On the Wisconsin governor race: “Evers benefited high turnout in the Democratic strongholds of Madison and Milwaukee and in college towns such as La Crosse, Eau Claire and Stevens Point.” (from a Madison news site).
As for Kelly winning in Kansas, the independent candidate there got a lot of votes. Maybe that helped Kelly win— surely there are lots of Kansans who would never vote for a Democrat, but dislike Kobach personally, and were happy to vote against him (by voting for the independent)…but WOULD have held their nose and voted for Kobach, if there were no third choice on the ballot.
State-level polls are frequently inaccurate.
But re: the Senate, I’m not sure that Heitkamp and McCaskill are huge defeats for the Democrats. I’m more concerned about Bill Nelson’s defeat by Rick Scott, though not necessarily surprised, as Scott has proven to be a brilliant political strategist, like him or loathe him.
One thing that seems to be clear already: last night, racism won.
The notoriously racist campaigners I can think of were mostly successful in their races.
Yes. Kobach being an exception.
Kobach lost but not because he’s racist; he lost because he blindly doubled down on Brownbackism. Kansans have had enough of that shit.
My wife and I were arguing about this the other night. The “experts” were saying that Orman was draining votes away from Kelly, but I wasn’t buying it. It was much easier for me to imagine GOP voters who didn’t like Kobach but wouldn’t be caught dead voting D, than D voters who would vote for Orman over Kelly for whatever reason.
Interesting pattern in the last six Kansas governors:
Mike Hayden (R, male)
Joan Finney (D, female)
Bill Graves (R, male)
Kathleen Sebelius (D, female)
Sam Brownback (R, male)
Laura Kelly (D, female)
While obviously there are some Senators who are more influential than others, for the most part, a vote’s a vote. And having lost those seats will make it a more uphill battle to regain the Senate in 2020. The pickup opportunities in 2020 are better than they were in 2018, but they’re still kinda mediocre really.
Best case for this year, now that the voting’s over and mostly counted, seems to be that the Dems hold MT and pick up AZ for a total of 47. They have two pretty good pickup opportunities in 2020 in CO and ME, but after that it gets stickier, as the list at the link demonstrates.
Cool! 
An “impeachment” of subpoenas.
NC governor can veto bills and the NC GOP state house and senate no longer have enough reps to override his veto unless they get some Dems to join them.
As far as beer at a Romney rally, Salt Lake City is very liberal , for example the mayor is a catholic lesbian. Due to transplants SLC is only 50% mormon.
They SHOULD have the same interest of keeping the party that OPENLY HATES THEM out of power. Absolutely nothing should be more important than that. How can that possibly not supersede anything else?
I think the problem for Democrats is that they’re still trying to carve out their shape; they’re trying to establish their identity. It’s clear that a new progressive movement is beginning to take shape, but the party is trying to work out the details and they’re trying to figure out who the spokespeople are. It’s clear that corporate-friendly types like McCaskill and Heitkamp aren’t going to energize people. But I’m not sure that Ocasio Cortez will either.
As I said in another post, I think the Republicans will make mistakes. Healthcare will be an issue. Social security and Medicare will be an issue, because trillion dollar deficits will be an issue. Once voters figure out what that billionaire tax cut actually means, and once they figure out who Mitch McConnell expects to pay for it - retired working class seniors - that could be a game changer. But the Dems have to figure out their identity, and soon.
So turnout.
Apparently 114M votes cast out of what? 235M eligible? That’s 48.5% if right. Blows away 2014’s 83M and not far off from 2016’s 134M. And if I am figgerin’ right only 1966 has had a bigger midterm turnout % and that just barely (48.7%).
That is something impressive.
The shape that won in the House was locally driven by the races.
For the national race? To be decided as we enter this phase of fighting for the nomination. I’m betting on Harris as the face. But we’ll see.
The Dems haven’t had a clear identity in over 50 years, so don’t hold your breath waiting, OK?
Went to be at 10:30 PM PST last night, and things look pretty much the same this morning. How long does it take to count ballot sin AZ (they’re only at 75%)?
Hurricane Ditka’s GOP congresswoman in UT trails but the votes are not all counted yet.
This. Votes matter in the Senate. No matter what one thinks of their Democratic bonanfides, Heitkamp and McCaskill would have been votes to put Democrats in committee chairs, to bring Democratic bills to the floor and to oppose the Administration’s most egregious nominees. That both were replaced by unalloyed Trumpists means that Trump has carte blanche to nominate pretty much anyone he wants. And as you state, it makes the 2020 election an enormous lift for Senate Democrats.
Not very long, they only have to count the votes for the Republicans.
And as I think about it, this result is great news for Susan Collins. With a solid Republican majority, she can feel free to vote against a couple of nominees to show her “independence” without any real risk of stirring conservative ire for tanking the nomination.