2022 Midterm Election MEGATHREAD

[Eddie Teach]

Georgians don't particularly care about Walker's NFL career.

[Valmy]

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.

That data is from the November election since it includes the third party guy I think.

[Josquius]

So... White men actually are a problem (tm)

[garbon]

So... White men actually are a problem (tm)

White people?

[Sophie Scholl]

Grifter Queen Kyrsten Sinema has pulled her affiliation with the Democrats and is now an Independent. 
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Official announcement of Twitter

[Sheilbh]

Again - I get Manchin. He makes sense, his views are pretty coherent and political.

I have no idea what's going on with Sinema

[OttoVonBismarck]

I've seen a lot of decent political analysis over the last two years that suggests Sinema really just isn't very good at politics and makes bad decisions. Her position is a lot different from Joe Manchin--Joe would actually be accepted into the Republican party because he's pro-life, anti-environment and has a long reputation as being conservative. He could likely switch parties and keep his Senate seat if he really wanted. Joe has been able to hold on to his seat because conservative West Virginias who used to be conservative Democrats have kept voting for him because they've always voted for him. Sinema is Senator solely because of activists in Arizona--largely progressives, who really rallied behind her in 2018. Catering to conservatives was never going to get her re-elected because it wasn't what got her elected in the first place. Progressives agreed to back her because they felt as a moderate she had the best chance of winning a general--but more mainstream Democrat Mark Kelly winning twice in two years by about the same margins Sinema did showed they didn't need her anymore.

Sinema, she has too many positions that make her totally unacceptable with Republicans, polling has shown her as being one of the least popular current Senators because both Arizona Democrats and Republicans mostly dislike her. She has certainly generated some fans on the GOP side with her behavior, but not "fans that are going to vote for her instead of a Republican." If she has any sort of experienced political staff, she would know that going Ind. doesn't really protect her from the challenge from Ruben Gallegos on the left--the Democrats just aren't going to stand down in Arizona in '24 and let her run unopposed like they do with Angus King (I-ME) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT); she likely can rob the Democrats of that seat because of splitting the ticket, but she will probably pull sub-10% of the vote which won't be a viable showing to continue having any relevance in elected politics afterward.

[Valmy]

Yeah her leaving is a disaster for 2024 as it probably means the Republicans pick up a seat if she runs for re-election. Damn one step forward, two steps back. But it kind of sounds like she will continue to basically still be a Democrat, to the extent she currently is, so I guess it won't be a problem until then.

[Sheilbh]

It feels like there's also an element of almost cosplay about it. As well as those example, given that it's Arizona I can't help but wonder if in her own mind/self-perception she has been the McCain of the left: a little difficult and slightly independent.

What seems missing is any sense that in all of those cases that comes from fairly deep principles/political views and required a bank of political trust and capital from your voters. Instead we just get the empty performance of being a maverick with none of the substance.

[DGuller]

Is recall a viable option?  Maybe she can be gotten rid of before the 2024 season that way.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I don't believe any Federal offices allow recall, while the constitution gives management of Federal elections over to the states in which they occur, the states are bound by how the U.S. Constitution defines those offices and AFAIK it has never allowed a recall for Congress / Senate. It would at the very least require a law being passed at the Federal level, but it would have to pass constitutional muster, which given some of the text of Article II I doubt it would.

[The Minsky Moment]

Again - I get Manchin. He makes sense, his views are pretty coherent and political.

I have no idea what's going on with Sinema

She's been pretty consistent throughout her political career, socially liberal and moderate to conservative on everything else; in the pocket of the financial industry (she has always been on the financial/banking committees in the House and Senate).

She's run into problems because polarization has raised the political temperature generally and the razor thin difference in the Senate focused a glaring spotlight on her. 

[OttoVonBismarck]

Sinema's positions may not have changed much--but what is important is she wasn't a U.S. Senator until 2018 and that happened almost solely because Arizona progressive Democrats were willing to rally behind her. She assumed she could piss those voters off without consequence and that just proved to not be true at all, which has functionally ended her career as a U.S. Senator.

Manchin has a very different situation in that West Virginia progressives (who are a far tinier portion of the vote than in Arizona) have always loathed him, but he has long familial and personal ties to both moderate and conservative voters in his state--he was a popular Governor, and had been in West Virginia politics a major figure for most of the 1990s as a party power broker in the legislature. He also comes from a storied West Virginia political dynasty that goes back to the 1950s. Manchin is the rare sort of politician who has regularly been endorsed by both his state's Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO, and has always had significant support from mining and other interests in his state. Manchin catering to the right isn't performative stupidity--it is actually how he views the world because he's a conservative guy who made his nut as a coal broker, and it is absolutely a requirement to get elected in West Virginia.

Sinema massively misread the room in Arizona and failed to understand the coalition that elevated her from obscurity into the U.S. Senate and what she would need to do to hold on.

[jimmy olsen]

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?

A republican win by about that margin.

[celedhring]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/27/new-york-congressman-elect-george-santos-admits-lying-about-college-and-work-history

This is amazing 

New York congressman-elect admits lying about college and work history
Republican George Santos, elected to represent parts of Long Island and Queens, admits 'embellishing résumé'

Tue 27 Dec 2022 09.49 GMT
A New York Republican congressman-elect has admitted that he lied about his job experience and college education during his successful campaign for a seat in the US House.

George Santos, who was elected in November to represent parts of northern Long Island and north-east Queens, told the New York Post: "My sins here are embellishing my résumé. I'm sorry."

He added: "I campaigned talking about the people's concerns, not my résumé ... I intend to deliver on the promises I made during the campaign."

The New York Times raised questions last week about the life story that Santos, 34, had presented during his campaign.

The Queens resident had said he obtained a degree from Baruch College in New York, but the school said that could not be confirmed.

On Monday, Santos acknowledged: "I didn't graduate from any institution of higher learning. I'm embarrassed and sorry for having embellished my résumé."

He added: "I own up to that. ... We do stupid things in life."

Santos had also said he had worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, but neither company could find any records verifying that. Santos told the Post he had "never worked directly" for either financial firm, saying he had used a "poor choice of words".

He told the Post that Link Bridge, an investment company where he was a vice-president, did business with both.

Another news outlet, the Jewish American site The Forward, had questioned a claim on Santos's campaign website that his grandparents "fled Jewish persecution in Ukraine, settled in Belgium, and again fled persecution during WWII".

"I never claimed to be Jewish," Santos told the Post. "I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was 'Jew-ish'." (       )

Santos first ran for Congress in 2020 and lost. He ran again in 2022 and won in the district that includes some Long Island suburbs and a small part of Queens.