US Politics: The Copper, Silver, and Peach hangover

[Ormond]

OK, that's the state nicknames for Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia. Best I could do on short notice. But if A Horse Name Stranger wasn't willing to start this, somebody had to.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Thanks. Was really out of good and bad titles. So it might have been US Politics: Less Florida, more DMC inside

Even I could hear the eyeroll over the atlantic. 

[Ormond]

So -- a question on the power of incumbency to bump this up.

Were some of the smartest people those Republicans who convinced Ron Johnson to run again in Wisconsin? Would someone who was just as bad as Johnson have won there without being an incumbent?

And would a new Democrat have been likely to beat Laxalt in Nevada this time, or is being an incumbent what still is giving Catherine Cortez Masto a numerical chance there?

[Zorral]

AOC has a two part interview via the Intercept, which many, many people don't like for some good reasons.

However, she does a detailed, in depth break down of what the Dems have and are doing wrong here, and how, essentially, it is NY Dems who kept NY from getting the most blue seats in this elections as they could have.

Both sections are very long.  They go deeply in the weeds of NY party politics, so it's local, and thus unlikely to be of that much interest to a lot of the regulars here.

However, for political pros, at least, this could be of interest and use.

I could send the parts along in messages if anyone was interested.  The thing is, AOC is one heck of a smart political person.  She's quite representative of young(er) women who have done so much to keep the midterms from being a blue debacle.  She's like the young(er) women we are seeing everywhere in the Americas, who are very smart, very community oriented, who are consciously culture bearers, who are very active, who hold everything together in spite of the ongoing catastrophes.  We met many in Colombia earlier this year.  We've been knowing them for years in places such as Puerto Rico, Cuba, Haiti, New Orleans.

 

[DMC]

52 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Were some of the smartest people those Republicans who convinced Ron Johnson to run again in Wisconsin? Would someone who was just as bad as Johnson have won there without being an incumbent?

And would a new Democrat have been likely to beat Laxalt in Nevada this time, or is being an incumbent what still is giving Catherine Cortez Masto a numerical chance there?

These are good, fun, interesting questions.  Unfortunately I don't have very good answers.  In Wisconsin it's certainly a compelling hypothesis that Evers got about 50k more votes than Barnes because he was an incumbent and Barnes was facing one.  But, alternatively it could be because Evers and even Johnson were perceived as more moderate than Barnes and Michels.  That's probably intertwined with the formers' incumbency, but I think it might have been the more important factor.  Of course, considering Johnson only won by 26k, if he wasn't the incumbent I think it's significantly more likely he would have lost, sure.

In Nevada I'm not sure how much incumbency helped CCM.  The state and the service industry - which includes many if not most swing voters there - were hit really hard by unemployment during the pandemic.  The state has also been hit particularly hard by inflation.  Frankly it's a miracle the incumbents are doing as well as they are.  Now, this obviously hurt Sisolak more than Cortez Masto - it makes sense to blame the governor more than the US Senator - but no I don't think incumbency is boosting her.  One caveat there is that a new Democrat would still have to be a quality candidate to match up to Laxalt, and there's not many truly quality candidates (for Senate) among Dems in Nevada.  

[Fez]

Clark county finally gave some clarity on exactly how many ballots are left:

Not all of those additional ballots will be cured or validated, but probably the vast majority will be.

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, Fez said:

Clark county finally gave some clarity on exactly how many ballots are left:

Not all of those additional ballots will be cured or validated, but probably the vast majority will be.

Thanks, took em long enough.  And yeah at least in terms of the cures almost all of them will probably be counted.

[IheartIheartTesla]

The deadline for cures is next Tuesday, and I think provisional ballots is Wednesday, so this will easily drag out to late next week.

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

The deadline for cures is next Tuesday, and I think provisional ballots is Wednesday, so this will easily drag out to late next week.

I mean maybe decision desks will hold off on official calls, but there's still a very good chance we'll know who won once the 50k (and Washoe/rural) ballots are reported.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

It's kind of amazing that in the Age of Technology we're still so bad at this. 

[LongRider]

5 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

It's kind of amazing that in the Age of Technology we're still so bad at this. 

Oh, come on now, they are sending the floppy disk by Pony Express and doing the best they can.   

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

19 minutes ago, LongRider said:

Oh, come on now, they are sending the floppy disk by Pony Express and doing the best they can.   

Lol. In college one of my good buddies who was an engineering student proposed giving everyone on their 18th birthday something that looked like a yak back and that's how we could all vote and have it calculated in an hour. 

[ThinkerX]

Blundered across this article, which is claimed to be accurate as of 9:45 am today (Nov 11) 

Just doing a straight up tally of the red verses blue bit on the chart (it's near the bottom) puts the D's within two votes of maintaining the majority. If the R's do not reverse that AND lose a couple of their seats - which seems possible given that the tallies in some of these races are well under 70%, with mostly D leaning (?) votes to be tabulated, then...maybe?

I suspect that Boebert's race is in automatic recount territory.

That said, I have, as always been plowing through piles of comments on political articles. Big take thus far - the across-the-board view on the Right is that the election was stolen. The more rational ones are assigning *some* blame to Trump, but the 'stolen election' meme dominates. The slow vote tallies only prove this in their minds.  Even when other posters point out the rules were set by republicans and walk them through the mechanics that mentality remains unchanged.

There is also a big, big backlash on the Right brewing against all forms of mail in voting. The prevailing mentality is it needs to be banned in all states. Sole exception being military ballots.

At this point, I am expecting two things:

Deranged nut jobs attacking poll workers and locations - of the 'lone whacko opens fire killing X number of people' variety.

Doubling down on the 'stolen election' meme by prominent R politicians.

 

Chart: Here are the tight margins for House and Senate races : NPR

[Fez]

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/11/gop-senators-call-for-postponing-leadership-elections-00066532

McConnell seems to be facing a bit of a mini-revolt in his caucus. By my count, 7 senate republicans have now signed on to a Lee/Johnson/R. Scott letter calling for a delay in the senate leadership election, which is currently scheduled for next week. Only Hawley has publicly said yet that he'd vote against McConnell, but the delay is clearly against his wishes. Also, Rick Scott apparently did actually film a video announcing he was challenging McConnell for as caucus leader, but shelved it after the "red wave" didn't appear (Scott was NRSC chief).  And Johnson may be challenging Ernst for the leadership spot of Senate Republican Policy Chair (which Blount, about to retire, currently holds).

I doubt there's anywhere close to 25 votes against McConnell yet, but it's fascinating to finally see his grip on the caucus starting to break.

[LongRider]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

something that looked like a yak back and that's how we could all vote and have it calculated in an hour. 

Great idea, but this technology is too complex for today's MAGA crowd. Do you really think it could pass the Boebert test?  The two buttons would cause major confusion, I'm sure.       

[Mindwalker]

@Zorral Is the interview different from this online version? (Haven't read it yet.)

https://theintercept.com/2022/11/10/aoc-interview-midterms/

 

Btw, Ryan Grim was on the Majority Report the other day, he also gave some details about the malaise with the corrupt NY Dem party (and also suggestions of what the Dems could do if they kept the Senate and lost the House).

His part begins at around 22:30.

 

ETA: Idk what the heck you guys are doing with the voting. We alsways have our results the same evening over here!

[DMC]

6 minutes ago, Fez said:

Also, Rick Scott apparently did actually film a video announcing he was challenging McConnell for as caucus leader, but shelved it after the "red wave" didn't appear

In the politico article reporting this earlier today they cited unnamed GOP Senators estimating Scott would have gotten around 5-10 votes if he went through with his challenge.

[Mindwalker]

If only there was an agency that could drag Trump to court to find out if his claims of sending the FBI to "fix" Florida elections in 2016 was true... We could call it Ministry of Accountability... or maybe Department of Law and Order... not quite, but... something like that.

[DMC]

Clark just had their latest dump - Laxalt's lead is now down to 798 votes as she won about 17 to 9 thousand.  So about 24k of that 50k from Clark is now left.  Looking very, very good!

ETA:  Washoe update at 11 tonight.  May be able to call it tonight!

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

^^^

Those results are amazing. Another drop coming soon with CCM expecting to do well.