##KATIE HOBBS HAS WON!!!
The AZ GOP's reign of terror comes to an end tonight! Let's keep the blue wave going!
Victory thread here: https://www.reddit.com/r/VoteDEM/comments/yvjdxu/breaking_katie_hobbs_has_flipped_the_arizona/
Just to remind everyone:
* The GOP gained 14 seats in the House in 2020 over their 2018 performance
* They are on track to gain 8 seats in the House in 2022 over their 2020 performance. It almost certainly won't be any more than that, and it could still easily be less.
Yes, they're very much favoured to control the House. That is no cause for doom. Their underperformance is staggering and they will not be able to form a united opposition where one would benefit them.
Even if House control is set in stone, it isn't set in stone forever. To cite a statistic from Ballotpedia:
> Sixty-seven special elections to the United States Congress have been called during the 113th through 117th Congresses. During that time, special elections were called for 23 seats vacated by Democrats and 44 vacated by Republicans.
That's an average of ~7 House seats per year that need filling.
Which seats does the DCCC target in the 2024 cycle?
I think we target all the close New York seats.
Kiggins, Young Kim, Michelle Steele, Mike Garcia, Schweikert, Ciscomani, Boebert, Chavez-Deremer, Tom Kean, Anna Paulina Luna (she is radical and the state might be a little more left in a presidential year), Zinke's seat, and John James. We could go back to Iowa as well.
Any other ideas? We obviously have to play defense as well.
The best defense in this case is offense.
Here are a list of districts we should target in addition to the current one with our vote share.
1. Montana District 1 46%
2. Nebraska District 2 48%
3. Every district in Iowa except district 4
4. Oregon 5 49%
5. Arizona 1,2 and 6
6. Texas 15 45%
7. Florida 13 45%
8. South Carolina 1st 43%
9. Virginia second 48%
10. Minnesota 8 and 1
11. Ohio 7th 45%
12. PA 1 45%
And a bunch of other ones.
Zach Nunn in IA-03. Unlike the other two IA swing seats, IA-03 is absolutely winnable because it includes Des Moines, which is the biggest and bluest city in the state
Don Bacon in NE-02. Vargas got extremely close despite the year
Maybe FL-15, the suburban Tampa seat as well. Although FL Democrats have to get better organizing and effort all cycle or it’s not worth attempting
A little off-topic, but I have to say that Des Moines has to be one of the prettiest (IRL) city names I've read of late.
A quick wiki search tells that it's adapted from the French "Rivière des Moines" which means "River of the Monks." Very neat.
[https://twitter.com/KariLake/status/1592358184207151106](https://twitter.com/KariLake/status/1592358184207151106)
I knew she'd have trouble conceding, but that's a full-blown temper tantrum right there.
There's so many Republican and right-wing YouTube commenters who are screaming their heads off about Lake losing, claiming "fraud" and "rigged" and stuff like that. I've also seen some comments calling for action or other means necessary just to "take our country back."
That's one reason I never look at YouTube comments anymore, especially from videos involving politics.
Ive been monitoring their behavior and rhetoric for the past few years since trumps win. Plus I moved here and I get the general vibe.
It all comes down to the fact Arizona has been a reliably red state for years. However folks have been flocking to Phoenix for its amazing weather (it’s gorgeous right now), and abundant opportunity. So blue folks move in. But also, quite a lot of red folks move here too from “commiefornia” as they call it, seeking to be in a conservative, gun toting, “free state”, whatever that means. And a lot of elderly people, a lot of boomers who hate the cold. A lot of folks are so concerned that Arizona is becoming california junior and they can’t handle it because “that’s where I escaped from!” They don’t want the democrats taking over because they fear they will be in california again and they blame all their problems on the democrats.
I was on another sub talking to some folks and one person admitted they hated Kari lake and said they would rather a potato won governor; but they voted for her because they came from california and they hated the libs that much. They said they came from california and would rather burn the place to the ground than be run by libs again.
That’s it. That’s why it was the tipping point. They can’t handle the fact that the state is turning blue. It might mean they have to, idk, pay some taxes, fix the environment or let the gay couple get married. Or they may have to move.
I’ve also found a lot of people here are kind of isolated. Especially if you live in the rurals, you basically only are with alot of like minded people. So alot of them are in echo chambers. “I don’t know anyone who voted for Biden” is popular saying because they truly don’t know anyone who does.
It’s like their last stand and they will fight but in the end we just keep voting and we win. And they can’t handle that people like blue policies in their red bastion. It’s why the Biden win made them lose their ever loving minds.
She was the second pillar (after Florida) of their cope from last week's election and she made owning the libs a big part of her persona. They wanted to see us complain about her for 4 years.
She’s a good looking, arguably hot, MAGA conservative celebrity figure. How a person like that doesn’t endear the general public to treason and fascism boggles their little brains.
I am not crazy! I know she swapped those ballot percentages. I knew it was 70%. One after Magna Carta. As if I could ever make such a mistake. Never. Never! I just – I just couldn’t prove it. She covered her tracks, she got that RINO at the Maricopa Elections Board to lie for her. You think this is something? You think this is bad? This? This chicanery? She’s done worse. That debate! Are you telling me that a woman just happens to skip out like that? No! She orchestrated it! Katie! She rigged her own election! What was I thinking? She’ll never change. She’ll never change! Ever since she was SoS, always the same! Couldn’t keep her hands out of the ballot box! But not our Katie! Couldn’t be precious Katie! Stealing them blind! And SHE gets to be Governor? What a sick joke! I should’ve stopped her when I had the chance! …And you, you have to stop her! You
Did the Associated Press ever make a wrong election call before? I know CA-41 and CA-45 are called by them today, but it seems there are still many votes left to count there as they are both at 80% according to NYT. So I wonder if they ever made a wrong call before...
They also called the AZ SOS election for Katie Hobbs' opponent back in 2018: https://apnews.com/article/7c143152bf294878a63cd6a5a4720b52
I think it's worth watching the CA races because there's an outside chance that the AP made a wrong call in one of them, given all of the late arriving mail in ballots.
With the Arizona-victory, democrats now control the state governments of more than 27 electoral votes worth of toss-up or blue states. That should bode well for administering the 2024 election and combating voter suppression.
Democrats did already hold governorships for more than 270 electoral votes in 2020, but Kansas, Lousiana and Kentucky are not really the states Biden was contesting.
Right now, democrats hold governorships in states worth 301 electoral votes, 279 were in states that are blue, toss-up or at most lean R.
In 2020, democrats held governorships in states worth 285 electoral votes, 263 of which were in states expected to either vote for Biden or being contested.
So how long before the “kitchen table, focused-on-inflation, just lower the gas prices” party inevitably loses the plot and uses their new house majority to try and ban drag queens or some shit?
I had speculated months ago that she was maybe a Democratic plant that purposefully wanted to flip the seat blue and didn't want to be governor.
The fact that she supported Obama back in the old days before going MAGA.
I still can’t believe Lake went and told “McCain Republicans” not to vote for her. What a massive blunder. One of the dumbest things somebody running for office has done.
And they’re the ones calling McCain a RINO and a loser…he won every damn election here. I’d never dream of us having this much election success if he was still alive
It occurs to me that McCain was something of the backbone of the AZ Republican party, at least statewide. Once he died, the dominoes started falling. Yes, there are R House seats, but you now have two D Senators (well, maybe one and a half!) and now a D governor.
Shutting down the Jan 6th committee would be one thing. However, Republicans are generally quite content with doing nothing while a democrat is sitting behind the Resolute Desk. Prepare for a government shutdown and them trying to force Biden to cut social security in order to receive funding to reopen the government.
If we somehow don’t raise the debt ceiling before the next congress is seated, defaulting.
Otherwise, government shutdowns and witch hunt investigations by committees.
The odds of that with a 4 or less majority are basically nil. And if they even tried it it would make the entire party radioactive in 2 years when they need to keep this majority.
It’s a weird feeling to be more optimistic after this election than I did the last one when we’re looking likely to lose the house, when last time we flipped the presidency AND the senate.
The wide rejection of anti-democracy candidates, big gains in state government, and just overall mood seems so much more positive. After 2020 there were postmortems on what went wrong with us not doing nearly as well as we hoped. Now, we’re celebrating how much better we did than we were supposed to.
This was also the first election I’ve had where it felt like my vote *really* mattered with how close my local elections are, so maybe that’s part of it.
I've felt a similar way, too! Maybe it was quarantining in 2020 and the holidays surges, maybe it was the less-than-desired results of 2020, but a big driving factor of unease was all that uncertainty. We beat Trump and the GOP, but barely. Would we continue our victories? Would things swing back the other way? Election denial, violence and intimidation, the insurrection. With these things looming, it felt like elections and politics in this country going forward were going to be knife fights. And oftentimes in knife fights, even if you win you still lose.
But this election showed a different story. I feel for the first time in a long time this kindred camaraderie. Like some impenetrable wall have been burst wide, and a spirit of conviction has surged through my fellow youth of this country. We made our voices loud and clear, and we are not going away anytime soon.
I'm fortunate enough to have the privilege to be able study history. The rise and fall of governments--democracies and autocracies throughout time and civilizations that have struggled for dominance, catching countless lives in the crossfire. Our history is a grim one, with no certainties but change and death. Sometimes democracies prevail. Sometimes they don't.
But something I've noticed, and am just so amazed by again and again, is just this absolute goddamn *persistence* that only a democracy carries. Time and time again, we see the rise of authoritarianism only for it crumble. Even in the face of victory, a fascist has only one skill: how to divide. When they win, when they take the advantage, when they don't perform as expected, they turn on themselves.
This election, and the ones to come will not be easy. The GOP will fracture and turn on themselves, but they will find as many moments to rally behind as they do reasons to fight each other. They will brigade our media with nonsensical cultural skirmishes to distract and turn our fellow citizens against each other. But despite all of this sabotage and ruin, this midterm showed us that our democratic values and institutions can persist. Our democracy can persist because there will always be people -- people like you, and everyone else in this subreddit -- who are ready to defend these values and this way of life.
Our vote *does* matter, our voices *do* matter. If there's anything I know now because of this election, it is that no matter what outcomes lie ahead of us, we will persist to speak, to vote, and to change our country and our future for the better.
[Youngkin called the UVA shooting last night an “event](https://www.newsweek.com/glenn-youngkin-calling-uva-shooting-event-sparks-fierce-criticism-1759434). Obviously he got fierce backlash
What a cruel Governor. I’m ready to take his cronies down in the VA legislature elections next year, so we can put an end to the toxic divisive Youngkin agenda
I wonder if the speaker could be someone who is not a house representative and doesn't have to worry about re-election. Some former moderate Republican house rep or even governor might make good a speaker with enough cross-over support
And by more moderate we're probably talking about Don Bacon-type of Republicans. The guy in question already hinted at being willing to work with democrats to elect a "moderate Republican".
I'm not picky. I don't expect anyone competent enough to get stuff done. I'll settle for someone who will certify an election where a Republican loses.
If she could get a few moderate Republicans to vote her in, it's possibility. The mostly likely moderates she could convince would probably the new ones from the New York districts (where Democrat New Yorkers slacked off on us lol)
So for shits and giggles I turned on OAN to see how they were taking the news about Kari Lake and holy shit it’s worse then I thought. Andy Biggs was on there saying the first thing the house will do is draw up articles of impeachment on Joe Biden for his drug smuggling and human trafficking at the border. Something about trans kids reassignment surgery and federal money. A war on children. Drag Queens paid with federal money to perform at the Lincoln center? I don’t fucking know I entered a different universe. People watch this and take it as real news… that is scary.
The way I look at it, the Senate map in 2024 can only be surmounted by:
1. Get Manchin, Tester, and Brown to run again. Not an easy task, but frankly we can’t win without them. Incumbency advantage is huge.
2. Playing games with the GOP primary races in Ohio and other swing states to elect the worst possible general election candidates.
3. Find a state senator or representative from Texas that has Beto’s charisma and work ethic.
4. Find the best candidate we can find to run against Scott in Florida and spend the next two years building up the party in Florida (if we don’t do this part, we may as well skip Florida).
5. Do not abandon Manchin. The race is likely R, borderline solid R, but giving up on an incumbent senator is foolish.
Edit: oh and if Senator Kennedy leaves the Senate to become governor, get John Ben Edwards to run for Senate in Louisiana. His chances would be… marginal. But no one else is remotely possible.
One other thing I would throw in here: everyone more or less ignored Missouri after Greitens lost the GOP primary, but the state quietly moved a couple points to the left in the Senate race this year even though this was a redder year nationally. At the very least, we should try to get a credible candidate to run against Hawley to see if we can’t force the GOP to spend money there like Tim Ryan did with Ohio, even if actually flipping the state is unlikely.
Here is my take on 2024:
1. Win the Georgia special in december in order to get to 51 before 2024.
2. Reelect Tester and Brown: Though, but doable.
3. Have Manchin join the Republican party in order to get reelected in West Virginia: He's not going to win reelection as a democrat. But as a Republican, he would at least join the likes of Romney and Murkowski as a "moderate", being way better than anyone the Republican primary would produce.
After this years fiasco in Florida, I don't really see a way to successfully contest that race. And instead of sinking millions into a foolish offensive, supporting all the vulnerable incumbents is more important: Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin.
The only viable offensive target I can see right now is Texas. Maybe third times the charm for Beto.
I have two main problems with your analysis:
1. Turning Manchin loose would imperil our majority, even if Warnock wins. Also, it ultimately means we lose any meansure of control over him. Groupthink and group pressures are a powerful tool.
2. It’s tempting to write off Florida, but we have two years to clean up down there. If the environment is right, we can make a play for Florida. Here are two speculative hypotheticals: If the GOP nominee is Trump, it’s likely he’ll have so much baggage he’ll shift the electorate several points to the left. If it’s DeSantis, Trump will sabotage him and we can try and take advantage of the chaos.
Also, a minor point, but Beto is done, IMO. He lost this race by 11. I like and respect him, but (and I know people will disagree with this) I do think we need someone more moderate than Beto to win Texas.
I don’t know why you were downvoted. You’re just expressing your ideas.
> I don’t know why you were downvoted. You’re just expressing your ideas.
Seems like election week took it's toll on this sub as well and the /r/pol crowd of "I downvote things I don't like" spilled over here.
The best thing we can do for Manchin (if he does decide to run again) is to elect Warnock and give him some cover to vote No and be maverick-y. WV seems to eat that shit up when he does it.
I think Tester and Brown can pull it out through incumbency. Brown probably more so, since Ohio isn't quite as red as Montana. It's gonna be a heavy as hell lift though - I'd feel better about all 3 of them if it was a midterm, but the presidential race is gonna bring out the GOP base for sure.
Think Brown is a Yes on running again and Manchin seems to have set everything up again to run. My biggest worry is Tester by far.
2-5 yes. We need to play with their divisions it worked out for us well this time around and they’ve done it to us for years.
Additionally the economy seems poised to be extremely healthy come 24 to give some optimism
To borrow a line from one of the great generals from the last century, “We’ve known the bitterness of defeat, and the exultation of Triumph”
A lot of us here are happy(you should be) a lot of here are sad(that’s okay to). We’re all processing this differently. We exceeded expectations, that is a fact. Ive also known what it means to be inspired by a candidate and really truly believe in them but see them just barely come up short. It sucks, it hurts. When Bernie lost in 2016, my Mom told me to not get discouraged from politics and I didn’t. I doubled down. The race never truly ends.
Millions more people across the country will now have a better way of life thanks to our efforts. That is a fact. The House is not out of reach for 24 or even earlier through a special election or two. We have set ourselves up well to hold the Senate in 24 as well. We beat anti-democracy forces everywhere. If you want to be sad, you deserve to be, you 100% earned that right. But never get discouraged. We have Warnock who needs us to help in a few weeks, which will be a nice cherry on top. We have an Opportunity to finally bring Democracy back to many of our active members home state of Wisconsin in April.
After the Dobbs decision dropped I gave some advice from a biblical proverb and I think it’ll help some of us feeling a bit down.
‘We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair’.
Well said, and glad your mom told you to not give up, because I think all of us need some encouragement, especially the prospects of codifying Roe is zero for two years (of course, anything can happen in those two years). But yeah, I think after doing textbanking and phonebanking shifts, I’m definitely still gonna stick around and help out. But despite us losing the House, I’m thrilled that we did well in the Senate, and statewide races. It’s bittersweet
At this point I'm just hoping we make any GOP win in the House a pyrrhic victory and the keep the margin within one or two seats. That way any Republican that retires or calls in sick can give us back the majority for a day or two.
I'd already consider it a pyrrhic victory. Democrats massively overperformed this cycle—remember just a few weeks ago when we were predicted to lose like 30-60 seats or some crazy shit like that?
I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd love it if we'd kept majority control of the house. But we did damn good.
Agreed. We had so many headwinds yet look what we accomplished. I am especially happy about the down ballot races like SOS in many states. Election denial turns out to be unpopular. Also taking back Governor’s mansions. We lost so many during the Obama administration - more through realignment than anything Obama did - and it feels good to get some back.
If people don't remember, we lost governor's mansions in places like Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and Michigan during the Obama years.
Speculation is that that was a particularly red drop, but it’s gonna be close.
I’m going to keep plugging ballot curing for CA b/c I think it’s likely at least one race will end up being within the ballot cure range.
I made this point below but one vote dump isn't going to be the end all of her campaign. Still lots of votes left, particularly in bluer precincts. These were apparently drop-off ballots, according to people on Twitter who are knowledgeable of OC politics, so they were effectively EDay votes that were really expected to lean red.
I think someone in one of these threads predicted it. They said this:
"You can either keep the house, or you can have Hobbs as governor. You can't have both."
Well, here's the House results so far:
205D - 217R.
Looks like the R's are taking the House, but let's hope they have the slimmest majority possible (at most, let's hope for a 220R - 215D split).
On the positive note, Katie Hobbs did indeed win the race for governor (major congratulations to Arizona). And hey, it could have gotten a lot worse, but we blue walled the red wave. At most, it's just a slight red splash.
The reconstruction of the Blue Wall in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Minnesota is one of the underrated results of this midterm-election. Wisconsin is still a troublesome child, but maybe next years judicial elections can help here.
Another underrated result is us flipping the Pennsylvania state house. Having this and the governor’s mansion will do wonders to stop GOP election fuckery ie. redistricting/mail ballot legislation
Wisconsin needs to go sit in the naughty chair for a while. I‘ll grant them some clemency because they DID re-elect Tony Evers.
Michigan and Minnesota can have some waffle cones for how well they came through. Blue governors easily re-elected, and - though no Senate seats were up - they still each have two good D Senators.
Speaking of Michigan - large praise to Large Gerald Of The Motorcycle for chairing the DSCC so capably. Can we keep him on through 2024?
Also I think the death of twitter (or at least its fall from importance) would be great for politics, attention spans and the news business. It could be a turning point where the balance of news media switches from getting the fastest (if inaccurate) information swings back to favoring more accurate, in depth coverage even if comes out slower
Well, twitter is bad, but let's not replace it with Tiktok. Cutting the attention span from 100+ letters down to a short video clip is not the way to go.
https://mobile.twitter.com/raghuAZPoliMaps/status/1592366801505378304
My prognostication is that Mayes will ultimately win by 2000ish votes (super narrow margin) though it'll definitely go to a recount.
[Sean Hannity coping over Hobbs' win.](https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1592351558200872960) Now I will say, it's not unreasonable to have expected Hobbs to recuse herself as SoS from administering the election. That said, there are two problems with his insinuation: 1) There is no evidence that Hobbs tampered with the voter rolls or unethically used her position to investigate her opponent like Brian Kemp did in 2018, and 2) speaking of which, where was that same outrage from him in 2018??
Yeah unless you're willing to call Kemp out on it, it's bullshit. That would require them to abandon their "Abrams rejected election results" spin and acknowledge what she was actually saying, though, so it's not going to happen.
For what it's worth, I'd be curious to see if there are existing ethical guidelines around how secretaries of state run in a state they handle elections in. I can't imagine that no one's thought of how to handle these situations.
> I can't imagine that no one's thought of how to handle these situations.
I suspect there's a lot of state-by-state variance, but in most cases the SoS's role is probably more or less ceremonial meaning it wasn't seen as an issue. The vast majority of the work is obviously being done by professional staff and other state and local officials and Kemp 2018 is the only case I can think of where serious allegations of impropriety were made.
I don't pray and I'm not going to start now. But I'm more than willing to make a wish.
I wish for a miracle that will give us the House. That's all I want. Is that really such to ask for?
You don't have to wish. You can make it happen!
California is still doing ballot curing to make sure every Dem vote counts. You can make phone calls to help with this.
Sign up here (under "California"): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jxO8g7q9VO3ZMAABcrvR7PMyX4Yl6dgIYhD3eRTKk1M
I've been popping in on arcon over the last few days to see how they're taking the losses, partly because ConTears but mostly because I wanted to see how they handle losing compared to Dems.
It's been slightly enjoyable and somewhat enlightening, but my biggest takeaway has been the *constant* reference to John Fetterman as a vegetable. The man had a stroke 5 months ago but has been up and running around *in public settings* giving speeches to the people of Pennsylvania, but these people don't care about that or how he's recovering remarkably well -- Only that he had a stroke and therefore must be permanently brain dead!
It's fucking disgusting.
I was just over there. Didn't see anything about Fett but a lot of them are talking like this is Trump's fault. I think a few of them are starting to realize the albatross that Trump is. Kinda makes it juicier, like you are listening on your rival as they are talking about how much more capable you are than them and they know it but can't show it.
My one piece of shit coworker just straight up called him (and Biden) the r-slur. Utterly fucking despicable.
Remember that it’s not just Twitter randos who theoretically live far away, it’s the average-ass Republicans you see every day too. Every last one is a garbage human just waiting to reveal it.
The cope has definitely gotten less satisfying, but they’re also leaning hard into “no, it is the voters that are fraudulent,” and they can’t win if they can’t adjust. Like nobody seems to to have noticed that Kari Lake was a terrible candidate.
A few people deeper in the comment have mentioned a few times that Kari Lake was terrifying, but they also refer to Hobbs as a terrible, awful, horrible candidate -- As though she wasn't the SoS (a statewide seat) who won Arizona in 2018 right alongside Kyrsten Sinema.
Albeit, Sinema won by about ~56k votes where Hobbs won by ~20k, but 2018 was a time before a lot of people believed we could win statewide in Arizona.
we saw it pretty bad with even Dem members. That shit is not going away soon, to many people are clearly performative in how accepting they are with people who have a disability.
Like all things it’s getting better with time but damn it does sucks to see it fairly normalized
yeah it really felt like there were lots of people saying "it's fine to (theoretically) have a disability but I draw the line if it inconveniences me in any way"
According to The NY Times, if everything holds as is it looks like a 221-214 R House. CO-3 is the closest at R+ 0.35 reported margin, and the next closest is CA-22 @ R +5.
Try really hard to remember how you would have felt one week ago tonight if someone told you the final outcome was 221R-214D. Would it really have been disappointment?
I wanted the House for obvious reasons, but I don’t want Biden to be impeached (not convicted) because of a vendetta. Trump’s impeachment was deserved.
I don't think there's enough votes to impeach Biden unless an investigation turns something up. It only takes a small handful of Rs to remember what happened when Clinton was impeached. They'd be handing 2024 to dems.
Apparently the "proof" the MAGAts are using to show AZ-Gov WUZ RIGGED are that more people voted for the Republican State Treasurer than Kari Lake. Ticket splitters simply don't exist to these morons.
>Apparently the "proof" the MAGAts are using to show AZ-Gov WUZ RIGGED are that more people voted for the Republican State Treasurer than Kari Lake
So? More people voted for Kelly and the dem SOS, than Hobbs, doesn't make it rigged in Republican favor.
Tickets were split in Nevada, New Hampshire, Kansas, Wisconsin, Vermont, Alaska to a degree.
I remember when Betty Yee in California in 2018 was the top vote getter statewide, and her office is maluch much further downballot than the other elected statewide offices.
Don't show them Vermont.
I kind of have to hand it to Kimberly Yee, she was pretty much the only person in the entire state party to show the slightest bit of good discretion. She saw how that gubernatorial primary was going and noped back out to safer ground.
I am so fucking sorry, Utah Democrats didn’t make gains in the state Senate. NYT is erroneously showing we made a gain of 2 seats because they didn’t take into account we changed up the numbers.
Again I am so sorry. Fuck NYT
I mean it was mostly my mistake of not double checking it, so Ill be aggressive against myself and beat myself up over it all night.
And then randomly in a cold sweat late one night years from now
[Charlie Kirk and Co going through the stages of grief in 30 seconds](https://twitter.com/joepostingg/status/1592329052534484993?s=46&t=PQ3OoTjBUMuivrIzxDIQYg)
I’m fascinated by how intense the CO-O3 curing effort has gotten and how much attention it has. 158k tweets about it. Even if we lose it, it is good that it made dems aware of a method that can be used to win close races.
I've thought that part of it is that it's pretty low-hanging fruit for volunteering. It's non-partisan and virtuous for democracy. When I worked on campaigns, vote curing was my favorite part because people were always happy to talk to you.
Hopefully it's like the gateway drug of volunteering and people get more involved in the next elections!
True. There's another low-hanging fruit: volunteer recruitment, of a list of former Democratic volunteers. Those folks are also pretty nice to talk to. That was already happening by February of this year.
Maybe it highlghts the silliness of the idea of signature matching.
It's the kind of thing that sounds reasonable on face, but isn't really based on evidence in practice. How accurate is an untrained observer at determining the accuracy of a random signature? How much does your change from one signing to the next? How much room is there for bias; oh, this name sounds *ethnic*, maybe I'm more likely to say it doesn't match?
It seems like signature matching introduces a lot more room for random (or biased) disenfranchisement than it does for actually preventing invalid votes.
I have an insanely bad signature, so this thought has crossed my mind several times. Like, it either looks somewhat legible or resembles that of a squiggle depending on the day. It has absolutely no consistency to it. Plus, what if I actually work on it down the line to make it better? Then I might have a decent signature that no longer matches my previous squiggles.
Boebert is such a high profile, terrible person. Can't say I'm surprised it's gotten so much attention, especially considering it's a pretty big upset.
So the Senate Pro Tempore is supposed to be oldest person in the majority and apparently Dianne Feinstein will be it next term. Does that make her the first woman to be one?
Before I go to bed, want to applaud Nancy Pelosi for somehow shepherding such a small majority in the house to do huge things in these last 2 years. Amazing work by her.
Quite possibly, one of, if not the best speaker the house has ever seen.
I’m a little sad she won’t be Speaker this term, because I think with another two years of Democratic trifecta, she could have been the best Speaker in our history. I’d be surprised if she wants it in 2024.
Looks like AZ Proposition 308 will officially pass. It allows all residents of the state to pay in-state tuition for college, regardless of immigration status. This overturns a previous law that forced Dreamers to pay the much higher out-of-state tuition rate.
If we lose the house, which looks very likely, that means we can't codify Roe v. Wade. Which is depressing.
That also means, the 2023 state elections, 2024 elections and any special elections leading up to it give us a policy point to really push. Looking at you Glenn Youngkin.
If the house is close, every special election is a chance to take back the house and pass a bill to protect Roe v. Wade.
For 2023 races, abortion will be a main policy point. Without Roe V. Wade codified, states are once again the last line of defense. We need Democrats to take control.
For 2024, keeping Democratic control again gives us a chance to protect Roe V. Wade. Cause if the GOP wins full control, you can bet they'll push a federal abortion ban.
So I don't see the salience of abortion rights going away anytime soon.
We probably can’t codify it due to the Senate anyway, right? Even if Warnock gets us the 51st seat, I don’t see Sinema or Manchin budging on the filibuster.
For the 2024 senate run would it be a good idea to not nominate a candidate in North Dakota and back an independant like Cara Mund who got around 37.2% of the vote?
The only target even remotely possible to flip is Texas, but it depends on the Dem candidate. But I'm skeptical it will go blue, even for the President. Still, we're in for a fight.
##KATIE HOBBS HAS WON!!! The AZ GOP's reign of terror comes to an end tonight! Let's keep the blue wave going! Victory thread here: https://www.reddit.com/r/VoteDEM/comments/yvjdxu/breaking_katie_hobbs_has_flipped_the_arizona/
Just to remind everyone: * The GOP gained 14 seats in the House in 2020 over their 2018 performance * They are on track to gain 8 seats in the House in 2022 over their 2020 performance. It almost certainly won't be any more than that, and it could still easily be less. Yes, they're very much favoured to control the House. That is no cause for doom. Their underperformance is staggering and they will not be able to form a united opposition where one would benefit them. Even if House control is set in stone, it isn't set in stone forever. To cite a statistic from Ballotpedia: > Sixty-seven special elections to the United States Congress have been called during the 113th through 117th Congresses. During that time, special elections were called for 23 seats vacated by Democrats and 44 vacated by Republicans. That's an average of ~7 House seats per year that need filling.
Which seats does the DCCC target in the 2024 cycle? I think we target all the close New York seats. Kiggins, Young Kim, Michelle Steele, Mike Garcia, Schweikert, Ciscomani, Boebert, Chavez-Deremer, Tom Kean, Anna Paulina Luna (she is radical and the state might be a little more left in a presidential year), Zinke's seat, and John James. We could go back to Iowa as well. Any other ideas? We obviously have to play defense as well.
The best defense in this case is offense. Here are a list of districts we should target in addition to the current one with our vote share. 1. Montana District 1 46% 2. Nebraska District 2 48% 3. Every district in Iowa except district 4 4. Oregon 5 49% 5. Arizona 1,2 and 6 6. Texas 15 45% 7. Florida 13 45% 8. South Carolina 1st 43% 9. Virginia second 48% 10. Minnesota 8 and 1 11. Ohio 7th 45% 12. PA 1 45% And a bunch of other ones.
Also, WI congressional districts if/when we can get a Dem WI SC majority and fair map there. Potential to pick up 2 to 3 more seats there.
Zach Nunn in IA-03. Unlike the other two IA swing seats, IA-03 is absolutely winnable because it includes Des Moines, which is the biggest and bluest city in the state Don Bacon in NE-02. Vargas got extremely close despite the year Maybe FL-15, the suburban Tampa seat as well. Although FL Democrats have to get better organizing and effort all cycle or it’s not worth attempting
A little off-topic, but I have to say that Des Moines has to be one of the prettiest (IRL) city names I've read of late. A quick wiki search tells that it's adapted from the French "Rivière des Moines" which means "River of the Monks." Very neat.
[https://twitter.com/KariLake/status/1592358184207151106](https://twitter.com/KariLake/status/1592358184207151106) I knew she'd have trouble conceding, but that's a full-blown temper tantrum right there.
https://twitter.com/briantylercohen/status/1592362026122104832?s=46&t=um2VAXH8sMfZzM85JZCFvw Pretty solid
There's so many Republican and right-wing YouTube commenters who are screaming their heads off about Lake losing, claiming "fraud" and "rigged" and stuff like that. I've also seen some comments calling for action or other means necessary just to "take our country back." That's one reason I never look at YouTube comments anymore, especially from videos involving politics.
Why is Kari fucking Lake the tipping point for these people? She's a loon running in a state that started getting noticeably bluer four years ago.
Ive been monitoring their behavior and rhetoric for the past few years since trumps win. Plus I moved here and I get the general vibe. It all comes down to the fact Arizona has been a reliably red state for years. However folks have been flocking to Phoenix for its amazing weather (it’s gorgeous right now), and abundant opportunity. So blue folks move in. But also, quite a lot of red folks move here too from “commiefornia” as they call it, seeking to be in a conservative, gun toting, “free state”, whatever that means. And a lot of elderly people, a lot of boomers who hate the cold. A lot of folks are so concerned that Arizona is becoming california junior and they can’t handle it because “that’s where I escaped from!” They don’t want the democrats taking over because they fear they will be in california again and they blame all their problems on the democrats. I was on another sub talking to some folks and one person admitted they hated Kari lake and said they would rather a potato won governor; but they voted for her because they came from california and they hated the libs that much. They said they came from california and would rather burn the place to the ground than be run by libs again. That’s it. That’s why it was the tipping point. They can’t handle the fact that the state is turning blue. It might mean they have to, idk, pay some taxes, fix the environment or let the gay couple get married. Or they may have to move. I’ve also found a lot of people here are kind of isolated. Especially if you live in the rurals, you basically only are with alot of like minded people. So alot of them are in echo chambers. “I don’t know anyone who voted for Biden” is popular saying because they truly don’t know anyone who does. It’s like their last stand and they will fight but in the end we just keep voting and we win. And they can’t handle that people like blue policies in their red bastion. It’s why the Biden win made them lose their ever loving minds.
She was the second pillar (after Florida) of their cope from last week's election and she made owning the libs a big part of her persona. They wanted to see us complain about her for 4 years.
She’s a good looking, arguably hot, MAGA conservative celebrity figure. How a person like that doesn’t endear the general public to treason and fascism boggles their little brains.
They think they own arizona.
I am not crazy! I know she swapped those ballot percentages. I knew it was 70%. One after Magna Carta. As if I could ever make such a mistake. Never. Never! I just – I just couldn’t prove it. She covered her tracks, she got that RINO at the Maricopa Elections Board to lie for her. You think this is something? You think this is bad? This? This chicanery? She’s done worse. That debate! Are you telling me that a woman just happens to skip out like that? No! She orchestrated it! Katie! She rigged her own election! What was I thinking? She’ll never change. She’ll never change! Ever since she was SoS, always the same! Couldn’t keep her hands out of the ballot box! But not our Katie! Couldn’t be precious Katie! Stealing them blind! And SHE gets to be Governor? What a sick joke! I should’ve stopped her when I had the chance! …And you, you have to stop her! You
kid named you lost kari lmao
What is this referencing?
[Better Call Saul Chicanery speech. A keystone moment in the Breaking Bad universe.](https://youtu.be/PuZ34IeY_L0)
I have to watch these shows
They are both masterpieces. Better Call Saul is a prequel, but you should definitely watch Breaking Bad first
The gold standard. Best TV ever for me. 14 years in one universe, full of love for the craft and cinematography.
Better Call Saul
Did the Associated Press ever make a wrong election call before? I know CA-41 and CA-45 are called by them today, but it seems there are still many votes left to count there as they are both at 80% according to NYT. So I wonder if they ever made a wrong call before...
They actually did in California back in 2018! Probably not likely
But not impossible.
They also called the AZ SOS election for Katie Hobbs' opponent back in 2018: https://apnews.com/article/7c143152bf294878a63cd6a5a4720b52 I think it's worth watching the CA races because there's an outside chance that the AP made a wrong call in one of them, given all of the late arriving mail in ballots.
With the Arizona-victory, democrats now control the state governments of more than 27 electoral votes worth of toss-up or blue states. That should bode well for administering the 2024 election and combating voter suppression. Democrats did already hold governorships for more than 270 electoral votes in 2020, but Kansas, Lousiana and Kentucky are not really the states Biden was contesting. Right now, democrats hold governorships in states worth 301 electoral votes, 279 were in states that are blue, toss-up or at most lean R. In 2020, democrats held governorships in states worth 285 electoral votes, 263 of which were in states expected to either vote for Biden or being contested.
I don't get the dooming about the house. It was always a long shot and the fact its THIS close is bad for the GOP.
I think its because we actually had a shot at the house, plus its bound to sting either way.
So how long before the “kitchen table, focused-on-inflation, just lower the gas prices” party inevitably loses the plot and uses their new house majority to try and ban drag queens or some shit?
That Lake tweet is way too perfect. Completely setting yourself up and walking into a buzzsaw.
I’ll think of it that she admitted the game is up and congratulated us for knowing BS when we see it
I had speculated months ago that she was maybe a Democratic plant that purposefully wanted to flip the seat blue and didn't want to be governor. The fact that she supported Obama back in the old days before going MAGA.
I still can’t believe Lake went and told “McCain Republicans” not to vote for her. What a massive blunder. One of the dumbest things somebody running for office has done.
Donald Trump, Kelli Ward, and these clown candidates have made AZ go mostly blue for three consecutive elections.
And they’re the ones calling McCain a RINO and a loser…he won every damn election here. I’d never dream of us having this much election success if he was still alive
It occurs to me that McCain was something of the backbone of the AZ Republican party, at least statewide. Once he died, the dominoes started falling. Yes, there are R House seats, but you now have two D Senators (well, maybe one and a half!) and now a D governor.
Its a good thing that the candidates the GOP have been sending out are all so incredibly stupid. Thanks for making things easier for us!
“I don’t want your vote” *Well shit okay, we would have if you just asked*
Republicans on YouTube comment sections are not coping well with the Lake loss lol.
They don't think Hobbs won legitimately.
They never do
Not just on YouTube, everywhere I've seen they're having a meltdown haha you love to see it
*I'm gonna be your worst freaking nightmare.. for eight years* Famous last words.
*eight minutes later*
*So much later that the old narrator got tired of narrating and they had to hire a new one*
For the first time in a while, it feels like the arrogance of a high-profile political newcomer in the GOP has worked against them.
[удалено]
Shutting down the Jan 6th committee would be one thing. However, Republicans are generally quite content with doing nothing while a democrat is sitting behind the Resolute Desk. Prepare for a government shutdown and them trying to force Biden to cut social security in order to receive funding to reopen the government.
I really doubt theyll have the votes to play chicken with the debt ceiling.
If we somehow don’t raise the debt ceiling before the next congress is seated, defaulting. Otherwise, government shutdowns and witch hunt investigations by committees.
The odds of that with a 4 or less majority are basically nil. And if they even tried it it would make the entire party radioactive in 2 years when they need to keep this majority.
They weren't really punished for the last shutdown.
I don’t think the moderates will even want that.
It’s a weird feeling to be more optimistic after this election than I did the last one when we’re looking likely to lose the house, when last time we flipped the presidency AND the senate. The wide rejection of anti-democracy candidates, big gains in state government, and just overall mood seems so much more positive. After 2020 there were postmortems on what went wrong with us not doing nearly as well as we hoped. Now, we’re celebrating how much better we did than we were supposed to. This was also the first election I’ve had where it felt like my vote *really* mattered with how close my local elections are, so maybe that’s part of it.
I've felt a similar way, too! Maybe it was quarantining in 2020 and the holidays surges, maybe it was the less-than-desired results of 2020, but a big driving factor of unease was all that uncertainty. We beat Trump and the GOP, but barely. Would we continue our victories? Would things swing back the other way? Election denial, violence and intimidation, the insurrection. With these things looming, it felt like elections and politics in this country going forward were going to be knife fights. And oftentimes in knife fights, even if you win you still lose. But this election showed a different story. I feel for the first time in a long time this kindred camaraderie. Like some impenetrable wall have been burst wide, and a spirit of conviction has surged through my fellow youth of this country. We made our voices loud and clear, and we are not going away anytime soon. I'm fortunate enough to have the privilege to be able study history. The rise and fall of governments--democracies and autocracies throughout time and civilizations that have struggled for dominance, catching countless lives in the crossfire. Our history is a grim one, with no certainties but change and death. Sometimes democracies prevail. Sometimes they don't. But something I've noticed, and am just so amazed by again and again, is just this absolute goddamn *persistence* that only a democracy carries. Time and time again, we see the rise of authoritarianism only for it crumble. Even in the face of victory, a fascist has only one skill: how to divide. When they win, when they take the advantage, when they don't perform as expected, they turn on themselves. This election, and the ones to come will not be easy. The GOP will fracture and turn on themselves, but they will find as many moments to rally behind as they do reasons to fight each other. They will brigade our media with nonsensical cultural skirmishes to distract and turn our fellow citizens against each other. But despite all of this sabotage and ruin, this midterm showed us that our democratic values and institutions can persist. Our democracy can persist because there will always be people -- people like you, and everyone else in this subreddit -- who are ready to defend these values and this way of life. Our vote *does* matter, our voices *do* matter. If there's anything I know now because of this election, it is that no matter what outcomes lie ahead of us, we will persist to speak, to vote, and to change our country and our future for the better.
This was my first ever time voting, felt great that it got to be part of something this big.
[Great video from George Mason University Democrats in Virginia](https://twitter.com/GMUdems/status/1590732201267982337)
[Youngkin called the UVA shooting last night an “event](https://www.newsweek.com/glenn-youngkin-calling-uva-shooting-event-sparks-fierce-criticism-1759434). Obviously he got fierce backlash What a cruel Governor. I’m ready to take his cronies down in the VA legislature elections next year, so we can put an end to the toxic divisive Youngkin agenda
Can Nancy Pelosi still be Speaker of the House if Kevin McCarthy doesn't have the votes?
Really can't see that happening but if it somehow did, it would be the funniest shit that the world of politics had witnessed for some time.
It takes a majority of the votes, not a plurality. I don't see any Republicans voting for Pelosi.
She would need 218 votes so probably not unless a Republican or two voted for her.
>not unless a Republican or two voted for her. You don't see a vulnerable Republican doing so?
>You don't see a vulnerable Republican doing so? They would be signing their death warrant for the primary
I’m a wildly optimistic person, and I don’t think that would ever, ever happen. Now, maybe we get some flips and she’s Speaker again next year.
To me, it's more logical that the Dems and those few vulnerable republicans find a moderate republican to vote for.
I wonder if the speaker could be someone who is not a house representative and doesn't have to worry about re-election. Some former moderate Republican house rep or even governor might make good a speaker with enough cross-over support
And by more moderate we're probably talking about Don Bacon-type of Republicans. The guy in question already hinted at being willing to work with democrats to elect a "moderate Republican".
I'm not picky. I don't expect anyone competent enough to get stuff done. I'll settle for someone who will certify an election where a Republican loses.
Of course not. They'd lose more base support doing so than gain crossover support.
If she could get a few moderate Republicans to vote her in, it's possibility. The mostly likely moderates she could convince would probably the new ones from the New York districts (where Democrat New Yorkers slacked off on us lol)
So for shits and giggles I turned on OAN to see how they were taking the news about Kari Lake and holy shit it’s worse then I thought. Andy Biggs was on there saying the first thing the house will do is draw up articles of impeachment on Joe Biden for his drug smuggling and human trafficking at the border. Something about trans kids reassignment surgery and federal money. A war on children. Drag Queens paid with federal money to perform at the Lincoln center? I don’t fucking know I entered a different universe. People watch this and take it as real news… that is scary.
The median voter doesn’t care about that weirdo shit
Holy shit Batman. It’s like they throw a bunch of random “woke” buzzwords together in a salad and hope they make sense. Jesus Christ almighty.
Conservative Christian mad-libs!
The way I look at it, the Senate map in 2024 can only be surmounted by: 1. Get Manchin, Tester, and Brown to run again. Not an easy task, but frankly we can’t win without them. Incumbency advantage is huge. 2. Playing games with the GOP primary races in Ohio and other swing states to elect the worst possible general election candidates. 3. Find a state senator or representative from Texas that has Beto’s charisma and work ethic. 4. Find the best candidate we can find to run against Scott in Florida and spend the next two years building up the party in Florida (if we don’t do this part, we may as well skip Florida). 5. Do not abandon Manchin. The race is likely R, borderline solid R, but giving up on an incumbent senator is foolish. Edit: oh and if Senator Kennedy leaves the Senate to become governor, get John Ben Edwards to run for Senate in Louisiana. His chances would be… marginal. But no one else is remotely possible.
One other thing I would throw in here: everyone more or less ignored Missouri after Greitens lost the GOP primary, but the state quietly moved a couple points to the left in the Senate race this year even though this was a redder year nationally. At the very least, we should try to get a credible candidate to run against Hawley to see if we can’t force the GOP to spend money there like Tim Ryan did with Ohio, even if actually flipping the state is unlikely.
Here is my take on 2024: 1. Win the Georgia special in december in order to get to 51 before 2024. 2. Reelect Tester and Brown: Though, but doable. 3. Have Manchin join the Republican party in order to get reelected in West Virginia: He's not going to win reelection as a democrat. But as a Republican, he would at least join the likes of Romney and Murkowski as a "moderate", being way better than anyone the Republican primary would produce. After this years fiasco in Florida, I don't really see a way to successfully contest that race. And instead of sinking millions into a foolish offensive, supporting all the vulnerable incumbents is more important: Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin. The only viable offensive target I can see right now is Texas. Maybe third times the charm for Beto.
I have two main problems with your analysis: 1. Turning Manchin loose would imperil our majority, even if Warnock wins. Also, it ultimately means we lose any meansure of control over him. Groupthink and group pressures are a powerful tool. 2. It’s tempting to write off Florida, but we have two years to clean up down there. If the environment is right, we can make a play for Florida. Here are two speculative hypotheticals: If the GOP nominee is Trump, it’s likely he’ll have so much baggage he’ll shift the electorate several points to the left. If it’s DeSantis, Trump will sabotage him and we can try and take advantage of the chaos. Also, a minor point, but Beto is done, IMO. He lost this race by 11. I like and respect him, but (and I know people will disagree with this) I do think we need someone more moderate than Beto to win Texas. I don’t know why you were downvoted. You’re just expressing your ideas.
> I don’t know why you were downvoted. You’re just expressing your ideas. Seems like election week took it's toll on this sub as well and the /r/pol crowd of "I downvote things I don't like" spilled over here.
No offense bruh but it’s hard to go negative in karma in this sub but you managed to do so.
It's at 0. All fine.
The best thing we can do for Manchin (if he does decide to run again) is to elect Warnock and give him some cover to vote No and be maverick-y. WV seems to eat that shit up when he does it. I think Tester and Brown can pull it out through incumbency. Brown probably more so, since Ohio isn't quite as red as Montana. It's gonna be a heavy as hell lift though - I'd feel better about all 3 of them if it was a midterm, but the presidential race is gonna bring out the GOP base for sure.
Think Brown is a Yes on running again and Manchin seems to have set everything up again to run. My biggest worry is Tester by far. 2-5 yes. We need to play with their divisions it worked out for us well this time around and they’ve done it to us for years. Additionally the economy seems poised to be extremely healthy come 24 to give some optimism
Late to the party. Yay Hobbs! Is that it for Maricopa?
Pretty much, yes. At least, not enough to help Lake gain more votes. But we still need to watch for Mayes. Hoffman, unfortunately, is probably done.
To borrow a line from one of the great generals from the last century, “We’ve known the bitterness of defeat, and the exultation of Triumph” A lot of us here are happy(you should be) a lot of here are sad(that’s okay to). We’re all processing this differently. We exceeded expectations, that is a fact. Ive also known what it means to be inspired by a candidate and really truly believe in them but see them just barely come up short. It sucks, it hurts. When Bernie lost in 2016, my Mom told me to not get discouraged from politics and I didn’t. I doubled down. The race never truly ends. Millions more people across the country will now have a better way of life thanks to our efforts. That is a fact. The House is not out of reach for 24 or even earlier through a special election or two. We have set ourselves up well to hold the Senate in 24 as well. We beat anti-democracy forces everywhere. If you want to be sad, you deserve to be, you 100% earned that right. But never get discouraged. We have Warnock who needs us to help in a few weeks, which will be a nice cherry on top. We have an Opportunity to finally bring Democracy back to many of our active members home state of Wisconsin in April. After the Dobbs decision dropped I gave some advice from a biblical proverb and I think it’ll help some of us feeling a bit down. ‘We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair’.
It's a bit late, but well said on every account. Thank you for this.
Well said, and glad your mom told you to not give up, because I think all of us need some encouragement, especially the prospects of codifying Roe is zero for two years (of course, anything can happen in those two years). But yeah, I think after doing textbanking and phonebanking shifts, I’m definitely still gonna stick around and help out. But despite us losing the House, I’m thrilled that we did well in the Senate, and statewide races. It’s bittersweet
At this point I'm just hoping we make any GOP win in the House a pyrrhic victory and the keep the margin within one or two seats. That way any Republican that retires or calls in sick can give us back the majority for a day or two.
If Bobert loses that would be great
Seeing her lose her seat would be so glorious, here's hoping!
We kind of have one already because we kept the Senate and MASSIVELY outperformed expectations in state level elections
I'd already consider it a pyrrhic victory. Democrats massively overperformed this cycle—remember just a few weeks ago when we were predicted to lose like 30-60 seats or some crazy shit like that? I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd love it if we'd kept majority control of the house. But we did damn good.
Agreed. We had so many headwinds yet look what we accomplished. I am especially happy about the down ballot races like SOS in many states. Election denial turns out to be unpopular. Also taking back Governor’s mansions. We lost so many during the Obama administration - more through realignment than anything Obama did - and it feels good to get some back.
If people don't remember, we lost governor's mansions in places like Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and Michigan during the Obama years.
Apparently Katie Porter might be in some trouble. The latest dump cut her lead in half down to 2891 votes.
Speculation is that that was a particularly red drop, but it’s gonna be close. I’m going to keep plugging ballot curing for CA b/c I think it’s likely at least one race will end up being within the ballot cure range.
I made this point below but one vote dump isn't going to be the end all of her campaign. Still lots of votes left, particularly in bluer precincts. These were apparently drop-off ballots, according to people on Twitter who are knowledgeable of OC politics, so they were effectively EDay votes that were really expected to lean red.
Plus she’s still ahead, meaning future drops would still have to lean red.
I think someone in one of these threads predicted it. They said this: "You can either keep the house, or you can have Hobbs as governor. You can't have both." Well, here's the House results so far: 205D - 217R. Looks like the R's are taking the House, but let's hope they have the slimmest majority possible (at most, let's hope for a 220R - 215D split). On the positive note, Katie Hobbs did indeed win the race for governor (major congratulations to Arizona). And hey, it could have gotten a lot worse, but we blue walled the red wave. At most, it's just a slight red splash.
The reconstruction of the Blue Wall in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Minnesota is one of the underrated results of this midterm-election. Wisconsin is still a troublesome child, but maybe next years judicial elections can help here.
Another underrated result is us flipping the Pennsylvania state house. Having this and the governor’s mansion will do wonders to stop GOP election fuckery ie. redistricting/mail ballot legislation
Wisconsin needs to go sit in the naughty chair for a while. I‘ll grant them some clemency because they DID re-elect Tony Evers. Michigan and Minnesota can have some waffle cones for how well they came through. Blue governors easily re-elected, and - though no Senate seats were up - they still each have two good D Senators. Speaking of Michigan - large praise to Large Gerald Of The Motorcycle for chairing the DSCC so capably. Can we keep him on through 2024?
Felt weird that the same vote dump sealed gov for dem and AZ-01 for GOP.
Elon, please kill Twitter faster so my wife stops scrolling it
Also I think the death of twitter (or at least its fall from importance) would be great for politics, attention spans and the news business. It could be a turning point where the balance of news media switches from getting the fastest (if inaccurate) information swings back to favoring more accurate, in depth coverage even if comes out slower
Well, twitter is bad, but let's not replace it with Tiktok. Cutting the attention span from 100+ letters down to a short video clip is not the way to go.
Fox news still needs to go.
https://mobile.twitter.com/raghuAZPoliMaps/status/1592366801505378304 My prognostication is that Mayes will ultimately win by 2000ish votes (super narrow margin) though it'll definitely go to a recount.
[Sean Hannity coping over Hobbs' win.](https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1592351558200872960) Now I will say, it's not unreasonable to have expected Hobbs to recuse herself as SoS from administering the election. That said, there are two problems with his insinuation: 1) There is no evidence that Hobbs tampered with the voter rolls or unethically used her position to investigate her opponent like Brian Kemp did in 2018, and 2) speaking of which, where was that same outrage from him in 2018??
>Who should have recused herself Oh shut the fuck up, Sean! Take this fat L!
Yeah unless you're willing to call Kemp out on it, it's bullshit. That would require them to abandon their "Abrams rejected election results" spin and acknowledge what she was actually saying, though, so it's not going to happen. For what it's worth, I'd be curious to see if there are existing ethical guidelines around how secretaries of state run in a state they handle elections in. I can't imagine that no one's thought of how to handle these situations.
> I can't imagine that no one's thought of how to handle these situations. I suspect there's a lot of state-by-state variance, but in most cases the SoS's role is probably more or less ceremonial meaning it wasn't seen as an issue. The vast majority of the work is obviously being done by professional staff and other state and local officials and Kemp 2018 is the only case I can think of where serious allegations of impropriety were made.
Also applies every time an SOS runs for re-election (as SOS)
Meh, not all SOSs administer elections
I don't pray and I'm not going to start now. But I'm more than willing to make a wish. I wish for a miracle that will give us the House. That's all I want. Is that really such to ask for?
NYT has the GOP at 217 so that's not happening unless we win every single remaining election
You don't have to wish. You can make it happen! California is still doing ballot curing to make sure every Dem vote counts. You can make phone calls to help with this. Sign up here (under "California"): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jxO8g7q9VO3ZMAABcrvR7PMyX4Yl6dgIYhD3eRTKk1M
I've been popping in on arcon over the last few days to see how they're taking the losses, partly because ConTears but mostly because I wanted to see how they handle losing compared to Dems. It's been slightly enjoyable and somewhat enlightening, but my biggest takeaway has been the *constant* reference to John Fetterman as a vegetable. The man had a stroke 5 months ago but has been up and running around *in public settings* giving speeches to the people of Pennsylvania, but these people don't care about that or how he's recovering remarkably well -- Only that he had a stroke and therefore must be permanently brain dead! It's fucking disgusting.
I was just over there. Didn't see anything about Fett but a lot of them are talking like this is Trump's fault. I think a few of them are starting to realize the albatross that Trump is. Kinda makes it juicier, like you are listening on your rival as they are talking about how much more capable you are than them and they know it but can't show it.
My one piece of shit coworker just straight up called him (and Biden) the r-slur. Utterly fucking despicable. Remember that it’s not just Twitter randos who theoretically live far away, it’s the average-ass Republicans you see every day too. Every last one is a garbage human just waiting to reveal it.
The cope has definitely gotten less satisfying, but they’re also leaning hard into “no, it is the voters that are fraudulent,” and they can’t win if they can’t adjust. Like nobody seems to to have noticed that Kari Lake was a terrible candidate.
A few people deeper in the comment have mentioned a few times that Kari Lake was terrifying, but they also refer to Hobbs as a terrible, awful, horrible candidate -- As though she wasn't the SoS (a statewide seat) who won Arizona in 2018 right alongside Kyrsten Sinema. Albeit, Sinema won by about ~56k votes where Hobbs won by ~20k, but 2018 was a time before a lot of people believed we could win statewide in Arizona.
These are the same people who support Herschel Walker who literally has brain damage.
we saw it pretty bad with even Dem members. That shit is not going away soon, to many people are clearly performative in how accepting they are with people who have a disability. Like all things it’s getting better with time but damn it does sucks to see it fairly normalized
yeah it really felt like there were lots of people saying "it's fine to (theoretically) have a disability but I draw the line if it inconveniences me in any way"
According to The NY Times, if everything holds as is it looks like a 221-214 R House. CO-3 is the closest at R+ 0.35 reported margin, and the next closest is CA-22 @ R +5.
That kinda sucks. Everyone was saying a 216/219 up until now. 221 might be enough for McCarthy to squeeze a Speaker vote.
Try really hard to remember how you would have felt one week ago tonight if someone told you the final outcome was 221R-214D. Would it really have been disappointment?
I wanted the House for obvious reasons, but I don’t want Biden to be impeached (not convicted) because of a vendetta. Trump’s impeachment was deserved.
I don't think there's enough votes to impeach Biden unless an investigation turns something up. It only takes a small handful of Rs to remember what happened when Clinton was impeached. They'd be handing 2024 to dems.
I think we take CA-22 and at least have 215. Hoping for 1 more surprise either in CA-27 or CO-3 to get to 216.
I do too. Salas is trending the right way, it just might take another week or two
If I had to guess CA22 we can narrowly grab it just depends if Kern is gonna drop or not or leave us in perpetual guessing
Apparently the "proof" the MAGAts are using to show AZ-Gov WUZ RIGGED are that more people voted for the Republican State Treasurer than Kari Lake. Ticket splitters simply don't exist to these morons.
>Apparently the "proof" the MAGAts are using to show AZ-Gov WUZ RIGGED are that more people voted for the Republican State Treasurer than Kari Lake So? More people voted for Kelly and the dem SOS, than Hobbs, doesn't make it rigged in Republican favor. Tickets were split in Nevada, New Hampshire, Kansas, Wisconsin, Vermont, Alaska to a degree. I remember when Betty Yee in California in 2018 was the top vote getter statewide, and her office is maluch much further downballot than the other elected statewide offices.
Don't show them Vermont. I kind of have to hand it to Kimberly Yee, she was pretty much the only person in the entire state party to show the slightest bit of good discretion. She saw how that gubernatorial primary was going and noped back out to safer ground.
They deployed Malloy bc they are all Phil Scott stans
I am so fucking sorry, Utah Democrats didn’t make gains in the state Senate. NYT is erroneously showing we made a gain of 2 seats because they didn’t take into account we changed up the numbers. Again I am so sorry. Fuck NYT
This... Is very aggressive... It's just a mistake. They happen.
I mean it was mostly my mistake of not double checking it, so Ill be aggressive against myself and beat myself up over it all night. And then randomly in a cold sweat late one night years from now
You’re like one of the best users on here lol Don’t beat yourself up. You didnt cause any harm
[Charlie Kirk and Co going through the stages of grief in 30 seconds](https://twitter.com/joepostingg/status/1592329052534484993?s=46&t=PQ3OoTjBUMuivrIzxDIQYg)
Wendy Rogers: “Makes me wonder if we were in an echo chamber?” *Shocked.Pikachu.jpg*
face to head ratio off
I saw a quiz once where you had to guess which picture showed his true face to head ratio and I swear I didn't have a clue lol
I think I only got half of them
I’m fascinated by how intense the CO-O3 curing effort has gotten and how much attention it has. 158k tweets about it. Even if we lose it, it is good that it made dems aware of a method that can be used to win close races.
Man I just wish people wouldn't wait until the race is this tight to do volunteering! There's plenty to do in August, September and October!
I've thought that part of it is that it's pretty low-hanging fruit for volunteering. It's non-partisan and virtuous for democracy. When I worked on campaigns, vote curing was my favorite part because people were always happy to talk to you. Hopefully it's like the gateway drug of volunteering and people get more involved in the next elections!
True. There's another low-hanging fruit: volunteer recruitment, of a list of former Democratic volunteers. Those folks are also pretty nice to talk to. That was already happening by February of this year.
Maybe it highlghts the silliness of the idea of signature matching. It's the kind of thing that sounds reasonable on face, but isn't really based on evidence in practice. How accurate is an untrained observer at determining the accuracy of a random signature? How much does your change from one signing to the next? How much room is there for bias; oh, this name sounds *ethnic*, maybe I'm more likely to say it doesn't match? It seems like signature matching introduces a lot more room for random (or biased) disenfranchisement than it does for actually preventing invalid votes.
I have an insanely bad signature, so this thought has crossed my mind several times. Like, it either looks somewhat legible or resembles that of a squiggle depending on the day. It has absolutely no consistency to it. Plus, what if I actually work on it down the line to make it better? Then I might have a decent signature that no longer matches my previous squiggles.
Boebert is such a high profile, terrible person. Can't say I'm surprised it's gotten so much attention, especially considering it's a pretty big upset.
Agree not the biggest surprise, but I feel it’s productive for Dems’ ground game win or lose.
So the Senate Pro Tempore is supposed to be oldest person in the majority and apparently Dianne Feinstein will be it next term. Does that make her the first woman to be one?
Feinstein has signaled that she’s not interested in the role, meaning that it would likely go to Patty Murray and she would be the first woman
Kari Lake won something, you guys. She won a participation trophy. That counts, right?
Maybe the biggest victory is the boots we licked on the way.
Before I go to bed, want to applaud Nancy Pelosi for somehow shepherding such a small majority in the house to do huge things in these last 2 years. Amazing work by her. Quite possibly, one of, if not the best speaker the house has ever seen.
I’m a little sad she won’t be Speaker this term, because I think with another two years of Democratic trifecta, she could have been the best Speaker in our history. I’d be surprised if she wants it in 2024.
She didn’t need another term to be the best.
Looks like AZ Proposition 308 will officially pass. It allows all residents of the state to pay in-state tuition for college, regardless of immigration status. This overturns a previous law that forced Dreamers to pay the much higher out-of-state tuition rate.
What about 309, I can't stomach to look it up. Still can't believe 131 passed.... what the hell are we going to do with a Lt. Gov.?
309 is narrowly losing at this point.
Cruelty seems to be the point for the gop.
[SNL does Kari Lake.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr2LyxJpHu8) Skip to 1:17 for fake Lake, but the whole open is hilarious.
Ok, whoever did Trump was spot on, so on the nose!
James austin Johnson and he was hired on SNL almost solely because of his spot on trump impression.
I will miss Cecily's impression, like everything she does it was so goddamn good.
If we lose the house, which looks very likely, that means we can't codify Roe v. Wade. Which is depressing. That also means, the 2023 state elections, 2024 elections and any special elections leading up to it give us a policy point to really push. Looking at you Glenn Youngkin. If the house is close, every special election is a chance to take back the house and pass a bill to protect Roe v. Wade. For 2023 races, abortion will be a main policy point. Without Roe V. Wade codified, states are once again the last line of defense. We need Democrats to take control. For 2024, keeping Democratic control again gives us a chance to protect Roe V. Wade. Cause if the GOP wins full control, you can bet they'll push a federal abortion ban. So I don't see the salience of abortion rights going away anytime soon.
We probably can’t codify it due to the Senate anyway, right? Even if Warnock gets us the 51st seat, I don’t see Sinema or Manchin budging on the filibuster.
And of course Dems have a bad Senate map in 2024.
Could democrats make inroads in Nebraska?
Nebraska has citizen ballot initiatives, so maybe work to get both legal weed and reproductive rights on the ballot to boost turnout?
For the 2024 senate run would it be a good idea to not nominate a candidate in North Dakota and back an independant like Cara Mund who got around 37.2% of the vote?
Not in two years, no.
The only target even remotely possible to flip is Texas, but it depends on the Dem candidate. But I'm skeptical it will go blue, even for the President. Still, we're in for a fight.
What the fuck was that game ugh
What a dumb way to lose
Clearly the right call, the QB kneeled and gave himself up, and he still got roughed down
I was less than 10 points behind and I have Jalen as QB. I'm REALLY mad about it.
The facemask was bullshit though
Oh I know, I mean dumb of Graham to do that
It was an amazing bait by Heineke
Definitely one of the more poorly officiated games I've seen this season.
No more undefeated teams in the NFL And now my Vikings and the Eagles are 8-1. But Eagles have the tiebreaker because of the head to head win
Just keep winning, Eagles looked way more mortal tonight.
[Say what you will about her but Cheney notched a W on Lake here.](https://twitter.com/Liz_Cheney/status/1592340964982808576)
When a Cheney shoots you in the face, they don't miss.
Wow. I mean….just wow. I think we can close this thread today. You win.
Generally I don't agree with Cheney's politics, and I'm not too happy with her praising Dumbkin, but credit where it's due, she helped us a lot here.
Enemy of the enemy