Posted on 11/23/2018 10:01:53 AM PST by Kaslin
Some random observations on the 2018 offyear elections, for Thanksgiving weekend pondering:
1. We hear constantly, and in some respects accurately, that Americans are deeply divided politically. Another way to look at it: The differences between north and south, visible for two or three centuries, are vanishing. As Real Clear Politics analyst Sean Trende tweeted, "Southern suburbs are starting to vote like northern suburbs, northern rurals/small towns starting to vote like Southern rurals/small towns."
Republicans, who lost suburban House seats on the coasts and in the Midwest in the 1990s, lost them this year in metro Houston, Dallas and Atlanta. But Republican House seats occupy almost all the territory in the vast heartland beyond the coastal Democratic districts -- even as the party lost its House majority.
2. A few votes can make a huge political difference in the Senate. Democrats held two Senate seats (Montana and West Virginia), gained two from Republicans (Nevada and Arizona) and very narrowly lost one (Florida) with percentages that, rounded off, came to just 50 percent. The result: a 52-47 Republican majority.
But if all these close contests had gone to Republicans, their 52-47 majority would balloon to a near supermajority of 56-43. If they'd all gone Democratic, it would be only 52-48.
3. The moanings and lamentations about redistricting -- and how Republican redistricting put the House out of reach of Democrats -- should come to a sudden halt. Democrats won a comfortable majority by winning the House popular vote by about 8 percent, a margin inflated by the fact that there were no Republican candidates in 38 seats and no Democratic candidates in only three. The Democrats' share of votes and of seats will turn out to be about 53 percent.
Post-2012 court modifications of district lines in Pennsylvania, Florida and Virginia helped Democrats, and after the 2020 census, Republicans will control redistricting in fewer states than 10 years before due to this year's governor elections and the establishment of supposedly nonpartisan (but usually liberal-dominated) redistricting commissions.
The grave dangers to democracy posed by Republican redistricting, like those posed (without the media much noticing) a few census cycles ago by Democratic redistricting, have turned out not to be so grave after all.
4. Similarly, you have to comb awfully thoroughly through the results to find evidence that the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, allowing corporations to engage in political speech, biased the system toward Republicans and conservatives, as then-President Barack Obama intimated in his 2010 State of the Union address.
In fact, Democrats outspent Republicans in just about every seriously contested race for Senate, House and governor, just as forces backing Hillary Clinton outspent backers of Donald Trump in 2016. Democrats benefited from big contributors like George Soros, and from multitudes of small contributors motivated by fear and loathing of the 45th president. Spending by corporations had little impact one way or the other.
5. Demographics aren't always destiny, at least in the short term. It has been widely predicted, notably by pollster Stanley Greenberg and journalist Ron Brownstein, that an ascendant America with increasing numbers of blacks, Hispanics, unmarried women and millennials will swing America to the Democrats.
In that direction, perhaps, but not always, at least for now, as Donald Trump's election showed. This year, the narrow defeats of black Democratic governor candidates Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Andrew Gillum in Florida disappointed the ascendantists once again.
REALITY CHECK--- WALL STREET JOURNAL: Democracy Succeeds in Georgia
Despite loser Stacey Abrams' claims of voter suppression, the voting data in Georgia showed a record turnout.
By Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, Nov. 19, 2018
EXCERPT Republican Brian Kemp was declared Georgia’s Governor-elect, yet Democrats are trying to rob him of legitimacy by accusing him of stealing the election. The Democrats usual tricks---hoping to benefit politically by undermining faith in American democracy.
At the last tally on Sunday, Mr. Kemp led Democrat Stacey Abrams by about 55,000 votes or 1.4 percentage points. She finally acknowledged Mr. Kemp’s victory on Friday, though her non-concession concession makes Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump sound like gracious losers.
--snip---rest at WSJ web site
As Georgia's Secy of State, Kemp actually OPENED the voting process to MORE people----this hugely benefited Stacey Abrams.
She vainly tried to invoke the ugly spectre of Jim Crow, but Abrams would have lost by bigger margins were if not for Secy of State Brian Kemp's numerous pro-voting actions......including initiating online measures.
Abrams is just another hate-America factotum using the system to advance herself.
She has flatly rejected arguments that her whining about a stolen election erodes America's faith in the electoral process.
REALITY CHECK Since she’s deeply in debt, Abrams had to solicit big bucks to run a state-wide campaign.
Let’s see her campaign literature and her fund-raising methods.
What did she tell her campaign contributors to separate them from their money?
If she took money——but withheld information that she knew the election had been rigged against her -—
she was taking money under false pretenses......running a Ponzi scheme for herself.
And there you have it - the GOP didn't make the effort to win many of these races. The Never Trumpers tried to teach Trump a lesson and half succeeded.
Or the Democrat vote stealing machine was unchecked....
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