TPM’s Gonzo Election Highlights And Lowlights

Will they please stop with the Dems must pains already? Virginia always goes for the party not in the White House so Mcauliffe did pretty well (although the school thing was stupid of him) and NJ hasn’t re-elected a Democratic governor since 1977. What needs to happen is legislation. That’s all on you Manchema.

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That was supposed to be panic not pains.

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Because we lazily judge these things by presidential voting. 2020, D+16. 2016, D+14. 2012, D+18. 2008, D+15. 2004, D+6. 2000, D+6. Meanwhile, the state’s off-year election cycle depresses voter turnout and enables the state’s famously corrupt politicians to acquire and maintain office with something resembling the machine politics of the early 20th century.

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Last night is what happens when for whatever reason Democrats do not vote.

What Democrat voters/base fail to understand and was specifically intended by James Madison when he wrote the constitution and all the other founding fathers who amended and signed it, is that it takes more than one election to make a real difference.

The reason Democrats had a bad night was not Biden voters switching to Republicans but rather Biden voters NOT voting.

This is and has been a problem for 40 years. That is for 40 years Republicans have been consistently voting in every election whereas Democrats show up now and then. I mean if you compare Virginia’s Gubernatorial results to 2020 Presidential results, the Republican got about 95% of the what Trump got whereas the Democrat got about 75% of what Biden received.

Democrat voters need to understand that the system America has requires voting in not one but every election because one of the very purposes of the U.S. Constitution has intended by its creators was for change to be slow and difficult.

Compare this to Republicans voters who may finally, after more than 40 years, be one brink of ending a woman’s right to chose and control over their own bodies or the NRA’s effort to end any regulation on fire arms. It has taken decades and in the case of ending a woman’s right to control her body we may be on the cusp of Republicans getting what they want. The Heller decision, which is contrary to any reading of the 2nd Amendment and also any reading of any previous Supreme Court ruling on the subject, has delivered ending many gun safety laws.

If Democrats want real change, they need to make a commitment to voting in every election just like Republicans do.

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I’d read on 538 that VA turnout for Democrats was high.

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It was. Would be a mistake to presume that they all voted party line.

Keep telling people here that VA folks like their guns, and don’t look fondly on people who try to take them.

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Not all of it will be wrong. I caught just a small bit of CNN this morning while making coffee, and most of the punditry focused on the failure of Dems to get the infrastructure bill passed, making Dems look weak and ineffective. We can’t rewind the timeline, but I think there’s a good chance McAuliffe wouldn’t have lost if both bills had passed and the Dem messaging about what’s actually in them was good enough.

Another factor was running a weak has-been candidate, but we couldn’t do anything about that. I’m not in VA so I don’t know why he got the nom.

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You are right about VA specifically, but I am expressing a more general disbelief that Republicans seem to have skated on the responsibility for the whole attempted coup thing. Outside of the deep South and the rural West, there is no way that Republicans should be able to run as still viable candidates.

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From 538:

“At least according to the exit polls (which aren’t always reliable, so we’ll be looking at this question in other ways in the coming days), the electorate that turned out in 2021 was older and whiter than the one that turned out in 2020, and more friendly to Republicans in other ways.”

Or to put another way; Republicans do what Republicans always do, they voted. Whereas Democrats do what Democrats sometime do, many did not vote.

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Americans are woefully unprepared to participate in democracy. So many voters are incapable of just thinking rationally “Who is better qualified? Whose policies will benefit me over trime? Who is actually LYING to me about the policies they say they intend to carry out?”

Maybe the theme for the midterms should be IT’S NOT ABOUT YOUR FEE-FEES! The people who fill these offices are going to make decisions that affect your life and the lives of everyone around you, and you need to get off your couch, do a little fucking research, and make rational choices. That often involves picking the lesser of two evils, or someone whose voice is a little annoying, and you may have to stick with a party that has disappointed you lately because the other ones are going to screw you over royally.

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I’ll be curious what happens here in VA regarding the upcoming legalized marijuana. If the GOP legislature nixes it, watch the business community have a shit fit. Not sure if they can nix it, just speculating.

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This is completely wrong. McAuliffe’s 2021 vote total is about 15% higher than Ralph Northam’s 2017 result. Dems voted. It’s just that Glen Younkin’s vote total increased by about 43% over Ed Gillespie’s 2017 result. And that’s troubling. It suggests that Trump’s new and low-propensity voters from 2020 are a lot stickier than ours.

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McAuliffe’s LOSS proVes ELEction TAmperinG. TruMP lost by 10 Points while YOUngkin LEd by 2, PROVing TRUmp REaLLY woN by 12 poiNTs. It’s CALLEd MATH.

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Ciattarelli did say that he’d keep Columbus Day because he said that it was under attack. At least in a second Murphy term he’ll have nothing to worry about.

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VA has an interesting population. There’s the D.C. spillover Libtardia in Fairfax County who are on that side of the Potomac only because D.C. is too expensive. Another isolated enclave in Richmond. And most of the rest of the place is rural red.

Add into that that VA has a massive government and military/former military population. So you’ve got everything from Deep State to MAGA in that mix, but both parts are rather heavily armed and neither like people touching that.

The writing was on the wall since the Dem overreach, it was just a question of how bad it would be.

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Only the House had an election last night, and they are heading to a 50-50 deadlock at the moment.

Senate goes again in 2023, the Dems maintain a 2-vote majority there.

Net result will be absolutely nothing substantive will happen for the next two years.

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The progressive candidates in the Mayoral and City Council races appear to be headed to defeat here in Seattle. Only one (incumbent) seems to be on track to win. But we will know more when the next vote count is released at 4PM today. A miracle will need to happen for the progressives to reverse course particularly in the Mayor’s race.

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Txlawyer, this is dumb even for you.

As the population grows about 3% a year, of course McAuliffe’s 2021 vote total will be higher than Northam’s in 2017.

However, compare McAuliffe’s totals to Joe Biden and Younkin’s to Donald Trump’s. Younkin got fewer votes then Trump and still won. That is because the falloff that always happens between a Presidential and Midterm was far less for Republicans than for Democrats.

Or to again quote 538: The simplest way, though, to describe how Youngkin won is basically that he just performed better across the board, and did so via both turnout and vote choice. At least according to the exit polls (which aren’t always reliable, so we’ll be looking at this question in other ways in the coming days), the electorate that turned out in 2021 was older and whiter than the one that turned out in 2020, and more friendly to Republicans in other ways.

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Here’s a silver lining that portends relatively okay things for Dems in '22:

In the Tea Party wave election of 2009, Republican Bob McDonnell beat Democrat Creigh Deeds by 17.3 points. That’s a hell of a wave in advance of the 2010 bloodbath. Youngkin’s win of 1-2 points over McAuliffe does not suggest a repeat of the 2010 disaster. Dems need to get back to work passing the infrastructure bills, getting the economy back on track, and beating covid. If they can do that, the public mood should be much improved by next fall.

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Whereas yours is dumb because it’s you? Virginia’s population growth from 2010 to 2020 totaled 7.9%. Not annually. In total.

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