Posted on 11/09/2022 8:44:41 PM PST by SeekAndFind
My expectations last night were 20-25 House seats and plus one or two in the Senate. As we can all see this morning it’s looking like maybe 10 House seats and a chance of gaining one in the Senate. It’s also possible the GOP could lose GA and NV and wind up with one less seat than they had previously. For the sake of argument, let’s assume a narrow majority in the House and the Senate remains 50-50 with VP Harris breaking ties. If that’s where things land is there any silver lining?
In the short term it’s definitely a mixed bag. Without the House, Democrats can’t pass anymore giant spending packages which is good news. But Biden would (again, for sake of argument) still have the Senate which means he can appoint progressive judges for the next two years.
However, if you look forward at what the country is facing there may be some advantage for the GOP to not be holding the bag next year. A lot of Americans already feel like we’re in a recession. Whether we’re already in one technically has been hotly debated but a lot of economists believe that even if we aren’t now, we will be sometime next year. CNBC published another story on this topic yesterday.
A U.S. recession is “quite likely” next year as persistent inflationary pressures force the Federal Reserve to shift interest rates higher than expected, former Boston Federal Reserve President Eric Rosengren said Tuesday.
Rosengren told CNBC that the U.S. central bank now looked likely to increase its terminal policy rate — the level at which it will stop raising interest rates — to more than the 5% forecast by investors, pushing the economy into a mild downturn in 2023.
“I think it’s quite likely the U.S. has a mild recession next year,” Rosengren told CNBC’s Joumanna Bercetche at a UBS conference in London.
If this happens, I think we all know that Biden will do his best to blame the problem on Putin and the GOP. The GOP will likewise continue to blame Biden and the Democrats. My own take, which I’ve mentioned several times before, is that neither party is really in a position to fix inflation at this point. That’s really up to the Fed which operates independently. They are going to raise rates until inflation is under control whether Biden likes it or not. He can complain or remain silent but either way there’s not a lot he can do.
But, politically, there are a lot of voters out there who will blame the party in power if a) inflation remains high or b) we wind up in a recession. It comes down to that simple question: Are you better off now than you were x years ago? And given the outlook right now, the answer for a lot of people is going to be a firm no.
That sets us up for a change election in 2024, i.e. let’s throw the bums out. Assuming that’s the general dynamic next year as the race gets underway, it might be to the GOP’s advantage not to be in the line of fire of angry voters. It sets up an argument about competence that I don’t think will help Joe Biden’s approval ratings much. On the other hand it might help a certain GOP governor who won overwhelmingly last night in part because of his competence dealing with a recent natural disaster.
In any case, it’ll be a tougher sell to blame the GOP for the bad economy if they only have control of half of congress. Okay, I confess it’s not much of a silver lining but it’s the best I could come up with after a bad night. The good news is that the 2024 Senate map is more favorable to the GOP than this year’s map. So Democrats’ chances of holding the Senate in 2024 aren’t good no matter what the dynamic.
Even as the caucus pushes to expand a 50-50 majority this fall, it’s bracing for a fight to defend 23 seats to the GOP’s 10 in the next election cycle — many of them in red and purple territory. Against that backdrop, at least eight members of Chuck Schumer’s caucus are agonizing over whether to run again, and a couple hail from states that may be lost to the GOP if the incumbent bows out…
Some of those wrestling with whether to run hold safe seats, like Ben Cardin of Maryland and Tom Carper of Delaware. Others represent perennial battlegrounds, like Jon Tester of Montana and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, both of whom survived the 2018 midterm cycle that evicted four colleagues from red or swing states…
Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, which Trump won by 8 points, said he still plans to run for reelection in his red-tilting state, a big shot in the arm for Schumer and whoever chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Still, Democrats’ best 2024 pick-up opportunities are probably Texas and Florida — not exactly fertile ground.
There’s still a chance the GOP could pull out a win in the Senate and I hope it happens, but even if they can’t quite do it, Democrats may not enjoy being in power next year. No matter what else happens, Dems face a tougher map two years from now making their chances of either winning back or holding the Senate pretty low.
I had to wait until I was 21 to vote for the first time. That was in 1968. As I recall, back then, you had to be able to show proof that you couldn't vote in person, in order to cast an absentee ballot. My father was an immigrant to this country as a little boy from Holland in 1912, and was proud to be a citizen of this country. He impressed upon us the importance of going to the polls in person to vote every year. He was an FDR Democrat. If he was alive today, he wouldn't recognize the party, and sure as hell wouldn't be a Democrat.
The Democrats did well in congressional districts in North Carolina only because the Democrat leaning state supreme court threw out the electoral map drawn up by the state legislature and drew one favorable to Democrats in its place.
The good news is this:
- North Carolina elected Ted Budd to the US Senate
- North Carolina elected 2 Republicans to the state supreme court which flipped it from 4-3 Democrat to 5-2 Republican
- North Carolina elected supermajorities to both houses of the state legislature (meaning they can override any veto issued by the Democrat Governor).
Whether because the legislature draws a Republican friendly electoral map in the state for the next election or because the state supreme court overturns the previous insane Democrat court’s decision. Also, a couple of election integrity laws including voter ID which the state supreme court had struck down will now go into force as the new state supreme court reverses those decisions.
We need to get back to that. You should have to show you would be out of town or that you are too infirm to show up at the poll.
We also need several more election integrity laws like those in Florida:
- voter ID
- each precinct must report at the end of each day how many ballots it has received (ie no “finding” ballots after the polls close)
- strict deadline that all ballots MUST be received by election day. If you can’t get your ballot in by then TOUGH CRAP - Your ballot doesn’t count.
Correct: “You had to have proof, presented in person, that you were going to be out of town and couldn’t vote during normal voting hours. They knew in those days that integrity of elections was paramount.”
Same; and in the state where I resided back then:
Done at the county’s Board of Elections Office, and while still there, when the application was approved, you voted at one of the booths (usually 16 - 20 were set up).
Good analysis.
I’m not saying it applies to all women from PA but I do know that every woman from PA I ever worked with was a backstabber. It was uncanny.
It’s impossible to say definitively without seeing exit polls based on race or ethnicity as well as turn out
I blue baby boomers are dying off and they are pretty sizable majority conservative voters contrary to the 1970s and there are a lot of liberals in this country a lot more than we’d like to admit that is the real problem folks and the more boomers to die off and the more open borders we have like I have warned all this for him for 20 years now the worse it’s going to get
There are things most normal people have no idea about in this nation.
Chief among them is, it has been penetrated and taken over by an East German Stasi-like intelligence operation, complete with a ridiculously massive civilian informant/spy network, which remains entirely in the shadows, and uses the illusion of our democratically elected Republic to keep us compliant and pacified. It took me a decade of seeing it first hand to be able to accept it. It is way beyond belief.
On the 8th, we headed to the polls, so unified, this massive intel operation, using all of its tricks and intelligence techniques, could not get the complete control it wanted.
That is impressive.
If it gets revealed one day, I do not think it will last ten minutes. So there is that.
John Sexton, when you find yourself only musing to yourself like this you need to just shut up and go away.
If we get the house then we get...
Gridlock..
Not a bad way to go if you ask me
Quality over quantity is not always a bad thing.
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