All-purpose news and politics thread: Two Steps Beyond!(Part II)

[mathew101281]

So would you guys consider tonight a victory? I would, though their are some trends that really concerning to me. We got open white nationalists running for office, and their seems to be little consequences for that among conservatives. But The Dems just took the house and that really matters, for alot of reasons. I feel democrats often are to short sighted, when it comes to political strategy. That's the one thing Republicans tend to have on them, a tendency to play the long game. Your not going to win it all in one move.

[Tazirai]

I’m so bummed by what’s happened in Florida.

I can’t even be happy about anything else.

Racism won the day.

[Amadeus Arkham]

I’m so bummed by what’s happened in Florida.

I can’t even be happy about anything else.

For what it’s worth: Gillum and DeSantis were really close, I’m genuinely surprised Gillum even got as far as he did. He only lost by 1%. They were neck & neck. Florida was never going to turn blue partially because there’s so many older conservative people who are more persistent in voting than the younger more liberal voters but I still think there was still a strong turnout among the democrats there.

[numberthirty]

For what it’s worth: Gillum and DeSantis were really close, I’m genuinely surprised Gillum even got as far as he did. He only lost by 1%. They were neck & neck. Florida was never going to turn blue partially because there’s so many older conservative people who are more persistent in voting than the younger more liberal voters but I still think there was still a strong turnout among the democrats there.

Exactly.

Gillum ran pretty hard "Left", and didn't really suffer for that he did. Pound for pound, he probably did better than O'Rourke did with what was arguably more resources.

That's worth seeing for what it is.

[Tazirai]

So would you guys consider tonight a victory? I would, though their are some trends that really concerning to me. We got open white nationalists running for office, and their seems to be little consequences for that among conservatives. But The Dems just took the house and that really matters, for alot of reasons. I feel democrats often are to short sighted, when it comes to political strategy. That's the one thing Republicans tend to have on them, a tendency to play the long game. Your not going to win it all in one move.

It wasn't a Tsunami but more like a rough and windy river. Democrats tend to not try and get us excited to vote for them, and people like Sinema ( I can't stand her, and normally would want her to lose, but I have to think of her voters.), Donelly who literally shitted on his, McCaskill ran as Trump Lite, Heidtkamp the same.
Gillum should have told Clinton to keep her ass away. Beto did well, but should have went harder after Cruz.

[Mister Mets]

Exactly.

Gillum ran pretty hard "Left", and didn't really suffer for that he did. Pound for pound, he probably did better than O'Rourke did with what was arguably more resources.

That's worth seeing for what it is.

O'Rourke ran against an incumbent in a tougher state.

An advantage for Republicans is that Florida's economy is doing pretty well, which helps them keep the Governor's seat and allows the Governor to beat an incumbent Senator in a mixed year for his party (with results in Florida helping tip the outcome from "bad" to "mixed" for the GOP.)

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-sta...ops-1-trillion

[numberthirty]

O'Rourke ran against an incumbent in a tougher state.

An advantage for Republicans is that Florida's economy is doing pretty well, which helps them keep the Governor's seat and allows the Governor to beat an incumbent Senator in a mixed year for his party (with results in Florida helping tip the outcome from "bad" to "mixed" for the GOP.)

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-sta...ops-1-trillion

That exactly no one would have missed if he had lost.

[wjowski]

So would you guys consider tonight a victory? I would, though their are some trends that really concerning to me. We got open white nationalists running for office, and their seems to be little consequences for that among conservatives. But The Dems just took the house and that really matters, for alot of reasons. I feel democrats often are to short sighted, when it comes to political strategy. That's the one thing Republicans tend to have on them, a tendency to play the long game. Your not going to win it all in one move.

Pretty much. I hear a lot of talk from Dems, here included, about kicking Trump out of the White House when they should really be looking into uprooting all the Brian Kemps.

[Kevinroc]

Pretty much. I hear a lot of talk from Dems, here included, about kicking Trump out of the White House when they should really be looking into uprooting all the Brian Kemps.

Oh, this, absolutely. What happened in Georgia is disgusting.

[Sacred Knight]

There was no national "Blue Wave" but there sure as hell was one here in CO.

[worstblogever]

There was no national "Blue Wave" but there sure as hell was one here in CO.

Iowa. Montana. Some of these Midwestern states, with the exception of Missouri have had a shift. California's going to see itself even Bluer by night's end.

State legislature races have yet to be analyzed for the most part. I've checked on a few, and while the loons aren't getting turfed, things are more significantly blue in most state legislatures from what I've seen.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

So would you guys consider tonight a victory? I would, though their are some trends that really concerning to me. We got open white nationalists running for office, and their seems to be little consequences for that among conservatives. But The Dems just took the house and that really matters, for alot of reasons. I feel democrats often are to short sighted, when it comes to political strategy. That's the one thing Republicans tend to have on them, a tendency to play the long game. Your not going to win it all in one move.

It's going to be a tough post mortem. I think the House is a significant victory. However, it's a victory that I think most called back in late 2016/early 2017. It's kind what you expect to happen when the opposing party wins the prior Presidential election. It will have an impact and give Trump a significant check as far investigations and demanding tax reports. However, the House was already a problem for Trump because they could rarely get the votes on any major initiatives, now it's just more of one.

The downside really is that the Senate wasn't even edging up on being competitive, which was a real hope months back. Sadly while Kavanaugh was an albatross for some House Republicans, he did end up stalling a lot of momentum in the Senate. The Senate will also now still be a major protection for Trump. Also the other downside is a lot of the major races like Beto/Abrams/Gillum that had mainstream enthusiasm went Republican. So you do have to worry that a lot of the enthusiasm will be tempered by it being more of a lukewarm win

I think the ultimate take away is that the Democrats did what was expected and the should have done, but it was not a massive tidal wave they were hoping for and if you were going to make the case that we are in the middle of a historically awful Presidential term, you did not see a historical repudiation of that.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

It wasn't a Tsunami but more like a rough and windy river. Democrats tend to not try and get us excited to vote for them, and people like Sinema ( I can't stand her, and normally would want her to lose, but I have to think of her voters.), Donelly who literally shitted on his, McCaskill ran as Trump Lite, Heidtkamp the same.
Gillum should have told Clinton to keep her ass away. Beto did well, but should have went harder after Cruz.

All things considered, Gillum might have won if Hillary wasn't there. Idk what would make anyone think she would help in Florida.

[InformationGeek]

Steve Pearce has lost his bid for New Mexico Governorship. He gave up his seat to run for it and now, he has nothing. Not bad.

[TheDarman]

So, thoughts on tonight:

It looks like my prediction on how well Democrats would do in the Senate was a little bullish. I had predicted a one seat loss for Democrats. It looks like they will ultimately net lose four seats, provided Nevada and Arizona shake out for them, and Florida goes down the way that we expect. It was a bad Senate map, but I suppose the hope for Democrats was that the Senate map's treacherous nature would be aided by the fact that Trump has a pretty low approval rating heading into the mid-terms. However, they aren't as low as Obama's in 2014, which probably led to an over-estimation on my part that the mid-terms would play about the same way. Plus, overall turnout seemed to be higher here, with the people who are enthusiastic about Trump being really enthusiastic. This leads to an issue of an enthusiasm gap, especially since most of the states on the ballot that were competitive at the Senate level were states that Trump won in 2016 but had Democrat incumbents. It does bode well that Democrats were able to hold on to Wisconsin though, which probably emphasizes a better return to form for them in the Mid-West if they play their cards right.

This will yield a seat count of 53-47, if I'm right on my estimation (might be a little early to be predicting Nevada, Arizona, and Florida but I think that is a fair assumption that it is the Democrats' best case scenario). That's rough heading into a middling election season in 2020. One would've hoped for a better turnout for Democrats in 2016 but it seems that Hillary Clinton dragged down the rest of the Democrats down-ticket and Democrats might be hoping for a strong showing in those mid-terms. Given how well Trump's party did in the Senate with a map favorable to them this time, though, that might bode well for Democrats--in 2022, given the hyper-polarization of the topic. It would play even better for them if Trump somehow manages to hold on to the White House into 2021 and beyond (which I find doubtful but don't consider to be impossible).

Democrats will probably be pushing for one dark-horse candidate in order to even make a strong showing in 2020 to break even in the Senate, hopefully gaining the White House for tie-breaking votes in that case. This would require Democrats to perform well in states moving in their direction. Colorado seems like an easy pick but that would also include Arizona. One might hope to also see a pick-up in Iowa and pushing out a vulnerable Susan Collins in Maine and performing well in North Carolina (which is no guarantee). Of course, that also means Democrats would have to avoid losing a seat. Thankfully for them, they have virtually no vulnerable candidates outside of Alabama's Doug Jones. They would just need to make one solid pick-up elsewhere to make up for that likely loss (or really go all in on trying to secure re-election for him). This is going to be treacherous for Democrats but this election didn't leave them with too many paths to victory in 2020 either, except to try to pick-up seats that had been won by Democrats all the way back in 2008 with Barack Obama's first election.

However, I think that this night has been good for Democrats overall. They took back the House and took many state houses and governor mansions across the country. This will help with redistricting in 2020 to at least give them a say in making fairer maps going forward that will make sure they no longer need ridiculous margins of +5.0% in order to emerge victorious in the House like they needed tonight. Again, Democrats demonstrated themselves nationally competitive on a map that rewards competitiveness on an individual and regional basis. Still, they ought to take the wins where they can get them and being able to have a map favorable enough to win in elections like 2012 (where they frankly should've taken the House back) should be enough to help them in elections like 2022.

Additionally, it seems clear that Democrats may have a political rising star in Beto O'Rourke. Despite his loss, Texas had a wide array of Democratic candidates and initiatives emerging victorious. Additionally, he came much closer than anyone expected, all the while arguing for a platform that was traditionally viewed as too conservative for Texas. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see him elevated to the national stage as a presidential contender, especially given how well he performed without the help from PAC and SuperPAC money--which will be a huge issue for more progressive candidates like Warren and Sanders to hit other contenders with. I think his career will be one to watch with great interest.

It's going to be a tough post mortem. I think the House is a significant victory. However, it's a victory that I think most called back in late 2016/early 2017. It's kind what you expect to happen when the opposing party wins the prior Presidential election.

I actually disagree here. The House map has been gerrymandered to hell in order to favor Republicans. FiveThirtyEight said that Democrats needed a 5.0+% lead in the popular vote to even narrowly scrape by with a win. It was a national blue wave from my understanding. It just wasn't demonstrated in the regions that were having Senate races this time. And, unfortunately, might not be demonstrated in races that will be held next time either.