2022 midterm election thread

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Republicans will win the House, CNN projects

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Republicans will win the House of Representatives, CNN projects, in a victory that will fall short of their hopes of a “red wave” but thwart President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda and will likely subject his White House to relentless investigations.

The fact that the GOP finally passed the threshold of 218 seats needed for control of the chamber eight days after Election Day – and that it came down to the final districts to report results – underscores the party’s underwhelming midterm election performance, which history and political logic suggested should have delivered a heftier rebuke to Biden and Democrats.

In defiance of political gravity, Democrats held onto the Senate after an election dominated by concerns about high inflation and influenced, in some places, by the Supreme Court’s overturning of a constitutional right to abortion this summer. There’s still an outstanding Senate race in Georgia, which will be decided by a December runoff and will determine how large Democrats’ majority will be.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/16/politics ... index.html

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Midterms Voters Turned Out for Progressive Economic Solutions
by Nina Mast, Lea Woods, and Jennifer Sherer
November 18, 2022

Introduction:

(Common Dreams) In this year’s midterm elections, voters showed a strong level of support for progressive ballot measures across the country. These victories were tempered by the defeat of worthwhile ballot measures in some states and the uncertainty of progress under a divided Congress. Nonetheless, voters across the country approved minimum wage increases, protected access to abortion, supported cannabis legalization, and approved measures to increase housing affordability and promote good union jobs.

Though much work remains to be done to enact a progressive economic agenda, this midterm election showed clear signs of support for a policy agenda that prioritizes economic, racial, and gender justice for working families.

Minimum wage

Nebraska: Voters approved Initiative 433, which will increase the state’s minimum wage to $15 by 2026.

Nevada: Voters approved Question 2, which will increase the state’s minimum wage to $12 in July 2024. The measure also removed a provision that allows employers to pay workers $1 less if they offer health insurance.

Read more here: https://www.commondreams.org/views/202 ... solutions

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Low-Wealth Voters Made the Key Difference in Midterms
by Shailly Gupta Barnes
November , 2022

Extract:

(Common Dreams) In 2009, I went to West Virginia for a week-long school for poor and low-income organizations and leaders. There were 150 people there from over 40 organizations across the country. I met organizers, media-makers, cultural workers, faith leaders, scholars, and advocates of every stripe, united by their desire to raise wages, make housing more affordable, ensure clean water for all, and more. It was a remarkable experience.

At the time, the Great Recession had been declared officially over — but nearly every person there was still reeling from its effects. A decade later, we realized the true extent of that hardship, when the Souls of Poor Folk report found that in the wealthiest country in the world, 140 million people were poor or low-income.

As the Policy Director of the Poor People’s Campaign and the Kairos Center, I spend most of my time thinking about these 140 million people. Among them are our parents and children, friends, neighbors, and people who touch our lives every day.

We seldom hear about poverty in elections. But poor people vote. In 2020, one-third of all votes were cast by poor or low-income people — a figure that rose even higher in some battleground states in the South and Midwest. In all, 50 million low-income people voted in that election.

Numbers like these can make all the difference. That’s why the Poor People’s Campaign reached out to over 6 million poor and low-income eligible voters in the lead up to this year’s midterms. Our bilingual voter drive engaged nearly 1,000 volunteers, who together contacted 1 in every 43 eligible voters.

Read more here: https://www.commondreams.org/views/202 ... -midterms

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Respectable White People Return to the Democrats
by John Stoer
November 17, 2022

Introduction:

(Alternet) The Republicans reached the 218-seat threshold late last night to officially take over the House of Representatives. The vote-counting continues. We don’t yet know how big their majority will be. We do know it will be teensy. (About six races are pending, per the AP.)

We also know the Republicans would have lost without aggressive gerrymandering in Florida and interference by the US Supreme Court in Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana. The Democrats should have won the Congress. As it is, “voters delivered a split verdict.”

“Despite concerns about Biden’s handling of the economy and the prospects of a recession,” reported Bloomberg, “voters delivered a split verdict over who was to blame and how much weight to put on issues such as abortion rights and election deniers’ threats to democracy.”
But was that split really despite economic concerns?

As I said Wednesday, “the economy” isn’t only the economy. “The economy” can include abortion, which is, to many, another “kitchen table issue.” “The economy” (inflation, jobs) and abortion are not mutually exclusive. So did the Democrats overperform in spite of it, as Bloomberg reported? Or did they overperform because of it?

Read more here: https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/respe ... emocrats/

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'Astonishing' New Warnock Ad Shows What an 'Albatross' Trump is for Republicans
by Brad Reed
November 18, 2022

Introduction:

(Alternet) CNN's Chris Wallace on Friday said that a new ad from Sen. Raphael Warnock's (D-GA) campaign shows how much former President Donald Trump is a burden on his own party.

CNN host Don Lemon began the segment by playing the ad, which featured no commentary from any narrator and rather only featured video of Trump endorsing Republican Georgia Senate nominee Herschel Walker, followed by Warnock coming on screen and saying, "I approve this message."

"When you see this ad, this is what many in the Republican Party and Democrats believe that the former president is an albatross at this point, at least around Herschel Walker and maybe the party," Lemon said.

"It's quite astonishing," Wallace replied. "Because in no way is it an attack on Trump and in no way is it an attack on Herschel Walker, it is just playing Trump's endorsement of Walker, and clearly the Warnock campaign feels this is, as you say, an albatross. This is a liability for Walker, not a plus."

Wallace then recounted how many Republicans begged Trump to hold off on announcing his 2024 presidential run until after the Georgia Senate runoff next month to deprive giving Democrats ammunition to use against Walker, as they did not want to make the race a referendum on the former president.

Read more here: https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/trump-warnock/

caltrek’s comment: I just hope that the calculations of the Warnock campaign prove to be correct and that this doesn’t backfire and simply energize Trump supporters to vote for Walker

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CNN projects Caraveo in CO-8 and Porter CA-47 bringing Democrats to 212 Seats.

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In win for Democrats, Georgia judge allows early voting in Senate runoff on Saturday after TG
Source: NBC News

A Fulton County judge ruled Friday that the Georgia Secretary of State cannot prohibit counties from voting on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, a victory for the state Democratic Party and Sen. Raphael Warnock’s campaign.

The order comes after a brief legal battle between Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office and the Democratic Party of Georgia over the Dec. 6 Senate runoff between Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker.

Raffensperger, a Republican, had maintained that changes to Georgia voting laws meant that there could be no early voting on Nov. 26, the only Saturday when it would have been possible for Georgians to cast an early vote in the hotly contested race.

Democrats and Warnock’s campaign filed suit challenging Raffensperger's determination, and Judge Thomas A. Cox agreed with their arguments in a ruling late Friday afternoon. “The Court finds that the absence of the Saturday vote will irreparably harm the Plaintiffs, their members, and constituents, and their preferred runoff candidate,” the judge wrote.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-e ... on_results

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Some Midterm Polls Were On-target – but Finding Which Pollsters and Poll Aggregators to Believe Can be Challenging
by W. Joseph Campbell
November 17, 2022

Introduction:

(The Conversation) Pollsters indulged in breezy self-congratulation in the aftermath of the 2022 midterm elections. Pre-election polls, they declared, did well overall in signaling outcomes of high-profile U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races.

In an allusion to polling’s stunning misfires of 2016 and 2020, Joshua Dyck, director of the opinion research center at UMass Lowell, asserted as the 2022 results became known: “The death of polling has been greatly exaggerated.”

Nate Silver, a prominent data journalist and election forecaster, took to Twitter to proclaim the 2022 midterms were “one of the most accurate years for polling ever.”

Yet, a sense of doubt lingered: While they did not repeat their failures in recent national elections, polls in 2022 were more spotty than spectacular in their accuracy, and performance assessments often depended on which poll was consulted. Or perhaps more precisely, on which polling aggregation site was consulted. Aggregators typically compile and analyze results reported by a variety of pollsters. They often adjust the composite data to emphasize findings of recently completed surveys or to minimize effects of unusual or “outlier” polls.

Misses, near and far

As compiled by the widely followed RealClearPolitics site, polls collectively missed the margins of victory by more than 4 percentage points in key 2022 Senate races in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington.

Read more here: https://theconversation.com/some-midte ... ng-194700

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Arizona county board delays certifying election results
Source: AP

By BOB CHRISTIE

PHOENIX (AP) — The board overseeing a southeastern Arizona county whose Republican leaders had hoped to recount all Election Day ballots on Friday delayed certifying the results of last week’s vote after hearing from a trio of conspiracy theorists who alleged that counting machines were not certified.

The three men, or some combination of them, have filed at least four cases raising similar claims before the Arizona Supreme Court since 2021 seeking to have the state’s 2020 election results thrown out. The court has dismissed all of them for lack of evidence, waiting too long after the election was certified or asking for relief that could not be granted, in increasingly harsh language.

But Tom Rice, Brian Steiner and Daniel Wood managed to persuade the two Republicans who control the Cochise County board of supervisors that their claims were valid enough for them to delay the certification until a Nov. 28 deadline.

They claimed the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission allowed certifications for testing companies to lapse, and that voided the certifications of vote tabulation equipment used across the state.



FILE - Maricopa County, Ariz., ballots cast in the 2020 general election are examined and recounted by contractors working for Florida-based company, Cyber Ninjas, in Phoenix on May 6, 2021. At least one recount will be on tap in Arizona after the counting from the Nov. 8, 2022, midterm elections ends. Once Arizona's counties certify their results in the coming days as scheduled, a recount will be triggered in at least one statewide race. (AP Photo/Matt York, Pool, File)


Read more: https://apnews.com/article/arizona-elec ... dd73c42bde

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Walker, Kemp campaign in Ga. together for the 1st time
Source: AP

By BILL BARROW

SMYRNA, Ga. (AP) — Fresh off his commanding reelection, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Saturday played the role of dutiful Republican soldier as he campaigned for the first time alongside Senate hopeful Herschel Walker after spending months steering clear of his ticket-mate.

The joint appearance reflects how important Kemp’s broad coalition will be in determining whether Walker can unseat Sen. Raphael Warnock in a Dec. 6 runoff. The fact it occurred only now underscores the challenges that Walker, a celebrity athlete turned politician, has had appealing to many independents and moderate Republicans amid an intense focus on his rocky past.

“We cannot rest on our laurels, everyone,” Kemp told a few hundred supporters standing in the parking lot of a gun store in suburban Atlanta, urging them to cast one more ballot in a midterm election year that was underwhelming for Republicans nationally.

Kemp was the top vote-getter in Georgia’s general election, drawing 200,000 more votes in his matchup with Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams than Walker did in his challenge to Warnock. The result: Kemp defeated Abrams by 7.5 percentage points, while Walker trailed Warnock by about 36,000 votes or almost 1 percentage point. Warnock fell just shy of a majority, however, triggering the four-week runoff blitz.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/herschel-wal ... osition_07

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Young Voters Delivered Big Wins for Abortion Rights
by Ennedith Lopez
November 16, 2022

Extracrt:

(Otherwords) In exit polls… 44 percent of young voters named abortion rights as their top concern, and the vast majority of these voted for Democratic candidates. These voters played a big role in shaping the next Congress and helped deny Republicans control of the Senate.
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Young voters…helped Democrats capture statehouse chambers in Michigan and Minnesota, and put them on the cusp of flipping one in Pennsylvania. In my own state, New Mexico, Democrats swept to victory across the board.

New Mexicans currently have full access to abortion, making the state a destination for people seeking abortions from Oklahoma and Texas. Yet abortion access isn’t officially codified in state law. In the upcoming 2023 legislative session, Democratic lawmakers plan on introducing a measure to do just that following the reelection of Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham.

Abortion rights weren’t the only measures on the ballot. A stunning 70 percent of New Mexican voters enshrined a right to early childhood education in their state constitution. Voters in other states raised minimum wages, expanded Medicaid, legalized marijuana, and more. But there’s no denying that abortion rights brought together younger generations to vote in masses seldom seen before.

There is still a lot of work to be done — at least 22 million people of reproductive age still live in 15 states with complete abortion bans. But lawmakers of both parties should take note: Young people will resist radical efforts to violate our reproductive freedoms and our futures.

Read more here: https://otherwords.org/young-voters-de ... n-rights/

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The youth sure like to f*ck and whore around and don't want to take responsibility for their actions. Explains why they support such things so much.

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The youth sure like to f*ck and whore around and don't want to take responsibility for their actions. Explains why they support such things so much.

What youth are you talking about?

Ten-year-olds who have been impregnated through acts of incest?

Victims of rape?

Pregnant women who have been informed that their personal health is at serious risk due to their pregnancy?

Sure, these things might be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, in which case an intolerable and humiliating invasion of privacy would occur so that some individual judge or bureaucratic panel can judge the situation.

What is so objectionable about letting this be a matter kept between a doctor and female patient?