Red States Are Growing, While Blue States Are Mired in Decline

From Joel Kotkin, at Spiked, "A tale of two Americas: Red states are growing, while blue states are mired in lawlessness and decline":

Yesterday’s Midterms were not a victory for conservative or progressive ideology, but an assertion of the growing power of geography in American politics. It was less a national election than a clash of civilisations. Virtually nowhere in blue areas did Republicans make gains. Both the north-east and California – the central players in Democratic Party politics – stayed solidly blue. Even the most well-regarded GOP candidates, such as Lanhee Chen who ran for California state controller, struggled to make inroads in Democratic territory.

Meanwhile, the senators and governors of the leading red states – Texas’s Greg Abbott, Georgia’s Brian Kemp, Florida’s Ron DeSantis, Ohio’s Mike DeWine – all won handily. Almost all blue-state governors remained the same as well, although the Democratic incumbents often won by smaller margins.

So, what is happening in this increasingly inexplicable country? Essentially, there are now two prevailing realities in the US. One is primarily urban, single and, despite some GOP gains in this demographic, still largely non-white. It functions on the backs of finance, tech and the service industries. The other is largely suburban or exurban, family centric and more likely involved in basic industries like manufacturing, logistics, agriculture and energy.

Usually, the media assume these two Americas represent equally viable political economies. But this is increasingly not the case. In population terms at least, red America is now growing far more rapidly than blue America. And this makes it more important politically. Since 1990, Texas has gained eight congressional seats, Florida five and Arizona three. In contrast, New York has lost five, Pennsylvania four and Illinois three. California, which now suffers higher net outbound-migration rates than most Rustbelt states, lost a congressional seat in 2020 for the first time in its history.

This decline in blue America has accelerated since the pandemic, due to rising crime and the availability of remote work...

Keep reading.

 

Kari Lake Slams 'Imbeciles' Running Arizona Elections

It's Katie Pavlich, at Townhall, "Kari Lake Has Some Thoughts About Arizona Elections."

With House Majority in Play, a New Class Takes Shape

It's just a matter of getting all the ballots counted. When it's done, the GOP majority will take over in the House, possibly with some Republican outliers.

At NYT, "The Republican ranks grew more extreme and slightly more diverse, while Democrats added several young liberals to their caucus":

WASHINGTON — Whoever holds the House majority in January, the new lawmakers will include a fresh crop of Republican election deniers, including a veteran who attended the “Stop the Steal” rally at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; a handful of G.O.P. members of color; and a diverse group of young Democratic progressives.

As vote counting continued across the country on Wednesday, with Republicans grasping to take control and Democrats outperforming expectations in key races, the contours of a new class of lawmakers began to emerge.

It featured a sizable contingent of Republicans who have questioned or denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election, many of them hailing from safely red districts, adding to an already influential extreme right in the House. At least 140 of the House Republicans who won election this week are election deniers, at least 15 of them new additions.

A handful of Black and Latina Republicans also won, adding a touch more diversity to a mostly white, male conference — though far less than leaders had hoped as many candidates they had recruited for their potential to appeal to a broader set of voters in competitive districts fell short.

For Democrats, the election ushered in younger, more diverse members to fill the seats of departing incumbents. Many of those candidates had held state offices or previously sought seats in Congress and are expected to back many of the priorities of the Democratic left wing.

Here are some of the new faces:

The Republicans

Jen A. Kiggans, a Navy veteran and state senator.

As a woman with military experience, Ms. Kiggans was regarded by Republicans as a prime recruit to put up against a centrist Democrat in a conservative-leaning area. She defeated Representative Elaine Luria on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, propelled in part by state redistricting that tilted the district more decisively to the right.

She focused her campaign narrowly on inflation and public safety, and was bolstered by top Republicans, including Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader who is running to become speaker should his party retake the House, and Gov. Glenn Youngkin. That suggested that she would be more likely to serve as an acolyte to Republican leaders than a thorn in their sides.

But though she ran as a mainstream candidate, Ms. Kiggans declined throughout her campaign to say whether she believed Mr. Biden was legitimately elected.

Derrick Van Orden, a veteran at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

A retired Navy SEAL who rallied at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Van Orden flipped a key seat for Republicans in western Wisconsin, in a largely rural district currently held by Representative Ron Kind, a 13-term centrist Democrat who did not seek re-election.

Much remains uncertain. For the second Election Day in a row, election night ended without a clear winner. Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, takes a look at the state of the races for the House and Senate, and when we might know the outcome:

The House. Republicans are likelier than not to win the House, but it is no certainty. There are still several key races that remain uncalled, and in many of these contests, late mail ballots have the potential to help Democrats. It will take days to count them.

The Senate. The fight for the Senate will come down to three states: Nevada, Georgia and Arizona. Outstanding ballots in Nevada and Arizona could take days to count, but control of the chamber may ultimately hinge on Georgia, which is headed for a Dec. 6 runoff.

How we got here. The political conditions seemed ripe for Republicans to make big midterm pickups, but voters had other ideas. Read our five takeaways and analysis of why the “red wave” didn’t materialize for the G.O.P.

Mr. Van Orden, who emphasized his military service on the campaign trail, largely ducked questions about his attendance at the Jan. 6 rally. He has said he did not go into the Capitol, and wrote in an opinion essay that he left the grounds outside the building when violence began, watching “what should have been an expression of free speech devolve into one of the most tragic incidents in the history of our nation.”

During his race, Mr. Van Orden leaned heavily into culture war messaging, accusing Democrats of “taking the nation rapidly down the path to socialism” and railing on a podcast against what he described as “woke ideology” seeping into the military.

John James, an Iraq veteran set to expand the House’s ranks of Black Republicans.

West Point graduate who commanded Apache helicopters in Iraq, Mr. James was personally lobbied for months to run by party leaders including Mr. McCarthy, who were convinced that his victory would keep this Michigan seat safely in Republican hands for years to come.

Mr. James, who unsuccessfully challenged Senator Gary Peters, Democrat of Michigan, in 2020, ran a more moderate campaign than many of his colleagues in safe seats. He presented himself to voters as “an open-minded, freethinking conservative,” and focused on kitchen table issues like lowering prices and bringing back manufacturing.

His victory will nudge up the number of Black Republicans in the House to at least three from two.

Monica De La Cruz, the conservative from the Rio Grande Valley.

Ms. De La Cruz emphasized her conservative ideology in flipping a seat in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas abandoned by an incumbent who switched districts after the state legislature handed him an unfavorable gerrymander.

Ms. De La Cruz, who owns an insurance firm, had campaigned heavily on the influx of illegal migrants at the southern border, emphasizing how her family had immigrated legally to the United States from Mexico and pledging to “finish the wall” started by former President Donald J. Trump.

Republicans had enthusiastically pointed to her candidacy, as well as those of two other Latinas running in the Rio Grande Valley — Mayra Flores and Cassy Garcia — as evidence that they were finally making inroads with Latino voters. But both Ms. Flores and Ms. Garcia lost, according to The Associated Press.

Andy Ogles, a hard-right former mayor.

A former mayor, Mr. Ogles flipped a Democratic-held seat in central Tennessee thanks to a drastic redrawing of the district that all but guaranteed a Republican victory.

Outspoken, hard-right lawmakers like Mr. Ogles could cause headaches for Republican leaders as they try to keep the government funded and prevent the country from defaulting on its debt.

After triumphing in his primary election, Mr. Ogles called for the impeachment of Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as “treason” charges against Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, over the administration’s handling of immigration at the southern border. And a video released by his Democratic opponent showed him at a G.O.P. candidate forum following the repeal of Roe v. Wade arguing that the “next thing we have to do is go after gay marriage.” ...

 

Jeremy W. Peters, How Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Ever Wanted

At Amazon, Jeremy W. Peters, Insurgency: How Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Ever Wanted.

Ron DeSantis: The New Champion of Trumpism (VIDEO)

From Batya, at UnHerd, "The Florida Governor has found a winning formula":

Democrats were expected to suffer a crushing red wave in Tuesday’s midterm elections, but it never materialised. Despite polls and pundits predicting massive Republican gains, the results have been tepid at best, with control of the Senate leaning Democratic and the House teetering toward a slim Republican majority.

Many are breathing a sigh of relief, casting Trump’s election night losses as a sign that his influence over the party is waning. Indeed, candidates endorsed by former President Donald Trump fared especially poorly, with many routed by Democratic opponents in what were seen as winnable races.

But the real lesson of the 2022 midterm elections is slightly different: Trump might be over, but Trumpism had a great night. Trump the man is simply no longer the conduit of his own legacy.

The clearest sign of the health of Trumpism without Trump was the biggest blowout of the night: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s victory over Democratic challenger Charlie Crist. The Democrats and their allies in the media have done their best to cast DeSantis as a hate-mongering authoritarian, yet he won in a landslide against Crist, a notorious flip-flopper who infamously told a reporter that he did not want the votes of DeSantis supporters. DeSantis netted what may turn out to be a 15-point victory over Crist, and a 20-point lead over his own numbers from just four years ago. It was something DeSantis made a point of noting in his acceptance speech:

It’s clearly apparent that this election we will have garnered a significant number of votes from people who may not have voted for me four years ago, and I just want to let you know I am honoured to have earned your trust and your support over these four years. - RON DeSANTIS

How did he do it? Despite what the Democrats want us to believe, DeSantis is no Right-wing extremist; he cruised to victory thanks to a record of ruling over Florida for the past four years as a populist appealing to the middle and working class irrespective of their party affiliation. DeSantis has figured out something that’s lost on most politicians, that there are a lot of Americans who are culturally conservative and fiscally protectionist in both parties whom no one is speaking to. These voters are united on issues like Covid-19 lockdowns, sexualised messaging in early childhood education, and immigration, and on each of these issues, DeSantis took a big swing that signalled his willingness to represent this forgotten constituency and give them a voice.

In other words, he took Trump’s central insight, that the white working class has been abandoned by an elitist, Leftist cultural hegemony that looks down on working Americans, and he expanded it to include working-class Hispanics and working-class liberals...

 

Republican Voters Deserve Answers and Accountability

At Townhall, "There's no way to sugarcoat it — Republicans got bamboozled in the midterms. All the polls that we reported showing Republican candidates surging in the final weeks of their campaigns, the race ratings from the Cook Political Report, and the overconfident statements from GOP leaders were all significantly overly optimistic about what we all watched play out on Tuesday night."

Wiki Woman

That's her handle. Don't ask me.

On Instagram.

Democrats Take All State-Wide Offices in Callifornia

Wow. Big surprise.

At the Sacramento Bee, "California Democrats poised to keep lock on statewide offices including attorney general":

California Democrats appear poised to maintain their nearly two-decade lock on statewide offices, leading in races for lieutenant governor, attorney general, controller and other posts in early results...

More at the Los Angeles Times, "Newsom cruises to reelection as governor, Democrats leading races for other statewide posts."

Calcified Politics Gives Us Another Close Election

From the redoubtable Amy Walter, at the Cook Political Report, "Just as Democrats did in 2020, Republicans came into the 2022 midterms expecting a landslide. Sky-high inflation, an unpopular President, and pessimism about the direction of the country all pointed to a 'typical' midterm romp for the party out of power:"

First, as I wrote earlier this fall (citing the amazing work of political scientists John Sides, Chris Tausanovitch, and Lynn Vavreck), events and the responses to them from politicians no longer have the ability to deeply and fundamentally reshape our politics or political coalitions. With fewer people willing to 'defect', even when they are unhappy with the status quo, you get more close elections and fewer 'wave' elections. Also, when every election is an existential election, the drop-off among 'in-party' voters, which was once common in midterm elections, is no longer the case. Mike Podhorzer, the former AFL-CIO political director and progressive strategist, has long argued that the 2018 and 2020 elections proved that there is an anti-MAGA voting majority in this country. As long as these voters turn out, he’s argued, Democrats will remain competitive in battleground states and districts. Moreover, Podhorzer told me on Wednesday morning, that the January 6th hearings were critical in “reminding people that Trump existed and that he was dangerous.” Combine that with the overturning of the Roe v. Wade decision and the ‘costs’ of a MAGA majority, he said, became even clearer to these voters.

Keep reading.

 

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."

Amouranth

She's pretty.

On Twitter.

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...

 

We're Done – American Voters Are Idiots

From Stephen Kruiser, at Pajamas, "The Morning Briefing: We're Done–American Voters Are Idiots":

So much for the Red Wave, freedom, and hopes that the United States of America would continue to exist past next Arbor Day.

We’re done here, kids. You know actual human beings who voted for Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, and Kathy Hochul in New York.

These are not people who are conducive to the continued existence of this once-glorious Republic.

What happened last night should have been an emphatic correction to the hell this country has been subjected to since Joe Biden was artificially installed in the White House.

Instead, we got a bunch of bleating socialist sheep...

RTWT.

 

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...

 

Joan Donavan, et al., Meme Wars

At Amazon, Joan Donavan, Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America.

Why Elites Like Greta Thunberg Hate Capitalism

And she's so young. What a waste of a great potential.

From Michael Shellenberger, on Substack, "Free markets have lifted millions out of poverty, liberated women, and protected the environment. Why, then, are so many progressives against them?":

For the last three years, Greta Thunberg has said that her life’s purpose was to save the world from climate change. But last Sunday, she told an audience in London that climate activists must overthrow "the whole capitalist system," which she says is responsible for "imperialism, oppression, genocide... racist, oppressive extractionism." Her talk echoed the World Economic Forum's calls for a “Great Reset” away from fossil fuels and toward renewables. There is no “back to normal,” she said.

But her claims are absurd. The "whole capitalist system" has, over the last 200 years, allowed for the average life expectancy of humans to rise from 30 to 70 years of age. The "whole capitalist system" produces larger food surpluses than any other system in human history. And the "whole capitalist system" has resulted in declining greenhouse gas emissions in developed nations over the last 50 years.

Capitalism is far from perfect. It worsens inequality by making some people so rich that they can rocket into space on liquified hydrogen while leaving others too poor to afford natural gas. It is characterized by cycles of boom and bust that create frenzies of wealth followed by high unemployment. And it is constantly turning non-market relationships, including intimate ones, such as between parents and caregivers, into exchanges between buyers and sellers.

But capitalism is plainly better than any other system of economic organization yet devised. High levels of inequality are the result of more rich people, not more poor people, who are much better off under capitalism than feudalism or communism. The business cycle of booms and busts provokes manias and depressions, but it is much more efficient, and less oppressive than governments deciding what should be produced, by whom, and at what price. And while it’s true that capitalism undermines non-market relationships, that’s often a good thing, even in the case of childcare, since it allows women and others to be compensated for their labor.

Some of the people who have benefitted the most from industrial capitalism are people like Thunberg and her family. The remarkable wealth of their home nation of Sweden is due to the industrial revolution, which allows for a tiny number of people to produce food, energy, and other necessities for life so that the majority of Swedes can do other, less arduous, and more pleasurable things. The same is true across the West. In the U.S., just 2% of the population works on farms and just 8% in factories. And industrial capitalism allowed Sweden to create a generous social welfare state consisting of free health care, free education, and 480 days of paid leave for parents when a child is born or adopted. The Thunbergs are, by any global or historical standard, rich: the annual per capita income globally, according to the World Bank, is $11,000, which is less than the cost of the two chairs in Thunberg’s living room.

Capitalism is far better for the natural environment than feudalism or communism. Under feudalism, subsistence farmers rely on wood and dung for cooking fuels and must farm large tracts of land to produce a small amount of food. The industrial revolution not only liberated most people from back-breaking farming but also reduced the amount of land required, thanks to fertilizer, irrigation, and tractors. The same process allowed humans to switch from using wood to coal to natural gas and uranium as primary fuels.

The result has been the return, and “re-wilding,” of grasslands and forests around the world, including in Sweden. The reason is that market capitalism rewards economic efficiency and thus reduced natural resource use. Consider the whales. What saved them, in capitalist nations, was cheaper substitute oils, first petroleum and then vegetable oils. The Soviet Union, by contrast, kept whaling long after it was economically efficient to do so because whalers were protected from market competition.

All of this and yet, around the world, it is affluent and educated progressives like Thunberg who are anti-capitalist...