Midterm Election 2022 Takeaways

From Ira Stoll, at Future of Capitalism, "Some votes are still being counted and the final results are not clear, but I've seen enough to draw some conclusions from yesterday's election":

Republicans can delude themselves in a bubble, too. At the top of the Wall Street Journal editorial page on November 4 was an article touting Bolduc's chances under the headline "An Upset May Be Brewing in New Hampshire." Henry Olsen of the right-leaning Ethics and Public Policy Center, generally a shrewd analyst, had a November 7 Washington Post column predicting the Republicans would emerge with 54 Senate seats. "Inflation, crime, progressive attempts at overreach and a general sense that President Biden is not up to the job will likely deliver a surprisingly large victory to Republicans," Olsen wrote. Michael Barone, one of the most brilliant election analysts on the center-right, had a column about "poll numbers trending toward a wave victory for Republicans." I myself was holding forth in private conversation this past weekend about Tesla-driving, college-educated coastal elites underestimating the fury felt by middle-American, non-college-educated voters at high gasoline prices and at Biden's unilateral forgiveness of student loan debt. It turns out that some voters care more about abortion rights than they do about cheap gas prices.

Still more at that top link.

 

DCCC Chair Sean Patrick Maloney Concedes Defeat in New York's 17th Congressional District

A telling bright spot from last night, at Fox News, "Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Maloney concedes in historic House loss: Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney competed against Republican nominee Mike Lawler to represent New York's 17th Congressional District "

And from Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "MICHAEL LAWLER CONTRIBUTES TO FLIPPING THE HOUSE, KNOCKS OUT DCCC CHAIR SEAN PATRICK MALONEY IN NY-17."

Slaves to Leftist Authoritarians

Jedediah Bila, on Twitter:

You will not understand what’s happening until you accept that there is a growing segment of the population that welcomes leftist authoritarianism & is happy to relinquish their freedoms. They would rather have a ballooning government than a free society.

— Jedediah Bila (@JedediahBila) November 9, 2022

The Other Side Gets the Ball, Too

A day-after autopsy, at AoSHQ, "As the GOP prepares for post-mortems and mutual recriminations -- and some of that will be necessary -- it's also important to keep in mind that in any contest, the other team has strengths as well, and they get their time with the ball too. And that they're going to score."

Maybe America Hasn't Suffered Enough: "The responsibility of the American public was to deliver an utter rebuke to the Left and the Democrat Party that the Left runs, and the 2022 election was not a rebuke..."

From Scott McKay, at the American Spectator, "The red wave washed ashore as a ripple, though Republicans did make progress":

It’s late as I write this, though not late enough to know how things will turn out. But there are things we can safely say just after midnight Eastern time on Tuesday as the vote counts roll in and the races get called.

One of them is that for all the anger we’ve seen evidence of from Republican and independent voters, it seems pretty clear that channeling it into positive action is something beyond the reach of the GOP’s leadership and political class.

Is that a failure of that leadership? Well, yes. It is. And we’ll spend weeks and months analyzing the fact that what was supposed to be a red wave election was more like a sea spray that might be just enough to take majorities in the House and Senate by the tiniest margins … or perhaps not even that. And we’ll be analyzing it within the context of the opportunity the GOP had in 2022 — and the party simply blew it.

This should have been a massive wave election. Given the low job approval ratings of the sitting president in his first midterm election, and given the favorable generic congressional ballot numbers, this should have been a plus-five wave in the Senate and a plus-30 wave, or bigger, in the House. It also should have resounded down to statehouses, and yet the GOP turns out, apparently, not to have been able to beat abysmal Democrat gubernatorial candidates like Katie Hobbs, Kathy Hochul, and Gretchen Whitmer.

There are so many utterly horrid Democrats who will remain in office after this election that it should be offensive to average Americans. It’s tempting to fall into the trap of believing there must be wholesale corruption in American elections, but the problem with going there is that there must be proof before it’s actionable.

Until some is presented, we’ll have to deal with something very unpleasant. Namely, here’s the truth that we on the Right are going to have to accept: the American electorate in 2022 is awful.

And the axiom about the cycle that involves weak men and tough times is a real thing, and we are in the worst quadrant of that cycle. We are still in the time in which weak men make tough times. We have not gotten to the point where tough times make tough men...

 

Larry Sabato's Final Forecast for Election 2022

Sabato's Crystal Ball ate crow in 2020. 

These guys are good, but obviously not that good. My sense is they're a little gun shy on the Senate side. Sabato's team can only muster a prediction of 51 seats for Republicans in the upper chamber. Sure, they've got the data, but who can you trust nowadays? What pollsters? I will be surprised if Fetterman wins in Pennsylvania, and perhaps the enthusiasm for Kari Lake in Arizona will have spillover effects for the Senate race there, where Republican Blake Masters is said to be less competitive than his cohort next door in the Silver State. Native son Adam Laxalt will likely beat Democrat incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto in the Nevada Senate match-up.

As for the House, it's not a question of if but how big. I have no idea, but Republicans need a pickup of just fives seats to take back the chamber. Folks have thrown out all kinds of numbers, with former House Speaker even predicting Republicans picking up at least 40 seats!

God knows who will win, literally.

See, "Final Ratings for the 2022 Election" (via Memeorandum).

Ron DeSantis Campaign Spot Draws Donald Trump's Ire (VIDEO)

 At the New York Times, "DeSantis Campaign Video Hints at National Aims and Draws Trump’s Ire":

It has not been aired on television and there are no plans to use it as a paid advertisement for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, but that may not be the point, so long as it spreads on social media.

Back in April, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican, released “Sweet Florida,” a catchy campaign anthem by two current members of the Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd.

That song, with lyrics including “You can take it to the bank he don’t care what Brandon thinks at the White House,” served as the walk-on song for Mr. DeSantis’s campaign events but never went viral outside of conservative circles. As of Monday, it has about 328,000 views on YouTube and another 1.1 million on the conservative video platform Rumble.

But while the campaign jingle touted Mr. DeSantis’s record and popularity in Florida, a new video released by his campaign on Friday hints at the governor’s broader national ambitions.

Posted to Twitter by his wife, Casey DeSantis, the 96-second video invokes God 10 times and suggests that Mr. DeSantis was sent by a divine power.

“God made a fighter,” the narrator says. “God said I need someone to be strong, advocate truth in the midst of hysteria, challenge conventional wisdom and isn’t afraid to defend what he knows to be right and just.”

Former President Donald J. Trump, who views Mr. DeSantis as a potential 2024 rival, wasn’t amused. He called the governor “Ron DeSanctimonious” during a rally Saturday in Pennsylvania. Even some of Mr. DeSantis’s Florida allies said privately that the video was a bit much.

The new video, which already has at least 2.5 million views on Twitter, was produced in-house by the DeSantis campaign. It has not been aired on television and there are no plans to use it as a paid advertisement for Mr. DeSantis, but that may not be the point, so long as it spreads on social media.

It is, by far, the biggest viral candidate video of this year’s midterm cycle, but there is not much competition out there...

 

Kari Lake is Amazing! (VIDEO)

On Twitter, folks are suggesting Ms. Lake is a much better public communicator than even Barack Obama. As Melissa Mackenzie writes, "She should be teaching classes to other Republicans. She's that good."

And on Fox News yesterday:

Marc Morano, The Great Reset

At Amazon, Marc Morano, The Great Reset: Global Elites and the Permanent Lockdown.

The Collapse of Biden's Woketopia

From Sasha Stone, on Subtack, "And the Realignment of a New America":

“I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions.” ― George Carlin

Joe Biden and the Democrats have a big problem. It isn’t just that they stand to lose in the midterm elections and maybe the Presidency in 2024. They stand to lose much more than that. They stand to lose everything.

The American people, by now, have had enough. They’re sick of cowards who cannot stand up to the activists who control them. They’re not just sick of them in Washington. They’re sick of them everywhere. They’re sick of being told what they can and can’t say, what they can and can’t think.

In 2020, a New Woke Order exploded on the streets. It looked a lot like the rehearsal at Evergreen and across many college campuses all over the country. It wasn’t all of the Zoomers leading the charge, but the activists have been loud and powerful. They have captured corporate America and nearly every cultural institution in the country. And they’ve captured Joe Biden and the Democrats.

Their activism, however well-intentioned, has all but wrecked Hollywood movies; almost every network or streaming series is infused with their doctrine. It is inescapable. It’s in public schools, museums, fast food advertising, library reading lists, and sports. Most of us are developing an immunity to anything we think might be “woke,” and we will avoid it as much as possible.

Most of us know that if there is some message buried in a book or a movie, we’re going to resent being drawn in for yet another lecture on how to be better, how to do better, and how to reorder our thinking to satisfy their unending critiques. It’s so bad that someone should start a website called “Is it Woke”? That would save consumers a lot of time and trouble.

The only reason we don’t hear about it more is that any dissent is viciously attacked until an apology is squeezed out like the last bit of toothpaste in an empty tube. It is too much trouble to endure all of that panic and hysteria. So most people keep their heads down and hope it will pass.

Joe Biden doesn’t yet understand this. Most Democrats don’t. Not even the new stars in the party like Gavin Newsome or Pete Buttigieg. Not even Beto. They falsely believe that is what they must do to win Twitter and win points on the Left. The exact opposite is true. Although one must develop “rhino skin,” like Elon Musk or Donald Trump, the future will be with those who push back loudly against this ongoing madness.

In the past, we might have had some reality checks with people like Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Jimmy Kimmel, or SNL. But no. They’ve been sucked into the Body Snatchers, too, and their comedy isn’t comedy at all. They work for the Democrats, just like much of the media. It feels like being stuck inside a Twilight Zone episode where everyone is pretending like what is happening isn’t happening.

There are many reasons the Democrats might lose in a massive red wave on Tuesday. One of those is the pendulum shift we see throughout American history that bobs back and forth between liberalism and conservatism. But I would bet that many of these voters might not even want Republicans in power and disagree with their policies.

Still, they see in the MAGA candidates something they don’t see anywhere else: unapologetic resistance to the “woke” utopia that has been foisted upon us all.

This is why Kari Lake is burning up the polls. This is why Glenn Youngkin won and why Ron DeSantis is so popular. And it’s why Trump will likely breeze through to a win in 2024. Sure, they are also offering ways to rescue America from a collapsing economy, but what people fear the most is what they aren’t allowed to talk about.

The Democrats and their robot army on Twitter or in the mainstream media seem to think that continuing to demonize the other side will work to scare voters away from them. But to many people, that’s like trying to tell them not to get in the lifeboats as the Titanic sank, explaining that the people driving the boats protested the last election.

But let’s get specific about what we mean by “woke.” It doesn’t mean inclusion. It doesn’t even mean equity. It means that the answers to humanity’s problems have finally been solved. All you have to do is measure a person’s worth by status as a marginalized person. Meet the new utopia. Same as the old utopia.

They believe that America, and other Western nations, have been built as colonizing systems of oppression specifically to keep Black and Brown people down. They have an adjunct category now for whites. They can have protective status if they’re part of the LGBTQIA community. If they are disabled, if they have some mental disorder, or even if they are old. These things elevate those deemed oppressed, left out and shut out of the American way of life, which theoretically rewards high achievement.

Joe Biden and John Fetterman are cis-gendered heterosexual white men who would usually be on the list of oppressors. Still, both have miraculously transcended their identity to become part of a marginalized group. Fetterman is considered disabled, and Biden is incapacitated due to age.

There is nothing more the Left loves than incapacitated white men. If they can wrap their fingers around a pen, they can tell them where to sign. Disability is only a protected class if you are also ideologically compliant. Elon Musk has Asperger’s but do you think that wins him any points with the Woketopians?

If you don’t have protective status, you are on the other side, the “bad” side. You are someone with privilege. White privilege, pretty privilege, thin privilege, youth privilege, straight privilege, and able-bodied privilege.

Here is a sampling of different kinds of privilege from North Shore Community College...

RTWT.

 

'We Are Moving Backwards' -- A New 'Underground Railroad' in U.S. Amid Draconian Abortion Laws

 At Der Spiegel, "In the United States, abortion is no longer a basic right. The recent Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade has allowed states to criminalize the act. But the battle for women's right to self-determination continues – on the streets and underground."

Democrats Promote Tough-on-Crime Credentials as Party Plays Defense

Shot: At the New York Times, "With sheriffs vouching for them and a flood of ads proclaiming their support for the police, Democrats are shoring up their public safety bona fides. Still, some worry it’s too late":

In the final stretch of the midterm campaigns, Democrats are straining to defend themselves against a barrage of crime-focused attacks from Republicans, forcefully highlighting their public safety credentials amid signs that G.O.P. messaging on the issue may be more potent than usual in some critical races this year.

Democrats have enlisted sheriffs to vouch for them, have outspent Republicans on ads that use the word “police” in the month of October, and have been using the kind of tough-on-crime language that many on the left seemed to reject not long ago — even as some Democrats worry that efforts to inoculate the party on a complex and emotional issue are falling short.

Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, who is being criticized over a 2018 video in which he called ending cash bail a “top priority,” aired an ad in which an officer declared him a “tough-on-crime” lawmaker who confronted those “who wanted to defund the police.”

Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada has long highlighted her pro-law enforcement credentials, including with an ad featuring a police chief praising her record of being “tough on crime.”

And Lt. Gov. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, whose history on criminal justice issues is being denounced by Republicans, sounded pro-law enforcement notes at a senior center on Friday as he discussed his tenure as the mayor of Braddock, Pa., saying he “was proud to work with our police departments, and funding the police.”

Nationwide, Democrats spent more money last month on ads that used the word “police” than Republicans did, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm. But heavy Republican spending on crime ads earlier this year has helped define the final weeks of the campaign in states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

National crime trends are mixed and complex, and Republicans have often reached for arguments about crime or border security, with varying results. Some party strategists doubt the issue will be decisive this year, with many Americans far more focused on economic matters.

But a Gallup survey released late last month found that “Americans are more likely now than at any time over the past five decades to say there is more crime in their local area than there was a year ago.”

The issue, fanned and sometimes distorted by conservative news outlets, has been especially pronounced in liberal-leaning states, including New York, Pennsylvania, Oregon and Wisconsin, where big cities have struggled with concerns about violence and quality of life over the last few years. But the topic is at play in many tight Senate, House and governors’ races...

Chaser: "Most Candidates Running on Crime Don’t Have Much Power to Solve It :Your congressman doesn’t control the police budget. Your senator probably doesn’t know where the worst hot spots are."

Tuesday's going to be blast!

Election Deniers: Some Democrats Believe the Polls are All Lies and Part of a Conspiracy Theory to Make Abortion Appear Less Popular Than It Is

At AoSHQ, "Optimistic Democrats insist the polls are wrong, says The Hill."

BONUS: "#TheSnap: Half of Twitter's " " " Workers " " " Are Unemployed, Starting Now (9 am Pacific Time)."

The Democrats’ Insurrection Flop

It's Julie Kelly, at American Greatness, "Turns out, the “Big Lie” is that January 6 ever mattered to anyone outside the Beltway."

In California, Republicans Hope to Flip These Biden-Leaning Districts

It's going to be extremely embarrassing iIf some of the districts flip to the G.O.P. 

At the Los Angeles Times, "These California districts voted big for Biden, but Republicans are optimistic about their chances":

As the sun set behind rows of modest homes, Republican Matt Jacobs knocked on doors urging voters in Oxnard to ditch their incumbent Democratic congresswoman and pick him to improve their quality of life.

“I care deeply about this community,” Jacobs told Jacqueline Mercado, 28, adding that he was born and raised in Ventura County, a message he repeated in English and fluent Spanish in this predominantly Latino neighborhood. “I just think things can be better all around.”

With her 1-year-old daughter crawling nearby, Mercado, a Democrat, nodded vigorously when Jacobs asked if the cost of groceries was affecting her family. “Absolutely,” Mercado said, before telling him that she would vote for him in Tuesday’s election.

“I just want someone to make everything better,” said Mercado, an employee of the state’s toll-free 211 system that connects Californians with job training, after-school programs and other services. “Make things better, like inflation. That really matters, because gas is crazy right now. Food. Everything.”

Such pocketbook concerns are among the reasons Republicans say they feel good about their odds in blue regions like California’s 26th Congressional District, which Joe Biden won by 20 points.

The GOP is favored to take control of the House in Tuesday’s election, and voters like Mercado could make that happen or determine the size of its majority.

The midterms have been defined by Republicans arguing that Democrats are poor stewards of the economy and their policies have fomented rising crime and Democrats warning that Republicans are too extreme when it comes to abortion rights, threats to democracy and potential cuts to Social Security.

The 26th, largely based in Ventura County with a sliver of Los Angeles County, is probably a reach for Republicans. But the prospect of it being in play suggests vulnerability for Democrats in a number of districts in California and across the country that Biden won by double digits.

“If California Democrats have a headache in California 26, they’ve got the flu in a whole range of more competitive seats,” including contests in the Central Valley and Southern California, said David Wasserman, a congressional forecaster for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

Democrat Julia Brownley has represented much of Ventura County in Congress since 2013. On Tuesday, the district was moved from “solid Democrat” to “lean Democrat” by Cook, which based its prognostication on a poll that showed a statistical dead heat between the candidates and the amount of money flowing in. The Cook Report also forecast tightening contests in districts represented by Democrats Katie Porter of Irvine and Josh Harder of Turlock. Many of these districts, in historically conservative bastions such as Porter’s in Orange County, are now closely split between Democratic and Republican voters, or are places where Democrats wield a numeric edge but have a Republican incumbent, such as Reps. Mike Garcia of Santa Clarita and David Valadao of Hanford.

The 26th District, however, doesn’t fit into either of these categories. The incumbent is a Democrat, and though the district gained conservative Simi Valley in the 2021 redrawing of congressional maps, Democrats still have a nearly 15-percentage-point voter registration edge.

Wasserman was among the prognosticators who was skeptical when Brownley’s prospects were initially questioned.

“But clearly the environment has deteriorated for Democrats since then,” he said. “Though she’s still a clear favorite, she is not in as solid shape because Republicans have a credible candidate and there is still some ancestral Republican support in Ventura County.”

Inflation, gas prices, concerns about crime and the lack of exciting statewide campaigns are a boon for Republicans, said Democratic strategist Andrew Acosta.

“All of this is a toxic brew,” he said, adding that voters in districts like Brownley’s may be liberal on social issues but malleable on economic matters. “And we are in a pocketbook election.”

GOP politicians represented the area in Congress for 70 years, until Brownley won her seat in 2012. One out of five of the district’s voters decline to identify with a political party.

More than 20 House campaign committees and leadership PACs contributed to Brownley and Jacobs over a three-day span in late October, making it “the top House target for Republicans and Democrats alike” for such efforts, according to the research director for the California Target Book, a nonpartisan guide that analyzes races in the state. A pro-Brownley outside group recently chipped in a half-million dollars.

GOP redistricting expert Matt Rexroad said that these moves, as well as President Biden’s appearance with Rep. Mike Levin in Oceanside on Thursday, indicate that several districts in California are competitive...

 

FLAMING SKULL: 'Florida *Democrat* Election Official Blows Whistle of Longstanding ILLEGAL Practice of 'Ballot Harvesting' by Paying Mostly African-American Residents $10 Per Ballot'

 At AoSHQ, "'WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS "MISINFORMATION" ACCORDING TO THE TREASONOUS CRIMINAL GANGS CALLED THE DOJ AND FBI, DEFINED AS "TRUE FACTS WHICH CONTRADICT THE LIES OF THE REGIME'."

Signs of a Red Wave

A good piece, from Erick Erickson, "Forget the Polls. Here Are the Signs of the Red Wave."

Forty-Five Percent of Americans Say They Want a 'Christian Nation'

Hmm.

At Pew Research, "45% of Americans Say U.S. Should Be a ‘Christian Nation’."

But they hold differing opinions about what that phrase means, and two-thirds of U.S. adults say churches should keep out of politics.

The implication is that Americans want "Christian Nationalism," which is a left-wing boogeyman. 

 

Their America Is Vanishing. Like Trump, They Insist They Were Cheated.

At the New York Times, "The white majority is fading, the economy is changing and there’s a pervasive sense of loss in districts where Republicans fought the outcome of the 2020 election":

When Representative Troy Nehls of Texas voted last year to reject Donald J. Trump’s electoral defeat, many of his constituents back home in Fort Bend County were thrilled.

Like the former president, they have been unhappy with the changes unfolding around them. Crime and sprawl from Houston, the big city next door, have been spilling over into their once bucolic towns. (“Build a wall,” Mr. Nehls likes to say, and make Houston pay.) The county in recent years has become one of the nation’s most diverse, where the former white majority has fallen to just 30 percent of the population.

Don Demel, a 61-year-old salesman who turned out last month to pick up a signed copy of a book by Mr. Nehls about the supposedly stolen election, said his parents had raised him “colorblind.” But the reason for the discontent was clear: Other white people in Fort Bend “did not like certain people coming here,” he said. “It’s race. They are old-school.”

A shrinking white share of the population is a hallmark of the congressional districts held by the House Republicans who voted to challenge Mr. Trump’s defeat, a New York Times analysis found — a pattern political scientists say shows how white fear of losing status shaped the movement to keep him in power.

The portion of white residents dropped about 35 percent more over the last three decades in those districts than in territory represented by other Republicans, the analysis found, and constituents also lagged behind in income and education. Rates of so-called deaths of despair, such as suicide, drug overdose and alcohol-related liver failure, were notably higher as well.

Although overshadowed by the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the House vote that day was the most consequential of Mr. Trump’s ploys to overturn the election. It cast doubt on the central ritual of American democracy, galvanized the party’s grass roots around the myth of a stolen victory and set a precedent that legal experts — and some Republican lawmakers — warn could perpetually embroil Congress in choosing a president.

To understand the social forces converging in that historic vote — objecting to the Electoral College count — The Times examined the constituencies of the lawmakers who joined the effort, analyzing census and other data from congressional districts and interviewing scores of residents and local officials. The Times previously revealed the back-room maneuvers inside the House, including convincing lawmakers that they could reject the results without explicitly endorsing Mr. Trump’s outlandish fraud claims.

Many of the 139 objectors, including Mr. Nehls, said they were driven in part by the demands of their voters. “You sent me to Congress to fight for President Trump and election integrity,” Mr. Nehls wrote in a tweet on Jan. 5, 2021, “and that’s exactly what I am doing.” At a Republican caucus meeting a few days later, Representative Bill Johnson, from an Ohio district stretching into Appalachia, told colleagues that his constituents would “go ballistic” with “raging fire” if he broke with Mr. Trump, according to a recording.

Certain districts primarily reflect either the racial or socioeconomic characteristics. But the typical objector district shows both — a fact demographers said was striking.

Because they are more vulnerable, disadvantaged or less educated white voters can feel especially endangered by the trend toward a minority majority, said Ashley Jardina, a political scientist at George Mason University who studies the attitudes of those voters.

“A lot of white Americans who are really threatened are willing to reject democratic norms,” she said, “because they see it as a way to protect their status.”

That may help explain why the dispute over Mr. Trump’s defeat has emerged at this moment in history, with economic inequality reaching new heights and the white population of the United States expected within about two decades to lose its majority.

Many of the objectors’ districts started with a significantly larger Black minority, or had a rapid increase in the Hispanic population, making the decline in the white population more pronounced.

Of the 12 Republican-held districts that swung to minority white — almost all in California and Texas — 10 were represented by objectors. The most significant drops occurred in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs and California desert towns, where the white percentage fell by more than a third. Lawmakers who objected were also overrepresented among the 70 Republican-held districts with the lowest percentages of college graduates. In one case — the southeast Kentucky district of Hal Rogers, currently the longest-serving House member — about 14 percent of residents had four-year degrees, less than half the average in the districts of Republicans who accepted the election results.

Many residents say they have lost faith in political leaders — except for former President Donald J. Trump. Montgomery County, Va., is in one of the country’s poorest congressional districts. Many residents say they have lost faith in political leaders — except for former President Donald J. Trump.Credit...Laura Saunders for The New York Times

While Mr. Nehls’s district exemplifies demographic change, Representative H. Morgan Griffith’s in southwest Virginia is among the poorest in the country. Once dominated by coal, manufacturing and tobacco, the area’s economic base eroded with competition from new energy sources and foreign importers. Doctors prescribed opioids to injured laborers and an epidemic of addiction soon followed.

Residents, roughly 90 percent of them white, gripe that the educated elites of the Northern Virginia suburbs think that “the state stops at Roanoke.” They take umbrage at what they consider condescension from outsiders who view their communities as poverty-stricken, and they bemoan “Ph.D pollution” from the big local university, Virginia Tech. After a long history of broken government promises, many said in interviews they had lost faith in the political process and public institutions — in almost everyone but Mr. Trump, who they said championed their cause.

Marie March, a restaurant owner in the town of Christiansburg, said she embodied “the mind-set of the Trump MAGA voter.” “You feel like you’re the underdog and you don’t get a fair shake, so you look for people that are going to shake it up,” she said of the local support for Mr. Trump’s dispute of the election results. “We don’t feel like we’ve had a voice.”

Ms. March, who said she attended the Jan. 6 rally in Washington but did not go to the Capitol, was inspired by Mr. Trump to win a seat in the state legislature last year. She said she could drive 225 miles east from the Kentucky border and see only Trump signs. No one in the region could imagine that he received fewer votes than President Biden, she insisted...

 

Confessions of the Libs of TikTok

At AoSHQ, "Detransitioners tell harrowing stories about being rushed into gender "transitions" they weren't ready for -- and didn't even want."