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Midterms 2018


pettie4sox
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5 hours ago, raBBit said:

So the implication would be that marijuana users are increasing their risk to heart disease?

Yes. Research has shown that consistent use of marijuana leads to non-fatal heart attacks. 

The other effect is that it's a significant anti-inflammatory.  This is one of the original reasons for medical marijuana. 

Edited by ptatc
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Looking like 226-209, but that could shift by 2-3 either way in the House.

Walker finally lost in WI.   Trend against Dems continued everywhere except for Nevada.  AZ barely went to McSally.

 

Tons of Republican seats that were chopped down from 20-30% wins in 2014 and 2016 to losses or slight victories this time around.   The Handel race in GA (she's the one who beat Jon Ossoff in the hugely expensive runoff is up by just 57 votes with 100% reporting, Chris Collins of insider trading fame in NY went from 34.4% margin down to 1.1%, and it's still not over officially).

4 "lean Dem" seats are still within 1%, along with 6 "lean GOP" House seats.

California 25, 48, Michigan 8, Minnesota 1 could still go either way...same with California 10, ME 2, GA 6 (Handel), NC 9, NJ 3 and NM 2 are all within 1%, too.

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What's people's take?  I feel like it's a stalemate in the grand scheme of things.  Trump just got seriously neutered but Desantis winning Florida has to give him confidence in 2020?

80K votes is what helped him win in 2016 in the rust belt.

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Trump’s tactics worked in the South, Indiana, Missouri and maybe Montana...

The problem for the GOP is losing PA, Michigan, Iowa (3 of 4 seats, King almost lost and Reynolds barely held on), Wisconsin, Minnesota, etc.   Nevada is going more and more Dem.   Barely held onto Arizona.

It ORourke didn’t go so far to the left, he could/should have won Texas with $70+ million behind him.

Walker and Kobach are gone.

When the dust settles, the pickup in the House will be around 30 seats.

That said, Abrams, Gillum and ORourke each lost, along with that Iron Stache dude.  Four high profile losses.

 

If Trump goes to war with the House, he won’t win.  If they decide to work together and Trump betrays the GOP on areas like infrastructure, lower prescription costs, pre-existing conditions and actually lowers taxes on the middle class (only), he has a very good chance to win again in 2020.

It just depends on which side makes a better argument to the 40% in the middle, not the 30% that are hyper partisan on both extreme wings ideologically.

Trump controls his own fate.  More culture wars in the middle of an expected recession and he’s doomed to bring down the GOP brand for a decade.

 

(The Handel/GA 6 seat flipped back to the Dems by the slimmest of margins.)

Edited by caulfield12
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30 million increase in voters, from 83 million in 2014 to 113 million plus, an increase of around 35%, roughly.

Normally, Presidents with a popularity rating below 50% lose an average of 37 seats...Obama lost 63 in 2010, but the country is still 75% center right (especially on financial issues) and this election will end up around +29-33 for the Dems due principally to the fact that this is one of the strongest economies in a long time (at least for the top 25% of Americans) and higher healthcare costs haven’t fully come home to roost quite yet.

 

Tester still has a good chance in MT, Sinema maybe 25% in AZ....Nelson and Scott would have a runoff in FL if the final margin is 0.5% or less.

Elected three 20 somethings in Finkenauer, Katie Hill (CA) and Ocasio-Cortez...two Muslim American women in MI and MN.

 

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/07/opinions/why-this-blue-wave-was-no-tsunami-granderson/index.html

Edited by caulfield12
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So in the end, this went about the way it's looked like it would for the last couple months. Dems take the house, probably a +/- 20 seat majority. GOP holds the Senate and adds 2-3 seats. Dems make pretty big ground on governor chairs (and I'd assume probably state legislatures but haven't checked those). No way around the fact that this is a pretty big win for the Dems. One can argue how much of a "wave" it really was, but it's a good win for sure, overall.

I personally am very interested in where the governor and state legislatures end up, because of redistricting, particularly in states with more than 2 or 3 districts. Anyone know a good place to look up all those state-level results?

7 minutes ago, StrangeSox said:

Why? It's a criticism of the deeply anti-democratic (small d) nature of the Senate.

This is not the case. The Dems were given a situation where they had hardly any map to work with for the Senate. The GOP had 42 seats that weren't even up for election, for one thing. For another thing, many of the competitive seats were in states like TX, ND, IN... deep red states by nature. The Dems losing three seats was not only predictable, it was also in no way associated with some sort of Senate model flaw. It's just the cycle. Next cycle the picture will be very different going in.

 

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10 minutes ago, caulfield12 said:

https://sports.yahoo.com/9-former-athletes-running-office-performed-tuesdays-election-053416828.html

Former WR Anthony Gonzalez, Colin Allred, Napoleon Harris and Royals’ 2B Frank White win various elections...

So did a dead man!

https://www.apnews.com/afd73fee87e5442ca72b7179c593089e

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Florida and Ohio governors’ jobs to the GOP loom large...but that could be offset by Sherrod Brown as President or more likely VP on 2020 ticket.

Still a ways to go in resolving Nelson/Scott, Montana, Arizona and the GA Governor’s race.

O’Rourke, Sanders, Brown, Harris and Warren the five best-positioned to take up progressive flag.

 

Pelosi, go away!!...Trump is raring to tear into you like red meat again...a younger Dem without such negative poll numbers nationally would be the better choice to turn over the position to in the summer of 2020, before she gets weaponized in the presidential election.

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20 minutes ago, NorthSideSox72 said:

 

This is not the case. The Dems were given a situation where they had hardly any map to work with for the Senate. The GOP had 42 seats that weren't even up for election, for one thing. For another thing, many of the competitive seats were in states like TX, ND, IN... deep red states by nature. The Dems losing three seats was not only predictable, it was also in no way associated with some sort of Senate model flaw. It's just the cycle. Next cycle the picture will be very different going in.

 

It is a criticism of the structure of the Senate itself. The outcome shown above was entirely predictable, and some people (myself included) think it's a bad thing. It's the same old "Wyoming Senator represents 200,000 people, California Senator represents 20,000,000 people" criticism of the Senate. "Two senators for every state" is a bad model and the huge disparities in what Americans actually vote for and what they actually get from the federal government drives that home. No other national government in the world follows that model. No US state government follows that model and in fact they're prohibited from doing so. It's a bad, broken system based on a centuries' old compromise with slave power. It's beating a dead horse though because the only realistic way to "fix" it is PR/DC statehood.

 

In pro-democratic news, some good referendums/amendments/ballot measures passed last night. NC unfortunately amended their state constitution to enact a Voter ID law that was previously struck down for being deliberately hyper-targeted at black voters, but they also rejected a court-packing plan from the state GOP and the Dems have a 5-2 majority in the state court. Florida voted to enfranchise former felons who have served their sentences, restoring voting rights to over a million people. Previously, it was solely at the Governor's discretion. Michigan passed a raft of measures including independent redistricting and same day registration/auto-registration/no-excuse absentee and early voting. Colorado did some independent redistricting measure. MD passed same-day registration. NV passed automatic voter registration.

 

Iowa came *really* close to going 4/4 blue in the House and bouncing white supremacist Steve King, but he hung on. Sad to see 50k+ of my neighbors vote for the literal nazi in IL-03.

 

Dems picked up something like 333 total seats across state legislatures, breaking at least one GOP supermajority and strengthening a bunch of their own majorities.

 

Edited by StrangeSox
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7 minutes ago, StrangeSox said:

It is a criticism of the structure of the Senate itself. The outcome shown above was entirely predictable, and some people (myself included) think it's a bad thing. It's the same old "Wyoming Senator represents 200,000 people, California Senator represents 20,000,000 people" criticism of the Senate. "Two senators for every state" is a bad model and the huge disparities in what Americans actually vote for and what they actually get from the federal government drives that home. No other national government in the world follows that model. No US state government follows that model and in fact they're prohibited from doing so. It's a bad, broken system based on a centuries' old compromise with slave power. It's beating a dead horse though because the only realistic way to "fix" it is PR/DC statehood.

 

Wait, so your problem is that there are two Senators per state? Really? That's by design and a key to making sure the states have some power. You are suggesting a unicameral legislature?

Look I'm 100% for getting rid of the Electoral College for Presidential voting because the President is by nature a single national position. State power should be irrelevant in that particular equation. But by suggesting the states have no leverage in he legislative branch, which is by nature representative, I don't get that at all. It is most certainly not a flaw, in fact I'd call it a feature.

 

4 minutes ago, GoSox05 said:

56,350 people voted for Art Jones last night.  I just don't know what to even say on that.

 

Almost all of which were, I'd bet, party line voters who were not even aware the dude is a literall Nazi. In other words, lazy and uninformed.

 

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1 minute ago, Jenksismyhero said:

I would bet a lot of those votes are people who voted party line without thinking about (or even knowing) who he was.

For sure, but it's like damn.  You don't have to be an expert on the guy, but one stop at his website and that should be an easy no vote.  Just leave it blank or do a write in.

 

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Just now, GoSox05 said:

For sure, but it's like damn.  You don't have to be an expert on the guy, but one stop at his website and that should be an easy no vote.  Just leave it blank or do a write in.

 

Dead people get voted into office all the time.  People in this country are generally stupid and both parties take advantage of that.

 

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3 minutes ago, Jenksismyhero said:

Dead people get voted into office all the time.  People in this country are generally stupid and both parties take advantage of that.

 

Dead people is a much better vote because it allows either an appointment or second special election. THis was voting in the affirmative that a holocaust denier and neo-nazi should be in power. Some amount would have voted yes here out of confusion but 23% is way more than I thought and pretty scary.

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36 minutes ago, NorthSideSox72 said:

Wait, so your problem is that there are two Senators per state? Really? That's by design and a key to making sure the states have some power. You are suggesting a unicameral legislature?

Look I'm 100% for getting rid of the Electoral College for Presidential voting because the President is by nature a single national position. State power should be irrelevant in that particular equation. But by suggesting the states have no leverage in he legislative branch, which is by nature representative, I don't get that at all. It is most certainly not a flaw, in fact I'd call it a feature.

Yes. The Senate is a bad model by design that no one else in the world uses. You can still have a bicameral legislature without the current structure of the Senate. Almost every state in the US does this. Illinois does that.

I don't think we should advantage land over people, especially not at the massive scale we do. There's no reason for Wyoming, the Dakotas, and Montana to all be separate states with 8 total Senators and a fraction of the population of many other states. The federal government should represent the people, not the states, and we've otherwise largely moved away from late 18th century political thoughts. I don't think it's good for our democracy to give someone 100x more Senatorial representation simply because they happen to live in Wyoming instead of California, or 50x more because they don't live in NY. It gives a political minority a strongly disproportionate amount of power over the minority. We'll see the effects of that in the judiciary for decades to come.

Like I said though, it's a pipe dream. We're stuck with the Senate until the US Federal Government collapses at some point. More realistically to restore some balance would be DC and PR statehood. DC has a larger population than two states, and PR would rank 29th overall.

Edited by StrangeSox
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16 minutes ago, Jenksismyhero said:

I would bet a lot of those votes are people who voted party line without thinking about (or even knowing) who he was.

I'd have to imagine at least 60-70% of voters just walk in and press "D, D, D, D" or "R, R, R, R" without even a second thought.

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