Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Election 2018: The Aftermath

Amidst the continuing 9 House of Representative races still unbeknownst of a call for either a Democrat or Republican, we can essentially say the Democrats will win the House of Representatives and the Republicans the Senate unless all sorts of post-election chaos happened i.e.: A post-apocalyptic world.  So how do we summarize one of the more important mid-term elections in recent history?  Well take a gander with me here my friends and we'll go through it step by step!

1. A chance lost or a lost chance?- This might be Senate Democrats question in ways as they lost three Senate seats on Election Night in the states of Missouri, Indiana and North Dakota.  They fielded candidates that won those seats in 2012, only for one reason or another to find their luck ran dry in this election.  That is most noted with Claire McAskill from Missouri.  In 2006, she eked out a win over Jim Talent.  In 2012, she benefited from Todd Akin being.. well.. dumb.  This time, Josh Hawley didn't have a significant drop-off of Republicans and he wasn't completely controversial and it paid off beating McAskill.  Joe Donnelly was succumbed to the political nature of Indiana, same with Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota.  That, along with likely Bill Nelson's defeat in Florida, will have Democrats rue this mid-term on the Senate side for a while.

2. A door opened or an already opened door?- On the flip side however of that, the Democrats took down Dean Heller in Nevada and won a senate seat in Arizona.  That is significant because even if Florida goes to Republican Rick Scott and the Mississippi run-off goes to the Republican as well, the worst the Democrats will be is 53-47 down going to the 2020 elections.  With likely only one or two embattled Democrats on the ticket in 2020, and one is Doug Jones from Alabama, the stage is set to try to get a +5 advantage of the likely 7-8 battleground seats in the Senate in 2020.  The Republicans had the turf advantage this go round.  However, it's the Democrats who own the field possession two years from now, and there are many embattled Republicans on the docket.  If the Democrats can field a strong field of Senators for 2020, this could change hands very quickly in four years.

3. Great Escapes- So this election season saw some impressive escapes.  Assuming Rick Scott pulls it out over Bill Nelson, he would have escaped a massively narrowing margin that was favoring Nelson towards the end.  Ditto Bruce Poliquin in Maine's Second House District, who has been deadlocked with Jared Golden most of that campaign.  Same can also be said for Rob Woodall if he holds the Seventh District in Georgia.  But none may compare to Democrat Jon Tester in Montana who was losing through the night to Matt Rosendale only to pull it out on Wednesday afternoon in an escape to stay in the Senate for six more years.

4. Voting Rights- Okay I have to lay a gavel hammer down here.  I am so sick of the idea that a nation has to have a government try to restrict voting rights.  It's infuriating, and in all honesty it should be unconstitutional every single second of every day of the week.  I am also sick of seeing people wait 2-6 hours in line.  I applaud judges for the ability to tell people to vote and stay in line, but this shouldn't have to go like this in a country as advanced as the United States.  This is on states as well.  It's not just the federal government.  The states need to be accountable to make sure polling places are up to date, are ADA compliant, and if not then to get them to be by means possible.  Closing polling places does nothing to help the fabric of the institutional right to vote in this country.  It's actually horrid that this conversation has to be put in, but damnit I am tired of people still in 2018 fighting for their exercised right to vote in this country.  End the stupid discussion, and let those eligible to vote then vote and stop with the blasphemous garbage to try to prevent them from doing so.

5. The Presidential Field?- Okay, okay this was going to be the overarching story but I seriously hate posting this because I was more excited about what actually happened on Election Night and the days that have followed.  Obviously, the GOP person is likely Trump, unless there is a massive overreach of the power of the GOP to get him out.  The tricky scenario is who is the Democrats leader?  Is it Beto O'Rourke? Andrew Gillum?  Joe Biden?  Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, or someone else?  We have two years to figure this all out. 

6. The House is a disaster for the Republicans- Okay, okay I am blasting Republicans it seems here, and I PROMISE it'll get better (maybe?) but this is honestly point forward.  So the House was in Republican control, and in a fell swoop on Election Night, that was gone.  There were surprises, like NY-11, OK-5 and SC-1.  There were expected seats, like all in Pennsylvania, some in California, and Florida.  However, of the toss-ups, no one expected nearly all the California toss-ups to go to the Democrats.  No one also expected all but one of the toss-up VA seats to go to the Democrats.  The rough range was likely 224-226 for the Democrats.  They are going to surpass the 230 mark.  How far over is still uncertain.  But they still could take UT-04, NJ-3 (Tom McArthur's seat) and a couple more.  If it weren't for likely a data entry error, GA-7 is possible to the Democrats as well.  And that isn't saying for much on Chris Collins and Duncan Hunter, who are likely to go to prison for their legal issues.  All of this.. is also during an age where there is extreme gerrymandering in many states.  The Republicans held 33 governor seats prior to the 2018 midterms so they held a lot of the re-districting rights.  Now.. the Republicans couldn't hold seats they likely could have won.  And they suffered the ultimate defeat for it because now the Democrats can do a lot of work in a House they not only have a majority in, but likely lead by thirty seats.

7. What a night in Gubernatorial Races- First to the Republican side, they kept popular governors there, Charlie Baker, Larry Hogan, Phil Scott in the Northeast.  There likely won't be much that gets done in redistricting there as it'll be tough since all three of those states are widely Democratic anyway.  However, that doesn't all do it for Republicans.  Mike DeWine beat Richard Cordray in Ohio, beating a powerful Democrat that could have sent another major shockwave.  Ron DeSantis appears to be willing to hold off Andrew Gillum in Florida, preventing a major shockwave again.  And it appears Brian Kemp could hold off Stacey Abrams from a run-off election in December..

8. However.. that is about the extent of the Republicans success: The major successes of the night happened on the flip side of this for gubernatorial races.  Starting up the coast in Maine, Janet Mills flipped that to Democrat.  Ned Lamont held off a fierce Republican challenge to win Connecticut after very deeply unpopular Dannel Malloy left office.  Toward the Midwest, it got bad for Republicans really, really quickly.  J.B. Pritzker ran away with the Illinois race, an expected rout for the Democrats.  Gretchen Whitmer won in Michigan, after a deeply unpopular Republican Rick Snyder was term-limited.  Out west, New Mexico took Michelle Grisham to the Governor's Mansion in another flip.  In Nevada, Steve Sisolak upset Adam Laxalt to retake the Democrats control in that Gubernatorial race.  However, the two shockwaves happened in the Midwest.  Laura Kelly beat Kris Kobach in Kansas and Tony Evers upset Scott Walker in Wisconsin.  Kelly's win was significant due to the hostility of what Kobach represented.  The Evers' upset represented how much more coordinated the Democrats have become in four years in the state. 

9. Women bust records but so do LGBTQ+ candidates: Women are no longer just the backmarker in politics, and given how men have operated the White House the last couple of years and essentially Congress forever it might not be a bad idea for a massive change.  Women have set high markers in the House this mid-term and by 2020 should set more markers in the Senate.  The all-time highs can also be attributed to the state houses and senates across the nation.  However, LGBTQ+ candidates on Election Night and afterward had a terrific night.  Openly gay Democrat Jared Polis was elected governor of Colorado, openly gay Senator Tammy Baldwin was re-elected.  However, openly gay Sharice Davids won a House race in Kansas of all places.  Bisexual candidates Katie Hill and Kyrsten Sinema won their races in California and Arizona respectively.  This also goes with different ethnic groups winning for the first times ever.  Native Americans, Latinas and Somali-Americans will be introduced to Congress as House members for the first time, and oh yeah they are women too.  Women won Gubernatorial races as well.  The aforementioned Grisham, Whitmer, Kelly and Mills and Iowa Republican Kim Reynolds join the fray.  Ditto with Kate Brown in Oregon, Kay Ivey in Alabama, and Kristi Noem in South Dakota.  Like I said, if men cannot do the job, then women should be capable of doing a better job.

10. The Heartbreak stories: Without Election Night, there would be no Cinderella stories in politics (see really most of the above for that, plus some others I didn't mention) but then there wouldn't be the heartbreak stories that can evolve over a campaign.  There are many but none bigger than Beto O'Rourke.  The Texas Democrat who represented El Paso in the House of Representatives spent the better part of a year in every county, 254 to be exact, traveling to different people in the state.  Some are more likely than others to vote for him.  However, he was determined and fired up.  In the second debate against Ted Cruz, he was fiercely aggressive to the point that the next day he apologized for that.  When the votes were tallying up, he was in a dead heat a lot of the night against Cruz. But with about 80 percent of the vote in the state, it was announced that Cruz would win.  It was a brutal reminder that sometimes these stories are buried.

If I missed anything, let me know! Before we know it, 2020 is around the corner and those damn political ads will be at it again!

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