2022 Midterm Election MEGATHREAD

[OttoVonBismarck]

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.

My thesis has been that Trump was a really bad candidate and it was an ominous sign that in an election they carried the presidency failed to carry a single senate seat in the 25 most republican states, and lost one in the other 25. They repeated that performance in 2022.

If we repeat the "winning" performances of 2020 and 2022 the result is going to be a 53 seat republican majority.

Truly "winning" over the long haul means taking senate seats from republicans in trump 2020 states and holding more of your own.

Trump was President for 4 years, one of the hardest things to achieve in electoral politics anywhere in the world. Your concept of bad candidate may need some more exploration. He was also a sitting incumbent with an incredibly passionate base--something most politicians would covet.

I don't really know what you mean by "truly" winning. You win elections or you lose them. Democrats won the Presidency, retained the House, and won the Senate in 2020. They lost the House and retained the Senate (gaining one seat) in 2022--gaining seats in the Senate is generally seen as good in a midterm when your party holds the Presidency, as is muting House seat losses. The goals for 2024 are obviously to win the House back, retain the Senate, and retain the White House. There's no "true" or "false" wins.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Your scenario where the GOP rejects Trump in the 2024 primaries (which I am highly skeptical of),

I repeat my offer earlier...I'll bet anyone here any amount of money (may need to get wife's approval if we get much over $10k) to be held in escrow until the primary is over that Trump is not the nominee.

I already bet on elections on websites, no reason to do side bets with scumbags.

[Barrister]

Trump was President for 4 years, one of the hardest things to achieve in electoral politics anywhere in the world. Your concept of bad candidate may need some more exploration. He was also a sitting incumbent with an incredibly passionate base--something most politicians would covet.

The key thing to remember about 2016 was that Hillary was an equally bad candidate...

[OttoVonBismarck]

A guy who put a gun to the head of his wife, beat his kids, pay for his mistress' abortions and the Dems, with one of their best, win by a few % points.  Well, 2.8% is much better, but at the time of writing, it was less than a 1% gain.

He's also a guy who played football for the Georgia Bulldogs and won the Heisman Trophy, had a hugely successful pro NFL career, and had enormous name recognition in Georgia.

Correct--and keep in mind this, if you're a partisan Republican in America you largely consume news and media that reinforces your beliefs, not ones that challenge them. A lot of Republican voters aren't watching CNN or reading the New York Times doing deep dives on all these Herschel Walker exposes. In fact, they "hear about them" through conservative media that paints them as fake news and just more dredged up slander.

Meanwhile they are being fed stories that Raphael Warnock assaulted his ex-wife during acrimony over their separation and has all kinds of other scandals associated with him. Those appear to largely be bullshit charges, and the claim that he assaulted his ex-wife appears to be based on an assertion that he ran over her foot (with a car) during an argument, but appears to have been if not totally debunked, never substantiated meaningfully.

If anyone here ever actually interacts with conservatives in real life you'd see a lot of this--when I have discussions with my mostly Republican relatives about the many bad behaviors of the modern GOP, the response is always a long list of very bad things about Democrats (they groom kids for abuse, they hate women, they hate God, they want abortion up to the last second of pregnancy etc etc.) If you say those things enough you start to half-believe them, and compared to that it's easy to overlook that Herschel Walker is not well spoken, and focus on his positives--that he does have a pretty inspiring personal story of coming from extreme poverty and getting a lot of success in life.

[alfred russel]

Trump was President for 4 years, one of the hardest things to achieve in electoral politics anywhere in the world. Your concept of bad candidate may need some more exploration. He was also a sitting incumbent with an incredibly passionate base--something most politicians would covet.

I don't really know what you mean by "truly" winning. You win elections or you lose them. Democrats won the Presidency, retained the House, and won the Senate in 2020. They lost the House and retained the Senate (gaining one seat) in 2022--gaining seats in the Senate is generally seen as good in a midterm when your party holds the Presidency, as is muting House seat losses. The goals for 2024 are obviously to win the House back, retain the Senate, and retain the White House. There's no "true" or "false" wins.

I've been focused on the Senate which is where the problem for democrats is going to reside. You are talking about changes in seats, but that is a function of a baseline set in the 6 years prior.

In 2020 there were 35 seats up and republicans won 20 of them.

In 2022 there were also 35 seats up and republicans also won 20 of them.

The net effect of this is that the democrats have 51 seats because they totally dominated in 2018. That class is up again in 2024 and if 2024 has a repeat of 35 seats up with republicans winning 20, republicans will not only have a majority but will be flirting with a filibuster proof majority. I don't think that will happen but i've been harping on this for a few years and won't give up now.

[alfred russel]

Your scenario where the GOP rejects Trump in the 2024 primaries (which I am highly skeptical of),

I repeat my offer earlier...I'll bet anyone here any amount of money (may need to get wife's approval if we get much over $10k) to be held in escrow until the primary is over that Trump is not the nominee.

I already bet on elections on websites, no reason to do side bets with scumbags.

Which websites?

[Valmy]

Viper has a point.  The fact that 48% of the population voted for a man who claims to have multiple personalities is deeply concerning.

They say the same thing about Pennsylvania voting for Fetterman.

[The Minsky Moment]

A guy who put a gun to the head of his wife, beat his kids, pay for his mistress' abortions and the Dems, with one of their best, win by a few % points.  Well, 2.8% is much better, but at the time of writing, it was less than a 1% gain.

had a hugely successful pro NFL career

More successful for the team that traded him than the one that got him.
Not totally surprising that he forgot that he played football in the 1990s.  Fans for some of teams he played for then would like to forget that too.

[Barrister]

A guy who put a gun to the head of his wife, beat his kids, pay for his mistress' abortions and the Dems, with one of their best, win by a few % points.  Well, 2.8% is much better, but at the time of writing, it was less than a 1% gain.

had a hugely successful pro NFL career

More successful for the team that traded him than the one that got him.
Not totally surprising that he forgot that he played football in the 1990s.  Fans for some of teams he played for then would like to forget that too.

I really didn't pay much attention to the NFL in that era.  I didn't even know he played for the Vikings at one point!  It was just that, for not paying attention to the NFL, I still knew the name Herschell Walker - which is saying something.

[alfred russel]

I really didn't pay much attention to the NFL in that era.  I didn't even know he played for the Vikings at one point!  It was just that, for not paying attention to the NFL, I still knew the name Herschell Walker - which is saying something.

It makes a lot of sense you would know the name. He basically led to the formation of the Cowboys dynasty by being overrated to the degree they were able to trade him for a zillion draft picks that led to the creation of the dynasty's core.

If you want to tell the story of the Cowboys in the 90s, there are probably four players that are essential to the story: Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, Michael Irvin, and Herschel Walker. Only Walker didn't play for them.

[The Minsky Moment]

His numbers were pretty similar to Ernest Byner, who played in the exact same era.  Byner didn't win the Heisman and didn't do any McD's ads coming out of college though so less name recognition.
Walker had one huge year for Dallas, which they cannily cashed in for a huge draft pick haul.

[Valmy]

I think you 100% missed the point I was getting toward. I think everyone here did. It started with hoping to get a general acknowledgement that Herschel Walker had a chance to win the election, and with that I wanted to make a point unrelated to politics.

I wasn't worried Walker would win, though I thought it would go this way. A runoff followed by a 1 or 2% Democratic win. Because that was what happened last time and I didn't think Walker brought anything to the table that would change that.

I really didn't pay much attention to the NFL in that era.  I didn't even know he played for the Vikings at one point!  It was just that, for not paying attention to the NFL, I still knew the name Herschell Walker - which is saying something.

It makes a lot of sense you would know the name. He basically led to the formation of the Cowboys dynasty by being overrated to the degree they were able to trade him for a zillion draft picks that led to the creation of the dynasty's core.

If you want to tell the story of the Cowboys in the 90s, there are probably four players that are essential to the story: Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, Michael Irvin, and Herschel Walker. Only Walker didn't play for them.

Smith also being one of the guys the Cowboys drafted because of the Walker trade.

[Valmy]

His numbers were pretty similar to Ernest Byner, who played in the exact same era.

A man famous for one and only thing: His touchdown in Super Bowl XXVI AND NOTHING ELSE

[Syt]

[OttoVonBismarck]

I think if those exits were right Warnock would have gotten around 48% of the vote, so I suspect the exits are a little off--my guess is they overstate Walker's support with white voters by several points; and given results in 2020 I do think those Walker numbers are a little high for Georgia white voters.

The voter file gets updated soon which can give some better data than exit polling.