Twitter Patter …
Here’s a smattering of the best tweets of the night featuring people who keep insisting they no longer like Twitter.
Rachel Maddow on MSNBC wondered if Arizona Republicans would "use their open carry privilege as a form of political intimidation" to try and steal the election.
NPR weighed in with a fair and balanced headline on the Arizona governor’s race:
The NYT had some helpful tips if Election Night has you stressed out, including plunging your face in ice water and breathing “like a baby.”
Dear Friends —
As I write this, it’s clear the predicted 2022 Republican wave didn’t materialize. They will likely win the House of Representatives, yet not the Senate, although we won’t know the full picture until the Georgia runoff next month.
The election wasn’t a tear-inducing wipeout for Republicans, but they should’ve done much better.
The political environment for Republicans rarely gets better than 2022. History shows that an unpopular president and a poor economy usually leads to large scale wins for the opposition party. President Biden’s approval ratings is in the lower 40’s, while inflation and crime have risen faster than we’ve seen in decades.
People are rightly worried about their economic and physical safety, while Democrats have gone overboard on racial and gender nuttines. Seventy percent of voters said they were angry, or at least dissatisfied with the state of the country.
Nevertheless, about half of Americans rejected Republican candidates and chose to keep Democrats in power.
Why? The best explanations: abortion and some unpopular candidates hurt Republicans, especially in some important swing states.
Abortion swayed independents
If you see an abortion bumper sticker on someone’s car, either pro or anti, you can be assured that person isn’t an independent type of swing voter.
And what we can see from exit polling is that while the majority of the country went +4% Republican, independents actually leaned Democrat, which is a striking fact. It’s rare to have a “wave” without the middle-of-the-road voters coming with you.
Democrats ran a whole, whole lot of ads on abortion. They don’t need to swing huge swaths of voters, or any partisans, but in some states – especially where Republicans made early moves to heavily restrict abortion – it seems to be an important factor.
The “extreme” label stuck on some Republicans
Remember that cynical ploy where the Democrats spent tens of millions to elect more extreme, “election denying” Republicans in primaries? It worked.
Right now, it looks like all of those Republicans lost in the general election. Most of those were Trump recruits who expressed their complete loyalty to him, and on average his slate did worse than most Republicans.
The red wave swept one state: Florida
Florida isn’t a swing state anymore.
On election night the top Republicans won by staggering margins. DeSantis by nearly 20 points, and Rubio by over 16 points.
Governor DeSantis deserves most of the credit for that. He seems to be the country’s best student in Trump-style aggressiveness, but in a more refined, often less angry way. He guided the state through COVID with commonsensical moves, and pushed back on woke extremes with not only talk, but policy moves.
Large swaths of people had also voted with their feet by moving to Florida, and they voted accordingly at the polls.
Given his unique success, to many people Ron DeSantis represents the future of the Republican party, he was undoubtedly the night’s overwhelming winner.
John Fetterman won in Pennsylvania. Holy heck, what happened there?
It’s never a good sign when your party loses to a man who can’t complete sentences.
Part of his reason for victory is that his opponent, Mehmet Oz, had some serious popularity issues. He was a carpet-bagger, a rich guy who fumbled in his efforts to look like a commoner, and he stood in contrast in his newly adopted state on abortion and Trump fealty.
But still, the future Senator Fetterman was a nearly fatally flawed candidate, with undeniable brain damage. In the end, Democrats (and enough independents) decided that his Senate vote was more important than his medical state.
The best way to understand this, if you’re a conservative, is to flip the script in your head.
Imagine a candidate who would vote your way on the First Amendment, Second Amendment, taxes, social issues and would oppose a Biden-nominated far-left Supreme Court justice … yet was somewhat mentally impaired. And he was running against AOC. Would you really vote for her because he mushed his words or roll the dice on his votes?
Where does this leave us?
We still don’t know the final shakeup, but Republicans are in a stronger position than they were on Monday.
A GOP House of Representatives will be able to thwart the next “let’s spend trillions of dollars to combat inflation” and other absurdities. They can start their own investigations, which will be largely ignored by the mainstream media, but will still affect the national debate.
If the Senate stays in Democrat control, praying Republicans should be asking for the good health of Supreme Court members. Any conservative-to-liberal shift of the court would be a worst-case scenario that a Democrat Senate could allow.
Finally, we have a presidential race that’s starting off within hours. Republicans will have to decide whether Donald Trump can and should lead their party, and this election should make them all think hard. Democrats still have an aging, unpopular president, with a similar choice to make.
I have a Winston Churchill quote taped to my office wall: “Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.”
Before writing this, I double-checked on the accuracy of that quote. As it turns out, Churchill never said it.
So, fake news. But still pretty good advice.
— Ken
It was a red wave in Florida because Governor Ron Desantis worked on election integrity. You had to show ID to vote, no ballot harvesting and he banned mass mail in voting. He also had an election police force.
I am convinced if the other States did this we would see the true will of the people.
Instead they take days to count while yet more votes show up for you know who
What...no mention of election integrity and cheating by the Democrat machine?
Look at Arizona...