Arizona seat, both of which were viewed as possibly only being won in 2020 because Trump was so unpopular he hurt the Republican brand. Both were guys who were elected to fill out partial terms, and both won reelection in competitive races this year.

Flipping Toomey's seat in Pennsylvania was also unabashedly good.

Not flipping Johnson's seat in Wisconsin is akin to the failure to beat Susan Collins in a winnable Maine seat in 2020.

I don't really ascribe much to your core thesis--that if the Republicans win a state in the electoral college it means they will always win it in the Senate. I think you are absolutely going to see less ticket splitting than you once did, and that bodes badly for a party that can't win or compete in at least 25 states. But that isn't where we are right now--both parties won 25 states in 2020. That broadly suggests both parties will remain competitive in the Senate. Obviously you want to get rid of "enemy" Senate seats in states that are going blue, but sometimes you lose elections. The Democrats are not going to win every election and that isn't doom and gloom for them--the Republicans aren't going to win every election either.

Like I said, I think people's reactions to this are going to be based on what their baseline expectation was. My baseline expectation was a very poor Democrat showing, including 30+ seat loss in the House, and probably losing the Senate. Instead they locked in several competitive Senate seats for another 6 years. It would have been ideal had they picked off Ron Johnson, but they didn't. In 2024 they are very likely to lose the Senate because I think the WV Democrat seat is a guaranteed flip to Republican and I think the Montana Senate seat is a near-guarantee. But I also don't view that as maybe as dire as you do. If we're working from an assumptions Democrats can never lose an election, never lose either House of Congress or they're "doomed", then well--they're doomed. We have a two party system, a polarized country, and a strong geographic sorting of political partisans. The Democrats are going to lose elections, and that is never going to change.

I'm not someone who thinks it is that big of a deal for party changes to happen in government in "normal" operations of our society. The post-2010 GOP and particularly the 2016 and onward GOP represents a unique threat to the country, to me the goal isn't the GOP never winning elections again because that isn't a realistic goal. The goal is to see the GOP tone things down so that them winning elections doesn't make us feel like the republic is in peril. I see a lot of good indicators that we may have hit a peak of anti-democracy and extremism in the GOP in 2020 and we're starting to see what will likely be an agonizingly slow decrease in such over the next 10 years.

Your scenario where the GOP rejects Trump in the 2024 primaries (which I am highly skeptical of), doesn't worry me at all--in fact it encourages me. The very fact that the GOP could reject a Trump nomination would be an unabashed move in the right direction.

[Valmy]

Raphael Warnock
Democratic Party
51.4%
1,817,465

Herschel Walker
Republican Party
48.6%
1,719,868

A 2.8% victory in Georgia seems to be quite good.

Really? What would you have considered to be an average result?

The last few results in statewide Georgia elections? You know...the ones that we lost? The one that led to this runoff? The two Senate races from 2020? The other fucking elections in Georgia? What else are we supposed to consider an average result in Georgia? Elections in Idaho?

How much do you know about Herschel Walker?

People vote for the party more than the person these days. The fact that Walker was a doofus helped Warnock win by 2.8% instead of 2% like last time or 1.2% like Ossoff did over Perdue.

You can see this in Georgia. Walker was a MAGA candidate, basically a political creation of Trump, and lost. There were 8 other statewide races in Georgia and Republicans won all of them (the closest race was actually the senate race).

Yeah? No fucking shit. This is how it has been in Georgia for awhile. Which is why this, and the other two Senate races, was a good result.

But the bigger danger is that Trump picking really bad candidates covered up major problems. Nate Cohn in the NYT found that MAGA republicans had a swing in republican vote of +0.7% compared to 2020. However, other republicans had a swing of 5.6%.

Right. It is called being an incumbent and running in a difficult environment with inflation and shit. The fact that we managed comparable results to 2020 is pretty impressive. But yeah the other point is the Hillary Clinton "why aren't we winning by 50 points?" Well maybe the Republicans are a powerful and formidable opponent? The right wing all around the western world is resurgent in a big way? That is the major problem and we will see if the tired old Democratic party is ultimately up to the challenge.

But you are moving the goal posts all over the place. We are talking about this one election in the context of the last election. You are bringing up big decades long trends and telling us they are not acceptable. Well sure. Reality sometimes sucks, but we have to deal with it.

[OttoVonBismarck]

FWIW one of the big challenges the GOP will have in confronting the Trump nomination is the assumption that the hardcore Trumpers will unify behind someone who challenged and defeated Dear Leader in a primary, one which he will almost certainly never concede and will continually say was stolen, is far more questionable than the reverse. We already know almost all establishment Republicans will toe the line and fall in behind a Trump nominee, we do not know that Trump will play that role if DeSantis beats him in the 2024 primary, and there is good reason to suspect Trump who is one of the most spiteful people to ever be on the public stage would dedicate immense resources to undermining DeSantis and the GOP if they dare to reject him.

I think a lot of people know exactly this, which will make it harder for DeSantis to win to start with because some people will actively fear supporting him for this exact reason.

I think DeSantis as the nominee with Trump behind him would be a strong, strong candidate and I struggle to imagine Biden beating him. but DeSantis with Trump regularly taking potshots at him for the entirety of the election? That seems pretty disastrous to me for the GOP.

ETA: One of the big reasons all the guys Trump beat coalesced behind him in '16 is they all genuinely believe in the larger Republican political project and are desperate to maintain their spot in the party. Trump has no such concerns, he clearly does not care about the GOP at all outside of how it relates to his personal standing, and he has no interest in elected office outside the Presidency and his position in the party is secured by his legions of foaming-at-the-mouth imbecile fans, who aren't going anywhere. Trump has almost no natural incentive to be a good boy if he loses the '24 nomination.

[celedhring]

Raphael Warnock
Democratic Party
51.4%
1,817,465

Herschel Walker
Republican Party
48.6%
1,719,868

A 2.8% victory in Georgia seems to be quite good.

Really? What would you have considered to be an average result?

Biden carried the state by 0.2%

How much do you know about Herschel Walker?

Less than I know about Donald Trump, but we aren't certainly talking model citizens here.

[OttoVonBismarck]

There is not much reason to expect a big shift away from one of the two parties.

In an era of extremism, non-extremists in both parties are going to start to feel less comfortable with their own party. It is absolutely the case that a good chunk of Georgia Republicans were uncomfortable with both Donald Trump in 2020 and Herschel Walker in 2022. However, the good majority of those people still ended up voting for Trump and Walker. [A small minority ended up not, ticket-splitting in the November General or even staying home in the special election, which is how Walker '22 lost, Trump '20 lost, and Brian Kemp won handily in '22.]

This is because despite growing extremism making moderates uncomfortable, the growing extremism increases negative partisanship. While there are plenty of Democrats who are uncomfortable with figures like AOC, and Republicans who are uncomfortable with figures like Doug Mastriano / Donald Trump / Herschel Walker etc, their negative partisanship (i.e. hatred of Democrats) overcomes that and just leads to strong "lesser of two evils" voting behavior. In theory if the Democrats could plausibly sell themselves as a centrist party that just happened to have some leftists in the fringes, it might pour cold water on that negative partisanship and lead to a return of the pre-1994 era when the Democrats enjoyed strong "natural" majorities in most elections and particularly in House and Senate elections. That is highly unlikely because there is a huge media network and political network in the GOP built to fight against any cooling of that negative partisanship. This is why Democratic attempts to moderate frequently have limited success--moderating is one step, getting exacerbated moderates on the other side to acknowledge it is harder, and if they still primarily consume Republican media they will be prone to viewing Democratic moderate candidates as no different than the socialists / leftists they hate (and worse still, some of these compromise candidates will not only fail to attract disaffected Republicans, they will inspire fewer progressive Democrats to bother voting.)

There really isn't a magic answer, with a lot of caveats both moderation attempts and play to the base attempts can and do work in this environment. I really see little reason to think the future of the country is a long period of political slog--but I see indicators that at least the guys who aren't in favor of disbanding democracy have a good fighting chance in that slog.