The 2022 midterms and beyond

[hntnhole]

11 hours ago, JimInWisc said:

But pretending it didn't happen

It may be possible that you didn't notice my tongue firmly planted in my cheek?  

[hntnhole]

On 11/8/2022 at 9:03 PM, Jackruby said:

it’s the economy

Maybe partially - but obviously not wholly.  

[backdoorjimmy]

I normally stay out of politics because I don't have anything interesting to contribute to these discussions. But I've been utterly confused for a while about one thing - how did the Republicans manage to retake the house? They're the party that staged what a lot of people call a coup. The violence at the capitol on 1/6/2021 is documented. So knowing this, how did the democrats manage to lose? People are celebrating the fact that there wasn't a red wave, but my question is, how wasn't there a blue wave?

I hope this isn't offensive to either side, but I can't wrap my head around it.

[hntnhole]

2 hours ago, backdoorjimmy said:

how did the Republicans manage to retake the house?

Great question !!!  There are several layers to begin to answer that, and here's my take:

Traditionally, whichever party happens to be out of the majority at the midterms gains a majority (often in the House, less so in the Senate), because Americans are notoriously self-centered about when they vote, who for and why.  Given the recession, higher costs for everything, shortages of some goods, etc, this time around the Democrats lost, but only just.  More, they kept the Senate majority, and early in Dec, we'll find out by how much.  

This tradition, in theory, attempts to keep the Congress attuned as much as possible to the will of the citizens.  Piss off the electorate, get tossed out on your (now wealthy) ass.  

However.  This time, Mr. Trump had led so many Americans astray with his constant lies - all aimed at undermining the citizens belief in the stability of their Government - to the point that (apparently) millions of Americans jettisoned their intellect, in favor of following a huckster - the leader of the cult they've fallen into believing,  and merely followed their supposed 'savior' in a vain attempt to restore him to power in the general election 2 years from now.  The truly odious thing is, this segment of the electorate simply abandoned their powers of reason, in favor of believing that the aforementioned conman would uphold and defend their perceived position in the social structure of the US.  Oddly, the Republicans didn't seem to notice that their field of candidates reflected an inordinate number of fools, which didn't help their cause.  

The traditional "out-of-power" wave didn't happen, mostly for reasons the Republicans crafted in the first place.  

However, thanks to a overweening sense of Entitlement on the SCOTUS, that handful of old men (and one truly misguided young woman) really pissed off millions of Americans on both the political right and the left.  That, and the distaste of decent-minded American voters towards the previous President combined to prevent the Republicans from taking the Senate, and gaining only a tiny majority in the House.  Basically, the hatreds stirred up by the previous President, cemented in the minds of the conservative electorate, allowed the Republicans to hang onto the House by their well-manicured fingernails. 

This is only an overview of what happened - I'm sure other guys will be adding their insights as well - but, in the proverbial nutshell, that's pretty much what happened.  I hope you found this helpful, and this thread continues.  

Thanks for the question !!!

[BootmanLA]

I would add the following factors:

FIRST:

In the last few years, the Supreme Court has held that there is no federal constitutional problem with gerrymandering districts for partisan gain. Several red states (Ohio, Texas, Florida) have congressional districts that are far out of balance with the overall balance of votes in the state.

For instance, in Ohio, the Republican who won the Senate seat got 53% of the vote. In a fairly districted state, you'd expect somewhere between 50 and 60% of House seats to go Republican. But the way the state is gerrymandered, 66% of the seats went to Republicans.

In Florida, Rubio got 57% in his Senate race and DeSantis got 59% in the governor's race. But 71% of the congressional seats went to Republicans.

In Texas, Abbott got 55% of the vote. But Republicans took 66% of the House seats.

By contrast: California, the largest blue state, has its districts drawn independently without regard for party. New York's highest court imposed similar restrictions on that state. If those two states alone were allowed to gerrymander the way Republican states do, the Democrats would still hold the House. The Democrats lost four House seats in New York alone because we were not allowed to do what Republicans do in Texas and Florida. 

(Illinois is currently our "best bet"; statewide races tend to go about 55% Democratic, and we hold 14 of 17 seats there.)

SECOND:

In at least three states, courts ruled that the redistricting plans enacted by those state legislatures violated the Voting Rights Act, including the aforementioned Ohio. The others were Louisiana and Alabama, both of which refused to create a second black-majority district to better reflect the states' populations. The Supreme Court blocked all three of those court decisions, allowing the plans - which were already found by the courts to violate the law - to be used for this election anyway. If those decisions had not been blocked, the Democrats would probably still hold the House.

THIRD:

Republican legislatures in many red states enacted a whole batch of discriminatory voting measures over the last few years, curtailing or eliminating drop boxes, prohibiting people from having anyone else turn in their ballot, enabling other voters to easily "challenge" the eligibility of others to vote, cutting back on early voting and vote-by-mail, and more. Almost every measure was designed to hurt turnout in communities where progressives/liberals/Democrats outnumber Republicans. Quite a few were struck down, but again, the courts (stacked with Republican judges hostile to the Voting Rights Act) are upholding these restrictions more often.

Those, in a (large) nutshell, are reasons the Democrats aren't winning races hands down across a lot of the country. 

[PozBearWI]

Whew....  I am glad I went back and got current...  What I need to spend more time on is rereading this thread while I compose my thoughts  with cogent examples to defend them.  

Both of you are making excellent points.  The thread I am seeking is discovery of where we might mine that center line in this valid discussion; which at times seems like opposing points.  When we're both right we can agree upon our defense (as it were) of the argument.  And as I read each side I find myself nodding and thinking "yes and yes, now what?".  

What I observe in general by both parties is that there is too much asking of how we feel - which is valid and is worthy of consideration.  Our social situation if influenced by a number of concurrent factors. 

Media.  Discussions such as this are best done by slow media.  Coming to understanding when we are valuing different things takes patience, time and persistence.  Our overly noisy media and breaking news on our phones distracts us from focus.  We've taught ourselves that we need to know what happened in Washington as it happens...  Why?  What exactly are we going to do? 

Actions in each nation does have an influence on our shared economy.  We moved to a world economy decades ago.  And what hits our pocket is almost never the events of today.  

After this, our reactions seem to have more direct influence than our actions.  Those are almost always strong emotion over reason.  We socially judge with often pretty serious consequences on the judged.  

 

What can we do; those of us here discussing this; to help move us back to finding our centerline?  

[BootmanLA]

2 hours ago, JimInWisc said:

What can we do; those of us here discussing this; to help move us back to finding our centerline?  

I appreciate that this is a goal of yours - and don't mean to disparage it in any way. But quite a few of us don't want to spend more time at the center, the way we did under Clinton and Obama, always waiting for the "flip side" to any advance we made, because precious centrists had to be appeased.

The truth is that when individual positions  - the expansion of medicaid (and even single payer health care), increased legal immigration, abortion rights, same-sex marriage rights, contraception rights - are polled, a huge majority of people in this country support all of them.

(For those who question that statement on abortion: most surveys ask something along these lines: Abortion should
a) Always be legal
b) Be legal but with some restrictions late in pregnancy
c) Be legal but only early in pregnancy
d) Never be legal except to save the life of the mother
e) Never be legal period.

A substantial majority of people in this country believe either a or b. A smaller group believes in c, and even smaller numbers believe in d or e. But anti-abortion people will lump b through d together and say "people overwhelmingly want restrictions on abortion" while concealing the fact that a majority of people want very, very few restrictions at all.)

The problem isn't that we can't get back to a centerline; it's that one side constantly hawks fear and hatred of the other such that groups who would otherwise be natural allies are divided. Poor white people ought to be in solidarity with poor black and brown people, but the right has been telling the poor whites for decades that the reason they're not all upper middle class with great jobs is that the black and brown people get preferential treatment and take jobs from (more deserving) white people. They don't come right out and use this racist language, but that's what they mean when they say "affirmative action is robbing real Americans (ie white people) of jobs".

It's why they used feminists as the same foil (those women are taking your jobs) and LGBT people in a different way (you don't want to have to go to the same BATHROOM as those people do you? They'll be putting the moves on you as soon as you step up to the urinal). And it's why they raised the specter of perverted men in dresses claiming to be trans so they could go into women's restrooms and rape your daughters, while omitting that if you follow a strict "only persons with vaginas can use the women's room" policy, that's where Buck Angel, in all his tattooed, perverse glory will be pissing.

[backdoorjimmy]

4 hours ago, hntnhole said:

Thanks for the question !!!

Thank you for the thoughtful answer @hntnhole -

Quote

The truly odious thing is, this segment of the electorate simply abandoned their powers of reason, in favor of believing that the aforementioned conman would uphold and defend their perceived position in the social structure of the US.  Oddly, the Republicans didn't seem to notice that their field of candidates reflected an inordinate number of fools, which didn't help their cause.  

I agree, it's been wild watching people my mom's age and older lose their collective minds. I have an aunt who believes all kinds of weird stuff, from vaccines having 5G microchips in them to covid masks having mind control devices to Tom Hanks drinking the blood of scared children **sigh**

 

Quote

Traditionally, whichever party happens to be out of the majority at the midterms gains a majority (often in the House, less so in the Senate), because Americans are notoriously self-centered about when they vote, who for and why.  Given the recession, higher costs for everything, shortages of some goods, etc, this time around the Democrats lost, but only just.  More, they kept the Senate majority, and early in Dec, we'll find out by how much.  

This feels like such a stupid pattern - I mean, if the party was any good in the first place, wouldn't they already be in the majority? On the other hand, where there are only two parties that get the vast majority of the votes, it's probably only natural that they trade wins back and forth.

 

[backdoorjimmy]

4 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

In the last few years, the Supreme Court has held that there is no federal constitutional problem with gerrymandering districts for partisan gain. Several red states (Ohio, Texas, Florida) have congressional districts that are far out of balance with the overall balance of votes in the state.

For instance, in Ohio, the Republican who won the Senate seat got 53% of the vote. In a fairly districted state, you'd expect somewhere between 50 and 60% of House seats to go Republican. But the way the state is gerrymandered, 66% of the seats went to Republicans.

In Florida, Rubio got 57% in his Senate race and DeSantis got 59% in the governor's race. But 71% of the congressional seats went to Republicans.

In Texas, Abbott got 55% of the vote. But Republicans took 66% of the House seats.

Interesting take. I watch a progressive commentary channel on YouTube called Young Turks, and the host broke down a lot of the same stats but had a different theory on the disparity. He pointed to candidates who were endorsed by Trump, especially Hershel Walker, and noted that Kemp got way more votes than Walker did.

He also pointed to other Trump backed candidates, and pointed out that even when they won their races, they were much tighter than up or down-ballot races where other republicans won easily. His hypothesis was that Trump-backed candidates were too toxic for people who would have otherwise voted republican.

I wonder what impact the Trump endorsements had compared to the gerrymandering that went on in these areas. 

 

4 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

In at least three states, courts ruled that the redistricting plans enacted by those state legislatures violated the Voting Rights Act, including the aforementioned Ohio. The others were Louisiana and Alabama, both of which refused to create a second black-majority district to better reflect the states' populations. The Supreme Court blocked all three of those court decisions, allowing the plans - which were already found by the courts to violate the law - to be used for this election anyway. If those decisions had not been blocked, the Democrats would probably still hold the House.

Does it make sense that states get to draw their own districts? I know we're a democratic republic, but at some point it feels like their should be some federal guidelines for how this is done, and it should be tied to the census. I might be wrong, but letting the states control the congressional districts opens the door to complete and total assfuckery - and not the good kind!

 

36 minutes ago, BootmanLA said:

The truth is that when individual positions  - the expansion of medicaid (and even single payer health care), increased legal immigration, abortion rights, same-sex marriage rights, contraception rights - are polled, a huge majority of people in this country support all of them.

I think I know the answer to this question, but I'll ask since you're way more engaged and articulate than me on these issues. Would the democrats have held the house, or even increased their majority and held the senate, if they had sent a medicare for all bill to President Biden's desk? Or if they'd codified abortion rights as soon as the decision was leaked? The same question applies to codifying same sex marriage and contraception rights. How do you think that would have changed the outcome of the 2022 midterms?

 

[PozBearWI]

1 hour ago, BootmanLA said:

I appreciate that this is a goal of yours - and don't mean to disparage it in any way. But quite a few of us don't want to spend more time at the center, the way we did under Clinton and Obama, always waiting for the "flip side" to any advance we made, because precious centrists had to be appeased.

The truth is that when individual positions  - the expansion of medicaid (and even single payer health care), increased legal immigration, abortion rights, same-sex marriage rights, contraception rights - are polled, a huge majority of people in this country support all of them.

(For those who question that statement on abortion: most surveys ask something along these lines: Abortion should
a) Always be legal
b) Be legal but with some restrictions late in pregnancy
c) Be legal but only early in pregnancy
d) Never be legal except to save the life of the mother
e) Never be legal period.

A substantial majority of people in this country believe either a or b. A smaller group believes in c, and even smaller numbers believe in d or e. But anti-abortion people will lump b through d together and say "people overwhelmingly want restrictions on abortion" while concealing the fact that a majority of people want very, very few restrictions at all.)

The problem isn't that we can't get back to a centerline; it's that one side constantly hawks fear and hatred of the other such that groups who would otherwise be natural allies are divided. Poor white people ought to be in solidarity with poor black and brown people, but the right has been telling the poor whites for decades that the reason they're not all upper middle class with great jobs is that the black and brown people get preferential treatment and take jobs from (more deserving) white people. They don't come right out and use this racist language, but that's what they mean when they say "affirmative action is robbing real Americans (ie white people) of jobs".

It's why they used feminists as the same foil (those women are taking your jobs) and LGBT people in a different way (you don't want to have to go to the same BATHROOM as those people do you? They'll be putting the moves on you as soon as you step up to the urinal). And it's why they raised the specter of perverted men in dresses claiming to be trans so they could go into women's restrooms and rape your daughters, while omitting that if you follow a strict "only persons with vaginas can use the women's room" policy, that's where Buck Angel, in all his tattooed, perverse glory will be pissing.

Like it or not, if we don't find out center and expanding Common good over individual WANTS we will continue to live in a polarized society.

I am quite aware that compromise has fallen by the wayside.  That is a big part of the problem.  My winning means "you" lose.  It doesn't have to be that way.  

[BootmanLA]

41 minutes ago, JimInWisc said:

Like it or not, if we don't find out center and expanding Common good over individual WANTS we will continue to live in a polarized society.

I am quite aware that compromise has fallen by the wayside.  That is a big part of the problem.  My winning means "you" lose.  It doesn't have to be that way.  

For certain issues, of course, compromise is essential. What's the ideal marginal tax rate for someone making $140,000 a year? I might say 30%, someone else might say 15%, compromise might make the rate 22%.

That doesn't work for everything. You can't have "compromise" on things like marriage rights - either states can allow restrictions on same-sex couples getting married, or they can't. Either states must recognize each other's legal marriages, or they don't have to. 

You can't have "compromise" on things like racial discrimination. Either you can refuse to hire people, refuse to serve people, refuse to transport people, because of their race, or else you can't. There's no middle ground.

The good news is that for some issues, public opinion has swung so far to one side that it's not possible to stand in the way of progress. Twelve Republican senators joined all fifty Democratic senators to pass the Respect for Marriage Act. The chances of the right getting its way on same-sex marriage are fast approaching zero. Of course, as always, individual churches and clergy will be free to refuse to officiate such marriages, and that's enough to satisfy all but the most hard-core bigots.

I'm for compromise when it's an issue that good-minded people can disagree on the details. I'm not for compromise when it's indefensible to take one of the only two opposing sides.

[BootmanLA]

2 hours ago, backdoorjimmy said:

This feels like such a stupid pattern - I mean, if the party was any good in the first place, wouldn't they already be in the majority? On the other hand, where there are only two parties that get the vast majority of the votes, it's probably only natural that they trade wins back and forth.

The historical reason for the pattern: A president gets elected representing a change in party (Democrat to Republican or vice versa), and he starts out to fulfill campaign promises. The opposing side raises the alarm - can you believe what this guy is trying to do? - and the net result is usually a loss of House seats as a way to temper the efforts of the president. The president's own supporters, by contrast, may not feel the compulsion to vote in the midterms because "their guy" is already in place, and, especially if he hasn't gotten everything he wanted into law yet, they may not be excited about his tenure.

Think, for instance, Clinton's huge losses in the 1994 midterms after pushing for a huge health care overhaul that riled up Republicans. Or Obama's huge losses in 2010 after pushing through the Affordable Care Act. Or Trump's huge losses after his disastrous presidency started, from start to finish. Bush II didn't face that in 2002 because we were newly at war, but blowback from his war overreach is a big part of what cost him the House in the 2006 midterms. And so on.

2 hours ago, backdoorjimmy said:

His hypothesis was that Trump-backed candidates were too toxic for people who would have otherwise voted republican.

I wonder what impact the Trump endorsements had compared to the gerrymandering that went on in these areas. 

That undoubtedly helped Democrats in some races. There was a seat in Washington, for instance, that would have been safe for the incumbent Republican. But she voted to impeach Trump, and she was defeated in the GOP primary by a Trumpanzee. And that candidate, in turn, lost to the Democrat, who flipped the seat blue.

But in general, in districts in red states where there's heavy gerrymandering, a GOP candidate can survive the Trump downward pull - there just aren't enough Democratic voters in those districts to make a difference even if the candidate is dreadful.

2 hours ago, backdoorjimmy said:

Does it make sense that states get to draw their own districts? I know we're a democratic republic, but at some point it feels like their should be some federal guidelines for how this is done, and it should be tied to the census. I might be wrong, but letting the states control the congressional districts opens the door to complete and total assfuckery - and not the good kind!

The census does drive a lot of the process. Congressional districts are apportioned among the states based on population, with each state getting at least one House seat, and the rest distributed by a formula that determines who gains or loses seats when the population has shifted among the states. Once the number of seats in a state is determined, it's up to the state legislature to pass a law that divides the state into districts, each of which must have a population as near as possible to the "ideal" number; that is, if a state has 5,000,000 residents exactly, and it has ten seats in Congress, then each district should be as close as possible to 500,000 people.

The districts must be contiguous - that is, you have to theoretically be able to get from any point in the district to any other point in the district without crossing into another district. I say "theoretically" because the district might have a river down the middle that completely separates the land on both sides - but assuming you could walk on water, you could get from any point to any other point. You can't have two parts of a district separated entirely by land in another district.

Beyond that, it's up to a state to decide how to draw those lines. Remember that each state is a sovereign entity unto itself in addition to being part of the United States. There are some limits - notably, the Voting Rights Act limits the ability of a state to abridge the voting strength of a group based on their race or ethnicity - but the Supreme Court has held that there's nothing in the Constitution that makes drawing the district lines to favor one political party illegal.

Now - that doesn't mean Congress couldn't pass a law to prohibit just that. Congress has the power to supplant any state law regarding the "times, places, and manner" of elections for Congress. It's under that power that they require states to have districts, for instance, instead of a state being free to elect all its congresspeople statewide. Assuming SCOTUS adhered to precedent - no small assumption these days - Congress could ban partisan gerrymandering entirely, and in fact, bills have been pushed to do just that, but they have not passed the Senate.

2 hours ago, backdoorjimmy said:

I think I know the answer to this question, but I'll ask since you're way more engaged and articulate than me on these issues. Would the democrats have held the house, or even increased their majority and held the senate, if they had sent a medicare for all bill to President Biden's desk? Or if they'd codified abortion rights as soon as the decision was leaked? The same question applies to codifying same sex marriage and contraception rights. How do you think that would have changed the outcome of the 2022 midterms?

My gut feeling is that codifying abortion rights would have helped the Republicans, not the Democrats. The GOP would have pointed to the law and screamed that the right needed to take back the House so that this horrible bill could be undone (even though Biden would veto any repeal). Meanwhile, the Dems would, to some extent, consider it a victory over which they could relax. The fact that multiple states started cranking down abortion bans and limits between the Dobbs decision and the election made it that much easier to rally Democratic voters. 

I think the same is true regarding Medicare, marriage, and contraception, though possibly to a lesser extent. Fixing the potential problems before the GOP can wreck things even worse is generally helpful to GOP turnout. Urgency to fix the problems going forward, by contrast, motivates the Democrats to turn out to vote.

[Shotsfired]

On 11/16/2022 at 6:18 AM, hntnhole said:

Thank you, BootmanLA, for the comprehensive reply.

When ShotsFired mentions 'Americans waking up ...', I do think he's got a point.  Civics isn't taught in public schools anymore, and the resulting ignorance has been showing for some years now.  But, the American voting population managed to wake up in time to take the requisite action.  This time.  

But it's not just abortion rights: it's a comprehensive effort to destroy Democracy - i.e. the idea that active participation in Government is required of the citizens.  Now that Orange Jesus has thrown his Cheeto-colored pompadour into the ring again (reasons are debatable, of course), we're in for another tiresome shitstorm sucking up the energy of everyone.  

Exactly