Victory lap - Democrats maintain control of senate!!

Abortion was a huge issue but in many of the races they had just had bad candidates. Bolduc, Finchem, Tudor-Dixon, etc should’ve never been nominated. Oz and Kari Lake are telegenic but even they probably shouldn’t have been nominated. We’ll see what happens with Walker but if they had a Kemp like candidate I get the feeling GA wouldn’t be going to a runoff.

I don’t know whether it’s just loyalty to Trump or that they feel because in Texas they can get away with awful candidates that they believe that this would win but McConnell was right.

 

Strategically, I can't see why any party wants the driver's seat for an inevitable rough recession, but at this point, not having control is likely worse given how folks are starting to openly promote rewriting the rules for power sharing.

 

Control of the Senate is very important. That is why McConnell tolerated Trump even though it's likely he knew things weren't going to end well.

I think of it like this. Congressional Republicans were a decent team who did a late season signing of a star player. This player had a lot of baggage and no loyalty to the team but was what was needed to get the team to the hump. McConnell with only a short window racked up a lot of wins especially in court appointments that will matter for decades.

 

National Review's analysis:

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/the-magnitude-of-the-gop-midterm-debacle/

Mid-terminal

Since we last spoke on Wednesday morning, the 2022 midterms have somehow gotten worse for the Republican Party:

• The GOP blew a golden opportunity to win control of the Senate when it split 50–50. It’s more than fair to wonder if Georgia Republicans will be quite as motivated on December 6, now that control of the Senate is no longer a stake.
• Control of the House is no guarantee, and even if the GOP does win, a majority if 218-220 seats is barely a functioning majority at all.
• Republicans will begin 2023 with fewer governors than this year. They essentially forfeited gubernatorial races in Massachusetts, Maryland, Illinois, and Pennsylvania by running fringe candidates completely unsuited to those states’ electorates. They didn’t come all that close to dislodging Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan — Tudor Dixon lost by almost eleven percentage points! — and fell considerably short in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and New Mexico. We’re still waiting for the final call in Arizona, but right now it looks like Katie Hobbs — the woman who wouldn’t debate! — is going to be the state’s next governor.
• Traditionally, the president’s party loses a lot of state-legislature seats in the midterm elections — around 400! — but this year, Democrats are on course to gain seats. Democrats took control of the Minnesota Senate, both chambers of the Michigan legislature, and the Pennsylvania House.

Considering the national political environment, Biden’s approval rating, the inflation rate, and all the rest, the midterms amount to a debacle for the Republican Party and the cause of limited government. Yes, divided government is likely arriving, but the wide-ranging House GOP agenda is likely to be dramatically curtailed, with the presumptive next speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, having exceptionally limited leverage in negotiations.

Already, the usual suspects are concocting a narrative where their preferred lousy candidates don’t have to change anything; it’s everybody else’s fault but the candidates.

Losing GOP Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters blames Mitch McConnell. Losing GOP Michigan gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon blames the Michigan Republican Party. Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado is in a neck-and-neck race, and she blames the GOP’s Colorado candidates for U.S. Senate and governor.

So much for being the party of personal responsibility.

Masters, Dixon, Doug Mastriano, Mehmet Oz, Kari Lake, Don Bolduc, Herschel Walker, Dan Cox . . . in this narrative, those were all terrific candidates, it’s just that everyone else around them failed. Sure, sure.

...

For those who are inclined to blame vast conspiracies guaranteeing Democratic victories in statewide races, I find it a little odd that the conspiracy forgot to rig the statewide vote for Arizona’s state treasurer, which Republican Kimberly Yee is leading, 55.5 percent to 45.5 percent. The conspiracy forgot to rig the Nevada governor, lieutenant governor, and state controller’s elections, all won by the GOP. The conspiracy forgot to rig the Wisconsin treasurer’s race, won by Republican John Lieber. Honestly, if there was a vast shadowy conspiracy to rig the elections in favor of the Democrats, it is the sloppiest and least-effective one since 2020, where the conspiracy forgot to prevent the GOP from winning a bunch of House seats.

The next complaint is that Democratic victories are attributable to “vote harvesting.” If by “vote harvesting,” you mean that Democrats did everything possible to get their voters to cast ballots early, then yes, you’re right. The irony is that in the pre-Trump era, state and local Republican parties embraced early voting. Every person who cast a ballot ahead of that key Tuesday in early November was one less person you had to worry about on Election Day. Certain states saw GOP leads in early voting in 2010 and in 2014.

 

warrants repeating

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I keep hearing she ran a terrible race, but she won in a Republican state when the last Governor was republican against a candidate as polished as Lake.

So it seems she did it right, what did she do that was so terrible?

 

PA blue Collar would not work in CA or a lot of places.

It was way more than how Fetterman looked, why he won PA.

Nobody is as slicked down as Newsome, so I don't know why you would use him as an example, you run the candidates that fit in with your constituents.

 

Given the margin that Kelly won by I think she could've done better. Flat out refusing to debate Kari Lake made her look weak and against a candidate who hadn't gone all in on MAGA including insulting John McCain's memory things might've looked differently.

Kari Lake is telegenic but she too was a very flawed candidate and so was Masters and Finchem. What's interesting about the AZ results is that other Republican statewide office candidates who hadn't gone in to MAGA won rather handlily.

 

Dave Chappelle IMO tagged Trump correctly - The Honest Liar
"Trump came out of the house and said . . . WE ARE DOING EVERYTHING YOU THINK WE ARE DOING IN THERE! . . . then went right back in and continued to play the game."

Trump told those people .. . Every thing conspiracy/guess/assumption/etc is true
They loved the confirmation bias

Rocket River

 

The GOP could have kicked MAGAts to the curb after 2020, but they let them hang around this is what you get for being spineless.

DD