#GOP Governor race in Michigan

[qqueenofhades]

Another optimistic result from last night. Michigan's state legislature went blue for the first time since the Reagan administration. Dems were a superminority four years ago and now we run the entire state government, thanks in no small part to the independent redistricting commission that was created via a statewide ballot proposal in 2018.

We also passed a measure to protect abortion rights and broaden/strengthen voting rights. Basically, last night I had stress dreams all night about the end of democracy and I woke up to some good news. Things still aren't great and I'm anxious about races across the country, but I'm hopeful for the first time in a long time.

Michigan, Colorado, and Pennsylvania all had particularly good nights. Michigan Democrats won the governor and secretary of state races against cuckoo crazypants Q-challengers, protected abortion access, flipped the legislature, and expanded voting rights and access. In Colorado, all the Democratic incumbents won in a walk and might get an extra House seat from newly created CO-8. The biggest news there is that MAGA Barbie Lauren Boebert is still behind by about ~3500 votes in CO-3 with almost all the votes in. This is a R+9 district and shouldn't even be close. In Pennsylvania, Fetterman picked up a Senate seat for the Democrats despite all the doom and gloom and the intense GOP focus on Dr. Quack, Democrat Josh Shapiro easily beat MAGA lunatic Doug Mastriano for governor, and the state legislature is agonisingly close to flipping Democrat or at least almost even control.

Other morning-after thoughts from about four and a half hours of sleep:

As I said last night, the Democrats and Florida are Charlie Brown and the football. This isn't entirely their fault, as DeSantis has made it into his personal fiefdom and redrew the already-red maps to be EVEN MORE RED, threatened voters with his own goon squad, and otherwise turned it into Fascist Disneyland, literally. He cruised to re-election (ugh), but we still don't know how that plays outside his carefully curated media bubble where he only does interviews with right wing hacks like Fox and never answers tough questions. Lil Marco Rubio likewise beat Val Demings. Double ugh. So yeah, Florida Democrats are MIA. At least we got the first Gen Z member of Congress, 25 year old Democrat Maxwell Frost.

Whatever its untapped demographics, and unfair restrictions from obviously nonsensical voting laws, on the institutional level, Texas is not a blue state either. It just isn't. Beto ran a good campaign, but yet again, it wasn't close and Texas is just... Texas.

Hey anyone else think we should just let Florida and Texas secede?

However, my heartfelt sympathies to sane Floridans and Texans who worked hard but still had to see the same old crazy win.

Ohio and North Carolina also had Republicans win their Senate races. Tim Ryan and Cherie Beasley ran strong campaigns but it wasn't enough to overcome the increasing reddish tilt of those states (especially Ohio, which is also starting to look lost for the foreseeable future). However, they were both replacing retiring Republicans, so no change as far as the balance of power. Still despicable that that carpetbagging hack JD Vance is in the Senate, though.

Jury is still out in Arizona, where both Democratic governor and Senate candidates have narrow leads (governor more narrow), but if Katie Hobbs and Mark Kelly can pull this out, every single MAGA election denier candidate for governor/SOS will have lost.

That is GOOD NEWS for democracy.

Swingy Nevada is still looking dicey, though. As expected, its Democratic governor and Senate incumbent are behind after Election Day vote counting. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto is in a slightly better position than Governor Steve Sisolak. If big blue Clark County (Vegas) delivers its usual tranches of Democratic mail vote, they could both still probably win (CCM somewhat more likely since her deficit is smaller), but Nevada kept us anxiously waiting for days on end and seems fully set to do it again.

If Senate control comes down to yet another Georgia runoff between Raphael Warnock and Herschel "Me Good At Concussions And Abortions" Walker, I am going to scream.

Warnock is ahead but probably not enough to avoid a runoff under Georgia's ludicrous Jim Crow Senate rules where a candidate has to reach 50% to win outright.

Stacey Abrams also lost again to Brian Kemp. Ugh.

New York Democrats won the governor, AG, and Senate races, in not too much surprise but some of the late polling was close. They've had some struggles in suburban and rural NY, though managed to keep Pat Ryan's seat from the recent special election.

Way too many white people are still voting for Republicans, with the noted exception of 18-29 year olds, the only white age demographic to vote Democratic (by almost 2 to 1).

Looking at the data, 18-29 year olds from all demographics voting Blue are quite probably the only reason there wasn't a red wave. Good job, guys. I give you a lot of stick on here, but well done.

God, when will all those old white Republicans finally croak. They vote like clockwork every time and it's always bad.

Abortion access won everywhere it was on the ballot, including in deep red Kentucky (not overturning the current ban, alas, but rejecting a state constitutional amendment to ban it). Abortion rights are popular! Who knew.

This is an absolutely stunningly good result for an incumbent president's first midterm in any year, let alone with 8.5% inflation, economic pain, crazy fascists, and all the rest. Obama lost 63 House seats in 2010. So far, there hasn't really been a major change, and we still don't know who will control the House, after a lot of doomsters were insisting it would be Republican by 9pm ET on election night.

Democratic incumbents also won several tough re-election races in seats they would probably have lost in a red wave year.

Sarah Palin appears likely to lose in Alaska for the second time in three months. HA.

Trump was by no means the kingmaker. Almost all of his handpicked candidates have lost, with the exception of Vance in Ohio. Jury still out on Laxalt in Nevada (come THROUGH for CCM, Vegas, PLEASE).

Midterms are now not quite over, but at least moving to the rear view mirror. So when is Trump gonna get fucking indicted. That is the major next step on the Save Democracy checklist.

I likewise didn't think it would happen right after the midterms, regardless of who won; early 2023 remains my best guess. But also, like. Soon, please??

Anyway. If we lose the House (still not for sure) but keep the Senate, we can at least continue to confirm judges and other such important things. Having a tiny Republican majority (bleck) in the House would at least make it more difficult for them to do anything outrageously stupid, or at least have it succeed, as they would be sure to waste everyone's time with pointless stunts anyway.

Meh.

Still, though. By any metric, a big failure for Republicans, considering what their expectations were and how goddamn hard the media tried to help them at every turn, and a good showing for democracy as Democratic control was retained in key swing states and election deniers did not win any of their targets.

Stay tuned for more Election PutinDestielNevadaNovember5th...uh...8th redux!!!

UGH, NOT AGAIN.

#liptonrm #ask #politics for ts

[tomorrowusa]

Nikki Haley suspended her campaign for the GOP presidential nomination months ago and has not campaigned since. But she still got 21.7% of the vote in Tuesday's Republican primary in deep red Indiana. She passed the 30% mark in four Hoosier counties including Marion where Indianapolis is located.

If a fifth of Republicans go out of their way to vote for a non-candidate this late in the race to show their objection to Trump, it doesn't bode well for The Donald in November.

While Indiana should still be considered solid for Trump, the continuing significant showing for Haley could mean trouble for him in toss-up states like Georgia and Pennsylvania.

Former President Donald Trump faced warning signs in the Indiana GOP primary as former Republican rival Nikki Haley received more than 20 percent of the vote despite dropping out of the White House race two months ago. [ ... ] Haley also received more than 26 percent and 18 percent of the GOP primary vote in the key swing states of Michigan and Arizona respectively, amounting to hundreds of thousands of votes. Several polls have indicated that many Haley supporters will not go on to vote for Trump in the 2024 election.

Trump has a problem even if 75% of those Haley voters in GOP primaries decide to hold their noses and vote for Trump in November.

Trump's appointment of anti-abortion fanatics to the US Supreme Court who then overturned Roe v. Wade does not sit well with some pro-choice Republicans.

And those Trump comments about being a "dictator on day one" and "retribution" should horrify anybody concerned about the rule of law.

A Republican former lieutenant governor of toss-up Georgia announced that he's voting for Joe Biden in November.

Former Georgia Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan says he is voting for Biden in November

Mr. Duncan understands that the only way to defeat wannabe dictator Trump is to vote for Biden. Casting a blank ballot, writing in somebody, or voting for an impotent third party will do nothing to protect democracy in 2024. That goes for liberals as well as conservatives.

#donald trump #indiana primary #indiana #republicans #nikki haley #never trumpers #dictator on day one #abortion #geoff duncan #georgia #election 2024 #vote blue no matter who

[robertreich]

The Election Deniers on the Ballot: What You Need to Know

Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans allies who tried to overturn the 2020 election results are now just one step away from taking control of the election process itself.

BUT we can stop them if we turn out in full force for November’s midterms.

If we don’t stop them from taking over the election process, we can kiss what’s left of our democracy goodbye.

This fall, 60% of voters will have an election denier on their ballot, including key battleground states that decided the 2020 election and will be pivotal in 2024. Many are running for positions like secretary of state, where they'll have power to determine which votes get counted in future elections — and which don't.

In 37 states, secretaries of state are the chief elections officers — overseeing things like election infrastructure and voter registration. In 2020, they were the last line of defense for our fragile democracy, upholding Joe Biden’s win despite heavy pressure  from proponents of Trump's Big Lie.

But now, Big Lie proponents are vying to hold this key position in important swing states.

In Michigan, the GOP candidate for Secretary of State is Kristina Karamo  — who rose to prominence in conservative circles after claiming to have witnessed election fraud as a pollster. She’s also previously claimed that Trump won the 2020 election and that Antifa was behind the January 6th insurrection.  

In Arizona, Mark Finchem, a QAnon-supporting member of the Oath Keepers militia who participated in the January 6 insurrection cruised to victory in the GOP primary by claiming that “Donald Trump won.”

In Nevada, Jim Marchant won his Republican primary by making Trump's baseless claims of election fraud a cornerstone of his campaign. He also falsely claims that mail-in voting is rife with fraud and wants to eliminate it altogether in Nevada, despite the fact that he himself has voted by mail MULTIPLE times over the years.

We simply cannot have MAGA election deniers overseeing any element of our elections.

But it’s not just secretaries of state who will be able to pull trickery in future elections. Governors also play a critical role in certifying votes and upholding the will of the people. Which is precisely why Trump and Steve Bannon have had their eyes on running election deniers in these races.

In Pennsylvania, Republican gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano — who was also at the Capitol on January 6th and has been subpoenaed by Congress for his involvement in the insurrection — helped lead the push to overturn the state’s 2020 results. If he wins, Mastriano would appoint Pennsylvania’s top election official.

In Arizona, GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake has said she does not recognize Joe Biden as the nation’s legitimate president — adding that she would not have certified Arizona’s 2020 election results had she been governor.

In Wisconsin, Tim Michels is the Trump backed candidate for governor who still questions the results of 2020 and won’t say whether he would certify the 2024 presidential election. Right now, elections in Wisconsin are administered by the bipartisan Wisconsin Election Commission. But if Michels wins, he supports scrapping the commission in favor of a plan that could tilt oversight of the state’s elections into the hands of Wisconsin Republicans.

These extremist gubernatorial candidates also support abortion bans, openly denegrate the LGBTQ community, oppose common sense gun-control measures, and want to chip away at the rights of workers.

Ultimately, if any of these candidates wins their election this fall — governors or secretaries of state —  that could be enough to tip the balance in a tight presidential election.

So how can we fight back?

First, spread the word about the GOP's extremist plans to capture the election process and entrench minority rule. Make sure your friends and family — especially young voters — know what’s at stake in the midterms this fall. It will mean a lot coming from you. Make sure they register AND vote down the entire ballot.

Next, get involved locally. Volunteer to be a poll worker or join a campaign for a candidate running to protect democracy where you live. From school boards to secretaries of state, every position matters.

And of course, vote! Check your registration early and make a plan to cast your ballot.

The future of our country and our basic rights hang in the balance. All progress rests on maintaining our democracy. Let's get to work.

#youtube #video #videos #politics #election #2022 #donald trump #maga

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

Long read, but there's a lot of interesting stuff I never knew here. For instance, it's been against the law for the GOP to watch polls for the last 40 years.

Part of the reason Republicans hadn’t more effectively fought the election integrity battle before now is somewhat shocking. The 2020 contest was the first presidential election since Ronald Reagan’s first successful run in 1980 in which the Republican National Committee could play any role whatsoever in Election Day operations. For nearly 40 years, the Democratic National Committee had a massive systematic advantage over its Republican counterpart: The RNC had been prohibited by law from helping with poll watcher efforts or nearly any voting-related litigation.

Democrats had accused Republicans of voter intimidation in a 1981 New Jersey gubernatorial race. The case was settled, and the two parties entered into a court-ordered consent decree limiting Republican involvement in any poll-watching operation. But Dickinson Debevoise, the Jimmy Carter-appointed judge who oversaw the agreement, never let them out of it, repeatedly modifying and strengthening it at Democrats’ request.

Debevoise was a judge for only 15 years, but he stayed 21 years in senior status, a form of semi-retirement that enables judges to keep serving in a limited capacity. It literally took Debevoise’s dying in 2015 for Republicans to get out of the consent decree. Upon his passing, a new judge, appointed by President Obama, was assigned the case and let the agreement expire at the end of 2018.

Here are some other quotes about what's been done to secure elections since 2020

Before mounting successful lawsuits, however, better laws had to be passed — a difficult task in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election, when Democrats claimed any criticism of how that election had been run was unacceptable and possibly criminal. That campaign, designed to suppress efforts to bolster election security, continues to this day. Nevertheless, Republican lawmakers in dozens of states began pushing for election reforms. 

For example, bans on so-called Zuckbucks, the private takeover of government election offices, were passed and signed into law in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Six Democrat governors vetoed attempted bans, understanding how key Zuckerberg’s funding was to Democrat success in 2020. The governors of Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin all vetoed the bans. Wisconsin’s governor, currently in a tight election, vetoed twice. The Kansas legislature overrode the veto.

The resulting contrast between election integrity in some of these battleground states could not be clearer. Take Pennsylvania, for instance, a pivotal swing state where the Democrat governor vetoed the legislature’s attempted reforms. Its partisan Supreme Court meanwhile issues conflicting guidance, resulting in disparate treatment of ballots depending on the county they’re cast in. Elections here are high in irregularities and low in voter trust.

Meanwhile, the Foundation for Government Accountability worked with states to make policy changes to clean voter rolls, ban ballot trafficking, secure ballot custody, roll back Covid waivers, enact penalties for election lawbreakers, require chains of custody, secure drop boxes, pre-process absentee ballots, improve absentee voter ID, and dozens of other types of reforms.

Florida has been working steadily to improve its election system since the disastrous 2000 election. Last year, that meant banning Zuckbucks. This year, those changes included “requiring voter rolls to be annually reviewed and updated, strengthening ID requirements, establishing the Office of Election Crimes and Security to investigate election law violations, and increasing penalties for violations of election laws.”

And here's a few about litigation that's been going on

The RNC got involved in 73 election integrity cases in 20 states for the midterms, with plans to expand. They won a lawsuit against Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson for restricting the rights of poll challengers; got Maricopa County, Arizona, to share key data about its partisan breakdown of poll workers; won an open records lawsuit against Mercer County, New Jersey, for refusing to share election administration data; won a lawsuit against the North Carolina State Board of Elections for restricting the rights of poll watchers; and reached a favorable settlement against Clark County, Nevada, in which the county agreed to share information about its partisan breakdown of poll workers on a rolling basis.

For instance, RITE sued over controversial Wisconsin Elections Commission guidance that conflicted with state law, telling election clerks to accept ballots that had been spoiled, and won the case. It was also part of the group that successfully sued Pennsylvania over whether ballots that failed to be dated, as required by state law, could be counted. 

Give the whole thing a read. And remember to get out and vote tomorrow

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

A video clip of Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis from two and a half years ago has resurfaced and is being shared on social media, in which the 2024 presidential candidate suggested using a discredited legal theory in order to overturn the results of the 2020 election to help then-President Donald Trump remain in office.

The video suggests DeSantis, like Trump, is willing to embrace far-fetched legal theories in order to help himself or other Republicans obtain positions of power, even if they go against the democratic preferences of voters.

In the video, DeSantis discusses possible remedies to help Trump win the 2020 election, even after most media outlets at the time — including Fox News, the cable news station where the interview took place — had already called the election for President Joe Biden. DeSantis suggests utilizing an aspect of the fringe, right-wing independent legislature theory, which posits, in part, that state legislatures are the sole deciders of how electors are chosen to represent states in the Electoral College.

The Florida Governor also encourages viewers in states Trump lost to President Joe Biden to pressure their state legislatures to utilize the theory…

“If you’re in those states that have Republican Legislatures like Pennsylvania and Michigan and all these places, call your state Representatives and your state Senators,” DeSantis said in the clip. “Under Article II of the Constitution, presidential electors are done by the Legislatures and the schemes they create.”

DeSantis added that he would “exhaust every option” in order to produce what he said would be a “fair count” of votes, although all indications at the time — and ever since — showed that the initial vote count was both fair and legitimate.

While the Constitution does give legislatures the ability to decide how electors are chosen, it doesn’t give them the right to overturn elections or to decide how electors are picked after voters have already decided — the clause simply gives state governments the ability to pass laws to determine what the process will be. Since the middle of the 19th century, every state has chosen its electors through an election by eligible voters.

Seen as a fringe theory at the time DeSantis suggested it on Fox News, the United States Supreme Court has since rejected other aspects of the independent state legislature theory, which asserted that the legislature alone has the authority to decide how congressional maps are drawn.

A staunch Trump supporter when the interview was recorded, DeSantis has since stated he doesn’t believe Trump won the 2020 race.

Earlier this month in an interview with NBC News correspondent Dasha Burns, DeSantis was asked who he thought won the race, Biden or Trump. At first, DeSantis tried to sidestep the issue — “Whoever puts their hand on the Bible on January 20 every four years is the winner,” he responded.

Burns pressed DeSantis to be more direct. “Respectfully, you did not clearly answer that question,” she pointed out, asking whether the Florida Governor could give a “yes” or “no” response instead.

“No, of course he lost. Joe Biden’s the president,” DeSantis finally relented.

DeSantis will likely have to explain to voters why he, like Trump, would be supportive of using then-untested legal theories in order to justify overturning the will of the people — that is, of course, if he’s successful in becoming the Republican Party’s presidential nominee. As it stands right now, DeSantis, like all other current GOP primary candidates, is polling far behind Trump.

A recent Quinnipiac University poll published this week, for example, shows that 57% of Republican-aligned voters back Trump for the party’s pick. DeSantis, meanwhile, obtains just 18% support, while businessman Vivek Ramaswamy garners 5% and former Vice President Mike Pence gets 4% in the poll.

#us politics #truthout #2023 #news #republicans #conservatives #donald trump #gov. ron desantis #state legislatures #electoral college #false slate of electors #2020 election #twitter #tweet #x #fox news #us constitution #us supreme court #scotus #independent state legislature theory #Dasha Burns #nbc news #Quinnipiac University #polls

[naturalrights-retard]

Super Tuesday is upon us. Across 16 states, from Maine to California, Alabama to Alaska, voters will be casting their ballots today in the most delegate-rich day on the primary calendar. But don’t expect anything super from Tuesday; rather, expect more of the same.

At this point, neither presidential primary seems much of a contest. President Joe Biden is sailing through the primary, thanks in part to his party’s constant maneuvering to protect the beleaguered president. The only hiccup so far: 13 percent of voters in Michigan withheld their support for Biden over his policy on the war in Gaza. Former President Donald Trump,  meanwhile, is handily beating former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in the delegate count with 244 delegates to Haley’s 43. Haley did win the GOP’s Washington, D.C. primary over the weekend, but winning a contest in which just over 3,000 votes were cast in one of the bluest places in the nation does little to build momentum. The D.C. primary results are not causing any campaign donors to suddenly reconsider their decision to pull out of Haley’s campaign. 

Trump is going for a Super Tuesday clean sweep to put the nail in Haley’s coffin. In total, 865 Republican delegates are up for grabs in 15 states, which represents more than a third of the 2,429-delegate pie GOP presidential candidates are battling over. Even if Trump were to receive every single delegate on Tuesday, he’d be just over 100 short of the 1,215 delegate victory threshold. A commanding performance could, however, run his last challenger out of the race. Even if Haley refuses to drop out, Trump could have the nomination wrapped up by next week; on March 12, another 161 delegates come up for grabs across Georgia, Hawaii, Mississippi, and Washington.

Two of the Super Tuesday states, California and Texas, have largest delegate hauls in the entire GOP primary process, with 169 and 161 delegates respectively. In California, Trump leads Haley in the polls by an average of 53.5 points. In Texas, the former president’s average lead is 70 points.

It’s the same story in several other Super Tuesday states. Trump is up more than 50 points in Alabama, Maine, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. In three of those contests—Alabama, Oklahoma, and Tennessee—Trump’s polling advantage is at least 70 points.

[mariacallous]

“Florida is where woke goes to die,” Gov. Ron DeSantis declared at a victory speech in November 2022, just after winning his second term as governor of Florida. He’d just had a decisive win in an election that wasn’t otherwise particularly good for Republicans across the country, and he’d done it by promoting himself as an anti-woke warrior.

It wasn’t his official presidential campaign announcement, but it was still a pitch to voters nationwide: I’m the candidate who can defeat the creeping specter of wokeness infecting schools, workplaces, and our culture as a whole.

But one year after that victory speech that unofficially anointed him as a formidable opponent to Donald Trump, he’s polling in a far distant second place to the former president, and he’s been unable to take his anti-woke message nationwide. What happened?

Is DeSantis a bad messenger, is his anti-wokeness message just not resonating with GOP voters — or is the grip Trump has on the Republican electorate just too strong?

“It’s a little bit of all the above,” Alex Conant, a GOP consultant for Firehouse Strategies, a public affairs firm, told HuffPost.

Originally, “woke” was a term in African American Vernacular English meaning to stay alert to racial discrimination. But soon after the racial justice protests swept the country in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, conservative pundits co-opted the term to derogatorily refer to anything related to progressivism, equality or diversity.

Companies that put out statements in support of diversity initiatives or changed their racist logos, educators who wanted to teach accurate U.S. history, and celebrities who spoke out against discrimination were swiftly deemed “woke” ― and something conservatives everywhere should fear.

In contrast, in Florida and across the country, being anti-woke meant introducing bills that target LGBTQ+ students, diversity initiatives in the workplace, and what books children had access to at school. Any candidate promising to bring those ideas to the national stage, the thinking went, would be a strong Republican contender for the White House.

And perhaps no public figure has invested as much in the concept, or hitched their wagon to it as publicly as DeSantis.

“The woke mind virus is basically a form of cultural Marxism. At the end of the day, it’s an attack on the truth,” DeSantis said during a Fox News interview shortly after announcing he was running for president. “And because it’s a war on truth, I think we have no choice but to wage a war on woke.”

The following week he went to Iowa and promised to take on wokeness as president. “We will fight the woke in education, we will fight the woke in corporations, we will fight the woke in the halls of Congress,” he said.

But complaining about wokeness and stoking the culture wars has turned out to be a losing bet in elections across the country.

In the November 2022 election, candidates that focused on culture wars failed to win key races across the country, with losses in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia. Then last month, school board candidates who ran on combating wokeness in schools were unsuccessful.

It’s looking increasingly clear that Republicans overestimated how much GOP voters were invested in fighting wokeness. With just weeks to go before the first ballots are cast, a November poll out of Iowa shows that DeSantis is tied for second place with former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, at just 16%.

Trump seemed to pick up on the weakness of anti-wokeness branding before DeSantis. “I don’t like the term ‘woke’ because I hear, ‘Woke, woke, woke.’ It’s just a term they use, half the people can’t even define it, they don’t know what it is,” he said at an Iowa event in June.

Conant says Trump is correct. “A lot of voters don’t know what woke is,” he said. “Republicans struggle to define it.”

“Fundamentally, a lot of Republicans are troubled by activist politicians on the right and the left, and they don’t want to see the government penalizing companies,” Conant said.

As part of showing how strong he was on fighting wokeness, DeSantis famously went after Disney after the company criticized Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, which restricts what educators can say about sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom. In turn, DeSantis revoked the Disney district’s special tax status and appointed a new board to oversee the district. The megacorporation sued the state, alleging the government was infringing on its First Amendment right.

“I think they crossed the line,” DeSantis said about Disney’s criticism of the law in March. “We’re going to make sure we’re fighting back when people are threatening our parents and threatening our kids.”

But by August, DeSantis appeared to be defeated. It turns out that even though DeSantis had filled the board with members who were loyal to him, the old board had passed a policy that made the new members effectively powerless.

“We’ve basically moved on,” DeSantis said on CNBC. “They’re suing the state of Florida, they’re going to lose that lawsuit. So what I would say is, drop the lawsuit.”

Despite railing against woke companies and politicians, according to Ron Bonjean, a former Republican spokesman and the co-founder of PR firm ROKK Solutions, traditional conservatives don’t like when the government interferes with businesses.

“Seventy percent of polled Republicans are against elected officials going after companies and punishing them,” Bonjean said about his polling. “They want the government to stay out of the marketplace.”

And further polling shows that GOP voters are just not interested in the anti-woke culture wars — at least not enough to rally behind the most anti-woke candidate.

A July 2023 New York Times/Siena College poll found that only 24% of respondents wanted a candidate that would focus on defeating woke ideology.

“It’s immigration, national security, the economy, those are the issues that GOP voters care about the most,” Conant said. “But DeSantis spent most of the campaign talking about what he did in Tallahassee.”

And while campaigning against wokeness was a staple in DeSantis’ stump speeches early in his campaign, he slowly began pivoting. In a televised town hall with CNN this month, he didn’t utter the word once.

Not every political campaign expert believes that it’s simply a messaging problem.

“If you look at the kinds of things DeSantis is arguing against — progressive agendas pushed by school administration, the politics of corporations, DEI ― it’s something that he has articulated well and has a wide audience,” Daron Shaw, a political science professor and public opinion researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, told HuffPost.

But Shaw said DeSantis is just not an effective messenger. “Most conservatives would agree that woke politics have gone too far. But DeSantis isn’t the right messenger. He’s not a happy warrior.”

Trump’s supporters, for better or for worse, find him relatable and believe the former president is standing beside them. Meanwhile, DeSantis comes off as out of touch, like when he was unable to connect with a teenager describing his mental health struggles.

Others believe the media has a role to play. Initially, DeSantis sought only friendly media outlets, eschewing traditional television or print outlets that he likely believed would paint him in a bad light.

“He made a strategic mistake by not engaging in mainstream media,” Conant said. “He allowed his opponents to define him aloof, out of touch, and weird.”

For example, several clips of DeSantis struggling to smile have gone viral. He’s been accused of wearing high-heeled shoes to appear taller and made fun of for eating pudding with his fingers, and his candidacy has been dogged by allegations that he doesn’t know how to relate to voters.

“The Trump influencers and messengers behind the Make America Great Again movement post about DeSantis in high-heeled boots or getting his make-up done,” said David Capen, a North Carolina-based strategist. “They’re using these memes and little clips to make him look weak and insecure.”

And when you’re running against Trump, who is famous for delivering low-blow insults and is polling around 50 points ahead of DeSantis, the last thing you want is to look weak.

Even if DeSantis were polling better or if his message was resonating with voters nationwide and not just in Florida, he’d still have to contend with Trump — who has been the party’s standard bearer since his nomination in 2016.

“Everyone’s fundamental problem is Donald Trump,” Conant said. “He’s effectively the incumbent. You need to convince voters that he needs to be fired.”

And despite the numerous indictments and legal battles the former president is facing, it doesn’t appear to be holding him back. One Iowa strategist believes that DeSantis’ fledging campaign can’t be blamed on anti-wokeness being unpopular or DeSantis’ being too awkward for the national stage.

“It is all about Donald Trump’s popularity,” Jimmy Centers, an Iowa-based strategist, told HuffPost. “Trump is the 500-pound gorilla in the [Iowa] caucus. I think there was a fundamental miscalculation that the Republican electorate was ready for something new.”

[bighermie]

[warriyorcat]

I’ve seen a lot of info on the US election, but there’s one huge thing that I’ve noticed most media and commentators have not mentioned: what happened in the State of Michigan Senate and House races. 

For those unaware, Michigan’s state legislature has been under Republican control for years - since before my parents moved to MI in the ‘90′s - and that was what people expected to see this midterm. That’s not what happened. Control of the state gov’t is now in the hands of the Democrats. Even though there was no ‘red wave’, MI Dems were not expected to flip either chamber. According to 270towin, MI Republicans had a 53% probability to hold the Senate and a 64% probability to hold the house, whereas MI Dems had 35% and 32% probabilities, respectively; there were smaller chances for an even split. MI’s GOP should have held both chambers, and they didn’t. Why?

Every 10 years in US politics, states undergo a process known as redistricting, wherein political lines are changed based on population. In MI, up until 2018, this process was controlled by the party in power (The GOP). Because the party in power draws the lines, they tend to draw the lines in places that benefit them, even if those lines make no sense. This is known as gerrymandering, and it’s everywhere in the US. Michigan’s was bad, because the lines either concentrated Dem votes in one area or spread them too thin to compete with rural areas in the same district. Because of that, you would get wack vote tallies. Dems would win more votes, but the GOP would end up with 75% of the seats.

In 2018, Michigan voted to pass Proposal 2, which established an independent redistricting commission, which removes politicians from deciding where the district boundaries go. This commission is made up of 13 people (5 Dems, 5 Republicans, 3 independents) pulled from the common populace (my dad was invited to be on the commission but he declined). When 2020 came, instead of drawing incredibly gerrymandered boundaries, they drew the boundaries based largely on population. They also asked people to submit their own maps. The districts they drew pretty much balanced out Dem and GOP districts.

Thanks to the redistricting, it balanced the number of Dem and GOP districts and made several of them really competitive. Combining that with GOP candidates underperforming nationally (except Florida) and Dem candidates overperforming, a scenario was created in which the MI Dems flipped both chambers of the state legislature. Even though they hold a two-seat margin in each chamber, it’s still huge. Very few people thought that a flip would happen in MI; most people though other legislatures would flip, and likely in the favor of the GOP.

Anyway, thank freaking goodness. MI’s Governor, Secretary of State, and AG races were all won by the Dem incumbents, and now Whitmer (the Gov.) has a legislative branch that will work with her more on her key issues.

TL;DR: MI Dems flipped both state chambers because there’s no more gerrymandering in MI and not enough people are talking about it.

links: https://www.270towin.com/2022-election-results-live/state/michigan

here is a map of what districts looked like in 2020 prior to redistricting: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/map

Most states have some gerrymandering, but if you want to see extreme gerrymandering look at Maryland, Ohio, and the Chicagoland area of Illinois. 

#LONG post #its my longest post so far #but srsly though this is so so big and its criminal that more ppl arent talking about it #blue wave #us politics #2022 midterm analysis #Michigan #michigan legislature #michigan voting #gerrymandering #tl;dr #no red wave for you

[foreverlogical]

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The newly-installed conservative board of trustees at New College of Florida ousted its current president in favor of former state education commissioner Richard Corcoran Tuesday, launching the initial move in reshaping the campus under the vision of Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The decision came at the first board meeting since DeSantis appointed six new trustees with the idea of overhauling the liberal arts college in Sarasota into a more conservative-leaning institution. That track was accelerated Tuesday when the board paved the way for new leadership as students and parents protested the major changes that appear bound for New College.

“Some have said these recent appointments amount to a partisan takeover of the college. This is not correct,” said trustee Matthew Spalding, a constitutional government professor and vice president at Hillsdale College’s D.C. campus who was appointed by DeSantis. “It’s not a takeover — it’s a renewal.”

A leadership switch from President Patricia Okker to Corcoran as interim leader is one of several moves made Tuesday by the board, which also signaled its intent to abolish diversity, equity and inclusion programs on campus — all policies pushed by DeSantis. The changes are major developments at the school spurred by the new appointees, including Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who has advised DeSantis on critical race theory, and Eddie Speir, the co-founder of Inspiration Academy, a Christian charter school in Bradenton, Fla.

Tuesday’s meeting was met with apprehension from dozens of students and parents who protested what they called a “hostile takeover” at New College. They urged Okker to stay on as president and push back against the new mandates from the DeSantis administration to model the school as a “Hillsdale of the South” in reference to the private conservative religious “classical“ college in Michigan.

Okker in an emotional address told the board — and the campus — that she couldn’t continue to serve as president amid accusations that the students are being inundated with liberal indoctrination.

“The reality is, and it’s a hard reality and it’s a sad reality, but the vision that we created together is not the vision I have been given as a mandate here,” Okker said.

In remaking the board at New College, the DeSantis administration said the school was “completely captured by a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning” and in need of change following downward enrollment trends. To move on from Okker, trustees agreed to a “generous” exit package that includes at least 12 months of paid professional development leave and benefits. Corcoran is unable to begin serving until March, leaving Okker’s chief of staff Bradley Thiessen in charge until then.

“New leadership is the expectation and I think it makes sense,” Rufo said at the meeting. “I don’t think it’s a condemnation of Dr. Okker, scholarship or skills or character.”

DeSantis’ changes at New College follow other efforts to reshape higher education in Florida. Earlier Tuesday, the GOP governor proposed several changes to Florida’s university system, including pressing the GOP-led Legislature to cut all funding for diversity, equity and inclusion programs and to allow university leaders to launch tenure review of professors. Last year, DeSantis and state Republicans placed GOP allies in top university posts and pushed legislation that could limit how professors teach race.

New College is also now set to review its Office of Outreach & Inclusive Excellence at the request of Rufo as part of the state’s stance against diversity, equity and inclusion programs in schools. Rufo originally pushed to abolish the office outright, including four positions, and take other actions tied to diversity and equity, but decided to request further details on the program for a discussion in February.

Tuesday’s meeting was tense at times, with audience members frequently shouting over and at the new trustees as they spoke. Several parents and students addressed the board before they huddled, often criticizing their plans to retool the university and asking them to leave the college alone.

Some faculty said students felt “hopeless” about what could happen at the school, which is a unique college of under 700 undergraduates where students craft personalized education plans and don’t receive letter grades.

“Many students came here to feel safe and access the education that is their right as Floridians,” Diego Villada, Assistant Professor of Theater and Performance Studies, told the board. “And the impulse to make this a place where race, intersectionality and DEI are banned indicates to them that you want everyone to be the same – to be like you.”

Trustees, though, made it clear that the New College overhaul is fully underway, a message that came the same day DeSantis pledged to invest millions of dollars into recruiting faculty to the school.

“The campus needs a deep culture change. You sat up here, you called us racists, sexists, bigots, outsiders,” said trustee Mark Bauerlein, professor emeritus of English at Emory University who was appointed by DeSantis. “We are now in a position of authority in the college. And the accusations are telling us that something is wrong here.”

[qqueenofhades]

Hi Hilary! I'm really enjoying and appreciating your US election coverage and I'm probably being an idiot foreigner here who is missing something (I've been following casually but it's not my system), but you and other Democrats seem pretty positive and I don't quite get it. On the BBC News checker the Democrats and Republicans are exactly neck and neck for the Senate and the Republicans seem way ahead (203-187) for the House. Believe me, I'd love to feel positive about something political (I'm English so...lol) but I feel like I'm missing something in the data. Totally understand if you'd rather not answer this but thought I'd ask as you seem to understand it and are good at explaining it!!

Listen, you have to understand that the narrative for MONTHS was that Republicans were going to absolutely crush us. The House was supposed to be gone by 9pm ET on election night and the Senate possibly soon after. The media water-carried for the GOP as hard as it possibly could, midterm elections for a first-term incumbent president are always bruising (Obama lost 63 seats in 2010 and we didn't get the House back until 2018), and we are dealing with high inflation, economic pain, Biden's low approval numbers, literal fascists, and so much more. This was a setup for the Republicans to roll right in and pick up where they left off in 2020. They nominated tons of crazy, dangerous, fascist election deniers openly promising to permanently fix elections in their state if they won. It was BAD.

Against that, the fact that is a razor-thin, largely uncalled race in terms of major factors, ie Congressional control, is nothing short of astonishing. The House is looking iffy, but if it slips Republican by a tiny majority, there's no claiming a triumphant red wave, and while it will absolutely waste everyone's time in performative nonsense and doing nothing and passing garbage resolutions, it won't be able to make much of that actually stick. If Democrats keep the Senate (which they are... probably likely to do, especially as Fetterman's win in Pennsylvania looms large), they can at least continue to confirm judges and shut down the rabid GOP-y House from doing too much. They need to win 2 of 3 in Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia to do this. Nevada depends on mail-in ballots. The Democrat Mark Kelly seems likely to hang on in Arizona (knock on wood). Democrat Raphael Warnock is in the lead in Georgia, but will need to win his narrow election all over again because of a horrible racist Georgia law saying that a candidate can only win outright if they get 50% in the first round, and he is just under that.

So yes: it is narrow, contingent, and scary, but the fact that we are in this position is genuinely astonishing, considering that everyone figured the Democrats were historic amounts of toast. Election deniers for governor/SOS have almost all lost (still waiting on Nevada and Arizona) and thus far, MAGA candidates have conceded. This is a good thing for democracy, as it ups the chances that control of elections will be maintained, Democrats will hold key swing state legislatures, and more. They also did especially well in several states (Michigan, Colorado, Pennsylvania) and made major flips of governor's mansions. Literally none of this would have happened in a red wave.

Anyway, yes. I wanted things to go better and for us to win some races we didn't win, and otherwise optimistically hope that half the country wouldn't vote for fascist forced-birtherism because wah wah gas prices. Unfortunately, they still did (mostly white people, because you know). But considering the absolute worst case scenario, where we were basically looking at the effective end of democracy in America and election denialists holding key posts in advance of the 2024 elections, yeah, a lot of people are very relieved right now.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts

[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.

#state legislatures #state governments #florida #florida house of representatives #florida legislature #special election florida house district 35 #tom keen #erika booth #ron desantis #volunteer to help democratic candidates #election 2024]

[coochiequeens]

WASHINGTON — In a stunning display of broad support for at least some abortion rights, voters in a handful of key states voted to defend abortion rights in the first major test of public sentiment after the Dobbs decision.

Voters in Kentucky shot down a proposal that would have explicitly denied abortion as a right in its constitution, though the procedure still remains all but banned in the state. In a closely watched fight in Michigan, voters passed a measure that would protect abortion access in the state constitution. Voters in California and Vermont also voted to codify abortion as a constitutional right, while in Montana, voters weighed in on a measure requiring care for fetus born alive after an abortion attempt. That measure was largely expected to pass but remains in close contention with 80% of votes counted.

The Michigan measure was the first such vote since the Dobbs decision in a swing state with sizable populations of both Democrats and Republicans. Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was locked in a tight race with GOP opponent Tudor Dixon, who is anti-abortion and has skirted the issue on the campaign trail, but Whitmer was elected to a second term.

“In the Midwest, a lot of states have already banned abortion. So Michigan is an incredibly critical access point for people across the region,” said Ianthe Metzger, director of state advocacy communications at Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Planned Parenthood and partners EMILY's List and NARAL Pro-Choice America poured unprecedented funds into supporting abortion rights ballot measures and pro-abortion political candidates, as well as battling anti-abortion proposals such as Kentucky’s ballot measure.

“We definitely did all we could,” said Planned Parenthood’s Metzger, who said the group put $50 million into their drive. “It was our biggest mobilization ever.”

The advocacy groups’ campaigning is on top of record Democratic spending on abortion-related advertising including $94 million in gubernatorial races alone, according to Ad Impact data shared with The Washington Post. 

Stephen Billy, vice president of state affairs for anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, insisted that the Michigan vote is not a bellwether for Americans’ sentiments on abortion policy.

Related: ‘We’re sick of watching women die’: In Michigan, doctors rally to protect abortion access

“I don't think it tells us anything about the national abortion environment,” said Billy. “I think what it tells us is that the abortion industry can use tens of millions of dollars.”

SBA List has backed a number of conservative gubernatorial and congressional candidates that have run on banning or severely restricting abortion access, among them Michigan gubernatorial candidate Dixon, Nevada gubernatorial candidate Joe Lombardo — whose stance on abortion has shifted — and Tim Michels, who is running against Wisconsin incumbent Gov. Tony Evers. 

“Many Republicans running for governor and for Senate, we've seen over the past few months trying to scrub their records and to rewrite their records on this issue,” said Metzger. “That alone is an indication that they know that abortion rights are popular.” 

Candidates that have softened their rhetoric include Arizona Republican Blake Masters, who has backtracked from calling abortion “demonic” and supporting fetal personhood to saying he supports bans on late-term abortions, but not all procedures. In Nevada, the Republican running for U.S. Senate, Adam Laxalt, has been a vocal anti-abortion advocate but also recently insisted that he would vote with Democrats against a federal abortion ban. 

Related: Online requests for medication abortions spiked after the Dobbs decision

Vermont voters were largely expected to approve their measure after it passed both chambers of the state legislature with a two-thirds majority in both the 2019-2020 and 2021-2021 legislative sessions, giving it the necessary votes to secure a spot on the ballot.

“Enshrining this right in the Constitution is critical to ensuring equal protection and treatment under the law and upholding the right of all people to health, dignity, independence, and freedom,” stated the proposal written by state Sens. Tim Ashe, Becca Balint, Virginia Lyons and Richard Sears, all Democrats. The governor will sign a document adding the abortion measure and another outlawing slavery to the constitution on Dec. 13.

California's measure was also projected to pass because of high polling in favor of reproductive rights, though it remains unclear from the ballot language if it would protect abortion past the point of a fetal viability, which typically happens around 24 weeks. 

Kentucky’s ballot measure, Amendment 2, would bar the use of public funds for abortion procedures and banned state courts from considering its constitutionality, but it's trending to be rejected by voters in the largely red state.

This story has been updated with election results in California, Michigan, and Kentucky. 

#Midterm elections 2022 #reproductive justice #abortion bans

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Under the guise of rooting out the fraud that Donald Trump baselessly insists cost him the last election, Republicans have mounted a coordinated legal campaign to throw out mail-in ballots in key battleground states — an effort seemingly aimed at Democratic voters. “[Republicans are] looking for every advantage they can get,” Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at the nonpartisan democracy organization Common Cause, told the Washington Post on Monday. “And they’ve calculated that this is a way that they can win more seats.”

As the Post reports, the GOP is seeking to disqualify some mail-in ballots in at least three states, all of which were key to Joe Biden’s 2020 victory and have been at the center of Trump’s election lies and conspiracies since: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Kristina Karamo, the MAGA Republican running for secretary of state in Michigan, filed a lawsuit in Detroit in October challenging absentee ballots that were not cast in person with an ID, without offering rationale for zeroing in exclusively on the majority-Black, Democratic-leaning city. Karamo has been pushing conspiracy theories about fraud — including some pulled from a widely-debunked Dinesh D'Souza movie. That suit is seen as unlikely to succeed. But in Wisconsin, Republicans won their challenge against the nonpartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission to toss absentee ballots with incomplete witness addresses. And in Pennsylvania, the Republican National Committee filed a suit to toss ballots with undated envelopes; the state Supreme Court found the RNC has standing and ordered that election officials “segregate and preserve any ballots contained in undated or incorrectly dated outer envelopes,” putting thousands of already-cast votes at risk of going uncounted. That could prove hugely consequential in the state, home of one of the highest-stakes Senate races: a close contest between Democrat John Fetterman and Trump-backed Republican Mehmet Oz.

“A cornerstone of our democracy is that every ballot should be counted,” Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf wrote Sunday evening. “No voter should be disenfranchised simply because they made a minor error in filling out their ballot.”

Trump and the Republicans have railed hard against mail-in voting since 2020, lying ahead of that election that the method would be rife with fraud. That proved not to be true; the 2020 election, carried out in the middle of a raging pandemic, was “the most transparent, secure, and verified election in American history,” as elections expert David Becker told me in September. That the lies have persisted is no accident: Trump’s attacks on the integrity of mail-in ballots helped form the foundation of his failed campaign to “stop the count” before Biden overtook his Election Night lead. The GOP appears to be continuing those attacks as one component of a broader strategy both to challenge unfavorable outcomes and to limit Democratic participation in the process, including via state-level voting restrictions and intimidation campaigns against both voters and election workers.

It hardly seems accidental that, as they mount legal challenges to absentee ballots, Republicans have also encouraged their own base to vote on Election Day. “If you can eliminate one percent of the votes and they tend to lean Democratic, then that gives you a statistical advantage,” Clifford Levine, a Pittsburgh-based election lawyer for Democrats, told the Post. It remains to be seen what kind of impact the challenges have on this week’s midterms. But the suits underscore the extent to which ongoing lies about the 2020 election are factoring into the 2022 election. “This is not about stopping fraud,” Levine continued. “It’s about discounting mail ballots. There’s just no question.”

#us politics #news #vanity fair #2022 midterms #2022 elections #2022 #republicans #conservatives #GOP #voter disenfranchisement #voting rights #voter rights #2020 election #election laws #the washington post #mail in ballots #absentee ballot #Michigan #Wisconsin #Pennsylvania #gov. tom wolf #kristina karamo

[bumblebeeappletree]

Michigan voters will determine the fate of abortion rights in the state during the November midterms. The upcoming race between Governor Gretchen Whitmer and her GOP challenger Tudor Dixon will very likely determine many abortion providers' ability to provide safe and legal abortions to Michigan residents, as well as patients from Ohio, Texas, Louisiana, and elsewhere, who have crossed state lines in growing numbers following the Dobbs ruling.

'Abortion does not have to be a complicated subject. Abortion is a medical term.' — Here's why one nurse from Scotsdale Women’s Center in Detroit is worried.

For more updates on abortion rights, subscribe to NowThis News.

#abortion #michigan #politics #News #NowThis

#now this news #now this #solarpunk #abortion rights #abortion #human rights #reproductive rights #USA #Michigan #midterms #Gretchen Whitmer #Tudor Dixon #nurse #Detroit #Scotsdale Women’s Center #youtube

[mariacallous]

Of the Senate seats up in 2024, I think the following (all things being equal) I would be confident about staying Dem (Angus King in Maine and Bernie in Vermont are both up for re-election, but they both caucus with the Dems and fairly comfortably won last time and I don't expect any changes there, but I won't list them below)

California Connecticut Delaware Hawaii Maryland Massachusetts Minnesota New Jersey New Mexico New York Rhode Island Virginia Washington

The following I think are likely to stay Dem but it would probably be a bit of a fight:

Michigan Nevada (Jacky Rosen got 50.4% last time, and assuming she can do what CCM did this time plus a presidential election turnout...) Pennsylvania Wisconsin

(These are all based on the current incumbents, btw.)

Races which would probably be a real fight:

Arizona (Sinema only barely got 50% last time) Montana (Tester only got 50.1% last time, but he's a really good candidate for that seat, he oversaw the DSCC this election, and he would benefit from a presidential election turnout, plus in 2018 his GOP opponent got under 47% of the vote, with a Libertarian taking like 3%) Ohio (Brown had a decent majority but Ohio's gotten redder but also with Ryan's close race against Vance and the groundwork there...) West Virginia (Manchin got 49.57% to the Republican's 46.26%, with a Libertarian getting over 4%, so assuming he runs again and assuming he might benefit from being a moderate Dem bucking the party every so often and bringing money to WV and assuming a presidential election year turnout and and and)

Who the fuck knows what'll happen with these races:

Florida - Rick Scott only got 50.1% last time, but Florida has decisively shifted redder since 2018 and a lot of work would need to be done in organizing and campaigning plus a good candidate would need to chosen by the Dems.

Indiana: Mike Braun is retiring to run for Governor of Indiana, and last time he was elected with 50.7% of the vote (the Dem incumbent got just under 45% of the vote, and the Libertarian got almost 4.5% of the vote) so depending on who runs there it could potentially be competitive? Likely not though.

Missouri: Josh Hawley got 51% of the vote to Dem incumbent Claire McCaskill's 45.6%, but he's not especially popular and there might be potential to get it back, especially with a presidential election turnout.

Texas: Ted Cruz just barely beat Beto 50.9% to 48.3% and he's unpopular with a lot of people and Beto and other organizers in Texas have been working to make changes, so with Ted Cruz as an incumbent, the groundwork that's been laid, and a presidential election turnout?

Races staying Republican:

All the rest? lol

Mississippi Nebraska (both seats would technically be up, but Deb Fischer got 57% last time and Ben Sasse won pretty solidly too). North Dakota (Cramer beat Heitkamp 55% to 44%, roughly, and having lived and worked in North Dakota, it's pretty solidly red there, like one-party rule red) Tennessee (sadly I don't think Marsha Blackburn is going anywhere unless she runs for President) Utah Wyoming