Republicans Won’t Promise to Accept 2022 Results

This is supposedly the biggest threat to the American democracy.

Though the New York Times comes up with just 6 Republican candidates who say they won't concede if they lose. 

Hype much?

See, "These Trump-Backed Candidates Won't Promise to Accept Election Results":

Six Republican nominees for governor and the Senate in key midterm states, all backed by Donald Trump, would not commit to accepting the November outcome. Five others did not answer the question.

WASHINGTON — Nearly two years after President Donald J. Trump refused to accept his defeat in the 2020 election, some of his most loyal Republican acolytes might follow in his footsteps.

When asked, six Trump-backed Republican nominees for governor and the Senate in midterm battlegrounds would not commit to accepting this year’s election results, and another five Republicans ignored or declined to answer a question about embracing the November outcome. All of them, along with many other G.O.P. candidates, have pre-emptively cast doubt on how their states count votes.

The New York Times contacted Republican and Democratic candidates or their aides in 20 key contests for governor and the Senate. All of the Democrats said, or have said publicly, that they would respect the November results — including Stacey Abrams of Georgia, who refused to concede her 2018 defeat to Brian Kemp in the state’s race for governor. Mr. Kemp, now running against her for another term, “will of course accept the outcome of the 2022 election,” said his press secretary, Tate Mitchell.

But several Republicans endorsed by Mr. Trump are hesitant to say that they will not fight the results.

Among the party’s Senate candidates, Ted Budd in North Carolina, Blake Masters in Arizona, Kelly Tshibaka in Alaska and J.D. Vance in Ohio all declined to commit to accepting the 2022 results. So did Tudor Dixon, the Republican nominee for governor of Michigan, and Geoff Diehl, who won the G.O.P. primary for governor of Massachusetts this month.

The candidates and their aides offered an array of explanations. Some blamed Democratic state election officials or made unsubstantiated claims that their opponents would cheat. In Alaska, a spokesman for Ms. Tshibaka pointed to a new ranked-choice voting system that has been criticized by Republicans and already helped deliver victory to a Democrat in a House special election this year.

An aide to Ms. Dixon, Sara Broadwater, said “there’s no reason to believe” that Michigan election officials, including Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic secretary of state, “are very serious about secure elections.”

To some degree, the stances by these Republican candidates — which echo Mr. Trump’s comments before the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections — may amount to political posturing, in an effort to appeal to G.O.P. voters who do not believe the former president lost in 2020. An aide to one Republican nominee insisted that the candidate would accept this year’s results, but the aide declined to be publicly identified saying so.

And unlike Mr. Trump two years ago, the candidates who suggest they might dispute the November results do not hold executive office, and lack control of the levers of government power. If any were to reject a fair defeat, they would be far less likely to ignite the kind of democratic crisis that Mr. Trump set off after his 2020 loss.

But they do have loud megaphones in a highly polarized media environment, and any unwarranted challenges from the candidates and their allies could fuel anger, confusion and misinformation.

“The danger of a Trumpist coup is far from over,” said Rosa Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown University who in early 2020 convened a group to brainstorm ways Mr. Trump could disrupt that year’s election. “As long as we have a significant number of Americans who don’t accept principles of democracy and the rule of law, our democracy remains in jeopardy.”

The positions of these Republican candidates also reflect how, over the last two years, some of those aligned with Mr. Trump increasingly reject the idea that it is possible for their side to lose a legitimate election.

“You accept the results of the election if the election is fair and honest,” said John Fredericks, a syndicated talk radio host who was a chairman of Mr. Trump’s campaigns in Virginia in 2016 and 2020. “If it’s not fair and honest, you don’t.”

Still, many Republican candidates, including several who have cast doubt on the 2020 outcome, said they would recognize this year’s results. Darren Bailey, the Republican nominee for governor of Illinois — who said in a June interview that he did not know if the 2020 election had been decided fairly — responded that “yes,” he would accept the 2022 result.

In Nevada, the campaign of Adam Laxalt, the Republican nominee for Senate, said he would not challenge the final results — even though Mr. Laxalt, a former state attorney general, helped lead the effort to overturn Mr. Trump’s 2020 defeat in the state, spoke last year about plans to file lawsuits to contest the 2022 election and called voter fraud the “biggest issue” in his campaign.

“Of course he’ll accept Nevada’s certified election results, even if your failing publication won’t,” said Brian Freimuth, a spokesman for Mr. Laxalt.

How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.

And Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, who said during his successful Republican primary campaign for Senate that “we cannot move on” from the 2020 election, promised to uphold voters’ will.

“Yes, Dr. Oz will accept the result of the PA Senate race in November,” Rachel Tripp, an Oz spokeswoman, wrote in a text message.

Three other Republican Senate candidates — Herschel Walker in Georgia, Joe O’Dea in Colorado and Senator Lisa Murkowski in Alaska — committed to embracing their state’s election results. So did several Republicans running for governor, including Mr. Kemp, Joe Lombardo in Nevada and Christine Drazan of Oregon.

Aides to several Republican nominees for governor who have questioned the 2020 election’s legitimacy did not respond to repeated requests for comment on their own races in November. Those candidates included Doug Mastriano of Pennsylvania, Kari Lake of Arizona, Tim Michels of Wisconsin and Dan Cox of Maryland.

Ms. Lake was asked in a radio interview this month whether she would concede a defeat to Katie Hobbs, her Democratic rival and Arizona’s secretary of state. “I’m not losing to Katie Hobbs,” Ms. Lake replied...

Democrats Could Take Both Chambers of Congress

I suppose I should be picking it up with my own election analyses, but it's not been a normal election year, obviously. I've seen journalists dropping the "tsunami" word lately, suggesting the November elections will be a tidal wave washing all of the GOP incumbents out to sea.

You'd think so, actually. This is looking like the best year for Democrats I can remember, like ever.

In any case, at LAT, "As Trump sinks, he’s pulling down the Republican Senate, too":

President Trump’s faltering reelection campaign is dragging the Republican Senate down with him, giving Democrats their best hope in more than a decade of winning control of both houses of Congress and the presidency https://t.co/MhKKWEgiZy

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) July 18, 2020

CRANBERRY ISLES, Maine —  President Trump’s faltering reelection campaign increasingly is dragging on the Republican Senate, giving Democrats their best hope in more than a decade of winning control of both houses of Congress as well as the White House.

Democrats now threaten Republican Senate incumbents in Georgia, Iowa and Montana — states that had seemed reliably red — in addition to Colorado and Arizona, where Democrats have had the advantage for months, and Maine, where GOP Sen. Susan Collins is facing the toughest election in her long career.

The challengers have been swamping Republican rivals in fundraising and moving ahead in polls, leading independent analysts to dial up their assessment of the Democrats’ chances.

“After Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in 2016, there’s a temptation to avoid making political projections,” wrote Nathan Gonzales, a nonpartisan analyst and editor of Inside Elections. “But one election result shouldn’t cause us to ignore the data. And right now, the preponderance of data points to a great election for Democrats, including taking control of the Senate.”

New campaign finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission this week show that most Democratic Senate challengers out-raised their GOP rivals in the last three months — some by as much as 3 to 1.

In Georgia, where both Senate seats are up, polls have tightened so much that the Trump campaign and other GOP committees have begun advertising in a state that hasn’t backed a Democrat for president or Senate in more than 20 years.

Even worse for incumbent Republicans: Their fate is largely in the president’s hands. The Trump-dominated political environment, turned sour for his party by his handling of the coronavirus crisis and the nationwide protests over racism, has essentially made the Senate’s state-by-state contests a single, nationalized campaign.

Republicans currently control the Senate 53 to 47. Democrats need a net gain of four seats for a majority, or three if Joe Biden wins the presidency. When the Senate is split 50-50, the vice president is the tiebreaker.

But Democratic ambitions have grown larger: Biden said this week he could see his party winning 55 seats. Many Republicans fear that could happen.

“Panic is gripping the Senate races,” said Rob Stutzman, a California Republican political strategist who is a vocal Trump critic. “A lot of candidates are in a really, really tough spot.”

One sign of how nationalized the Senate races have become: An analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics finds that a record 69% of money contributed to Senate candidates now comes from outside their states. That’s up from 59% in 2018, as donors across the country are treating individual races as a referendum on Trump and GOP control of the Senate.

Nowhere is the national profile of a race as high as here in Maine. Sara Gideon, the speaker of the state House who won the Democratic primary Tuesday, stands to gain about $4 million raised in a national fundraising drive for the benefit of whichever Democrat won the nomination to challenge Collins.

The incumbent is a rare Republican with a record of supporting abortion rights, but her vote to confirm Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court despite his opposition to abortion rights has drawn donations and attention to her race from coast to coast.

“We are following all the campaigns where there is a chance of tipping a seat to Democrats,” said Sonia Cairns, an 80-year-old Minneapolis retiree who is planning to donate to Gideon. “Of course I need to know more about Sara Gideon, but I want a Democrat to win that Senate seat.”

A Center for Responsive Politics analysis by senior researcher Doug Weber found that both parties saw a surge in out-of-state giving, but it was more pronounced for Democrats. Republicans pulled in 64% of their contributions from out of state; for Democrats it was 72%.

A big money advantage built on out-of-state support can be a shaky political foundation, warned Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the center.

“It’s great to raise money, but only voters can cast ballots,” she said...

The Power of 41: GOP Senate Minority Frustrates Democrats

In May, Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, told the Wall Street Journal:

When I woke up after the election in November 2006 ... I realized I was going to be the Republican leader and not the majority leader. That was the bad news ... The good news is that 49 is not a bad number in a body that requires 60. The United States Senate is the only legislative body in the world where a majority is not enough ... My goal from the very beginning, which my Republican colleagues have supported without exception, basically, is to use the power of 41 – or more – to do one of two things: either to stop things that are totally awful . . . or more frequently, to use the power of 41 to shape ... Really bad ideas die in the Senate, and in that sense it has protected America from extremes throughout our history.

Thank goodness for the filibuster, I say. It works to frustrate the formation of permanent majorities, and the mechanism is an ultimate example of Madisonian safeguards for the protection of minority rights.

McConnell's in the news today, it turns out, as the Washington Post reports in its story, "Political Maneuvers Delay Bill After Bill in Senate":

The Senate went home yesterday for the Fourth of July holiday to face voters, having failed repeatedly to address critical economic issues from skyrocketing gas prices to climate change to the nation's housing crisis.

Leaders in both parties have vowed to tackle those problems. Yet the Senate has been unable to move forward even when there is broad agreement about what to do.

Take the housing rescue bill that collapsed this week: On a test vote, 83 senators supported provisions intended to halt the steepest slide in home prices in a generation. Still, the measure stalled, undone by a dispute over whether to add tax breaks for renewable energy production, an idea supported by 88 senators.

Lawmakers, lobbyists and independent analysts say that bill and other major legislation have been derailed by political maneuvering for an election likely to consolidate Democratic control over Congress and in which the sputtering economy tops the agenda. With each side using the Senate's byzantine rules to gain advantage, work in the upper chamber, always balky, has ground to a halt.

Senate Democrats accuse Republicans of adopting intransigence as a strategy to produce a "do-nothing" Congress. Senate Republicans acknowledge using delay tactics but say they are reacting to a heavy-handed Democratic majority that has denied them a voice on the Senate floor.

"Members recognize this is going to be a critical election. There's potential for dramatic change in the Senate and the House and the presidency. So both sides aren't willing to give an inch on messaging," said Brian Darling, director of Senate relations at the Heritage Foundation. "Both Republicans and Democrats have dug in their heels."

The Senate has managed to pump out a few big bills this year, including an economic stimulus package, which gave tax rebates to millions of Americans, and the farm bill, which directs agricultural spending. Late Thursday, the Senate approved a bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that also increases educational funding for veterans and extends unemployment benefits.

But the war spending bill was the sole victory in a week that otherwise dissolved in a frenzy of futility. In addition to delaying the housing bill until next month, the Senate left town without approving a long-awaited electronic surveillance measure and legislation to prevent physicians who accept Medicare from getting hit with a 10.6 percent pay cut.

The Medicare bill was a particular disappointment; it passed the House 355 to 59. But Senate Republicans used the filibuster rule, which requires 60 votes to end debate, to block the measure because of a dispute over small cutbacks in a program run by private insurers called Medicare Advantage. Doctors and advocates for the elderly were furious.

"A group of Republican senators followed the direction of the Bush administration and voted to protect health insurance companies at the expense of America's seniors, disabled and military families," American Medical Association President Nancy H. Nielsen said in a statement. "These senators leave for their 4th of July picnics knowing that the most vulnerable Americans are at risk because of the Senate's inability to act."

Housing advocates, consumer groups and business organizations have been equally frustrated by the glacial pace.

"It's a delay-of-game Congress," said R. Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "This Congress isn't addressing the issues that are foremost in the public's mind such as gasoline prices, economic anxiety and the housing crisis."

Senators in both parties say the logjam is the worst they've seen, largely due to copious use of the filibuster. Since January 2007, motions to end debate -- cloture motions -- have been filed 119 times. The previous record for any two-year session was 82.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) has used a procedural tactic to prohibit GOP amendments 13 times since January 2007, more than any Senate leader since 1985.

Republicans point to those statistics and accuse Reid of using cloture to deny them the ability to amend legislation often chosen for its political message. That is why, they say, Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) has slowed the housing bill with his renewable-energy amendment. The housing bill is one of the few measures moving through the Senate that has a chance to become law.

"Substantive bills have simply been abandoned," said Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.). "Therefore, when a vehicle does appear that, like the housing bill, has some consensus behind it, people throw baggage on that immediately derails it."

Democrats say that Republicans are using the filibuster to block legislation and that their demand for amendments is an effort to turn every bill, no matter the subject, into a debate over GOP issues, such as the estate tax or offshore drilling.

"I think it's really unfair to say no one's compromising," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), noting that Republicans have blocked even bipartisan measures. "And they're hurting themselves politically. They've been doing this for a year now. As they keep doing it more and more, the number of voters who say they prefer Democrats to Republicans keeps going up."

The low point in Senate relations may have come during debate on a climate-change bill sponsored by Sens. John W. Warner (R-Va.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.). Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) forced the entire 492-page bill to be read aloud, an exercise that took nearly nine hours. McConnell said the move was payback for Reid's failure to act on President Bush's judicial nominees. Frustrated, Reid moved to end debate and bring the bill to the floor. The vote failed, killing the bill.

Many partisans blame the Republicans for congressional ineffectiveness and unpopularity over last 18 month. The fact is, however, Harry Reid's perhaps the most inept Majority Leader in history, and the GOP is skillfully deploying institutional rules to slow action or kill disastrous Democratic-sponsored legislation.

The Senate results on election night will be some of the most significant to watch, and so far expert opinion suggests the Democrats will fall short of winning a filibuster-proof majority (see, for example, "Sabato Puts Senate race in Democratic Corner").

Political Experts Weigh-In on Massachusetts Special Election

maOkay, following up my post last night ("Dems Prepare for Complete Coakley Meltdown"), the Washington Post has also surveyed some election experts on the implications of a Scott Brown victory on Tuesday. See, "Topic A: What happens if Democrats lose in Massachusetts?"

The Post asked political experts to explain the prospects for Democrats if Martha Coakley is defeated in Tuesday's special Senate election in Massachusetts. Below are contributions from Norman J. Ornstein, Dan Schnur, Mary Beth Cahill, Ed Rogers, Robert J. Blendon and Martin Frost.

NORMAN J. ORNSTEIN

Resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute

A Scott Brown victory would send shock waves through Democratic Party circles, the Senate and the White House -- and not just because of the improbability of a Republican win in deep-blue Massachusetts. The real impact would be more immediate, jeopardizing passage of a health-reform plan carefully and painstakingly stitched together to win exactly 60 Democratic votes in the Senate, and not yet ready for its prime-time vote to move to final enactment.

Democrats have three options. One is to speed up delicate negotiations between House and Senate Democrats in order to bring up the bill before Brown gets sworn in. Even with their current sense of urgency, that is dicey at best. The bill will need to be scored by the Congressional Budget Office, meaning at minimum several days. Then a vote on final passage could be delayed for yet more days, using a variety of parliamentary tactics, in the Senate. Democrats control the Senate, so they can delay the swearing-in of Brown, but to do so for weeks would be uncomfortable and probably would not play well politically.

The second option would be to go back to Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, the only two Republicans who might consider supporting a bill. Snowe's refusal to vote for the Senate bill in December was in part based on substance, but in part a protest of the Democrats' decision to get to 60 votes without serious negotiations with her. Could she be brought back to the table with the requisite groveling and concessions -- without in turn losing another Democrat along the way?

The third option is reconciliation. While it is possible to lower the threshold in the Senate to 50 votes under the budget rules, it would mean a convoluted and inadequate health bill that would expire in five years. Three lousy options explain why Democrats are praying that Coakley limps across the finish line.

DAN SCHNUR

Director of the University of Southern California's Unruh Institute of Politics; communications director for John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign

There's no way that Martha Coakley can lose: Kennedy family members will personally carry Massachusetts voters to the polls to keep that from happening. More likely is that she wins by a relatively small margin of victory that will be written off as a status-quo outcome by a political community whose expectations for a huge upset were raised beyond all rational levels this past week.

But if Scott Brown actually does pull off an astonishing victory, first, the sun will swallow the moon, angels will weep and the Charles River will run red with blood. Then, the national Democratic Party will blame Coakley for running a hapless, uninspired Creigh Deeds-ish campaign. Republicans will prematurely predict a takeover of Congress in November, and thereby raise expectations to the same level they have for Brown in this race. And President Obama will be forced to learn, like Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan before him, that working with members of the opposition party is a fairly smart path toward his own reelection.

The most important impact will be on health-care reform. Democrats will be tempted to delay the certification of Brown's election in order to pass the bill, but Obama should be smart enough to see that the populist backlash against such brazen maneuvering would be devastating for his party in the fall. Better at that point to declare a brand-new set of bipartisan negotiations on health care, put them on simmer, and belatedly turn his full attention to the nation's economy.

The rest is at the link.

Photoshop Credit: The magisterial No Sheelpes Here!, "Miracle In Massachusetts?"

RELATED: The Boston Herald, "Rudy Giuliani Joins Scott Brown, Slams Martha Coakley on Terrorism (via Memeorandum). And, Gateway Pundit, "Scott Brown Up by 3 In American Research Group Poll," Legal Insurrection, "Brown Campaign Saturday ,"and The Other McCain, "Are Democrats Planning to Steal the Massacusetts Election for Coakley?"

Late Shifts in the Polls Probably Won't Help Desperate Democrats

Following up on my previous entry, "Democrats Now in Retreat as GOP on Verge of Historic Gains in House of Representatives."

Crush these mofos. Flatten them until they're bleeding out of the eye sockets.

At the Monkey Cage, "Why late shifts in the polls probably won’t help Democrats in Senate races":

All of the major Senate forecasting models, including ours at Election Lab, now rely heavily on averages of public polls.  This raises the question of whether those averages will be correct on Election Day, and whether any misses could affect which party manages to retain control of the Senate.  In particular, there is the question of whether polling misses might mean that the Democrats end up with a slim Senate majority after all.

There are reasons to be skeptical that this will happen.  It’s not just that we can’t easily predict whether the polls will over- or underestimate one party’s vote share, as discussed by Nate Silver and by Mark Blumenthal & Co.  And it’s not just, as Josh Katz and Sean Trende have found, that Senate polls already tend to be pretty accurate at this point in time — especially when candidates have a 3- to 4-point lead, as do Republican candidates in Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky and Louisiana.

The other key point is this: Late movement in Senate polls tends to be in the direction of the underlying fundamentals.  I discussed this movement in the polls in an earlier post, and it’s worth revisiting it now.

The analysis is pretty straightforward.  Estimate a simple model of Senate elections from 1980 to 2012 that relies on only a few factors: economic growth, presidential approval, whether it’s a midterm or presidential year, and how the state voted in the most recent presidential election. Then estimate an out-of-sample forecast for every Senate election between 1992 and 2012. Then compare the polls to that forecast.

Here is the gap between the polls and the forecast for the last 60 days of the campaign...

Continue reading.

Basically, public opinion polls should settle closer and closer to the prediction of the electoral model, hence early predictions of GOP gains are increasingly likely to hold true.

So crush their souls, the Democrat-progressive vermin. Flatten them like corpses in the mud.

Sullen Voters Set to Deliver Another Demand for Change

At WSJ, "If Republicans Win Control of Senate, It Would Be Fourth Such Control Switch in Less Than a Decade":

Odds are good that the U.S. midterm elections will mark the fourth time in less than a decade that voters oust a party from control of Congress or the White House, a remarkable period of instability that has left neither party with a firm grip on power.

If, as polls suggest, Republicans win a majority in the Senate, they will face anew the question: What can they do to address the voter dissatisfaction that keeps washing through the electorate and producing “change elections,’’ as in 2006, 2008 and 2010?

“Traditionally in American history, politics is like a seesaw: When one side is up the other side is down,” said Peter Wehner, a former aide to President George W. Bush . “Now it’s as if the seesaw is broken: the public is distrustful of both parties.”

As voters head to the polls on Tuesday, the most important test of this mood lay in about a dozen closely contested Senate races. Republicans need a net gain of six seats to win control of the Senate.

Across the country, candidates and party leaders made their final appeal to voters. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who stands to become Senate Majority Leader if Republicans win the majority, flew around his home state campaigning with Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.)

“We’re going to send a message to President Obama,” Mr. Paul said at a joint rally. “This will be a repudiation of President Obama’s policies.”

Former President Bill Clinton, who has maintained a punishing campaign schedule this year, traveled to Florida to appear Monday night at a rally with Charlie Crist , who is running for governor in Florida. Former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney , also widely traveled during the campaign, appeared in Alaska with GOP Senate candidate Dan Sullivan.

At the White House, officials insisted that there remained a chance that Democrats could retain a Senate majority. “I don’t agree with the oddsmakers,” Vice President Joe Biden said on CNN. “I predict we’re going to keep the Senate.”

Going into Election Day, the electorate appeared exceptionally dissatisfied with the political system, and almost $4 billion spent on the campaign appeared to do little to change that.

For Republicans, the risk is that, unless they find a way to address that underlying dissatisfaction, a 2014 victory could prove transitional, not durable. The parties will fight over the Senate once again in two years, on terrain more hostile to the GOP.

More broadly, the drive to address mounting voter dissatisfaction also figures to weigh heavily on both parties as they prepare for the 2016 campaign to succeed Mr. Obama.

“This is what I call a short-term election,” said Democratic pollster Peter Hart. “I don’t think it’s a tidal wave because there is no agenda or message that comes out of this election.”

Although officials from both parties—and the well-funded outside groups supporting the parties—have tried to rally voters by arguing that the stakes are enormous in the 2014 fight for control of Congress, the campaign has had little of the passion, grandeur or sweep of other recent “change” elections.

In 2010, intense tea-party anger about the economy and the new health-care law propelled Republicans into a House majority. In 2008, voters’ hunger for changing Washington’s partisan ways carried Mr. Obama to the White House. In 2006, matters of war and peace helped bring Democrats back to power in the House and Senate.

By contrast, the 2014 election campaign has been mostly tactical, negative and narrowly framed. Republicans ran against an unpopular lame-duck president; Democrats ran away from him. Voters overwhelmingly feel the country is on the wrong track, polls found, and seemed to be losing hope that either party has a plan to fix it.

“Do I think there’s going to be any change? No, I don’t,” said Mike Foohey, 70 years old, of Maggie Valley, N.C., who participated in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. “I just don’t see anybody cooperating in order to get anything done.”

That poll, conducted in the final week of the midterm campaign, is shot through with evidence of voters’ unquenched thirst for change—and of the nation’s divisions about what kind of change they want.

Among people who say they want Congress controlled by Republicans, 44% say that is because they want to express opposition to Mr. Obama rather than positive support for the GOP.

The poll found that two thirds of all voters want significant change in the direction in which Mr. Obama has been leading the country. That includes 47% of Democrats, suggesting the midterms may mark the beginning of the post-Obama era for Democrats.

More.

Biden Blasts Trump in January 6th Address (VIDEO)

He just looks old, cranky, and mean. 

For all the devastating problems we've got, this is all he's got. This is all the Democrats got. We'll be hearing about January 6th all year. Biden's just previewing his party's midterm election strategy. 

Disgusting. 

At WSJ, "Biden Assails Trump in Speech Over Jan. 6 Riot, Efforts to Overturn 2020 Election Results":

WASHINGTON—President Biden placed blame squarely on former President Donald Trump and his supporters for the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, using the first anniversary of the attack to assail the former president’s attempts to undermine the 2020 election results.

Mr. Biden’s remarks, from the Capitol’s Statuary Hall, represented his most pointed rebuke of his predecessor, saying Mr. Trump’s “bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our Constitution. He can’t accept he lost.”

The president accused Mr. Trump of spreading a “web of lies about the 2020 election,” pointing to his false claims of election fraud and his attempt to block the certification of the election by Congress that day. Mr. Biden didn’t mention Mr. Trump by name, referring to him throughout the speech as the former president.

Mr. Biden credited law enforcement members, including the Capitol Police, for saving the rule of law. “Our democracy held,” he said.

Mr. Trump, in a statement released shortly after Mr. Biden’s remarks, said the president “used my name today to try to further divide America. This political theater is all just a distraction for the fact Biden has completely and totally failed.” Mr. Trump has said the “real insurrection” happened on Election Day in 2020, not Jan. 6, 2021.

The former president had planned to hold a news conference later in the day. But he canceled the event Tuesday night, saying he would discuss the anniversary during a coming rally in Arizona.

Mr. Biden’s remarks opened a day of remembrances on Capitol Hill. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) each led a moment of silence on the House and Senate floors. In the afternoon, Mrs. Pelosi is participating in a conversation with historians and later a series of testimonials from lawmakers. The two leaders will join a candlelight vigil on the Capitol steps in the early evening.

The attack has served as a dividing line between the two parties in Congress, and few Republicans participated in the formal commemorations. Rep. Liz Cheney (R., Wyo.), accompanied by her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, was the only GOP lawmaker who attended the moment of silence in the House chamber. Democrats have called the riot an assault on democracy, and have cited the event in calling for passing new election laws. GOP leaders have condemned the action of rioters, but they have accused Democrats of trying to use the attack to embarrass Republicans for political gain.

Mr. Biden said the moment called for Americans to “decide what kind of nation we are going to be. Are we going to be a nation that accepts political violence as a norm? Are we going to be a nation where we allow partisan election officials to overturn the legally expressed will of the people?”

“We cannot allow ourselves to be that kind of nation,” Mr. Biden said. He said Jan. 6 marked “not the end of democracy. It’s the beginning of a renaissance of liberty and fair play.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, speaking before Mr. Biden, equated the riot to some of the darkest days in the nation’s history, including the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

On the Senate floor, Mr. Schumer called the Jan. 6 attack “the final, bitter, unforgivable act” of Mr. Trump’s presidency. Mr. Schumer said that it was important to counter the falsehood that the election was stolen because it could provide a pretext for more violence.

In a statement, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) blasted Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris over their remarks, saying that the speeches “were an effort to resurrect a failed presidency more than marking the anniversary of a dark day in American history.”

Hours before the Capitol breach, Mr. Trump spoke at a rally and urged his supporters to stop Mr. Biden’s election win, repeating his false claims that the election was stolen. Some of his supporters then marched to the Capitol and overwhelmed police officers, forcing the evacuation of lawmakers and then-Vice President Mike Pence and temporarily disrupting the certification of Mr. Biden’s win. More than 700 people face criminal charges for their alleged actions that day.

The D.C. medical examiner’s office determined that four people died as a result of the riot, including Ashli Babbitt, who was fatally shot by a Capitol Police officer as she attempted to jump through shattered glass at the door to the Speaker’s Lobby. Two died of heart conditions and one from an amphetamine intoxication. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who according to a Federal Bureau of Investigation affidavit was assaulted at the riot, suffered a stroke and died the following day of natural causes, the medical examiner’s office found.

House Democrats, joined by 10 Republicans, impeached Mr. Trump last January on the charge of inciting an insurrection. Mr. Trump was then acquitted in the Senate, with the votes of all Democrats and seven Republicans falling short of the two-thirds threshold needed to convict...

The rest is history, as they say.

The headlines have been dire at home and abroad. The drums of war are beating loudly in Eastern Europe as a showdown at the Russo-Ukrainian border looms. Meanwhile, Moscow's sent troops to Central Asia's Republic of Kazakhstan. Violent anti-government protests have threatened the regime of Nursultan Nazarbayev, which is closely allied to Russia. 

The Omicron variant is closing down government facilities and schools, and the White House has no clue on the way forward. In fact, Biden's going to shift administration policy to emphasize "living with covid," which for Democrats that the president's 2020 campaign platform to "end the pandemic" was a lie. The shoe's on the other foot, it hurts, and the race is lost. 

Still more.

Colorado Rep. Cory Gardner Announces Senate Run, Expanding 2014 Battleground in GOP's Favor

This is great!

The news up in Colorado has rocked the world like a political earthquake.

At USA Today, "Senate battleground expands in GOP's favor":

WASHINGTON — Republican Rep. Cory Gardner's entrance into Colorado's U.S. Senate race against incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Udall opens up a new front in the expanding 2014 battlefield for control of the U.S. Senate.

Democrats control the Senate 55-45, with the assist of two independents who caucus with Democrats, but they face strong challenges in the midterm elections with races clustered in conservative-leaning states that have stacked the political landscape in GOP territory.

While Colorado has tilted toward Democrats in recent elections — Barack Obama won it twice — Republicans see an opportunity to put Democrats on the defensive in a swing state.

"In 2008, Colorado led the nation in change," Gardner said Saturday at an event at a Denver lumberyard to kick off his campaign, in reference to Obama's nomination for president during the Democratic National Convention in Denver. "In 2014, we can change it again."

Chris Harris, a Udall spokesman, said the senator is ready for the fight. "The people of Colorado know that Mark spends every day working to protect Colorado's way of life," he said, "Despite what Republican leaders are trying to say about Gardner to try and cover up his reckless behavior and paint him as a mainstream candidate, that's just not true."

Democrats responded Friday with a new recruit of their own, former U.S. representative Travis Childers, who announced on the eve of the March 1 filing deadline that he is entering the U.S. Senate contest in Mississippi, where incumbent GOP Sen. Thad Cochran is running for re-election. Cochran first faces a June primary threat from state Sen. Chris McDaniel, a Tea Party favorite.

Incumbents seldom lose re-election, but if McDaniel were to defeat Cochran in the primary, Democrats face potentially better odds in the general election contest, where recent elections have resulted in Democratic victories over Tea Party candidates in states like Indiana and Delaware. However, the Deep South remains an uphill climb for Democrats running statewide.

Overall, the 2014 landscape is tilting in the GOP's favor and the party is working to put more races in play to improve their prospects for a takeover.

Republicans are also touting the recent entry of Ed Gillespie, a prominent national GOP strategist, into Virginia's Senate race against incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Warner as another top recruit who could transform what had been second-tier races this cycle into potentially decisive races in determining Senate control.

Republicans are also not ruling out a run at Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., as well, but the party has yet to coalesce around a candidate. The GOP's top choice, former senator Scott Brown, R-Mass., recently switched his residency to the Granite State and has teased a potential Senate run in a new state, but he has yet to make a decision.

Justin Barasky, a spokesman for the Senate Democrats' campaign operation, scoffed at the GOP's trio of recent and potential recruits. "Kudos to Republicans for landing people that can form coherent sentences, but it will not paper over the fact that they support a reckless and irresponsible Republican agenda that is wildly unpopular amongst voters," he said.

Democrats, however, have no additional states to expand the map in 2014, and they are defending more races overall...

PREVIOUSLY: "'The battle for control of the U.S. Senate is where the action is this year in American politics...'"

Both Sides Dig In Over Senate Trial

Noah Feldman, who testified during the House impeachment hearings (before Nadler's Judiciary Committee), posted something of a bombshell piece at Bloomberg the other day, "If Trump's Impeached, Then Why Can't a Senate Start Now?"

The whole delay is totally predictable. The Dems are losing the debate over impeachment, which went down on straight party lines. Trump's approval ratings are at the highest points of his presidency. Some House Democrats were grumbling about how they only wanted to "censure" the president, not impeach. Blah, blah.

It's going to the Senate one way or another, mainly because the American people aren't going to stand for the left's shenanigans too much longer.

In any case, at LAT, "Trump impeachment trial: Squaring off in the Senate":

Trump impeachment trial: Squaring off in the Senate https://t.co/Gsi93DcVku

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) December 23, 2019

WASHINGTON —  A senior White House official and leading Senate Republicans predicted Sunday that congressional Democrats would fail in their bid to force the Senate to summon witnesses in President Trump’s impeachment trial.
Democrats countered by asking why, if Trump were innocent, he would block the testimony of top aides with direct knowledge of his dealings with Ukraine — actions that led the House of Representatives to approve two articles of impeachment against the president last week.

Following Wednesday’s vote, only the third time in history that the House has impeached a president, Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not immediately forward the articles to the Senate for trial.

Democrats said that, in light of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s pledge to work in close concert with the White House, they were not satisfied the proceedings would be conducted fairly and impartially. Pelosi said she wanted clarity about what rules the Senate planned to follow before deciding which members of the House would act as the prosecutors, known as managers, of the case in the Senate.

Pelosi (D-San Francisco) is expected to send the articles to the Senate after the holiday recess. Senior White House aide Marc Short said he expected Republicans would make no concessions in return, even though Trump says he wants a quick trial in the GOP-controlled Senate.

“We’re confident this position is untenable, and she’s going to move it along,” Short, the chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence and a former White House legislative director, told “Fox News Sunday.”

“She will yield — there’s no way she can hold this position,” he said, referring to Pelosi.

The White House’s current opposition to witnesses in the Senate marks an about-face. Until recently, Trump was insisting he wanted extensive witnesses. He hoped to turn a trial into an opportunity for his lawyers to call prominent Democrats and force them to answer questions about his so-far-groundless allegations of misconduct among that party’s members. McConnell (R-Ky.) and other Senate Republicans opposed that idea and appeared to have convinced Trump to drop it.

Democratic lawmakers defended Pelosi’s delay.

“I think what she’s just trying to do is make sure the best possible case for a fair trial happens,” said Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Addressing Trump directly, Booker said: “If you’re innocent, have acting Chief of Staff [Mick] Mulvaney come before the Senate, swear to an oath — settle this whole thing.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said Pelosi was doing “exactly the right thing” in “focusing a spotlight on the need to have a fair trial in the United States Senate.”

Since an impeachment inquiry began nearly three months ago, Trump has refused any cooperation by the executive branch. The blanket rejection of subpoenas for documents and squelching of appearances by key figures such as Mulvaney and Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo formed the basis for one of the two articles of impeachment, alleging obstruction of Congress. The other accuses Trump of abuse of power.

More than a dozen diplomats and current or former administration officials defied Trump’s instructions and testified in the House proceedings. Those witnesses helped House Democrats make their case that the president withheld crucial military aid and a coveted White House meeting as a means of pressuring Ukraine’s newly elected leader to announce investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

Trump, who has never consistently accepted U.S. intelligence findings that Russia interfered in the 2016 election on his behalf, also asked President Volodymyr Zelensky to look into a debunked theory that Ukraine interfered in that election on behalf of Hillary Clinton, Trump’s opponent.

Although new evidence continues to emerge, Democrats say it is impossible to establish key details of what transpired if Trump blocks testimony by senior aides...

More at WaPo, via Memeorandum, "Impeachment live updates: McConnell, Pelosi dig in on impasse over Trump's Senate trial."

GOP Sees Difficulties in Trump Country

Well, I wasn't all invested in this race, but still. Alabama? A Democrat hasn't won there in 25 years?

At LAT, "In stunning 2017 defeats, Republicans see vision of difficulties in 2018":

Tonight's analysis: Democrats have learned to weaponize enthusiasm and cut a path to 2018. For Republicans, the last year has proved a reversal of fortunes: https://t.co/qbC6ulot06

— Cathleen Decker (@cathleendecker) December 13, 2017

Democrats who opened the year clashing among themselves and lamenting President Trump's election have closed 2017 with victories that demonstrated their ability to weaponize party enthusiasm and draw a template for success in a sharply competitive battle for Congress in 2018.

For Republicans, Tuesday night's stunning loss by Roy Moore in Alabama's Senate race — the first GOP loss in a Senate race there in a generation — underscored a bleak passage of time: A year that began in unified control of Washington has ended with the party bitterly split and redefined in the worst of ways, saddled with an unpopular president and a Senate candidate accused of child molestation.

The problems begin with Trump, for whom Moore's defeat represented a third straight repudiation.

The first came in September in Alabama, where Trump ambivalently backed incumbent Sen. Luther Strange, who lost to Moore in the Republican primary. Then Trump endorsed Republican Ed Gillespie in Virginia's gubernatorial race, only to have him lose by nearly double digits last month to Democrat Ralph Northam.

Finally, Trump transferred his Alabama endorsement to Moore and watched him lose in a state that has been ruby red for decades.
Even in Alabama, a state he won by 28 percentage points, Trump was unable to ease his candidate over the finish line. Exit polls Tuesday indicated one reason: Voters even in this heavily Republican state were closely split between approval and disapproval of Trump.

That's an ominous sign for Republicans heading into the midterm election. The key races next year will take place in states that are far less favorable to Trump than Alabama.

Related to Trump's broad unpopularity is the fact that his party is fractured. Those divisions began with the primary battle, which the president's former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, who strongly backed Moore, helped turn into a referendum on the party's Senate leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

The splits only deepened after the Washington Post published accusations that Moore had fondled and kissed girls as young as 14 when he was a local prosecutor in his 30s.

The Republican National Committee and the party's Senate campaign committee pulled its backing from Moore after the Post story. When Trump, urged on by Bannon, decided to endorse Moore, the national committee returned to support him. The Senate committee declined to follow suit.

On election night, Moore's chief strategist, Dean Young, took off not against Jones or even the typical targets, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, but against McConnell.

"I tell Sen. McConnell this: The people of Alabama are having an election tonight, and he should not overturn the people of Alabama," Young said, anticipating that a victory by Moore might be followed by a Senate Ethics Committee investigation.

On Tuesday night, it was clear that the bitter feelings among Republicans are likely to carry over to 2018 and beyond.

"The polls have been closed for 90 minutes & GOP could actually lose Senate seat. In ALABAMA," Alex Conant, a former spokesman for Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, tweeted Tuesday night. "No matter what happens next, hard to overstate what a huge political disaster this is for Moore-apologists like Trump, let alone Moore-champions like Bannon."

Moreover, in Alabama, and earlier in Virginia, Republicans found that arguments they have counted on to dispatch Democrats — that they are soft on crime, the military, immigration, guns and religion — no longer guarantee success...

More.

Will 2008 Be a Critical Election?

The idea of a partisan realignment is a key concept in political science.

In electoral politics, a new partisan era is said to have emerged when the coaltions supporting the parties become disrupted and voters realign their allegiances, with a new party becoming the hegemonic party for decades at the presidency and congressional levels.

There's a long line of research on this, but the most compelling account of partisan realigment is found in the notion of a "critical election." In an election contest whereby the political system is facing a fundamental national crisis of catastrophic proportions, voters choose the party out of power and elevate a new, enduring partisan coalition at the levels of the presidency and Congress. The elections of 1860 and 1932 are the key examples. The Republican Party was the dominant party in American politics following Abraham Lincoln's election at the moment of national crisis precipitating the Civil War; and in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected in a New Deal realignment that emerged out of the calamity of the Great Depression.

The Wikipedia page on realignments (which features an excellent review of the scholarship) singles out 1932 as classic case of partisan realigment:

Of all the realigning elections, this one musters the most agreement from political scientists and historians; it is the archetypal realigning election. FDR's admirers have argued that New Deal policies, developed in response to the crash of 1929 and the miseries of the Great Depression under Herbert Hoover, represented an entirely new phenomenon in American politics.

There's been little formal discussion of 2008 as a realigment around the blogosphere.

I've seen a few articles here and there, but partisan bloggers are more caught up in the scandal of the moment to reflect on the factors in this year's race that may portend a contest of epochal proportions. Folks say it's a "Democratic year," but the concatenation of events in foreign policy, and especially at home with a finanicial crisis (routinely described as the worst since the 1930s), may well result in a victory for Barack Obama and congressional Democrats on November 4 ushering in a new era of Democratic dominance lasting well into the future.

The truth about realignments, however, is that they are historical artifacts and not recurring political phenomena. The current political era is more appropriately known as a "dealignment system," in which the rise of politically independent voters and shifting electoral coalitions have resulted in neither party holding a long-term lock on both the presidency and Congress on the scale of the GOP from 1860 to 1928 or of the Democrats from 1932 to 1968.

I've contemplated the potential for a Democratic realignment for some time, but because of the success of the surge in Iraq, and the nomination of John McCain as the Republican standard-bearer, circumstances have appeared hopeful that the GOP might retain the White House. Not only that, for true dominance, should the Democrats take the presidency, the party would also need to consolidate their hold on Congress with a 60-plus filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. That possibility has long seemed remote.

Until this last month, that is.

The collapse of Wall Street over the last few weeks indeed repesents the kind of catastrophic event that precipitated previous partisan realignments - in other words, the current crisis, with polls showing highest voter dissatisfaction in American history, may well be the catalyst for historic Democratic victories, including a 60-plus margin in the upper chamber of the Congress.

Stuart Rothenberg made a dramatic argument this week, laying out the possibility for a GOP bloodbath:

It’s obvious to all that the national landscape — and the presidential map — shifted dramatically in the Democrats’ favor during the financial crisis. Americans are more dissatisfied with the present and worried about the future, all of which helps Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Democratic Congressional candidates.

Obama may not be comfortably over the crucial 50 percent mark in polls, but states that McCain hoped to compete in are moving out of reach, while more traditionally Republican states have come into play for Obama. McCain needs to change that dynamic quickly to have any chance of winning.

McCain still has a month to change the focus of the race, and Obama may have peaked too soon. But public concern about the economy isn’t likely to disappear over the next month no matter how much Republicans wish it would.

So far, there is no evidence that Democratic candidates are paying a price for the public’s sour mood, or that the election will be “anti-incumbent.” It is Republican candidates who are feeling the political pain.

The outlook in Senate races continues to deteriorate for Republicans, with Democratic gains at least in the high single digits increasingly likely. Where I once wrote in this space that Democrats had a chance of reaching 60 seats in 2010 (“For Democrats, Time to Pad Senate Majority and Think 60 Seats,” Feb. 12, 2007), I now can’t rule out 60 seats for this November....

Republicans appear to be heading into a disastrous election that will usher in a very bleak period for the party. A new generation of party leaders will have to figure out how to pick up the pieces and make their party relevant after November.

On Thursday, Steven Stark laid out the hypothesis that Rothenberg's "bloodbath" may indeed result in a fundamental transformation of the party coalitions:

Over the past eight years, the reaction of the Bush administration to both 9/11 and the current financial mess has been, ironically, one that is traditionally Democratic: running huge deficits while creating vast new government interventionist bureaucracies to deal with homeland security and the credit crisis. The current administration also decided that this new era required an expensive, expansionist foreign policy, fighting "terror wars" on various fronts.

Now, the public may be in the process of deciding that, if a new era requires a more activist and expansionist government, Democrats are better equipped to handle these tasks. Voters may also decide that they are willing to accept the "risk" of a far more rapid military withdrawal from Iraq - which is, after all, the major foreign-policy difference between the McCain and Obama candidacies....

And then there's the credit crisis which has just hit; admittedly, its effects may not be known for months or even years. But if Obama is able to win big because of it, it could serve as the final crystallizing event that allows the Democratic Party to reap the benefit for years to come.

I'm not one to make predictions, and I'm not ruling out that John McCain can pull off a miraculous upset. But if trends on the economy and voter sentiment continue their current trajectory, 2008 may just well turn out to be a genuine critical election.

The key indicator, for me at least, will be what happens in the elections for the Senate, and here's how Patrick Ruffini describes things:

If you're a conservative looking at the odds, what should really scare you is not the 80 to 90 percent chance that Barack Obama is the next President. It's the very real chance that Democrats could get to 60 or tantalizingly close to it in the Senate. President Barack Obama is unfortunate. President Barack Obama with 60 votes in the Senate means a socialist America.

And that would mean a fundamental reorientation in the ideological underpinnings of the American state, not unlike that following 1932.

Why Independent Voters Broke for Democrats in the Midterms

Trump's radioactive, it turns out. 

If he's not now, we'll know for sure after he makes his big announcement on November 15th. See how the Democrat Media Complex responds to that.

At the Wall Street Journal, "GOP candidates closely aligned with Trump turned off some centrists and in-play Republicans":

Lisa Ghelfi, a 58-year-old registered Republican in Arizona, voted for Donald Trump for president two years ago but has grown tired of his election-fraud claims. It is the main reason she voted for Democrats for governor, senator, secretary of state and attorney general this fall and plans to change her registration to independent.

“Not allowing the election to be settled, it’s very divisive,” Ms. Ghelfi, a semiretired attorney from Paradise Valley, said of the 2020 race. “I think the election spoke for itself.” She said she voted for Republicans down-ballot who weren’t as vocal about election fraud or as closely tied to Mr. Trump, yet couldn’t support Arizona’s four major Republican candidates because they echoed Mr. Trump’s false claims.

Republicans succeeded in one of their top goals this year: They brought more of their party’s voters to the polls than did Democrats. But in the course of energizing their core voters, Republicans in many states lost voters in the political center—both independents and many Republicans who are uneasy with elements of the party’s focus under Mr. Trump.

Control of the House and Senate, which had seemed poised to land with the Republican Party, is coming down to a handful of races that so far are too close to call, though the GOP remains on track to winning a narrow majority in the House. Republicans have won nearly 5.5 million more votes in House races than have Democrats, a tally by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report finds, as many voters were motivated by anxiety over high inflation and a low opinion of President Biden’s response.

At the same time, Republican analysts said their unexpectedly weak showing in the election indicated that they had failed to press hard enough on those issues. In Michigan, the Republican Party’s state committee said a failure to talk to voters in the political center was a central reason that Tudor Dixon, the party’s Trump-endorsed nominee for governor, was crushed in a 10 percentage point defeat by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

“Tudor’s efforts focused largely on Republican red-meat issues, in hopes of inspiring a 2020-like showing at the polls,” a memo from the GOP committee said. “There were more ads on transgender sports than inflation, gas prices and bread-and-butter issues that could have swayed independent voters.”

More than 30% of the midterm voter pool, by one measure, were independent voters, or people who don’t affiliate with either political party. David Winston, a Republican pollster who consults with the party’s House and Senate leadership, said polling showed that they were unhappy with the country’s direction and assigned blame for high inflation to President Biden.

“So, the door was open for Republicans to have a good interaction,” Mr. Winston said. “If everyone was focused on turnout of their base, they missed almost a third of the electorate—and basically the third of the electorate that’s in play.”

Mike Cernovich, a conservative blogger and supporter of Mr. Trump, said in an online analysis of the election outcome, “I would say the single biggest issue was, if your focus in 2022 was the 2020 election, then you were going to have a bad night with independents.”

Nationally, Republican candidates this year had the advantage of a favorable voter mix. Some 49% of midterm voters were Republicans, and 43% were Democrats, a 6-point GOP advantage, AP VoteCast, a large survey of the midterm electorate, found.

The GOP edge was similar or larger in states with competitive Senate races: 5 points in Pennsylvania, 8 points in Georgia and 11 points in Arizona. Despite those advantages, Republicans lost the Senate races in Pennsylvania and Arizona and will compete again in Georgia, where the race goes to a runoff next month.

Undercutting the GOP advantage was that independents favored Democrats by 4 points nationally, the survey found, and by a far more substantial 18 points in Pennsylvania, 28 points in Georgia and more than 30 points in Arizona.

Polling shows that independent voters have little enthusiasm for either party. Both parties were viewed favorably by less than 30% of independents and unfavorably by 50% or more, the AP VoteCast survey found.

“It’s picking the lesser of two evils sometimes,” said Micki LePla, 65, a retired respiratory therapist near Port Huron, Mich., who backed Ms. Whitmer for governor...

Congressional Republicans Face Tough Electoral Prospects for Midterms 2018

As much as I want to disagree with this analysis, I can't: The president's party normally loses seats in midterm election's, and this year we've got polarizing President Trump in the Oval Office. The GOP has a lot of favorable variables, the strong economy and partisan redistricting, for example, but the cultural environment and constant outrage and ideological hatred looks to be the key influence on voting. Trump's a totem for all that good or bad in politics, depending on your perspective.

Good thing we got tax reform. We need to finish up the MAGA agenda this year, especially on immigration,  because once the Dems take back one or both chambers of Congress in 2019, all bets are off.

At LAT, "As 2017 ends, Republicans struggle to counter a Democratic wave":

Two things equally true about the 2018 midterm outlook: Democrats start out ahead. Republicans still have lots of time to turn it around. https://t.co/HBv0iF6ZsU

— David Lauter (@DavidLauter) December 31, 2017

The clock is ticking on the Republican majority in Congress: The GOP has just over 10 months to avoid a rout in 2018.

Republicans could do it. They have time and several important factors on their side: a good economy, low crime rates, achievements of significance to the party's followers.

Nevertheless, as 2017 closes, almost all signs point toward big Democratic gains next year, largely driven by President Trump's widespread unpopularity. And some of the pugnacious instincts that helped the president win election a year ago may now be worsening his party's dilemma.

Midterm elections "are a referendum on the party in power," notes Sean Trende, political analyst for the Real Clear Politics website. During the Obama years, Trende correctly forecast that Democrats had underestimated the potential of a surge of conservative white Americans voting Republican. Now, he says, Republicans are making a mistake in assuming that turnout will once again favor them in an off-year election.

Trump has "terrible numbers," Democrats have a large advantage in polls, and "it all adds up to a really rough midterm" for the GOP, Trende says.

The trouble for Republicans comes despite some of the best economic conditions in years, which normally would boost the party in power. Unfortunately for Republican candidates, a majority of Americans continues to believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, despite the good economic news.

Much of that discontent appears to center on one person — the president.

Throughout the year, opposition to Trump has generated energy among Democrats. But something new has been added to the mix in recent months, said Joe Trippi, the veteran Democratic consultant who served as media strategist for Doug Jones' upset Senate election this month in Alabama.

"The sense of chaos, the constant fight, fight, fight and alarm bells going off all the time" has deeply troubled voters, including many who backed Trump last year, Trippi said. "There's this sense of being on edge," which Alabamians talked about frequently, Trippi said. "That's what they don't want anymore."

Alabama's election had unique aspects, notably the flaws of the Republican candidate, Roy Moore. But that same voter anxiety has come up repeatedly in focus groups around the country.

If a year of Trump has put voters in the mood for less confrontation, that poses a big challenge for Republicans.

"I don't know how you stop Donald Trump from putting people on edge," Trippi said. "That's what he does."

Indeed, even if conflict weren't so deeply ingrained in Trump's personality, political calculation might lead him to continue seeking out battles at every turn. Voters as a whole may not like it, but to Trump's most fervent supporters, his willingness to fight forms a major part of his draw. His former strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, threatens to add to the political tension by backing challengers to several Republican incumbents.

Trump's hard-core supporters remain loyal and probably always will. But for all the attention they get from the White House — and often from the news media — Trump's fervent backers make up only about one-fifth of the public and are outnumbered about 2 to 1 by fervent opponents.

Indeed, the gap between the share of Americans who say they "strongly disapprove" of Trump and those who "strongly approve" has grown significantly this year. In polls by SurveyMonkey, for example, the margin now stands at 26 percentage points, up from 16 points at the start of the year.

Those numbers form just one of several indicators of problems for Republicans. The most basic comes from the so-called generic ballot — a question polls have used for decades that asks which party's candidate a person plans to vote for in the next election. It has long proven among the most reliable forecasting tools in American politics.

For most of the fall, Democrats showed a healthy lead on that question — enough to suggest the midterms would be competitive. This month, the forecast took an abrupt jump in one nonpartisan survey after another — to 13 points in a poll from Marist College, 15 in Quinnipiac University's poll, 15 from a Monmouth University survey and 18 points, a previously unheard-of level, in a poll for CNN.

Exactly why the numbers for the GOP worsened is unknown, although the timing suggests the unpopularity of the Republican tax bill played a role. What is knowable is that even discounting the biggest numbers, the Democrats' lead on the generic ballot surpasses that of any party out of power in decades.

The average size of the Democratic advantage forecasts that if the election were held now, they would gain in the neighborhood of 40 seats in the House — considerably more than the 24 they would need for a majority.

For those who don't trust polls, actual election results point the same way. Some of the contests have gotten wide attention, including the Alabama Senate race and the Virginia election in November, in which Democrats won the governorship and all but wiped out a huge Republican majority in the lower house of the Legislature.

Other, less heralded contests have shown the same pattern of high Democratic turnout, depressed Republican voting and double-digit shifts in partisan outcomes, particularly in suburban areas where Trump fares worse than a typical Republican.

Senate Ripe for GOP Takeover

From Susan Davis, at USA Today, "2014 Senate landscape tilts in GOP's favor":

WASHINGTON — Contests are set in nearly half the states for November's elections, and with few contested primary elections remaining on the calendar, Republicans are enjoying clear advantages in their quest for a Senate takeover.

"The environment is really good right now, and the quality of candidates is superior," said Scott Reed, a veteran GOP strategist and senior political aide at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "These are the best candidates I've seen in 32 years. With a good environment and good candidates, it's a good combination. We like where we are."

Five months out from Election Day, Republicans have largely avoided the same mistakes of the two previous election cycles in which the party nominated lackluster candidates who cost the party winnable seats in Colorado, Delaware, Indiana, Missouri and Nevada.

This year GOP nominees in Democratic-held seats in South Dakota, West Virginia and Montana have consistently led in polls and are favored in November. Victory in the trio of states would provide half of the six seats Republicans need to net gain for a takeover.

The Rothenberg Political Report, a non-partisan election outfit, forecasts Republicans will gain between four and eight seats this November.

Rothenberg analyst Nathan Gonzales shared Reed's view that the GOP has largely tapped the candidates favored by the establishment but cautioned that many are still untested as the races shift to general election mode. "It seems like we've stepped through some of the minefields for Republicans so far, but when you think there's not a new way to lose a race, Republicans seem to find one," he said.

The party is also enjoying a three-to-one advantage: Republicans are defending only two Senate seats considered highly competitive — in Kentucky and Georgia — compared to six seats Democrats will be challenged to hold in Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, Michigan and North Carolina.

Republicans have also sought to expand the map by getting strong candidates on the ballot in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Oregon, where Democrats continue to hold leads but where the party could be in trouble if 2014 proves to be a seismic election year against Democrats.

Still, hope is not lost for Democrats. "They have incumbents who are running good campaigns, they have strong profiles in their state, they are good fundraisers and they have good teams," said Gonzales. "Their incumbents are structurally in good shape." Historically, incumbents have also consistently proved tough to beat.

Incumbents are in "good shape." Heh, good luck with that: "Ahead of Midterms, Anti-Incumbent Sentiment Strong in U.S."

But more at the link.

PREVIOUSLY: "Joni Ernst Wins Iowa GOP Senate Race."

Georgia Election Worker Shaye Moss, And Her Mother and Grandmother, Terrorized by Trump Followers After 2020 Election (VIDEO)

Citizens' fear from the repercussion of voting isn't a thing I've ever contemplated. I always thought the intimidation and violence of Southern Blacks was historical, like marchers being beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama during the King Years.

It's cliche at this point to say American politics is ugly and vicious. I know personally from the left's lying, low-down attempts to cancel me, to get me fired ten years ago from my teaching position, that ideological hate drives political polarization. I was physically attacked when I covered the Hamas/International ANSWER demonstrations in Los Angeles. I finally quit reporting them, it got so bad. You get a target on your back.

But I've never been targeted at my home. I've never had to relocate to a safe house for months because of my politics and teaching. Imagine the nightmare that Shaye Moss and her family have been living since November 2020, when President Trump called her out by name during his efforts to overturn the Georgia election results. His words set off mobs of MAGA supporters on campaigns of terror. I want to continue loving President Trump for his time in office before the 2020 election. But everything that happened after that makes me sick. 

The more I see of it, of Trump's very own words, on audio and video, broken down and put in context, makes me hope that he's not the GOP nominee in 2024. Right now I favor Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and pray to God he wins and that the conservative movement can start over and rebuild under new leadership. 

There's too much hate in this country. Had not the "Big Lie" taken over Republican politics after the election, and had not January 6th not happened, I'd be the world's biggest supporter for Trump 2024. Now I just can't.

The story's at the New York Times, "‘There Is Nowhere I Feel Safe’: Election Officials Describe Threats Fueled by Trump":

“Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?’’ Ruby Freeman, a Black election worker from Georgia, told the Jan. 6 committee.

WASHINGTON — Rusty Bowers, the Republican speaker of Arizona’s House, braced every weekend for hordes of Trump supporters, some with weapons, who swarmed his home and blared videos that called him a pedophile.

“We had a daughter who was gravely ill, who was upset by what was happening outside,” he said. She died not long after, in late January 2021.

Gabriel Sterling, a top state election official in Georgia, recalled receiving an animated picture of a slowly twisting noose along with a note accusing him of treason. His boss, Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, recounted that Trump supporters broke into his widowed daughter-in-law’s house and threatened his wife with sexual violence.

And Wandrea Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, two Black women who served as election workers during the pandemic in Georgia, suffered an onslaught of racist abuse and were driven into hiding after Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Donald J. Trump’s lawyer, lied that they had rigged the election against Mr. Trump.

“I’ve lost my name and I’ve lost my reputation,” Ms. Freeman said, adding as her voice rose with emotion, “Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?”

Election official after election official testified to the House Jan. 6 committee on Tuesday in searing, emotional detail how Mr. Trump and his aides unleashed violent threats and vengeance on them for refusing to cave to his pressure to overturn the election in his favor.

The testimony showed how Mr. Trump and his aides encouraged his followers to target election officials in key states — even going so far as to post their personal cellphone numbers on Mr. Trump’s social media channels, which the committee cited as a particularly brutal effort by the president to cling to power....

Ms. Moss, who goes by Shaye, and her mother became the targets of Trump supporters after Mr. Giuliani falsely accused them in a Georgia State Senate hearing of passing around USB drives like “vials of heroin or cocaine” to steal the election from Mr. Trump.

What her mother actually handed her, Ms. Moss testified on Tuesday, was a ginger mint candy.

But Mr. Giuliani’s claim — later elevated by Mr. Trump himself, who referred to Ms. Moss by name more than a dozen times in a call with Mr. Raffensperger — tore across far-right circles of the internet. Soon after, the F.B.I. informed Ms. Freeman that it was no longer safe for her to stay at her house.

The urgency of that warning became clear after Trump supporters showed up at the door of Ms. Moss’s grandmother. They forced their way into her home, claiming they were there to make a citizen’s arrest of her granddaughter.

“This woman is my everything,” Ms. Moss testified about her grandmother. “I’ve never even heard her or seen her cry ever in my life, and she called me screaming at the top of her lungs.”

While in hiding, Ms. Moss and Ms. Freeman continued to face threats explicitly invoking their race, including a comment that Ms. Moss and her mother should “be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920.”

“A lot of them were racist,” Ms. Moss said. “A lot of them were just hateful.”

Both women testified that nearly two years later, they were still haunted by the threat of violence. Ms. Moss recalled listening to the audio tape of Mr. Trump attacking her and her mother and immediately feeling “like it was all my fault.”

“I just felt bad for my mom, and I felt horrible for picking this job,” she testified, growing emotional. “And being the one that always wants to help and always there, never missing not one election. I just felt like it was — it was my fault for putting my family in this situation.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, quietly responded from the dais.

Ms. Freeman testified that she no longer went to the grocery store, and felt nervous every time she gave her name — once proudly worn bedazzled on T-shirts — for food orders.

“There is nowhere I feel safe,” Ms. Freeman testified. “The president of the United States is supposed to represent every American. Not to target one.”

The Backlash Politics of Dobbs May Come to Haunt Republicans in November

I have to own up to it: At the time of the Court's decision in June inflation and the economy were so bad I thought the Dobbs decision would fade as an important issue for voters in the midterms. Actually, not at all. Inflation's now easing a bit --- and gas prices especially --- and we certainly aren't falling into the much predicted recession amid Federal Reserve rate hikes.

Republicans are still expected to take the House majority, but it's not likley to be a tsumami wave election.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Abortion issue has deflated Republicans’ hopes for November; question now is how badly":

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe vs. Wade and ending the nationwide guarantee of abortion rights achieved a goal the Republican Party had pursued for more than four decades. Now, the bill has come due, at a price much higher than many Republicans expected.

Since the ruling in June, Democrats have done significantly better than expected in special elections, culminating Tuesday with a victory in a race for a vacant congressional seat in upstate New York that strategists on both sides thought the Republican would win.

Combine those results with polls that show Democratic Senate candidates leading in a half dozen swing states plus a surge of women registering to vote this summer in several states, and you have the evidence that has caused nonpartisan analysts to drastically scale back their expectations for GOP victories this fall.

Democrats, despondent over President Biden‘s dismal job approval ratings, had feared a wipeout this fall. Now, they have a strong chance of keeping narrow control of the Senate, perhaps even adding a seat to their majority. The House still seems likely to flip to the GOP, but the prospect of Republicans sweeping to a big majority has dissipated.

The possibility of Democrats saving their current tiny majority is “not out of the question,” David Wasserman, whose forecasts for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report have a wide following in both parties, said Wednesday on Twitter.

None of that means Democrats can start popping Champagne corks — Biden remains unpopular, inflation and the economy still top voters’ list of concerns and the political climate could shift again before November. For now, however, the evidence for a resurgence of Democratic fortunes is strong.

A closer race for the House

For the House, few polls look at specific races this far in advance of the election. Instead, surveys frequently ask people which party’s candidate they would vote for if the election were held now. That question, referred to as the generic ballot, has provided a fairly reliable tool to forecast elections for many years.

Before the Supreme Court decision, Republicans had just over a two-and-a-half point lead on that question, according to the average of polls produced by the FiveThirtyEight web site. The GOP’s standing began to decline shortly after the court’s ruling, and Democrats now lead the average by about a half point. In many recent polls, the Democratic lead has been larger, ranging as high as eight points among registered voters in a recent survey by the Republican firm Echelon Insights.

Caveats: Because of gerrymandering, the overall House map tilts slightly Republican. Because of that, if the two parties were to split the nationwide vote for the House evenly, Republicans would be almost certain to take the majority. In 2020, Democrats won the overall House vote by about three percentage points, which yielded their current four-vote majority.

Moreover, the generic ballot is just that, generic. It can give a rough guide to the vote for the House nationwide, but isn’t designed to say anything about specific congressional districts. Out of the country’s 435 congressional districts, only about 50-60 are competitive. Republicans need only increase their numbers by five seats to take the majority, and Democrats are defending a lot more competitive turf than the GOP this year. The political forecasting site run by Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia lists 27 House races as tossups, including three in California. Of those, Democrats now hold 21.

Special elections this summer have bolstered the polling evidence. Before the Supreme Court decision, Republican candidates in special elections ran well ahead of the mark that former President Trump had set in their districts in 2020 — results that boosted GOP hopes for a big wave.

Since the abortion decision, the picture has flipped. In four contests this summer, Democrats consistently have out-performed what Biden did in their districts two years ago.

Abortion isn’t the only issue helping Democrats: Inflation likely peaked in June, and gas prices have dropped all summer. Biden’s job approval has rebounded a bit. Democrats succeeded this month in passing major legislation on climate change and healthcare, which could help mobilize their voters. Biden’s announcement of debt relief for millions of student-loan borrowers could similarly motivate a large Democratic constituency, although it could also rile up Republican opponents.

But abortion rights were the center of the campaign waged by Pat Ryan, the Democratic candidate in Tuesday’s New York special election, and Democratic candidates nationwide likely will copy what he did. Meantime, some Republican candidates have begun scrubbing their websites to remove previous statements supporting abortion bans.

The issue could have its strongest effect in 22 competitive districts in six states — California and Michigan, where abortion referendums will be on the ballot, and Texas, Wisconsin, Georgia and Ohio, where sweeping bans have been enacted that a majority of the state’s voters oppose, according to Natalie Jackson, director of research at the Public Religion Research Institute, who has closely studied public opinion on abortion.

Democratic advantage in the Senate

Individual candidates matter more in Senate races than in the House because voters tend to know more about them. That’s added to Republican difficulties this year.

“Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome” in Senate contests, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell ruefully noted in recent comments in his home state of Kentucky in which he sought to lower expectations for what his side could accomplish.

In Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Ohio, Republicans have picked Senate candidates backed by Trump who have significant problems.

They’re likely to do the same in New Hampshire when that state holds its primary in mid-September. The leading Republican candidate in the state, retired Gen. Don Bolduc, has defended Confederate emblems as a “symbol of hope,” fanned anti-vaccination theories and repeatedly made false claims about the 2020 election...

 

What the Seasonal and Cyclical Forces in American Politics Suggest About the Coming Elections

I'm fairly inclined toward cyclical theories of politics, and I'm glad I'm on the right side of the cycle this year.

From Charlie Cook, at National Journal, "You Don't Need a Weatherman":

It's surprising how many people who avidly follow American politics don't seem to appreciate that elections are both seasonal and cyclical in nature.

The seasonal aspect is the more obvious one. Clearly in some years, or seasons, the wind is blowing in favor of one party. In other years, it appears to blow in the opposite direction. In others still, as during the time between seasons, the partisan winds do not seem to blow in any direction at all.

Unfortunately, the cyclical nature is lost on more people. In any given even-numbered year, the House is on a cycle of its own, the Senate another, and the governorships yet another. The easiest to identify is the House cycle; with its two-year terms, all you have to do is look at the previous election. If Democrats had a great year and picked up a large number of Republican seats, you know that Democrats are likely to be overexposed and to suffer losses in the coming election cycle. If Republicans had a banner year in the previous election, they are more likely to lose than to gain seats. It's all pretty straightforward.

In the Senate, with its six-year terms, it is necessary to look back three elections, to the last time that the current class was up for the voters' consideration. If one side had a more successful election six years earlier, that party likely will lose seats this time around. So, in 2014, we are looking at a group of seats last up in 2008. That was a year when President Bush's poll numbers were depleted by the Iraq War and his handling of Hurricane Katrina, and further depressed by the financial crisis and the country's subsequent tumble into a deep recession. The GOP suffered a net loss of eight seats that year. The Democratic success back then explains why the party has 21 seats up this year, including six in heavily Republican states, compared with only 15 GOP seats, only one of which is in a Democratic state.

Because 2010 was a terrific year for Republicans, the GOP will have 24 seats up in 2016, seven of which are in states carried by Obama in 2012. Democrats will have only 10 seats up that year, none in a state Obama carried by fewer than 5 points.

These cycles are very important but not entirely determinative. For example, 2006 was a terrific year for Democrats, so the 2012 election cycle—with 23 Democratic and only 10 Republican seats up—theoretically should have been a good year for the GOP. However, 2012 was a prime example of the seasonality of elections. Obama got reelected by nearly 4 percentage points; his state-of-the-art campaign operation maximized Democratic turnout in a presidential year, which normally favors Democrats more than do midterm elections, when the electorate tends to be older, whiter, and more Republican. Plus, Mitt Romney was no prize candidate for the top of the ticket. Making matters worse, Republicans nominated some rather exotic candidates in Indiana and Missouri, seizing defeat from the jaws of victory, and Republicans elsewhere sustained collateral damage. As a result, an election that once looked like an opportunity for Republicans to gain three seats and a Senate majority resulted in a net GOP loss of three seats, dropping the party's Senate roster to 45, six short of a majority.

Governors, most of whom serve four-year terms, are on yet a third cycle. The 2010 cycle was a horrific one for Democrats, who lost six governorships. This year, Republicans are generally overexposed in gubernatorial races, defending 22 seats to just 14 for Democrats. Nine of the Republican governorships (almost half) are in states Obama carried. Only one of the Democratic seats, Arkansas, is in a state where Romney prevailed in 2012.

Looking at this November's midterms, then, the wind certainly appears to be blowing in favor of Republicans. The main question is whether it is a light, moderate, strong, or hurricane-force wind. In terms of cycles, on the other hand, Democrats picked up just eight House seats in 2012, after having lost 63 seats in 2010 and having gained 52 seats in the solid Democratic years of 2006 and 2008 combined. The House is pretty much sorted out, and minimal change can be expected. Republicans look likely to pick up a handful of seats.

Notice how the normal expectations of that 6-year cycle are broken-up by the electoral impact of a popular presidential incumbent.

More via Memeorandum.