Is it true that very few Trump-backed candidates won last night?
I hate to say it, but I think it's time to move on from this man.
He can draw the crowds still but it seems like the Left has successfully made him appear toxic and I'm not liking how he seems to not get along with DeSantis.
That's all we need in 2024 is for our side to be split and fighting each other instead of whomever the Dems pick.
November 09, 2022, 10:15 AM
P220 Smudge
quote:
Originally posted by konata88: If future elections look dismal, does this mean we're taking steps toward civil war?
I think maybe five years, tops.
quote:
Originally posted by konata88: I'm a little depressed this morning now. I was hopeful but didn't really expect any change in this state. But seeing other states wavering, I'm not sure what to think. I've been looking forward to leaving this state and moving someplace free. But given the trends, I don't know where that would be anymore. Perhaps I should plan to make my last stand where I am.
I just got here. Imagine how I feel, thinking I had moved someplace free.
______________________________________________ Endeavoring to master the subtle art of the grapefruit spoon.
November 09, 2022, 10:17 AM
parabellum
You guys are somethin' else.
November 09, 2022, 10:20 AM
BMR
quote:
Originally posted by PASig: Is it true that very few Trump-backed candidates won last night?
I hate to say it, but I think it's time to move on from this man.
He can draw the crowds still but it seems like the Left has successfully made him appear toxic and I'm not liking how he seems to not get along with DeSantis.
That's all we need in 2024 is for our side to be split and fighting each other instead of whomever the Dems pick.
I couldn’t agree more. It’s like having an old QB that is past his prime and a younger one is waiting to take over. We’ve loved you for what you’ve done, but our loyalty is to the team. That’s coming from a lifelong Packers fan.
November 09, 2022, 10:21 AM
parabellum
Blame Trump. Right on cue. Do you think all this is that simple?
November 09, 2022, 10:24 AM
SIGnified
I agree that this is a complicated situation… Begs for solid introspection.
Exit polls seem to show that 1. abortion was a much bigger deal to women than people acknowledged, and that 2. GenZ 100% all in for dimmerwit freemium pledges.
I think the analysis will be interesting.
But I still think there’s just a ton of economic pain to be brought upon people who have never lived through it before.
"Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay - and claims a halo for his dishonesty." ~Robert A. Heinlein
Election Takeaways: Missing Republican Wave, Trump’s Bad Night, DeSantis’ Win
Saleha Mohsin and Laura Davison - 7h ago
(Bloomberg) -- It was an election packed with surprises.
Republicans were counting on resounding wins in the House and Senate because of voters listing stubborn inflation and a looming recession at the top of their concerns.
Instead, as the night unfolded, President Joe Biden’s party proved to be far more resilient than even the Democrats had reason to hope, as issues such as abortion rights and a general distaste for more extremist candidates playing a big part.
With power expected to be split across the two parties, Washington is entering a period of policy-making gridlock. Republicans will likely take at least the House, but by a much smaller margin that expected, while Democrats have a clear path to keeping control of the Senate.
Here are the key takeaways.
No Red Wave Democrats staved off the complete shellacking that some polls had projected as a possibility leading into Tuesday. “It’s definitely not a Republican wave -- that’s for darn sure,” GOP Senator Lindsey Graham said on NBC late Tuesday.
A smaller Republican House majority spells a tough couple of years for Kevin McCarthy if be becomes the next House Speaker. He will have to navigate a fractious and sometimes irreverent caucus that is eager to wield the power of the majority and has little appetite to compromise with Biden.
A stronger-than-anticipated night for Democrats also gives them more leverage going into the last two years of the current administration. The so-called lame-duck session is when the two parties try to cut deals on a wide range of policy issues, including the child-tax credit, energy permitting, business tax cuts and potentially the debt limit, preventing Republicans from bumping up dangerously close to economic default next year.
The result of a key governor race offers clues to what the campaign for president in 2024 will look like.
Former President Donald Trump wanted to solidify his grip on the Republican party, betting that the candidates he had personally endorsed (and backed his unfounded claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him) would do well and make him the undisputed nominee for 2024.
But two things got in the way. One, several of these so-called election deniers fared poorly. In one of the hardest-fought contests in the Senate, Democrat John Fetterman defeated celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz (backed by Trump) in Pennsylvania.
Two, Ron DeSantis won a second term as Florida governor by a landslide. That paves the way for him to challenge Trump for the candidacy. Indeed, that wry smile in response to the “two more years” chants at his campaign event spoke volumes.
Trump recognized the threat and has launched a warning shot to his rival: “If he runs, he could hurt himself very badly,” Trump said in an interview Monday with Fox News and other outlets. “I would tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering.”
Voters in both parties seemed clear-eyed about the impact of inflation on the economy. It was the top issue in exit polls, with 79% saying it had caused a hardship for their family, according to network exit polls. One in five said it was a severe hardship.
Inflation -- which, along with the economy in general, regularly tops the lists of voter concerns -- is the highest in a generation, eating into paychecks. And yet many of those voters didn’t seem to hold Biden or the Democrats responsible: 42% said they still trusted the Democratic party to handle the issue better.
Republicans and Democrats have each painted dramatically different pictures of the economy’s health. The GOP put the soaring cost of living at the center of their campaigns, blaming Biden and his party. Meanwhile Biden and his party have focused on an unemployment figure that is at its lowest in decades and an ongoing hiring boom that has kept-up consumer spending.
For markets, a divided government has traditionally proved a boon because it blocks any major legislation that risks roiling the outlook for the economy. Investors have already been crushed this year by the Federal Reserve’s campaign to curb inflation. Gridlock that hobbles Democrats’ ability to pass major fiscal measures would remove one potential reason for Fed Chair Jerome Powell to raise interest rates even further.
Republicans Win on Economy While Democrats Lean on Abortion | The nearly half of voters who identified the economy as the most important issue selected Republican candidates two-to-one Republicans Win on Economy While Democrats Lean on Abortion | The nearly half of voters who identified the economy as the most important issue selected Republican candidates two-to-one
Support for Abortion Rights
Abortion rights were on the mind of many voters, particularly women. People from Michigan to California overwhelmingly voiced their support for abortion rights at the state level after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision to roll back federal protections.
Heather Bastian, a 42 year-old living in Garrison, New York, said her number one issue is abortion. “I do not want our state government to slip into controlling my body,” she said.
Michigan and California will now amend their constitutions to add the right to choose to have an abortion and use contraceptives. In Vermont, voters added an even broader right to “personal reproductive autonomy.”
The success of the state-level abortion protections demonstrate the widespread disconnect between the public and the Supreme Court, which erased 50 years of precedent in its June decision to leave abortion rights decisions to the states. The support for these ballot measures in a wide variety of states is likely to spur similar efforts in coming years in additional jurisdictions.
November 09, 2022, 10:27 AM
P220 Smudge
quote:
Originally posted by SIGnified: But I still think there’s just a ton of economic pain to be brought upon people who have never lived through it before.
That's what I told my wife this morning: "With everything the economy has done with Democrats in charge of the government at every level, I guess people just haven't suffered enough yet. More's coming. Here we go."
______________________________________________ Endeavoring to master the subtle art of the grapefruit spoon.
November 09, 2022, 10:28 AM
Keystoner
I think it's too early to blame or give up on Trump. Remember that speech he gave at Mt. Rushmore? It was the best. If he can summon that attitude, and inspire us followers for the next two years, we can turn this all around. Let's see how his speech goes next week.
Year V
November 09, 2022, 10:29 AM
vinnybass
Here's what you're getting in PA.
"We're all travelers in this world. From the sweet grass to the packing house. Birth 'til death. We travel between the eternities."
November 09, 2022, 10:32 AM
P220 Smudge
quote:
Originally posted by Keystoner: I think it's too early to blame or give up on Trump. Remember that speech he gave at Mt. Rushmore? It was the best. If he can summon that attitude, and inspire us followers for the next two years, we can turn this all around. Let's see how his speech goes next week.
This is just campaign Trump: He absolutely savaged all opponents, real or perceived, until they weren't opponents, and then he had nothing bad to say about them. The same people crying about what he said about DeSantis last night are the same people who cried when he was going on about Little Marco or Low-Energy Jeb. When it's time again to play for keeps, I hope they decide to grow a fucking spine and line up for the man like they should have done in 2016 and 2020.
______________________________________________ Endeavoring to master the subtle art of the grapefruit spoon.
November 09, 2022, 10:32 AM
YellowJacket
quote:
Originally posted by Keystoner: That second debate with Biden—that's the Trump we need for the next two years.
we need the Trump that is retired and silent. he's not the only problem but he is one of the problems. he is in it for himself, even cheering that certain republicans lost races last night.
I'm gonna vote for the funniest frog with the loudest croak on the highest log.
November 09, 2022, 10:35 AM
SIGnified
quote:
Originally posted by Keystoner: I think it's too early to blame or give up on Trump. Remember that speech he gave at Mt. Rushmore? It was the best. If he can summon that attitude, and inspire us followers for the next two years, we can turn this all around. Let's see how his speech goes next week.
Funny enough this is what I keep telling my wife.
Everyone in 2016 kept counting Trump out every news break, debate or 30 days or or or; yet he survived each one to come back stronger.
"Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay - and claims a halo for his dishonesty." ~Robert A. Heinlein
November 09, 2022, 10:37 AM
wishfull thinker
quote:
Originally posted by SIGnified: snip... But I still think there’s just a ton of economic pain to be brought upon people who have never lived through it before.
12% mortgage rates come to mind
_______________________
November 09, 2022, 10:40 AM
Chris17404
quote:
Originally posted by PASig: Is it true that very few Trump-backed candidates won last night?
I hate to say it, but I think it's time to move on from this man.
Ya think?
November 09, 2022, 10:40 AM
bigwagon
If Trump's approach was successful, we would have seen a red tidal wave. We didn't. That means Republicans need to try a different approach. I do think part of the issue was that he backed some bad candidates and the anti-Biden sentiment was not strong enough to overcome that in a few key races.
November 09, 2022, 10:45 AM
Appliance Brad
quote:
Originally posted by YooperSigs: No real surprise for me regarding Michigan. Stupidity reigns. The big cities control the votes. I would say that is the case in AZ too.
Arizona is really 3 cities Phoenix, tucson and Flagstaff) and then the rest of it. Not many people in "the rest of it"
__________________________ Writing the next chapter that I've been looking forward to.
November 09, 2022, 10:50 AM
BBMW
Maybe because Kemp came off as more rational and competent?
quote:
Originally posted by BigSwede: How the hell did Kemp get 2.1 million votes and Herschel Walker only has 1.9 million?
November 09, 2022, 10:56 AM
Appliance Brad
Michigan opportunity to move Right was forever quashed yesterday.
Not only did the Dems retain control of the Governor's mansion, they now control both bodies of our legislature as well as a one seat majority on the state Supreme Court. Add to that our Secretary of State and AG.
Voters were also fooled by the financial disclosure promise of Proposal 1. Term limits are now expanded to 12 years in either the House or the Senate or a combination of both. Previously, one could only serve 6 years in the House or 8 in the Senate for a total of 14. The power of the incumbency is HUGE.
I will likely never see a Republican majority again in my lifetime.
I expect a flurry of anti-gun legislation come this January
__________________________ Writing the next chapter that I've been looking forward to.
November 09, 2022, 10:57 AM
PASig
quote:
Maybe America Hasn’t Suffered Enough The red wave washed ashore as a ripple, though Republicans did make progress.
by SCOTT MCKAY The American Spectator November 9, 2022
It’s late as I write this, though not late enough to know how things will turn out. But there are things we can safely say just after midnight Eastern time on Tuesday as the vote counts roll in and the races get called. One of them is that for all the anger we’ve seen evidence of from Republican and independent voters, it seems pretty clear that channeling it into positive action is something beyond the reach of the GOP’s leadership and political class.
Is that a failure of that leadership? Well, yes. It is. And we’ll spend weeks and months analyzing the fact that what was supposed to be a red wave election was more like a sea spray that might be just enough to take majorities in the House and Senate by the tiniest margins … or perhaps not even that. And we’ll be analyzing it within the context of the opportunity the GOP had in 2022 — and the party simply blew it.
This should have been a massive wave election. Given the low job approval ratings of the sitting president in his first midterm election, and given the favorable generic congressional ballot numbers, this should have been a plus-five wave in the Senate and a plus-30 wave, or bigger, in the House. It also should have resounded down to statehouses, and yet the GOP turns out, apparently, not to have been able to beat abysmal Democrat gubernatorial candidates like Katie Hobbs, Kathy Hochul, and Gretchen Whitmer.
There are so many utterly horrid Democrats who will remain in office after this election that it should be offensive to average Americans. It’s tempting to fall into the trap of believing there must be wholesale corruption in American elections, but the problem with going there is that there must be proof before it’s actionable.
Until some is presented, we’ll have to deal with something very unpleasant. Namely, here’s the truth that we on the Right are going to have to accept: the American electorate in 2022 is awful. And the axiom about the cycle that involves weak men and tough times is a real thing, and we are in the worst quadrant of that cycle. We are still in the time in which weak men make tough times. We have not gotten to the point where tough times make tough men.
But get ready because those tough times will do their work. Perhaps for quite a long while. Somehow, the Democrats and their pals in the legacy media managed to convince a large swath of Americans that we’re not in a recession. Four in five Americans are unsatisfied with the economy, a large majority seem to be furious about gas prices, people say crime is out of control, and yet barely half of the country — if that — are motivated to unload the horrid leadership that caused those issues.
Look at the state New York is in, and yet the voters there overwhelmingly chose to retain Hochul? But gas prices will skyrocket thanks to the Biden administration’s running out of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The true shortage of both crude oil and refined petroleum products will soon become unmistakable. And it’s going to be a cold winter in America, and a rough time coming.
You only think it’s rough now. You have no idea how bad things can get. When the diesel fuel runs out and the trucks don’t move, and the shelves go empty, and the layoffs come, perhaps you’ll think of 2022 as the good times. The responsibility of the American public was to deliver an utter rebuke to the Left and the Democrat Party that the Left runs, and the 2022 election was not a rebuke.
How you can perform so manifestly awfully in running a country like the United States of America over the past two years and not suffer a rebuke from the American public is mystifying. But the Democrats will perform even more manifestly awfully over the next two years.
The trouble is that the Republicans are also performing manifestly awfully, and if the voters were only willing to deliver a mild rebuke, at best, of the Democrats, they do appear willing to deliver one to the Republicans as well. The voters took a look at the Republican Party and they don’t prefer Mitch McConnell to Chuck Schumer — or, if they do, not by a lot. They don’t prefer Kevin McCarthy to Nancy Pelosi — or, if they do, not by a lot. And they didn’t see much of anything out of the GOP that they thought was worth voting for, even if they thought the Democrats were no better.
This isn’t a new problem. It’s the reason Donald Trump rose as the party’s surprise nominee in 2016 and why he’s the leading figure within the party still. Republican voters don’t even like the Republican Party, and Trump was seen as somebody who could reinvigorate it.
To some extent, he did. As underwhelming as things are right now, it would be infinitely worse if the Bush Republican brand was still dominant within the party.
The problem is that too many people who would be GOP voters think of it as a Bush Republican Party. And if the numbers on Kari Lake and Blake Masters persist in Arizona, those people might be right. It may be that shaking things up in the GOP upsets too many of the complacent, “compassionate conservative” crowd who prefer a slow descent into irrelevance for the party to a vigorous fight to the end — not just for the Republican brand but for the country as founded.
Right now, McCarthy has to be seen as a liability atop the GOP House leadership. Steve Scalise was always a better choice and Scalise is going to have to make a decision he’d like not to, which is to step over his friend and lead. Because, if he won’t, somebody else who can make a compelling case for conservatism will necessarily step over both of them.
The worst result of the 2022 midterms, however, is that we will be stuck with Mitch McConnell as the leader of the GOP in the Senate for two more years. Without Masters and Don Bolduc and Herschel Walker (who might yet win) and Mehmet Oz, it’s going to be hard to find enough Republicans in the Senate who’ll vote against him. Though Trump is demanding he go, to be replaced by Rick Scott of Florida. I doubt that would be the case, though it should happen that way. Scott isn’t going to have the votes within the caucus to unseat McConnell, barring something unforeseen.
But Trump didn’t play the net positive role he should have, and that might be the real takeaway. Mehmet Oz should not have been the GOP nominee in Pennsylvania. It should have been David McCormick. Everybody knows that now. McCormick would have beaten the ridiculous John Fetterman easily. Oz lost while performing similarly to Trump in 2020.
I’m not going to fault him for backing Masters. Masters was objectively the most interesting of the candidates in Arizona, and I wouldn’t give up on him as someone with a future in politics if he wants it. And I can’t understand Kari Lake’s underperformance, except she must have come on entirely too strong, particularly late in the race — but even then, in a competitive state, it’s impossible to fathom her losing to Katie Hobbs.
But when Trump rejoiced in Joe O’Dea’s loss in Colorado on Election Night, it was a rotten look. It’s also a rotten look for Trump to have thrown jabs at Ron DeSantis, who is the single brightest light in the Republican Party. DeSantis held Charlie Crist under 40 percent, or he was doing so last I checked, and won reelection by 20 points.
Objectively, it’s clear that DeSantis is the future of the GOP. The talk about Lake as potentially overshadowing him can now be put to bed.
What we’ll have to discover is whether, rather than the future of the party, DeSantis must become its present. Because what he’s done in Florida in turning it definitively from purple to red in just four years is the single most impressive thing in Republican politics.
Frankly, it might be just about the only impressive thing in Republican politics now. Republicans should study DeSantis and emulate him. He’s the standard. And as America turns bleak over the next two years, he might be the only inspiration the party has left.
