I meant to vote trickle but clicked on bust.
The House came out okay. The Senate was a disaster (if things hold as they are this morning). Governorships? Heh.
Dems need some soul searching after this.
It was a small wave. Turnout was up quite a bit, about 115 million votes in the house (near presidential levels) but both sides voted.
I’m surprised gop turnout was so high. In 2010 when the gop was locked out of power, only 45 million Republicans went out to vote. It’s probably closer to 50 million for them this year and that is just to hold onto power.
Ah well. We did win the house but due to gerrymandering we will probably lose it in a few years. But at least we’ll get some investigations.
I think this is probably true.
The Republicans seemed dead in the water a few months ago, but the Kavanaugh thing lit a fire under some asses and inspired the same kinds of passions among conservatives that they had in 2016. On the one hand, they lost educated white women and some educated suburban whites altogether nationally, but they also gained in certain regions, like Florida – Florida Republicans mopped the floor with Democrats there, as well as in Ohio and Indiana. Democrats still have a rural white problem, and as much as they can inspire the barista, hipster vote to put their Macbooks down for a few hours to vote, that won’t be enough. They need to start talking to people they don’t necessarily like all that much.
Small wave, countered by the GOP also being fired up by Kavanaugh and by insane levels of fearmongering (I mean, “MUSLIM PEDOPHILES WITH SMALLPOX ARE INVADING FROM MEXICO” ought to be a parody headline but that’s an accurate summary of right-wing messaging lately), and also by various vote suppression efforts. Georgia in particular was a massive shitshow of gaming the system; when the guy making and enforcing the rules has a heavily vested interest in the outcome, democracy is going to take a hit.
Still, I’ll take the wins, accept the losses and hope that any very close races are properly checked and verified.
Just being a democrat isn’t what “we” want. Having progressive and further left dems is what we want. If you’re satisfied with the likes of nancy pelosi and accept people like joe manchin then you aren’t apart of solution you’re part of the problem. You might as well go vote for some corporate welfare queen republican if you’re satisfied with having corporatist shills in leadership of the democrat party. An overwhelming majority of Americans want to get money out of politics, yet people like pelosi literally brag and make their claim to fame their ability to raise money.
We did good this time, but it’s not enough. We need to push the dems further left to balance out the shitfest republicans and moderate democrats have caused.
We live in a plutocracy. The ultimate fate of any capitalist society trying to hold a democratic government.
I don’t know how this could be seen as anything but a blue bust. Dems barely took the House (it wasn’t nearly the repudiation of Trump that many people thought was gonna happen). The Senate is a disaster (Nevada was a nice pick-up, but Florida sucked, Missouri sucked, Indiana sucked, and it’s looking like Montana sucks.) And aside from a few states (Kansas! Wisconsin! Michigan!), governor races were largely meh. But…the fact that the economy is humming pretty nice right now and unemployment is way down, I’d say these results are sorta the best we could’ve expected from House and Senate races. I’d also say that if we had a normal president (Hillary, Jeb!, Kasich, Mitt), we wouldn’t have flipped the House and we wouldn’t have won governor seats in Michigan or Wisconsin.
That being said, I’m stoked about my state of Michigan. It’s looking like Dems will take the governorship (called for Dems), AG (Dem leads) and SoS (called for Dems). We flipped a couple House seats and Stabenow returns to the Senate. Plus we have a couple new constitutional amendments that will make it easier to vote and eliminate gerrymandering. Oh, and legal weed!
All that said, I think these results are actually going to be a net win for the Dems. We got a few victories in key states (Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania) to make activists and lefty political nerds happy, we flipped the House…but it’s not a very satisfying victory overall. As a result, I think people will stay activated and motivated and pissed over the next two years, and I think with the fact that 2020 will probably see even more Dem voters turn out, I think 2020 will be the wave we (well, Dems anyway) were looking for here.
We just need a charismatic Dem nominee for president to lead the charge.
In a way, I think it’s good that so-called ‘moderate’ Dems were defeated last night, because it’s becoming clearer that there’s no safe space in the middle. There was in 2012 and 2014, and maybe even in 2016, but not anymore. Republicans have already made it clear that their future is an America that’s more racist, more sexist, and more hostile to anyone who’s not making six figures. You can’t fight Trumpism with weak coalitions. There are no more right-left coalitions. Those days are over. It’s now about how to sell the independents on the value of what progressives can offer.
In Illinois, it was a BIG wave. Rauner got blown out 54% to 39% and conceded 45 minutes after the polls closed. Roskam, a career politician who was basically untouchable for decades was stunned by his democratic challenger. The democratic candidate for Attorney General won.
In all, it was a big night for Illinois democrats.
Here in my district we had a long time rep and former gov get beaten by some lady who was massively in favor of trump. They specifically collided on the issue of offshore drilling, she wanted trump to shove it right up our asses while Sanford told him to go get fucked. Of course that didn’t pan out too well for sanford during the primaries and he got kicked out. Now heres where it gets juicy, she was entirely in favor of offshore drilling and anything trump says. That should in theory play real good down here in the heart of trump land, but it turns out actual conservatives care more about conserving their precious beach house scenery than playing identity politics. As a result we had endless ads running with a multitude of republicans SUPPORTING the fucking democrat running against the extremely pro-trump republican. It’s fucking amazing, people actually care more about reality than fake political bullshit. Republicans down here idiotically threw sanford under the bus because he attacked trump, and they lost as a result.
People will respond to policy and substance. I don’t even like calling trump supporters republicans, because many of them are so ignorant they don’t even know which party is for what. I’ve spoken to people who thought Bernie wanted to destroy healthcare and Trump wanted universal healthcare. That’s not just one isolated person either I’ve met multiple people who’ve had this exact same delusion. And it doesn’t stop there, there is so many things these people are ignorant about and if you educate them sometimes they’ll actually be convinced. Many people may find it odd but it’s true, there are a lot of trump supporters who actually support bernie sanders’ policies. The only problem is once you use big scary words like democratic socialism you instantly lose them and they go full 1930s nationalist on you.
Whatever it was, the GOP won the national House vote in 2010 by 6.8%, which got them a 242-193 majority.
The Dems are looking at a bigger popular vote win this year, for a distinctly smaller majority. The consensus going in was that the Dems would need a ~5.5% popular margin to have a 50-50 shot at winning the House.
Can we agree that that’s crazy, that something’s wrong with our system if a Dem popular win by 5% doesn’t easily translate into a House majority, while the GOP’s win by 1.1% in 2016 won them a huge 241-194 House majority?
Evidence of a blue wave can be found in Iowa. In 2016 Iowa voted for Trump over Clinton 51-41% and three out of the four House seats went Republican. This time two seats flipped to the Democrats, leaving mega-racist Steve King as it’s only Republican representative. And he won with less than 50% of the vote, when in 2016 he had over 60.
Big wave, would have been a bluenami but for gerrymandering and voter suppression. Flipping the House is a BFD, now we can provide adult supervision for the White House daycare center and also hire Bob Mueller to carry on after he is fired.
I think this is the exact wrong way to go. Democratic politicians have gone this route before, most recently in 1984 and 1988 with Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. I don’t think 2020 will be as bad as 1984 or 1988, but someone like say, Elizabeth Warren, would probably lose even worse than Clinton did, probably losing some of the weaker Democratic states like Nevada, New Hampshire, and Minnesota.* The Democrat’s can’t win the presidency or senate by running up the score in the northeast and on the west coast. They have to start appealing to moderates more strongly, and if that means having a Joe Manchin wing of the Democratic Party, I’m willing to live with that.
- Yes, I’m lumping in Minnesota with Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. It’s the same type of state, and just so happens to still have a little more of a blue base likely due to some old school Democratic voters still loyal to party from back in the Mondale days.
It’s not all bad. What matters is the Electoral College in two years.
Democrats rebuild Blue Wall in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Clinton lost those three states, and thus the presidency, by a total of (roughly) 70,000 votes. It’s a given that the blundering dope in the White House will mess up the economy with his brainless meddling. Trump won’t have the Obama economy to prop him up like he had during this midterm, so 2020 is looking ripe for the picking.
I wouldn’t count on those three states staying blue based solely on last night’s results. They could go blue with the right candidate, but they could easily go red with the wrong candidate. The states that I would feel comfortable calling part of the blue wall aren’t enough to win the presidency. IMHO the blue “wall” at this point consist of the Clinton 2016 blue states minus Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Nevada. That’s only 212 electoral votes. The rest have to be strongly fought for, not just put on some guaranteed to win and so can be safely ignored list.
Small wave, although I could easily have gone for trickle as well. Would have been more enthusiastic if Beto had won his senate race, and the FL/GA governors’ contests had gone the other way.
I’m going to assume the results hinged more on the economy than the ludicrous fearmongering leading up the election, and in this I remain highly disappointed with my fellow voters. Although I see no evidence that Trump has anything significant to do with its relative health, the President usually gets credit (and blame) for the economy, so the result isn’t all that surprising; I just wish people would recognize that an economy that isn’t all that hot for a person without a strong position in equities, and lots of jobs that don’t pay anywhere a living wage, is not a great bargain. Likewise, Republicans needed to be sent a message that they were going to get their collective asses kicked if they try to go ahead with their plan to blame deficits due to unnecessary tax cuts for a ‘need’ to cut Social Security and Medicare, and that didn’t really happen.
About all positive than can be said, is that with a Dem House majority, there is some reasonable chance of putting the brakes on the Trump train before it derails us all. So that’s something, I guess.
If it’s a net win for the Dems, which I agree it is (they also made significant gains in several state legislatures) then how could it be a bust?
Which took hold once we opened up the votes of the individual politicians to the public, because we wanted to be able to hold them accountable for not voting as the mob demanded, and subsequently allowing votes to be purchased and for politicians to be booted if they didn’t obey the mob.
Here in Texas, I’d say a small wave. Democrats picked up 10-ish State House seats, which doesn’t give them the majority, but it does break their supermajority, meaning that all the things that take 2/3 majority now require Democrat buy-in. So that’s a great thing!
Something like 11 US House seats flipped as well- this is also good.
Looking at the election results, the most interesting thing is that NONE of the statewide races were blowouts. Even Greg Abbott only won 56% to Valdez’ 43%, and that’s a white male GOP incumbent running against a gay Hispanic woman. The other races were all closer than that, with several being VERY close- Ken Paxton vs. Justin Nelson was a very close race for Attorney General.
That, I think is the message here- not that the Democrats didn’t flip the legislature or statewide offices, but that they didn’t blow anyone out. Things might change in a relatively short time-frame around here.
You can thank Kavanaugh for that.
If the Democrats squander the next two years on investigating instead of legislating, 2020 is going to be a disaster for them. I have no zero doubt about that.
This is standard run-of-the-mill churn, nothing more. It certainly wasn’t a censure for Trump. I strongly believe that if Trump hadn’t done his blitz at the last bit, this would have been a much worse night for Republicans. The more Trumpy candidates won for the most part, and the less Trumpy candidates lost. Trump has as much political capital as ever. Keep going after Trump at your peril, and you better hope, God forbid, that the economy crashes over the next two years.