Absolutely, the GOP under-performed the “fundamentals” of a mid-term with a sketchy economy and an unpopular president.
Possibly the GOP under-performed pre-election polling, although at this point the polls look to have been pretty good (at least the non-partisan ones).
Almost certainly the GOP made poor choices in candidate selection. Walker and Bolduc in particularly were bad candidates that may have cost the GOP Senate seats. And that’s without getting into the truly nutty candidates that may have hurt other candidates on the ballot (Mastriano in PA for example, did Oz no favors).
More like the incumbents exceeded expectation, and to an extent many on the GOP side expected to just coast,believing their own propaganda. They were looking forward to another 2010 not understanding it is not 2010.
Definitely a combination of these two factors and yes, the Dobbs decision woke people up about hey, wait a minute, this IS happening. (Especially when then like in the next breath after saying its up to the state, Mr. Graham proposes overriding the states in the antichoice direction).
A lot of that, and I noticed that at 538 and other places, was caused by the now clearly innacurate right wing pollster Trafalgar Group and a few others that were preferred by right wing outfits.
It made a lot of the media to report discouraging reports that IMHO caused a few progressive voters to not bother, I do think that the result would had been worse for the Republicans if it had not been for that ruse.
The former dupes have now grown up and become the party itself.
Well, we lucked out this time. Most of the time, voters in the aggregate are much more simple minded.
And that’s the lesson, this time there was a combination of luck and relying on Republican own-goals. And that happens too often. Democrats win, because of Republican mistakes. Frankly, to me, the Democratic party has been practically invisible in getting its own message out to the public, even to me, who cares about it.
A strange election, this was. Trump is “livid”* and shouting at Melania because she advised him badly about Dr. Oz, many people claim. I will quote the Independent, though I could have even quoted Faux News, all found in my search engine.
And even a D candidate who had been dead for weeks won 86% of the vote! Had he been alive he would have easily won 120-140%! Under this circumstances I almost feel sorry for the Rs. Almost, but not quite. Or should this be best ** told in the schadenfreude thread?
The GOP didn’t do that. When the fuck are the parties going to get it through their thick skulls that allowing John Q Dipshit to decide who their nominee is makes no more sense than allowing non-stock holders decide who the CEO is of a major corporation? The primary system is horse shit. And not legally required. If it sounds like I am advocating for the return of smoke filled back rooms, YOU’RE GOD DAMN RIGHT I AM!
538’s poll analysis matched pretty well with what we’re seeing. The GOP did worse than their expected values, but still well within the error bars, and the inclusion of those error bars think this is what differentiates their analysis from some other ones. They recognize and quantify the uncertainty inherent in their predictions, while most media organizations just calculate the expected value and call in the word of god.
One also has to look at it from a media marketing stand point. Declaring that there is going to be a slight ripple in the mid-terms isn’t going to get eyeballs. You need to sound like something majorly exciting is going to happen. Predicting a cataclysmic also also puts you in a good position for post election media coverage. If you are right you can continue pontificating about how cataclysmic it was. If it ends up being a ripple (as it was in this case) you can pontificate about how amazing it was that it was a ripple rather than a blow out.
Unfortunately John Q Dipshit needs to feel like he’s in charge of who gets nominated or else he pout and stay home in the general. So smoke filled rooms are out. What the GOP needs to do is turn their electioneering voter suppression machinations inward, and manipulate the rules of their primary so that the right candidate wins.
So here in Washington State, there was some doom and gloom about Tiffany Smiley being neck-and-neck with Patty Murray in the senate race. Up until recently, Murray had a somewhat comfortable lead in the polls.
But the day before the election I was listening to our local NPR station and they had someone on who said that they excluded “bad polls” and by doing the aggregate of “good polls”, Murray had anywhere between a 9 and 14 point lead. It was not that close.
Patty Murray won by almost 14 points. So there you go. I think there’s a lot of truth to what you’re saying.
I’m always perplexed by those who express nostalgia for the “smoke filled room.” I have a similar reaction to people who want to bring back the “talking filibuster.” Both are fundamentally anti-democratic tools that were routinely abused to entrench the interests of a small minority of powerful men. Yet there are those convinced that if we’d just bring them back, they will work like gangbusters to solve our current political problems. I don’t get it.
Someone else posted this in a Pit thread, I think. So, when Trump says he’s endorsing a candidate, it’s really just him passing along Melania endorsement? I’d like to see this get more attention in the media. I know it’s his attempt to duck the blame, but it does make him look indecisive and spineless.
It’s getting crowded under that bus.
Wasn’t it just in 2016 that the Democratic Party was getting heat because Bernie Sanders was doing well in the presidential primaries, but the “super-delegates” (party insiders) tilted the nomination to Hillary Clinton?
I don’t think he came out and publicly shifted the blame to her. It was part of his private rages (which he has denied having in a media interview) at the election results. Standard narcissist operating procedure. Whenever something bad happens to you, you find someone close at hand to blame and get mad at even if they had noting to do with it.
If we can’t trust one of his endorsements, we can’t trust any of them.
Not that I ever trusted Trump as far as I could throw him, but it seems a little different this time. Trump is saying outright that he let Melania make this decision for him. I’m not sure I recall him ever saying that so explicitly before. I wonder if his faithful followers will read this as a flaw in Trump’s image as a strong, decisive leader.
Oh, for the record, when Trump basically says “I only endorsed Oz because Melania told me to”, I don’t trust that statement, either.
Not to mention- the GOP campaigned on high gas prices and high crime (and crime is not high) and a lot of lies. “Defund the police” was thrown around a lot.
Yep. Anecdotal evidence had a lot of women registering and voting Dem. Note that Moscow Mitch told Republicans to drop the abortion issue.
Even if you’re right about that, how would that have helped in this particular election? Donald Trump and the cronies of his choosing would have been the ones in the smoke filled back room, and things would likely have been worse rather than better as a result of that.