US Politics: In Through the Out Door

[Fez]

17 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

For 2020,  Florida should be put in the R camp, and The Democratic strategy to regain the WH should be as if it doesnt exist. Will free up a lot of resources that wont go into that sinkhole (which happens to be scientifically accurate as that state is sitting on a bed of limestone)

I only partly agree. It should be assumed that Florida will go for Trump, but the state can't be abandoned. Its too close a state to just give up, especially with the felon voting rights amendment, and if up-ticket turnout drops it'll sink a least a few of the Democratic House districts. As of now, it does look like the 2020 path to beating Trump is to hold the Clinton states and take back PA/MI/WI. But that's a narrow path with no room for error, and WI did not swing as far back towards Dems last night as MI and PA did. There need to be pushes in other states, and FL is looking better than OH (not sure anyone besides Brown can win there anymore).

Also, if Dems didn't spend in Florida, it would free up Republican resources too.

 

[Mexal]

8 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

The damage that worries me most will be the court-packing that Republicans can engage in with solidified Senate control. There won't be any more votes hanging on Murkowski or Collins any more. We must all pray for the continued good health of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But even beyond concerns about the Supreme Court, the federal judiciary has been the only part of government that has done anything to limit Republicans' worst impulses on immigration and voter suppression. The Federalist Society will continue to send their vat-grown ideologues into the judiciary and tilt the courts for decades.

To be fair, neither Collins nor Murkowski actually stopped any of the court packing so at the very least, we don't have to worry about being disappointed yet again. It was going to happen whether McConnell had 50 votes + Pence or 54.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Idk why anyone would be losing faith in America. We just elected a dead pimp!!!

[SeanF]

6 minutes ago, DMC said:

Oh, and that they banned dog racing.

Why?

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

I’m not sure why so many of you are down. We won the House, and the was the chief priority. We lost a few more seats in the Senate than I expected, but it doesn’t matter given that we took the House and that Kavanaugh was confirmed on a 50-50 vote. Florida was a gut punch, no doubt, but Kansas offsets it big time in my book.

A couple reasons. 

One is that basically none of the "We LOVE THIS PERSON" races won. Democrats want a person to rally around and love - and Gillum, Abrams, O'Rourke all lost, and not only lost but lost despite poll numbers looking good (at least in FL and GA). That hurts. 

Another is that the Senate was a big loss. To put this in context, it hasn't happened in this century that a single Dem incumbent senator was flipped in an offyear; this year, at least three and potentially 5 were flipped. That's huge. Not only that, but this result - either a 54 or 55 majority - means that the Dems are unlikely to retake the senate for a while, and that means no check on the judicial destruction for likely 4 years or more.

[Fez]

Speaking of 2020, I took another look at the senate map and *ouch*. I really hope Tester holds on, because if he doesn't and Republicans have a 55-45 majority, I don't see the seats for a Democratic take back.

Colorado is the clear top target. Though with the expanded majority, McConnell could let Gardner take as many free votes as he wants to try to establish his "moderate" bona fides.

Maine is another top target only if Collins retires, otherwise its almost certainly a Republican hold.

Arizona will be a target, but with Sinema probably losing last night, its far from a guaranteed win.

Iowa will be a target, Ernst isn't an institution the way Grassley is; but the strange weakness of Democrats in Iowa last night outside of their congressional candidates means this one is also far from guaranteed.

North Carolina will be a target, and Democrats had a good night in North Carolina that won't be talked about because there were no state-wide races. But I don't know if the votes are there when Trump is on the ballot.

That's +5 at maximum, if everything goes right; but at the same time Jones is probably going to lose Alabama (all other Democratic incumbents are probably safe). The only even remotely plausible options after that are hoping Georgia sees a whole bunch more demographic change in the next two years, or that last night was the start of a true Democratic resurgence in Kansas.

That's the way the margin in the Senate is so important. It would be much easier to take the majority in 2020 if even only one of Nelson/Sinema/McCaskill/Donnelly had won.

[DMC]

6 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Gillum, Abrams, O'Rourke all lost, and not only lost but lost despite poll numbers looking good (at least in FL and GA).

The polls never looked that good for Abrams.  She lost by a couple points and that's what the aggregate percentage suggested.  Gillum, yes, was a polling error.  That's the only major one I can think of though.

ETA:  Oh, I guess Tester would be too.

[Mexal]

This from the NY Times Interactive group is pretty awesome. Worth a look if interested to see where the country shifted.

[Mexal]

Wow. Will need to lean more Dem than the current results to make up the current 15k difference but I can see why it's not called yet.

[Maithanet]

Tester is now ahead by 1,000 votes with 88% counted.  The remaining votes are almost entirely in Democratic areas.  He'll probably pick up 10k votes in Missoula county alone, whereas there only a few votes in Republican areas.  Tester is going to win, barring something really strange happening. 

So that's one disaster averted.

[David Selig]

4 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Tester is now ahead by 1,000 votes with 88% counted.  The remaining votes are almost entirely in Democratic areas.  He'll probably pick up 10k votes in Missoula county alone, whereas there only a few votes in Republican areas.  Tester is going to win, barring something really strange happening. 

So that's one disaster averted.

Some sites (CNN and NBC) reports that Tester leads by 2,000 votes with 99% of the votes counted.

[Maithanet]

Just now, David Selig said:

Some sites reports that Tester leads by 2,000 votes with 99% of the votes counted.

That is slimmer than I would have guessed given what I'm seeing at 88%, but 2,000 votes is still more than half a percentage point in Montana, so should be good enough. 

[Maithanet]

4 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Wow.

?!?  Is that ballots that are likely in the mail?  Or just people who requested a ballot and didn't send it back. 

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Maithanet said:

Tester is going to win, barring something really strange happening. 

Well that's good.  So other than Fucking Florida in the Senate all that can be said is they came up short in Missouri and Indiana, which isn't surprising, and failed to pickup Arizona, which is disappointing.

[JGP]

Georgia inching closer to a run off.

[Guest]

So let's talk about Bob Menendez. Schumer's Senate Majority PAC spent about $6 million in the last few weeks in his race, which he ended up winning comfortably by about 10%.

Would that money have been better spent to shore up more support for Sinema on AZ, or to try to persuade some tens of thousands of voters in Florida for Nelson? McCaskill, Heitkamp and Donnelly were all pretty much lost causes, but a flip in AZ and a hold in FL turns a 54-46 nightmare into a much more manageable 52-48 deficit (I'm assuming Tester holds on to win as he has just pulled ahead in the vote count).

[Centrist Simon Steele]

31 minutes ago, Fez said:

Speaking of 2020, I took another look at the senate map and *ouch*. I really hope Tester holds on, because if he doesn't and Republicans have a 55-45 majority, I don't see the seats for a Democratic take back.

Colorado is the clear top target. Though with the expanded majority, McConnell could let Gardner take as many free votes as he wants to try to establish his "moderate" bona fides.

Maine is another top target only if Collins retires, otherwise its almost certainly a Republican hold.

Arizona will be a target, but with Sinema probably losing last night, its far from a guaranteed win.

Iowa will be a target, Ernst isn't an institution the way Grassley is; but the strange weakness of Democrats in Iowa last night outside of their congressional candidates means this one is also far from guaranteed.

North Carolina will be a target, and Democrats had a good night in North Carolina that won't be talked about because there were no state-wide races. But I don't know if the votes are there when Trump is on the ballot.

That's +5 at maximum, if everything goes right; but at the same time Jones is probably going to lose Alabama (all other Democratic incumbents are probably safe). The only even remotely plausible options after that are hoping Georgia sees a whole bunch more demographic change in the next two years, or that last night was the start of a true Democratic resurgence in Kansas.

That's the way the margin in the Senate is so important. It would be much easier to take the majority in 2020 if even only one of Nelson/Sinema/McCaskill/Donnelly had won.

Colorado is really a blue state where Gardner got in during a time, I'd argue, was truly in transition. He is terrible. When he tries to play his "moderate" card, the data shows he has voted with Trump 90+ percent of the time. Additionally, I wrote Gardner about not voting for Kavanaugh (back in Sept!). I got his form letter response last week. It's truly sickening. I mean it's no worse than what we've heard, I suppose, "We must respect all women who report...and Kavanaugh rules!" The thing with this letter is it's a form letter. Two people I work closely with received the same thing. A TON of people got this letter. People are not happy with him.

 

Edit: In some ways, Colorado's interesting in that it has a ton of small red counties that are vehemently restricting the larger cities that have turned blue. The Gardner win years ago shows that tension, but each election, Colorado get more and more blue. 

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Would that money have been better spent to shore up more support for Sinema on AZ, or to try to persuade some tens of thousands of voters in Florida for Nelson?

Sinema wasn't lacking in money.  Menendez was compared to his opponent.  By a lot.  Maybe it woulda been better spent on Nelson, but hard to question that decision post-hoc.

[IheartIheartTesla]

So, just to be clear, Georgia is still not called because of the possibility of a runoff, and there are hundreds of thousands of votes left in AZ for anyone to call it yet (might take as long as a week). If both events happen (although I think runoff chances are much slimmer than a Sinema win) than I'd feel much better about last night. Even though it only means 15000 ish votes either way, which is statistically insignificant.

[Mexal]

17 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

?!?  Is that ballots that are likely in the mail?  Or just people who requested a ballot and didn't send it back. 

I think the former. What happens is people request ballots then return on election day but they won't count them until like Thursday.