2022 U.S. Congressional (and Other) Elections

[N.E. Brigand]

Nate Silver explains why despite currently leading in the polling average, Tim Ryan has an extremely uphill battle in the Ohio senate race against J.D. Vance.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/ca ... nate-race/

That's a thoughtful piece. Thanks for sharing it.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It is interesting that their three "models" are so widely disparate in that race. I'm hopeful that the current polling will prove to be more prescient that the other factors suggest that it will be.

[N.E. Brigand]

Three weeks ago, Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee for Senate from Georiga, said that he was "ready to debate" the incumbent, Senator Raphael Warnock, "any time, any day".

Today, Walker said that he was declining an invitation extended to both candidates (by television stations 13WMAZ, 11Alive, Georgia Public Broadcasting, The Telegraph and the Mercer University Center for Collaborative Journalism) to debate on October 13 in Macon. Sen. Warnock accepted an invitation to appear at this debate, and two others, more than a month ago. Walker has yet to indicate whether he will attend the other two debates.

Among the reasons Walker cited in this decision was that "only two people gonna see it on a Sunday night, I think." October 13 is a Thursday.

Earlier this month, Walker did agree to attend a different debate than the three at which Warnock had already agreed to appear. This one is scheduled for October 14 in Savannah. Warnock has yet to respond to that invitation.

[N.E. Brigand]

I saw some Republicans claiming that North Carolina's Supreme Court, by a 4-3 Democratic majority had crossed a line today by overturning voter ballot initiatives that amended the state's constitution -- which did sound to me like something a court shouldn't do -- but the actual story is more complicated and interesting.

Here's the ruling. The NAACP sued the Republican leaders of the state house and state senate for placing, with (barely) the required approval of 60% of the legislature, two initiatives on the ballot for statewide popular vote in 2018. One measure capped the state's income tax level; the other was a voter ID requirement (which is why I'm noting it here). Both ballot measures were approved by the public. But the NAACP argued that the legislature didn't have the right to put the measures on the ballot in the first place, and the N.C. Supreme Court agreed, because the legislators who proposed the measures and voted to put them on the ballot were in power because of illegal gerrymanders:

What makes this case so unique is that the General Assembly, acting with the knowledge that twenty-eight of its districts were unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered and that more than twothirds of all legislative districts needed to be redrawn to achieve compliance with Equal Protection Clause, chose to initiate the process of amending the state constitution at the last possible moment prior to the first opportunity North Carolinians had to elect representatives from presumptively constitutional legislative districts.

The court says that these de facto legislators can still undertake most regular business, but cannot approve ballot initiatives that could make fundamental changes to the state's constitution. The case has been sent back to a lower court to consider these issues.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Supreme Court issues rare emergency order favoring voters challenging elections rules

[N.E. Brigand]

Three weeks ago, Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee for Senate from Georiga, said that he was "ready to debate" the incumbent, Senator Raphael Warnock, "any time, any day".

Today, Walker said that he was declining an invitation extended to both candidates (by television stations 13WMAZ, 11Alive, Georgia Public Broadcasting, The Telegraph and the Mercer University Center for Collaborative Journalism) to debate on October 13 in Macon. Sen. Warnock accepted an invitation to appear at this debate, and two others, more than a month ago. Walker has yet to indicate whether he will attend the other two debates.

Among the reasons Walker cited in this decision was that "only two people gonna see it on a Sunday night, I think." October 13 is a Thursday.

Earlier this month, Walker did agree to attend a different debate than the three at which Warnock had already agreed to appear. This one is scheduled for October 14 in Savannah. Warnock has yet to respond to that invitation.

Ah, so apparently the only debate at which Herschel Walker has agreed to appears is also the only one that will provide the candidate with advance notice of the topics to be discussed.

[N.E. Brigand]

This could also go in threads about the 2016 or 2020 elections or the "escaping the echo chamber" thread. I put it here because if Democrats are going to succeed in this year's mid-term elections, I believe this is the kind of voter they'll need to win over, and I have no idea how they can do that.

Asked to "describe someone who voted for Obama twice and then Trump twice," here's how political commentator Matt Yglesias responded:

She's got wishy-washy views on abortion and LGBT issues, loves Social Security and Medicare, doesn't like immigrants, and is vaguely pro-cop and favorable to universal health care without a lot of specific takes on either point. No college degree and doesn't go to church.

She got annoyed when the media started proclaiming tons of normal-in-2010 opinions on cultural issues (illegal immigrants are bad, cops are good, etc.) beyond the pale racist. That's pushed her into consuming conservative media which has changed her whole information flow.

When news of dramatic right-wing policy change (repealing the ACA, overturning Roe v Wade) becomes salient, she starts to waiver from her new politics. But she does feel fundamentally like Republicans want her to vote for them while Democrats think she's a bad person.

And then ProPublica reporter Alec McGillis highlighted an actual profile of just such a woman in upstate New York form 2016. And it really brings home how much democracy depends on how people feel and not what they think. That voter's interests totally aligned with Democratic policies, but she had come to feel that Obama's persona was too cold and unfeeling, and she also felt that, even though she explicitly acknowledged that she didn't really understand the details, the events at Benghazi and Hillary Clinton's emails proved that she wasn't fit to lead:

To have lives be sacrificed because of corporate greed and warmongering, it's too much for me -- and I realize I don't have all the facts -- that there's just too much sidestepping on her [Clinton]. I don't trust her. I don't think that -- I know there's casualties of war in conflict, I'm a big girl, I know that. But I lived my life with no secrets. There's no shame in the truth. There's mistakes made. We all grow. She's a mature woman and she should know that. You don't email your f*&^ing daughter when you're a leader. Leaders need to make decisions. They need to be focused. You don't hide stuff. That's why I like Trump. He's not perfect. He's a human being. We all make mistakes. We can all change our minds. We get educated, but once you have the knowledge, you still have to go with your gut.

Now, while I knew in October 2016 that Donald Trump was a criminal who might sell out the U.S. to foreign powers if it would bring him money or power, I can understand how the media's refusal to take Trump seriously meant that information had not reached people like this voter. (As for Benghazi, we weren't a year into Trump's administration when four U.S. soldiers were killed at Tongo Tongo, a place where it wasn't even publicly known that there were American service members, with no clear explanation ever given by the Trump administration as to what they were doing or why they were killed.) And if this woman was or became a regular viewer of Fox News (or worse), the truth might still be unknown to her. But Trump is everything she mistakenly believed Clinton to be. Would she believe the evidence if it was presented to her? Or does it even matter this year (despite his repeated involvement in so many mid-term campaigns) since he's not on the ballot?

[N.E. Brigand]

Tudor Dixon, the Republican nominee for governor in Michigan, says that children who are raped should not be allowed to have an abortion because "I've talked to those people who were the child of a rape victim, and the bond that those two people made [i.e., the mother and chid], and the fact that out of that tragedy, there was healing through that baby, is something that we don't think about".

[N.E. Brigand]

Mehmet Oz, the Republican candidate for Senate from Pennsylvania (even though he mostly lives in New Jersey; only one of the ten properties that Oz owns is even in the Keystone State) apparently thinks he's running to be Pennsylvania's governor. Speaking on the right-wing Newsmax channel today in an effort to defend himself from criticism for a weird video he made in April in which among other things he garbled the name of a well-known Pennsylvania grocery story chain, he said today that he was "exhausted," that there have been times when "I've gotten my kids' names wrong as well" (presumably another Republican candidate, Herschel Walker, can relate to that one), and he doesn't believe that such mistakes are "a measure of someone's ability to lead the Commonwealth." (He's not running to "lead the Commonwealth" -- that's the job of the governor -- but to represent it in Congress.)

Oz said yesterday that despite his many years of living in New Jersey, he's not a carpetbagger in Pennsylvania because "my father came and settled us just south of Phliadelphia." However, as multiple people have pointed out, that would be New Jersey:



And in fact, the Oz family -- after Mehmet Oz himself was born here in Cleveland, Ohio -- moved to the southwest of Philadelphia ... in Wilmington, Delaware.

[RoseMorninStar]

One should question his geography, not to mention sanity. Good grief.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

And yet, there is still a very real chance, that he, Hershel Walker and J.D. Vance will all be in the Senate next year.

[River]

Refresh my memory. How/why did Oprah's pet doctor in New Jersey get recruited by the GOP to run for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania? Surely they could have boosted someone local who is also fabulously wealthy but isn't a complete political neophyte?

[RoseMorninStar]

Refresh my memory. How/why did Oprah's pet doctor in New Jersey get recruited by the GOP to run for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania? Surely they could have boosted someone local who is also fabulously wealthy but isn't a complete political neophyte?

I'll give my completely biased and honest opinion: The GOP has become the party of narcissistic personality hubris and pseudo-science. Dr. Oz feels completely at home in that environment. Trump chose (anointed?) Oz because 'all the world is a stage' and he believes in the power of TV. "It's like a poll".

[Sunsilver]

That sounds like a very good, plausible explanation, Rose!

[Dave_LF]

I'll go a step farther: it's the reality TV party. Put together a lineup of the trashiest, most entitled people you can possibly find, encourage all their worst tendencies for the entertainment of an audience that can only aspire to such lows of depravity, then let them battle it out publicly for the title of Garbage King.

[RoseMorninStar]

Dave, yup.

I had to hop on the freeway today. I don't often take that route, but in a short distance (9-10 miles) I saw 2 'UGE Trump billboards and one for Ron Johnson (which is a little less surprising).

[N.E. Brigand]

In March 2021 (i.e., 17 months ago), a billionaire named Barre Seid donated his entire company to a new PAC called the Marble Freedom Trust, which is controlled by Leonard Leo, generally thought to be one of the most influential conservative political activists through his leadership of the Federalist Society (he co-chairs the group's board of directors) and that group's success in the dissemination of conservative judicial philosophy and in particular for getting Republican presidents to choose federal judges sympathetic to their positions and especially Supreme Court justices from a list drawn up by the group. (There have been some twists in that process, however: Brett Kavanaugh was not on their list when Donald Trump was elected and seems to have been added specifically to convince Anthony Kennedy, for whom Kavanaugh clerked, to retire.) Reid donated his company rather than making a cash donation for certain tax advantages. The Marble Freedom Trust then sold the company.

For $1.6 billion.

This enormous donation, and the very existence of the Marble Freedom Trust, was unknown before today, when the news broke in the New York Times. I note it here because I presume the money will be spent (and is already being spent) to influence this year's election.

[N.E. Brigand]

Bookmarking two interesting items, to which I'd like to return later, on what Democrats arguably need to do to succeed either this year or in the long term:

This is a review in the Washington Monthly of a new book by a Democratic state legislator from a rural Maine district titled Dirt Road Revival: How to Rebuild Rural Politics and Why Our Future Depends On It. The reviewer feels that the book identifies a real problem, but (perhaps because the rural district the legislator represents is atypically granola and touristy) that it mistakenly offers a one-size-fits-all solution.

This series of excerpts from a political commentator's newsletter asks what the recently popular "Dark Brandon" meme says about how (as I alluded to in some other comments here lately) Democrats too often aim for the head rather than the heart in their campaign strategy.

[N.E. Brigand]

The Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from Ohio, J.D. Vance, is sending out emails to supporters that say, "At this point, if I don’t do a complete 180 on the fundraising front, not only will I have to possibly SHUT DOWN my campaign, but Republicans may never win another race this year."

Here's hoping! But as noted a couple days ago, he's still likely to defeat Tim Ryan, the Democratic nominee. Among other things, the Republican Senate campaign fund is apparently going to spend $28 million in Ohio.

[N.E. Brigand]

Herschel Walker offered some thoughts today about global warming. He doesn't favor programs to fight it because:

"They continue to try to fool you that they are helping you out, but they’re not, because a lot of money: it’s going to trees. Don’t we have enough trees around here?"