2022 U.S. Congressional (and Other) Elections

[Frelga]

This looks like a colorized photo from 1930s.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This looks like a colorized photo from 1930s.

Shockingly, you are not the only one to have that thought!

[N.E. Brigand]

Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur of Ohio is a Democrat who has served in Congress longer than any other woman in history, 39 years, except for former Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, who served for 40 years before her retirement in 2017. (That said, 59 men were in Congress even longer.) Kaptur currently represents me in the U.S. House of Representatives, but that never should have been: she had long represented greater Toledo, but her district, Ohio's 9th, was gerrymanded ridiculously by Republicans following the 2010 census such it contained parts of both Toledo and Cleveland, which are more than 100 miles apart, and it is sometimes called "The Snake on the Lake," because it's very narrow at many points and once is connected only by a bridge.

Kaptur will no longer represent me as of next January. As I have noted repeatedly in this thread, Ohio's Republicans have bulldozed the redistricting process based on the 2020 census, largely ignoring the requirements of a state constitutional amendment passed in the intervening decade and blowing past court deadlines, so that Ohio is likely to have 12 or 13 Republicans out of 15 seats in Congress even though only 55% of the states voters are Republican. Kaptur's new 9th district no longer includes Cleveland but does include a lot more rural and Republican-leaning territory than before. She is forecasted to win narrowly by 538.com.

Her Republican opponent, J.R. Majewski, is an election-denying, Trump-endorsed, QAnnon-supporting "U.S. army veteran and rapper," per Wikipedia, who has claimed that his service in the armed forces included a grueling stint in Afghanistan including a stretch of 40 days when he went without even a shower.

The AP reports today that Majewski was never in Afghanistan. Mind you, he did spend six months in Qatar loading planes that were flown to Afghanistan, but most of his military service was in Japan.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Both the House and Senate have shifted slightly back towards the GOP, with the Senate now at 70-30, and the House at 28-72.

ETA: Kaptur herself is favored 71-29. Hopefully the news that Majewski completely lied about his military service will increase her odds.

ETAA: Also, JD Vance is now favored over Tim Ryan in the Senate race, 72-28. I see that the last three polls all favor Vance.

[N.E. Brigand]

CNN is reporting that the Republican candidate for U.S. House from Michigan's 3rd district, John Gibbs, once wrote some pretty awful things about women's rights. He said that women shouldn't be in the workplace and also this

Some argue that in a democratic society, it is hypocritical or unjust for women, who are 50% of the population, not to have the vote. This is obviously not true, since the founding fathers, who understood liberty and democracy better than anyone, did not believe so. In addition, all people under age 18 cannot vote, although they too comprise a significant portion of the population. So we cannot say that women should be able to vote simply because they are a large part of the population.

We conclude that increasing the size and scope of government is unequivocally bad. And since women's suffrage has caused this to occur on a larger scale than any other cause in history, we conclude that the United States has suffered as a result of women's suffrage.

Mind you, Gibbs wrote this as a college student at Stanford about 20 years ago. So I would be inclined to give him a pass on having been a youthful idiot if he would renounce those statements now. The original web page has long been deleted, and Gibbs at some point clearly recognized that his remarks would be controversial, since he requested that the Internet Archive remove their copies of those pages several years ago. (They complied, but there are other archive sites, one of which CNN examined.) His campaign manager says he was being deliberately provocative to goad liberals and that he doesn't oppose women's rights to vote and work.

Earlier this year, Gibbs defeated Peter Meijer, a Republican who voted in 2021 to impeach Donald Trump. Gibbs, who served for about a year in the Trump administration, had previously claimed that Hillary Clinton's campaign manager participated in satanic rituals.

[N.E. Brigand]

For the first time that I've seen, 538.com now has the odds of Democrats holding the Senate -- currently at 71% -- ahead of the odds of Republicans taking the House, which is now at 69%, and this has led the site for the first time to describe Republicans as only "slightly favored to win the House".

A 538 staffer this week made a point of noting that in 2016, their site said Hillary Clinton had a 71% chance of winning the presidency. That was worse than the odds most other election forecasters gave Clinton, but as we know, Donald Trump beat the odds (and for purposes of forecasting, it doesn't matter if that achievement was partly due to help from a Russian influence campaign). In other words, it's now just as possible that Republicans take the Senate or Democrats hold the House as it was then that Trump would win.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Wow, that is a huge movement in the House race from when I last checked yesterday morning and it was (as I said above), 28-72. I wonder what sparked such a big change? This is the first time that Republicans are only "slightly favored" to take the House.

[N.E. Brigand]

Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate for Senate from Georgia, claims that his company donates 15% of the proceeds to charity. The New York Times called the charities to whom the company supposedly donates; those charities have no record of any such donations.

[Sunsilver]

Wow, that is a huge movement in the House race from when I last checked yesterday morning and it was (as I said above), 28-72. I wonder what sparked such a big change? This is the first time that Republicans are only "slightly favored" to take the House.

Maybe some of Trump's followers aren't quite as stupid as he thinks. For instance, when he says he can declassify documents by just 'thinking about it' they are finally realizing how full of B.S. the man is.

And maybe they've been listening to the news about the suit being brought against him for fraudulently inflating his property values, and are finally thinking, 'well if he's lying about this, what else is he lying about?'

Or am I just being naïve?

[Dave_LF]

It's not that they're stupid, it's that they're corrupt. They'll abandon him once it becomes clear he's finished, but we should not forgive or forget the choices they made before that.

[N.E. Brigand]

Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur of Ohio is a Democrat who has served in Congress longer than any other woman in history, 39 years, except for former Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, who served for 40 years before her retirement in 2017. (That said, 59 men were in Congress even longer.) Kaptur currently represents me in the U.S. House of Representatives, but that never should have been: she had long represented greater Toledo, but her district, Ohio's 9th, was gerrymanded ridiculously by Republicans following the 2010 census such it contained parts of both Toledo and Cleveland, which are more than 100 miles apart, and it is sometimes called "The Snake on the Lake," because it's very narrow at many points and once is connected only by a bridge.

Kaptur will no longer represent me as of next January. As I have noted repeatedly in this thread, Ohio's Republicans have bulldozed the redistricting process based on the 2020 census, largely ignoring the requirements of a state constitutional amendment passed in the intervening decade and blowing past court deadlines, so that Ohio is likely to have 12 or 13 Republicans out of 15 seats in Congress even though only 55% of the states voters are Republican. Kaptur's new 9th district no longer includes Cleveland but does include a lot more rural and Republican-leaning territory than before. She is forecasted to win narrowly by 538.com.

Her Republican opponent, J.R. Majewski, is an election-denying, Trump-endorsed, QAnnon-supporting "U.S. army veteran and rapper," per Wikipedia, who has claimed that his service in the armed forces included a grueling stint in Afghanistan including a stretch of 40 days when he went without even a shower. The AP reports today that Majewski was never in Afghanistan. Mind you, he did spend six months in Qatar loading planes that were flown to Afghanistan, but most of his military service was in Japan.

It's not that they're stupid, it's that they're corrupt. They'll abandon him once it becomes clear he's finished, but we should not forgive or forget the choices they made before that.

The House Republican election committee is pulling its advertising money from this race, abandoning Majewski and effectively conceding to Rep. Kaptur.

It's not impossible that he could still win, but it's less likely now.

[N.E. Brigand]

Just a couple days ago, a number of Republican commentators were giving Nate Silver a hard time because 538.com was the only major election forecast outlet to classify the U.S. Senate race in Arizona as leaning to Democrats rather than a toss-up. Today, the Cook Political Report joined 538.com in that assessment that Sen. Mark Kelly, a moderate Democrat, will be able to hold off the challenge from Blake Masters, the extremist (and violent) Republican. Here's hoping both sites are correct.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Her Republican opponent, J.R. Majewski, is an election-denying, Trump-endorsed, QAnnon-supporting "U.S. army veteran and rapper," per Wikipedia, who has claimed that his service in the armed forces included a grueling stint in Afghanistan including a stretch of 40 days when he went without even a shower.

The AP reports today that Majewski was never in Afghanistan. Mind you, he did spend six months in Qatar loading planes that were flown to Afghanistan, but most of his military service was in Japan.

Majewski responds!

[N.E. Brigand]

Donald Trump's Super PAC Raised Just $40 in August (Financial Times)

No words are missing from that headline: forty dollars, not forty million or even forty thousand. But the same PAC also raised no money in June. Last year, it brought in many millions.

[N.E. Brigand]

'Tasteless" doesn't begin to describe this:

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[RoseMorninStar]

Perhaps he had a fight with a few too many cans of beer.

Is anyone else being bombarded with calls from Americans For Prosperity? We have been getting 4-5 calls a day for at least a month.

[N.E. Brigand]

From the Economist. Obama and Trump both saw their parties lose a lot of seats in Congress in their first midterm, so this doesn't bode well for Democrats in five weeks. That said, at least Biden's recent trend is upward:

[N.E. Brigand]

Last night, at a rally for the Republican candidate for Secretary of State in Arizona, retired general and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn said:

"States rights! Did you know that a Governor can declare war? And we’re going to probably see that."

I look forward to Arizona being thoroughly routed by California in the Battle of Lake Havasu.

(Edited to correct the identify of the speaker.)