The Initial Midterm Lessons For The GOP

It’s time to stop letting Trump pick our candidates.  Voters may not be in love with the Democrats but that doesn’t mean that they’ve changed their opinion on Trump.

This is not the night I was hoping for but that’s politics.  Polls show that voters are not happy with Biden but, at the same time, it’s obvious from tonight that they’re not ready to embrace Trumpian candidates with a history of election denialism.

Another lesson, and this is one that I am going to hold myself to: Don’t allow yourself to get trapped in a bubble when it comes to following politics.  The GOP is probably going to win the House.  They might win the Senate.  I would probably be happy with these results if I hadn’t spent months only hearing news about how this was going to be a wave election.

DeSantis is the big winner tonight.

Tomorrow is Lisa’s birthday.  We’re heading to Lake Texoma on Thursday.  I’m taking a break from politics and focusing on what’s important.

Midterm Results at Halftime

It’s early still but looks like we’re heading to more of a draw than a wave, with regions either being solidly red or solidly blue.

That’s a disappointing result, if it holds.  Both parties have got some work to do.

As Goes Guam, Goes The Nation

The first results of the 2022 midterms are in and Guam has elected James Moylan as it’s new delegate to the U.S. House.  Moylan is only the second Republican to have ever been elected to the position.

If there is a Red Wave, remember that it all started with Guam.

For once, Trump Waited

I wonder how many people are breathing a sigh of relief that Trump didn’t announce that he was running for President at Monday’s rally.  The rumor was that he was going to and you could literally hear Republicans across the country thinking, “Please don’t do this before the midterms.”  Right now, the GOP appears to have a winning message for voters who are concerned about crime and the economy.  The last thing anyone wanted was to have spend Election Day answering questions about Trump.

Fortunately, it turned out that Trump’s big announcement was that he’ll have a big announcement on November 15th.

Looking Towards Election Day

I still don’t believe it’s going to happen but nothing would make me happier than Lee Zeldin defeating Kathy Hochul two Tuesdays from now.  As a Republican, Zeldin is at a disadvantage running statewide in New York.  But then you see the clips from the Zeldin/Hochul debate and you hear Kathy Hochul saying that she doesn’t understand why Lee Zeldin is so concerned about  crime and you realize that, if any Democrat could lose in New York in this environment, it would be Kathy Hochul.

As a sidenote, what is the deal with Democrats blowing debates this election year?  Fetterman had a reason for his poor performance but what excuses can Kathy Hochul, Raphael Warnock, Tim Ryan, Beto O’Rourke, and Gretchen Whitmer offer up?  If these people represent the best that the Democrats have to offer, the party is in real trouble.

If It’s A Day That Ends In Y…

…Bob Menendez is going to be the subject of some sort of federal investigation.

At this point, I think people are so used to Bob Menendez being in legal trouble that the voters would be disappointed in him if he didn’t have someone investigating him.

Menendez went out of his way to ensure that his son gets elected to the U.S. House this year.  So, if Sen. Menendez is ever forced to leave, his seat will probably be quickly filled by Rep. Menendez.

After the Debate

To be honest, I think that Dr. Oz won the Pennsylvania senate race long before Tuesday’s debate.  John Fetterman’s polling numbers had been stalled for a while and all the cries of “New Jersey” stopped being effective months ago.  The Tuesday debate probably just put the final nail in a coffin that was already being hammered shut.

Would Connor Lamb be winning this race at this point?  It’s hard to say.  The national environment is terrible for Democrats but Dr. Oz has a lot of negatives of his own.  Connor Lamb would probably be a Tim Ryan-style candidate.  Ryan is losing in Ohio but he probably could have won in Pennsylvania.

Would John Fetterman be winning right now if he hadn’t had a stroke?  Again, I’m not sure.  Fetterman has never been as impressive a candidate as some have made him out to be.  Even if Fetterman hadn’t had a stroke, he would still be a trust fund kid pretending to be working class.  He would still be the person basing parole decisions on The Shawshank Redemption.  Oz would still have his negatives but, at a time when voters are concerned about crime and rightfully skeptical of Democrats in general, I think this  race was always destined to be close.

Sometimes it’s better to keep quiet

Especially if you’re these three.

Say what you will about John Fetterman, at least he was smart enough to keep quiet at his rally with Biden.  Biden, meanwhile, was even more incoherent than usual.  If there is a red wave in November, I’ll be curious to see if the whispers about Biden’s diminished abilities becomes louder amongst Democrats.

The Best Thing That Could Happen To Joe O’Dea

Trump slams ‘stupid’ GOP Colorado Senate candidate after 2024 remarks

Considering how unpopular Trump is in Colorado, this is probably the best thing that could have happened to Joe O’Dea.  Much like Lee Zeldin in New York, O’Dea is a Republican who originally wasn’t given much of a shot but who has recently been showing unexpected strength in the polls.

Working to O’Dea’s advantage is that he’s running against one of the most vapid senators in Washington, Michael Bennet.  Bennet is so forgettable that most stories on this race don’t even mention that he was briefly a candidate for 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.  He dropped out of that race even before Tim Ryan but he did manage to outlast Eric Swalwell.

Is there anyone in Washington who didn’t run for President in 2020?

Governor Lee Zeldin?

It has been interesting to watch the polling in New York’s race for governor.  Originally, no one was paying attention.  New York is so blue that even Andrew Cuomo was able to get elected three times.  No one expected Lee Zeldin to seriously challenge Kathy Hochul.

The last few days, though, the race has been tightening.  While Hochul still leads, Zeldin is only a few percentage points behind and that would suggest that the momentum has shifted in the final weeks of the campaign.  Along with the rise in crime, the struggling economy, and the Democratic Party’s decision to focus on social issues instead of the economic day-to-day issues that most voters are concerned about, Hochul’s problem is that people already know her so the people who are going to vote for her have already made up their minds to do so.  In most polls, she’s polling between 47-50% and that’s probably the ceiling for her.  Undecided voters, though, are now discovering Zeldin and enough of them seem to like what they say and, more importantly, dislike the job that Hochul and the Democrats are doing in Albany.

For the record, I would be stunned in Zeldin pulled it off.  New York is very, very blue.  For many people in New York, voting for Democrats is as automatic a thing as getting up in the morning.  But the same was true when George Pataki defeated Mario Cuomo in 1994.  If Zeldin does win in November or even comes close, that means it’ll be a good night for the GOP.