#democratic overperformance

[tomorrowusa]

There was a special election on Tuesday to fill the vacancy in an Ohio US House district due to the resignation of Republican Bill Johnson in OH-06.

It's not a major surprise that Republican Michael Rulli won. His GOP predecessor Bill Johnson took the district in 2022 by 67.7% to 32.3% for Democrat Louis G. Lyras. Donald Trump won the district by about 29% in 2020.

But it was noteworthy to see Rulli, a state senator, win by just 9.3% over a little-known bartender named Michael Kripchak.

The Republican candidate won, and that’s no surprise. But political observers are frankly shocked that the race was far closer than expected. [ ... ] Ohio continues to surprise us. The statewide votes last year, first to prevent Republicans from raising the threshold to pass constitutional amendments to 60 percent, and second to preserve the right to abortion in the state, showed that Ohio voters are ready to draw the line when it comes to extremist religious or anti-democratic measures. [ ... ] [T]he Democratic challenger was a first-time, unknown candidate named Michael Kripchak, who quit his day job to run against GOP state senator, Michael Rulli. Kripchak is a veteran who spent only around $25K to Rulli’s $700,000, a nearly 30 to 1 cash advantage for the Republican.

Every county in this district had a swing to the Democrats. Two counties were actually carried by Democrat Kripchak; Democrats carried no counties in OH-06 in 2022.

Democrats have overperformed in almost every special House election since the start of 2023.

But we still hear the pundits and pollsters droning on about Democrats allegedly being in big trouble this year. Fox News has even dusted off a dormant conspiracy theory that Biden is going to step down and be replaced by Michelle Obama. Fox News doesn't miss a chance to juice up its racist and misogynistic viewers by hinting a white male would be replaced by a black female.

Democratic voters in OH-06 turned out thanks to Democratic volunteers spreading the word. Persistence, enthusiasm, and hard work produce results. To use a Latin phrase: Vincit qui laborat.

Anybody who is not an outright MAGA supporter is a potential swing voter and should be regarded by us as such. The stakes are too high this year to revert to the slackerism of 2016.

[maybe-boys-do-love]

Scams, Fakes, Performance, & Belief

Peaceful Property: On Sale, ep. 4

This week's episode was filled with fakes: online order scams, magicians, compromised democratic processes, and a fake ghost. What reasons do we have to believe in anything? Everything is just an attempt to pull the wool over our eyes while the rugs get pulled out from under us so others can make a quick buck and protect their own hide. Who wants to be fooled by all the shams?

Pangpang does. Jan Ployshompoo has been fantastic in this role, and she got to devour this episode. Jan specializes in a 'camp' performance style that's easy to undervalue. 'Camp' acting involves overacting the characters and emotions, and lesser actors often approach it with self-awareness and cynicism. Jan understands my favorite note on camp that Susan Sontag wrote.

“56. Camp taste is a kind of love, love for human nature. It relishes, rather than judges, the little triumphs and awkward intensities of “character.” . . . Camp taste identifies with what it is enjoying. People who share this sensibility are not laughing at the thing they label as “a camp,” they’re enjoying it. Camp is a tender feeling.”

The tender affection in Jan's 'camp' hits the themes of this episode home (no pun intended) because she infuses compassion for her over-the-top characters. They get to have range and reasons for their shallowness.

Pangpang's manic overperformance as a social-media influencer has been all about naively buying into every gimmick for herself and from others. Home, probably from his own similarities, points out to Peach how she's doing this as a form of compensation. All along she needed to believe in something because she needed to believe in her brother, to believe when no one else would in his debilitating fear and grief. She didn't need evidence to believe he saw ghosts as he said. She needed to believe she could be there for him even if she didn't know how. Pangpang chooses enchantment because staying true to her brother and her own feelings of loss over their parents are more important than being the winner of some existential argument.

The problem of deception lies at the heart of performance, and I often have a sense that performers and production crews invest a little more when they have to address it (Foei Patara who played Chobkol GAVE!). They have to prove that there is value and truth in the make-believe and assisting people in doing it. For a while, they need their audience to return to the magic of childhood so that they'll clap to show they believe in fairies when Tinkerbell's light begins to fade.

I loved how Peaceful Property symbolized this return to innocence as an egg, a kind of spiritual rebirth. If we want to believe in the magic of fantasy (Kan), the potential in ourselves (Peach), and the value of others (Home), we have to let go of our guarded cynicism. It won't eliminate the harsher truths of reality. They'll arrive one way or another. But we don't need to be the person who crushes our own dreams or who crush others' dreams just because we're scared of being vulnerable. We need to be people like Pangpang who want to believe and help others on their journey to believing good things are possible.

[tanadrin]

do polls of the whole country tell us anything? don't you need to look at swing states?

National polls aren't useless, because movement in polls tends to correlate. If a national poll moves a couple points in one direction or another, that will tend to correlate with some degree of movement in several states. As I understand it, though, certain subgroups of states (e.g., ones with similar demographics) have much closer correlations in how their polls move, so that a shift in the polls in one Sun Belt state should correspond to a similar shift in the polls in another. This means you can make predictions like "If Donald Trump wins Virginia, he's probably winning a crushing victory nationally," because his performance in Virginia should correlate to his performance in many other states.

Swing state polls are very valuable, but keeping those correlations in mind helps to understand whether a swing state poll is an outlier or not. If a poll shows a shift in a certain direction, but that's not correlated with similar movement in similar states, it's worth questioning of that poll is accurate. Ditto if the poll shows unusual breakdown of results in demographic subgroups: if Trump is winning (say) 30% of young black voters, given the way demographics and party alignment usually break down, he should be winning a massive margin with other groups.

One reason I am not so bearish on Biden is that my understanding is that a lot of polls have had these demographic anomalies, with Trump's lead coming largely from support among younger, politically disengaged voters of color, and Biden, apparently, doing well with demographics like older whites. It is not a coincidence, in this view, that Trump seems to be performing unusually well with demographics that are particularly hard to poll in the modern polling landscape--response rates to telephone polls are very low among millennials and gen Z--and while there are various ways you can try to compensate for non-response bias, those depend on your model of the electorate.

Now, I am not extremely confident about this, because I am the furthest thing in the world from a polling expert, but as I understand it, there are two possible situations here:

One: the polls are broadly correct, and Trump is ahead. The election in November, if current trends continue, will feature a historic realignment of voters along demographic lines like age and race of the likes not seen since the 1960s (called "depolarization" by some commentators), perhaps driven by the rise in far-right internet media and social media.

Two: the polls are broadly incorrect, and we should be more agnostic about the state of the race, or even assume Biden is a little ahead, because such a massive realignment is extremely unlikely to have occurred in only two years since the 2022 midterms (where no such realignment was in evidence, and Democrats broadly overperformed polls), and polling right now is plagued by historically low response rates in the same key demographics that give Trump his lead.

Some commentators, including commentators whose field is polling, seem to want to have it both ways: the demographic crosstabs are wrong, but the top-line polling numbers are right. I'm not sure how this can be true. On top of that, big political realignments usually take time (i.e., we should have at minimum seen some evidence of this coming in 2022), and are unlikely to occur in a race where both candidates have been president before.

So on balance I think the second scenario is more likely. Now, I am not a stats person, nor particularly knowledgeable about polls; all of this opinion is second-hand from other commentators. As such, I am not going to claim any kind if ironclad certainty about this, and you're perfectly entitled to rub it in my face if I turn out to be totally wrong. And if I do stumble across someone who does know the polls really well with an explanation of why I'm wrong (even just at the level of "you are factually wrong, here's why the crosstabs are actually perfectly normal") I may well revise my opinion.

[mariacallous]

I think people need to stop paying much attention to the polls until September. Polls are being conducted everyday (through largely dubious methods) to try and produce a horse-race for the media. They’re essentially trash polls. Just assume the races in the swing-states are tight and prepare accordingly.

Most importantly, I’m gonna need the doomerism among people to stop. No, Trump is not “crushing” Biden in the polls. The Democrats have been consistently overperforming ever since 2020. The Red Wave of 2022 never came. Democrats are flipping seats in special elections, especially at the local and state levels. Republicans are, at best, holding onto existing incumbencies, and some of those are by the skin of their teeth. Actual election results matter more than polls.

Not saying that to make people complacent, but to emphasize that liberals are energized right now and we need to keep flaming that energy. We need it especially in order to keep the US Senate this election. People in Tennessee, Maryland, Texas, Ohio, and Arizona especially need to do their part to make sure the GOP don’t flip the Senate (everyone knows West Virginia’s a lost cause for the Dems now that Manchin’s retiring).

And things are looking pretty good for Democrats to flip the House since not a day goes by without the House GOP showing everyone what a circus they’ve turned the place into. But again, we need people to actually get out there and pump up Democratic challengers of vulnerable Republican seats.

If people are scared of a Trump presidency, they need to not only make sure they vote for Biden, they need to make sure that the Democrats get control of both houses of Congress.

^

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Markos Moulitsas (kos) at Daily Kos:

Last week, a friend called me with concerns about the presidential race, something that repeats often during a typical week. We all have legitimate reasons to be terrified of a second Donald Trump presidency. In response, I sketched out the reasons why I think President Joe Biden currently has a narrow but real advantage. Now, I’m sharing it with you all. 

1) TRUMP IS TIED IN POLLING, EVEN THOUGH PEOPLE AREN’T PAYING ATTENTION

It’s an old political adage that voters do not start paying attention to campaign season until after Labor Day. A Gallup poll fielded this past April found that 71% of Americans have given “quite a lot” of thought to the race, which means that a third haven’t. And the numbers were most pronounced among independents, with just 61% giving it a lot of attention. This is noteworthy because, for one, a significant number of potential voters haven’t seen Trump’s latest erratic, grievance-addled performances. Also, a Siena College poll for The New York Times found that 17% of voters blamed Biden for the loss of federal abortion rights. As more people begin to tune in, those misconceptions will be corrected.  And yet, despite those challenges, the polling is still essentially tied. In fact, take a look at the numbers in some of the polling, and the share of undecided voters is ludicrously high. An Ipsos poll for Reuters has it at 41 to 39 in Trump’s favor. YouGov is at 42 to 40 for Trump. A Civiqs poll for Daily Kos puts it even, at 45 to 45. And Morning Consult shows 44 to 43 for Biden. Given that Trump has never hit 47% in his two elections and that there’s no evidence he’s expanded his base of support, the biggest challenge is getting reluctant Biden voters to show up. That will happen when the race begins in earnest. 

[...]

3) AS PEOPLE LEARN THAT TRUMP’S RESPONSIBLE FOR DOBBS, IT’LL BLEED SUPPORT

Already mentioned above, but worth underscoring. Abortion and democracy were the two issues that propelled Democrats to an atypical, ahistorical victory in the 2022 midterm elections, despite Biden’s enduring unpopularity. Abortion was so powerful and dominant an issue that it overcame voter frustrations about inflation at a time when inflation was significantly worse than current rates.  Nothing in the two years since has lessened the impact of losing federal abortion rights. To the contrary, more people have learned that abortion is, indeed, health care thanks to stories like this one in People magazine, which is read by tens of millions of people. This is no longer a niche issue in the political press. It’s gone mainstream, which explains why the pro-abortion-rights side has won every ballot initiative—even in deep-red states, like Kansas and Kentucky—since Roe v. Wade was overturned.   And instead of laying low, Republicans are gunning hard to restrict or eliminate in vitro fertilization and birth control, and GOP lawmakers are helpless to stand in the way. Rather than defang the issue, Republicans are digging deeper. 

4) TRUMP’S CONVICTION WILL TAKE ITS TOLL OVER TIME. POLLING WAS BRUTAL FOR HIM ON THAT

I wrote up the numbers here. In short, Trump can’t afford to bleed any of his support in a tied race. What does his conviction do? Bleed support.  And three weeks after I wrote that story, polling is still showing how Trump’s convictions are causing lasting damage to his campaign. A recent Ipsos poll for Politico found that 9% of Republicans and 32% of independents are “less likely to support Trump” because of his conviction. Additionally, 23% of independents said the conviction was “very important” to their vote, and another 7% said it was “somewhat important.”  Remember, Trump needs to expand his support. Right now, this is costing him. 

5) DEMS ARE OVERPERFORMING IN SPECIAL ELECTIONS, WHICH ARE ACTUAL ELECTIONS—NOT POLLS

POLLS POLLS POLLS DID YOU SEE THE LATEST POLL? I’m on record saying that pre-Labor Day polls are interesting but not determinative. But you know what is better than polls? Actual election results. Last year, Daily Kos’ own Daniel Donner did the research and found that “special elections have indeed proven to be useful in analyzing the election environment. There is still a good long-term correlation between the results of special elections and November elections.”  And what do this cycle’s special elections tell us? The same thing they were telling us in 2022 when they presaged that year’s unlikely Democratic victories: Democrats are outperforming Biden’s 2020 benchmark numbers.  Some corners of the political punditry are heavily invested in discrediting this theory, mostly by arguing that a presidential electorate doesn’t look like a special election electorate. But it does demonstrate which party is more energized, activated, and likely to turn out—all critically important factors in any general election. Of course, as far as the media is concerned, Democrats always lose. Are Republicans more energized? That’s bad for Democrats. Are Democrats more energized? Bad for Democrats.  But I’ll be consistent, and Donner’s data backs it up: The more energized party has the better chance to win. This isn’t rocket science. It’s (data-supported) common sense. 

6) TRUMP UNDERPERFORMED HIS POLLING NUMBERS IN PRIMARIES

I love this Daily Kos headline: “Polls still love Trump more than voters do.” And it’s true. During the early part of the Republican primary campaign, Trump consistently underperformed his poll numbers. In February, The New York Times’ Nate Cohn has some theories on why that’s the case. My guess? It’s something we’ll see further down the line: People who support Trump are less scared of the alternative than those who are terrified of him.  But if nothing else, the notion that polls are missing some kind of hidden Trump vote isn’t borne out by the facts. 

Markos Moulitsas (kos) underlines the 11 reasons why Joe Biden is going to win come November.

Some of those include: Trump’s role in getting Roe overturned, 34 (and counting) felony convictions, underperformance in much of the GOP primaries even after Nikki Haley dropped out, and is currently tied, slightly trailing, or slightly leading in polling with the race not yet in full swing.

[brightlotusmoon]

Podcaster Lex Fridman made one of the most direct efforts to get Trump to tone it down, telling him in an interview this month that he was more effective offering a positive vision for the future rather than criticizing Democrats. The former President rejected the premise. “Yeah, I think you have to criticize, though,” Trump said. “I think they’re nasty.”

Many Republicans now seem more resigned to Trump doubling down on his divisive strategy through Election Day. “Trump should be talking issues, not throwing personal insults all over the place,” says Charlie Black, a veteran Republican strategist who was a senior adviser on John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. “But he won’t do that. He doesn’t appear capable of it.”

In the minds of Trump defenders, the critics are looking at the situation all wrong. Trump enters the final stretch of the race with a clearer path to victory than in either of his last two campaigns. In the Real Clear Politics polling average for must-win Pennsylvania, he’s tied, whereas he was down 4.3% at this point in 2020 and 6.2% in 2016. Georgia and North Carolina are effectively tied, but advisers believe he is the favorite to pull out both traditionally red states. If Trump takes those three battlegrounds, campaign officials argue, the election is his. Polling in the last two elections, they note, underestimated his support. On the other hand, argues Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, there’s been a different pattern since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022: “Republicans have underperformed public polling and expectations and we've overperformed.”

That it’s even this close is a cause for optimism insist Trump confidants.

[redistrictgirl]

As of August 18th, 2024, the race to control the US House of Representatives is a dead heat.

Now here's the uneventful map. The forecasted seat composition hasn't changed one iota, but some Democratic seats have become safer due to improved generic ballot polling. Not a lot of Republican seats have become more vulnerable, interestingly - Ohio's 7th district, which covers the Cleveland suburbs and exurbs, has appeared on the board this week, however. Wisconsin's 3rd district is another surprise - the math has gotten tougher for Democrats in western Wisconsin but they have a real chance to flip it back.

Otherwise, the same picture emerges as last week - Democrats have a slight edge, while Republicans need to make inroads in the Mid-Atlantic or repeat their 2022 overperformance in the big blue states of New York and California.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

After three decades of increasingly steep losses in rural America, Democrats are finally beginning to grapple with an inconvenient truth: An enduring Democratic majority requires winning back some portion of persuadable rural working-class voters.

Both Republicans’ and Democrats’ neoliberal economic policies have been harmful—in some instances ruinous—to rural communities. The GOP, on the whole, has caused more economic pain—but it has also been the party that has acknowledged rural struggles and put the people who’ve been harmed at the center of their rhetoric. None more so than Donald Trump, who said, in 2016, “Every time you see a closed factory or a wiped out community in Ohio, it was essentially caused by the Clintons.”

Too many Democrats, meanwhile, have sounded either dismissive of or exasperated by rural people. In 2016, Chuck Schumer’s catastrophically cavalier strategy willfully sacrificed blue-collar rural voters in exchange (or so he’d hoped) for high-income suburbanites. As far as the Democratic establishment was concerned, non-college-educated rural voters should quit complaining and simply get a degree—ideally in coding—and join the knowledge economy. Such contempt for a large swath of America has resulted in the ongoing erosion of Democratic support among working-class white and non-white voters.

Joe Biden, more than any president in decades, has prioritized rural people with a remarkable set of pro-worker policies and major investments in rural economies and infrastructure. We believe that this record offers a foundation for Democrats at all levels to begin to win back working-class rural voters—while holding on to the party’s multiracial urban and suburban base.

In 2022, the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative (which we cofounded) interviewed 50 Democratic candidates, from 25 states, who ran in rural districts between 2016 and 2020. Though they didn’t all win office, they all significantly overperformed the partisan lean of their district or state.

Our questions to them boiled down to, “What was your secret sauce?” From their answers, we identified several key ingredients: First and foremost, successful candidates were highly attuned to the concerns of their would-be constituents. Instead of running on a cookie-cutter national Democratic platform, they focused on the things voters in their district cared about most—kitchen-table matters like jobs and the economy, alongside ultra-local problems such as lousy roads, underfunded hospitals, and spotty Internet access.

Overperforming candidates also eschewed Beltway political consultants in favor of campaign staffers rooted in the community. This made for authentic campaigns with local flavor. Former Maine state senator Chloe Maxmin, for example, deployed homemade yard signs that were a folksy departure from the typically soulless campaign placards that litter the landscape.

Rural overperformers did something else that’s unpopular within the progressive left but widely appreciated by rural swing voters: They didn’t demonize Trump, no matter how richly he deserved it. And they didn’t try to scare or pressure persuadable voters into seeing the GOP or MAGA as an existential threat to democracy. Such rhetoric is music to the base’s ears but falls flat with key constituencies, most worryingly youth and Latinos.

Guillermo Lopez, a board member of the Hispanic Center Lehigh Valley in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, had this to say about Democrats’ hyping the MAGA threat to democracy: “I actually think that harms the vote.… [The average person who] just puts their nose to the grindstone and goes to work, I don’t think that motivates them. I think it scares them and freezes them.”

We’re with Lopez. Time spent enumerating and labeling Trump’s voluminous misconduct is time that could have been spent connecting with voters on what they care about most. We reserve judgment as to whether sounding the alarm about MAGA fascism appeals to disaffected or undecided urban and suburban voters, but we’re reasonably confident that this message does little to help rural candidates.

The superiority of depolarizing rhetoric is corroborated by a wide body of academic and poll-tested research documented in our full report. At the end of the day, the rural Democrats able to chip away at Republican strongholds were the ones who knew how to meet voters where they already were—not where they wished they were at. This sounds like Politics 101, but it’s a principle all too often cast aside by candidates and campaign consultants who spend too much time tuned in to MSNBC pundits and not enough listening to their own voters.

Democrats running in this cycle should study the 2022 campaigns of Representatives Mary Peltola, who won in solidly red Alaska, and Marie Glusenkamp Perez, who won Washington State’s Third Congressional District, which had been in Republican hands for six terms. Peltola ran on “Fish, Family, Freedom” and in her current reelection campaign calls on Alaskans to say “to hell with politics” and “work together to protect our Alaska way of life.”

Glusenkamp Perez won her 2022 race in large part because of her credibility as co-owner of an auto repair shop and her laser-sharp focus on issues her constituents prioritized, like the “right to repair” farming and other equipment. While some on the left are angry that she doesn’t toe the Democratic party line on every issue, her record shows her to be the kind of left-leaning populist who can win in rural districts. The Democratic Party would be wise to embrace socially moderate, economically and stylistically populist candidates like Glusenkamp Perez and Peltola as part of its coalition.

In the spirit of cross-racial populist solidarity, top-performing rural candidates put work and workers at the center of their policy and rhetoric, proposing a “hand up” rather than a “handout.” For the great majority of rural people, self-reliance—the wherewithal to solve our own problems and meet our own needs—is central to our identity. We don’t know a single farmer, conservative or liberal, who doesn’t feel this way. As Colby College rural political scholars Nick Jacobs and Dan Shea put it, “What rural residents want to hear is this: ‘Make it possible for us to improve our communities ourselves.’”

Rural residents might be disproportionately dependent on some form of government transfer payment, but they don’t like it. Farah Stockman, author of American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears, wrote, “Too often, those who champion the working class speak only of social safety nets, not the jobs that anchor a working person’s identity.” The key is in the delivery, ensuring that local communities can adapt and drive these investments rather than trying to implement ill-suited, top-down mandates.

The Biden administration’s aggressive anti-trust actions combined with rule changes favoring workers and organized labor are critical steps in giving non-college-educated working people agency. Its investments in rural infrastructure and manufacturing are essential as well.

Likewise, the Biden campaign’s decision to hire a rural coordinator bodes well. But that coordinator’s efficacy will be orders of magnitude greater if they hire a small army of locally rooted staff who know how to make a national campaign relevant and resonant for rural voters.

While Democrats will not “win” rural America in 2024, they can and must run up the margins with rural voters—a third of whom are considered persuadable—if they are to keep the presidency and control Congress and statehouses. Because it turns out the secret sauce isn’t that complicated: Find out what’s most important to persuadable rural people, and focus on that. That’s the only recipe worth cooking.

[schraubd]

The 2022 Almost-Post Mortem

I was a bit hesitant to write my post-mortem recap today, since some very important races remain uncalled. Incredibly, both the House and Senate remain uncalled, though the GOP is favored in the former and Democrats have the slight advantage in the latter. It would be truly delightful if Catherine Cortez Masto can squeak out a win in Nevada and so make the upcoming Georgia run-off, if not moot, then slightly less high stakes. But again, things are up in the air that ought make a big difference in the overall "narrative" of the day.

Nonetheless, I think some conclusions can be fairly drawn at this point. In no particular order:

There was no red wave. It was, at best, a red trickle. And given both the underlying fundamentals  on things like inflation and the historic overperformance of the outparty in midterm elections, this is just a truly underwhelming performance for the GOP. No sugarcoating that for them.

If Trafalgar polling had any shame, they'd be shame-faced right now, but they have no shame, so they'll be fine.

In my 2018 liveblog, I wrote that "Some tough early results (and the true disappointment in Florida) has masked a pretty solid night for Democrats." This year, too, a dreadful showing in Florida set an early downer tone that wasn't reflected in the overall course of the evening. Maybe it's time we just give up the notion that Florida is a swing state?

That said, Republicans need to get out of their gulf-coastal-elite bubble and realize that what plays in Tallahassee doesn't play in the rest of the country. 

That's snark, but also serious -- for all the talk about how "Democrats are out-of-touch", it seems that the GOP also has a problem in not understanding that outside of their fever-swamp base most normal people maybe don't like the obsession with pronouns and "kitty litter" and "anti-CRT". Their ideological bubble is at this point far more impermeable, and far more greatly removed from the mainstream, than anything comparable among Democrats.

Abortion is maybe the biggest example of this, as anti-choice measures keep failing in even deep red states like Kentucky, while pro-choice enactments sail to victory in purple states like Michigan (to say nothing of blue bastions like California). Democratic organizers should make a habit of just putting abortion on the ballot in every state, and ride those coattails.

It's going to fade away almost immediately, but I cannot get over the cynical bad faith of what happened regarding baseless GOP insinuations that any votes counted after election day were inherently suspicious. On November 7, this was all one heard from GOP officials across the country, even though delays in counting are largely the product of GOP-written laws. But on November 8, when they found themselves behind on election night returns, all of the sudden folks like Kari Lake are relying on late-counted votes to save them while raising new conspiracies about stolen elections. Sickening.

Given the still powerful force of such conspiracy mongering, Democrats holding the executive branch in key swing states like Wisconsin and Michigan is a huge deal. Great job, guys.

For the most part, however, most losing MAGA candidates are conceding. Congratulations on clearing literally the lowest possible bar to set.

The GOP still should be favored to take over the House, albeit with a razor-thin majority. And that majority, in turn, seems almost wholly attributable to gerrymandering -- both Democrats unilateral disarmament in places like New York, but also truly brutal GOP gerrymanders in places like Florida. This goes beyond Rucho, though that case deserves its place in the hall of shame. The degree to which the courts bent over backwards to enable even the most nakedly unlawful districting decisions -- the absurd lawlessness of Ohio stands out, but the Supreme Court's own decision to effectively pause enforcement of the Voting Rights Act because too many Black people entering Congress qualifies as an "emergency" on the shadow docket can't be overlooked either -- is one of the great legal disgraces of my lifetime in a year full of them.

Of course, I have literally no idea how the Kevin McCarthy will corral his caucus with a tiny majority. Yes, it gives crazies like Greene and Boebert (well, maybe not Boebert ...) more power, but that's because it gives everyone in the caucus more power, which is just a recipe for chaos. Somewhere John Boehner is curling up in a comfy chair with a glass of brandy and getting ready to have a wonderful day.

My new proposal for gerrymandering in Democratic states: "trigger" laws which tie anti-gerrymandering rules to the existence of a national ban. If they're banned nationwide, the law immediately goes into effect. Until they are, legislatures have free reign. That way one creates momentum for a national gerrymandering ban while not unilaterally disarming like we saw in New York. Could it work? Hard to know -- but worth a shot.

Let's celebrate some great candidates who will be entering higher office! Among the many -- and this is obviously non-exhaustive -- include incoming Maryland Governor Wes Moore, incoming Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, incoming Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman. Also kudos to some wonderful veterans who held their seats in tough environs, including Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Virginia congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, New Jersey congressman Andy Kim, Maine Governor Janet Mills, and New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan.

Special shoutout to Tina Kotek, who overcame considerable headwinds (and the worst Carleton alum) to apparently hold the Governor's mansion in my home state of Oregon. Hopeful that Jaime McLeod-Skinner can eke out a victory in my congressional district too, though it looks like that might come down to the wire.

I also think it's important to give credit even to losing candidates who fought hard races. Tim Ryan stands out here -- not only did he force the GOP to spend badly needed resources in a state they should've had no trouble keeping, but his coattails might have pushed Democrats across the finish line in at least two House seats Republicans were favored to hold. (I hate to say it, but Lee Zeldin may have played a similar role for the GOP in New York).

I'm inclined to agree that, if Biden doesn't run in 2024, some of the emergent stars from this cycle (like Whitmer or Shapiro) are stronger picks for a presidential run than the also-rans from 2020. But I also think that Biden likely will get an approval bump off this performance -- people like being associated with winners!

On the GOP side, the best outcome (from my vantage) is Trump romping to a primary victory and humiliating DeSantis -- I think voters are sick of him. The second best outcome might be DeSantis winning narrowly over Trump and provoking a tantrum for the ages that might rip the GOP apart. DeSantis himself, as a presidential candidate, is an uncertainty -- I'm not convinced he plays well outside of Florida, but I am convinced that if he prevails over Trump the media will fall over itself to congratulate the GOP on "repudiating" Trumpism even though DeSantis is materially indistinguishable from Trump along every axis save that he's not abjectly incompetent (which, in this context, is not a plus).

The hardest thing to do is to recognize when even candidates you really like are, for whatever reason, just not going to get over the hump. This fits Charlie Crist, Beto O'Rourke, and (I'm sorry) Stacey Abrams. It's no knock on them -- seriously, it isn't -- but they're tainted goods at this point. Fortunately, Democrats have a deep bench of excellent young candidates who we can turn to next time around.

And regarding the youth -- I'm not someone who's a big fan of the perennial Democratic sport of Pelosi/Schumer sniping. I think they've both done a very good job under difficult circumstances, and deserve real credit for the successes we saw tonight and across the Biden admin more broadly. However, we do need to find room for some representatives from the younger generation to assume leadership roles. Younger voters turned out hard for the Democratic Party and deserve their seat at the table. It says something that Hakeem Jeffries, age 52, is the immediate current leadership figure springing to mind as a "young" voice -- that (and again, there's no disrespect to Jeffries here) is not good enough.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/1YJTzbo

[charyou-tree]

One reason that I'm on y'all's ass about voting is that its crucial that non-fascists hold onto power.

The other reason though, is that its already fucking working. Districts that have been solid red for years and decades are turning blue, because people are pissed at trump and the complete negligent violence of his administration's covid nonresponse, theft of classified documents, coverup of illegal use of campaign funds for hush-money payments (for which he was just convicted of 34 felonies), and various other crimes.

If it was truly hopeless, if there was nothing we could do to stop this fascist takeover, they wouldn't be trying so hard to convince you not to vote! They're running scared because they're losing every election since 2020, badly, and they know this is their last-best chance to avoid going to jail for insurrection.

[tomorrowusa]

To take back the country from climate-denying, abortion-forbidding, homophobic religious fanatics, we need to quit ignoring state governments. State legislatures in particular deserve far more of our attention. It's such attention which has helped flip legislative chambers in the past couple of years in states like Virginia, Michigan, and Minnesota.

In Florida this week a Democrat flipped a seat in a special election for the state House of Representatives. Although the Florida legislature still has a gerrymandered GOP supermajority in both chambers, the Republican defeat comes a day after the poor showing by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the Iowa caucuses.

Florida Democrats kicked off the new year with a major victory as businessman and Navy veteran Tom Keen flipped a Republican-held seat in the state House―a development that represents Gov. Ron DeSantis' second electoral humiliation in the span of 24 hours. Keen defeated his Republican rival, Osceola County School Board member Erika Booth, 51-49 in Tuesday's special election for the 35th House District, a constituency in the Orlando suburbs that Joe Biden carried 52-47. The Democrat will succeed Republican Fred Hawkins, whom Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed in June to serve as president of South Florida State College despite lacking any background in higher education. Republicans will hold an 84-36 supermajority in the state House as well as a similarly lopsided edge in the state Senate, so Keen's victory won't jeopardize the party's iron grip on state government. But Sunshine State Democrats are hoping that this win, which comes less than a year after the party flipped control of the mayor's office in Jacksonville, will give them another chance to convince Biden's reelection campaign and other deep-pocketed organizations that this longtime swing state is still winnable.   Former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who stumped for Keen over the weekend, is making the same argument as she tries to persuade national Democrats that her campaign against Republican Sen. Rick Scott is worth investing in. She's linked the two races in arguing that Floridians "can’t afford to pay their bills" thanks to "the failed policies" that began while Scott was governor.

WFTV offers this bit of analysis about Democrat Tom Keen's victory.

Digging into the numbers shows Keen overperformed with non-party affiliated voters, winning roughly 65% of the NPA vote, enough to overcome a raw vote lead in the race where Republicans cast some 900 more votes in the contest. Keen also overperformed in Orange County, where he beat Booth by 1,859 votes.

If you're thinking about getting a little more active in politics, becoming a volunteer for a local Democratic candidate for state legislature is an excellent place to begin.

Check to see who currently represents you in the legislature.

Find Your Legislators Look your legislators up by address or use your current location.

If you are represented by Republicans, contact your county or state Democratic Party and ask them who to get in touch with. You might also try contacting the DLCC.

Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee - Elect State Dems

If we need to take back the country one legislative seat at a time then we'd better get started right now.

[qqueenofhades]

Going to cautiously posit that if they're moving toward calling Kentucky for Beshear (incumbent Democratic governor) in a blindingly red state Trump won by 30 points, in an off-year election, about 30 minutes after polls close statewide, that is a Good Sign.

[arpov-blog-blog]

..."PRESIDENT BIDEN’S JOB APPROVAL RATING has plummeted during his three years in office to historic lows—lower than President Obama’s was at this point before he won re-election in 2012, lower even than President Trump’s was in October 2020 before he lost.

The numbers make clear that Biden is a much weaker candidate than he was when he defeated Trump three years ago. It’s unlikely Biden’s approval will recover significantly before November. But—crucially—that doesn’t mean he will lose the election.

There are multiple theories for why Biden remains underwater, with higher disapproval than approval. Most of the electorate has concluded that Biden is too old. As some commentators have noted, in his long career, Biden has never been popular; his initial honeymoon in the presidency was a temporary deviation from the norm as the country basked in the relief of dumping Trump.

Biden’s peak approval registered at about 54 percent in the spring of 2021, according to FiveThirtyEight’s average of polls. There was one big reason: Americans, coming out of the pandemic, had hope. The Biden administration was competently managing the vaccine rollout and most of us had had one or both shots and celebrated a return to normal life.

Biden’s polling crashed to earth that fall, after the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the battle over the bloated and ill-fated Build Back Better bill. By the end of his first year in office, 10 percent more Americans disapproved of his job performance than approved. He lost favor with a majority because he lost the support of his own voters. The centrist Biden inspires no zeal from his base the way Obama did, let alone the way a cult leader like Trump does. He has no buffer.

So the spring of 2021 was a rare time of artificially elevated national mood. It’s hard to imagine a scenario other than a major national emergency in which any president reaches 53 percent approval again. We live in an age of extreme polarization and zero-sum politics, in which entrenched partisans despise a president from the opposing party, and the default dourness Americans naturally revert to (see: current economic data vs. polling about the economy) means the in-power coalition is also likely to be disappointed. Biden polls poorly on nearly all the issues that comprise the umbrella of job approval: inflation/economy, foreign policy, immigration, crime, and his fitness/age. But we can’t know how voters prioritize them (or other issues) when making their choice. And even if Biden manages to stabilize the southern border, help end the war in Gaza, and preside over continuing economic improvements and low inflation, his job approval might not budge.

YET APPROVAL RATINGS MAY NO LONGER BE a useful benchmark in future campaigns, especially if Biden overperforms his polling in 2024 the way Democrats did in 2022 and 2023. An analysis by FiveThirtyEight found that Democrats did so by an average of 10 points in special elections throughout 2023, outperforming the partisan lean of the districts—and the polls—even where they lost.

Before the 2022 midterms, both parties predicted doom for Democrats because Biden’s approval was at 40 percent according to Gallup—lower than previous presidents who had faced massive losses in their first midterms. But Democrats outran Biden’s job approval everywhere, defending Senate seats in swing states like Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia, winning Pennsylvania’s open seat, and losing just ten House seats in what was predicted to be a wipeout.

A year later, the same thing: In 2023, Kentucky governor Andy Beshear won re-election, and Democrats took back control of the Virginia state legislature (ending Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s hope of a presidential run) and scored a major abortion ballot victory in deep-red Ohio."

[tanadrin]

Apparently the Ohio 6th district went from like Trump +29 to Trump +9 in the recent special election (where the D candidate spent very little money to boot), which is pretty wild. Democrats have been overperforming in special elections, especially since Dobbs, but that’s one heck of a swing.

[gwydionmisha]

This only holds if everyone keeps showing up to vote.