2022 Midterm Election MEGATHREAD

[Valmy]

Herschel Walker is a fine tax paying Texan sir! 

Anyway we lost the election in the House and that sucks, but we barely won it in 2020. Local conditions in New York and Florida ultimately sunk us. Got to do better in 2024. I am certainly not saying everything is great and we are kicking ass, just that Warnock winning re-election was a good result. If somebody had told me in 2019 that we were going to control both Senate Seats in Georgia in 2022 I wouldn't have believed them and currently that is the difference in the Senate.

And we have a hell of a mountain to climb in 2024 in the Senate as well, we desperately need both of those seats.

[Barrister]

Herschel Walker is a fine tax paying Texan sir! 

Anyway we lost the election in the House and that sucks, but we barely won it in 2020. Local conditions in New York and Florida ultimately sunk us. Got to do better in 2024. I am certainly not saying everything is great and we are kicking ass, just that Warnock winning re-election was a good result. If somebody had told me in 2019 that we were going to control both Senate Seats in Georgia in 2022 I wouldn't have believed them and currently that is the difference in the Senate.

And we have a hell of a mountain to climb in 2024 in the Senate as well, we desperately need both of those seats.

See... 2024 is why you guys should've been nicer to Joe Manchin.

Just trying to figure out how bad 2024 is actually... besides Manchin, the Ds are defending senate seats in Ohio, Montana, and Arizona.  And if you're looking for vulnerable R seats - you're stuck looking at Missouri (Josh Hawley) Texas (Ted Cruz) and Florida (Rick Scott) - none of which feel like they're trending D.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I think Dems likely hold AZ, and I can't imagine them keeping MT or WV; I won't speculate on OH. The trends in OH are bad for the Democrats but Sherrod Brown has a weird voter base in that state and has defied odds before so until I see polling in the general election season in '24 itself I won't feel too strong on prognosticating on that one.

I would not favor Democrats to flip any Republican seats in '24.

The Dems suffered some bad beats in winnable races the last few cycles which will continue to trouble them. Ron Johnson was beatable this year but a progressive black candidate was his opponent, one linked to the defund the police narrative in a cycle where that was deeply unpopular (Ron Johnson has been beatable his entire career--he is the beneficiary of a string of close election wins and mismanaged chances by the Democrats.) Susan Collins was polling horribly throughout 2020 but I think the campaign against her from an establishment centrist Democrat in Maine just never seemed to get wind under its sails. I think Collins was probably beatable too.

Then in NC I think Tillis was beatable--North Carolina has had Democrats winning statewide seats there and is pretty competitive, but his challenger had an extramarital affair leak a few weeks before the election and he himself was a candidate of a divisive primary that alienated parts of the left in NC. In this tight environment the close losses, especially where you can imagine a reasonable alternative scenario where you'd have pulled out wins, will haunt you.

Bill Nelson in FL is another good example--FL is a state where just 2 years after Nelson lost it looks pretty reasonable and unlikely FL elects a Democrat to the Senate in the next generation, but the year Nelson lost it was by a very narrow margin--and he is widely viewed as having ran a horrible and anemic campaign. It was being actively complained about while it was going on that he wasn't putting the work in, was poorly deploying his resources etc. Given the narrow margin of his loss and how poorly he ran his campaign, it seems close enough that you can imagine the Democrats "stealing one" there and keeping Nelson's seat; they almost certainly would have lost it regardless 6 years later because Florida has drifted too far red, but it would have been nice mortar for their wall in the Senate for that 6 years.

[Valmy]

See... 2024 is why you guys should've been nicer to Joe Manchin.

Agreed. And now we can be now that we have a cushion. Manchin played ball as far as he could, now he is off the hook.

Sinema is now the problem but there is no need to be nice to her.

[Valmy]

I think Dems likely hold AZ, and I can't imagine them keeping MT or WV; I won't speculate on OH. The trends in OH are bad for the Democrats but Sherrod Brown has a weird voter base in that state and has defied odds before so until I see polling in the general election season in '24 itself I won't feel too strong on prognosticating on that one.

I would not favor Democrats to flip any Republican seats in '24.

Montana seems to be trending our way for some reason, not enough to think we can win but it is interesting.

[Barrister]

I think Dems likely hold AZ, and I can't imagine them keeping MT or WV; I won't speculate on OH. The trends in OH are bad for the Democrats but Sherrod Brown has a weird voter base in that state and has defied odds before so until I see polling in the general election season in '24 itself I won't feel too strong on prognosticating on that one.

I would not favor Democrats to flip any Republican seats in '24.

AZ is a wild card because I suspect Sinema would be primaried.  AZ if a toss-up but has been friendly to Dems recently.

MT and WV - the incumbents (Manchin and Tester) have held both seats for quite awhile now.  Just looking at the numbers they've been narrow wins, but both have won three straight elections.  Agree Ohio is trending R pretty strongly (though not so strongly as MT or WV), so who knows.

It is a Presidential year, so that will have a huge effect on the down-ballot races.

[alfred russel]

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.

[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.

[Barrister]

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 hope Trump is not the nominee, and I see positive signs he may not be the nominee, but I would not make that bet.

[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?

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.

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.

[Razgovory]

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.

There is something wrong with you.

[viper37]

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.

 

This is an extremely ignorant post. 

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.

[Razgovory]

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

[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.

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.

[PDH]

Hey!  Herschel Walker is as qualified as Tommy Tuberville!