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In 2016, California took yet another significant step in its decades-long quest to become the world’s largest banana republic when then-Governor Jerry Brown signed AB 1921, a then-barely-noticed revision to the state’s vote-by-mail procedures. The change was a small but significant one. California, in its infinite wisdom, decided to make the practice of “ballot harvesting” legal. Thus, instead of only relatives or those living in the same household being allowed to legally collect and turn in absentee ballots for voters - as was previously the law - any “third party” can do it, including activist groups, Democratic operatives, or street-corner panhandlers.As a...

Very few people took notice when far left Governor Jerry Brown signed the changes in AB1921 into law two years ago. As a result, California lost 7 of its 14 Republican House seats this election cycle.

But does the coast-heavy Democratic leadership know anything about the districts outside of their super ZIP codes of the Beltway, California, New York, and Chicago? American voters, in particular independent voters who actually deliver these swings back and forth between parties, keep sending Washington a message with their votes. And Washington keeps misreading that message. It tells us in part that these rapid and large swings show a disconnected middle that feels a distrust with both parties and an allegiance to none. But the magnitude and frequency of these swings tell us something more important: Nothing seems to be working....

Trump fought like "Hell" to keep the Senate and gain Senate seats, which he did. Knowing that Trump is a raging street fighter on all issues the "he" loves & pursues with super vigor, he put little pressure on Paul Ryan, who just stood by and let the House slip from GOP hands. Now...I am thinking, "Did Trump want to give the House to the "Nutcase" Democrats and let them weave their own patterns of self-destruction leading into the 2020 POTUS, campaign. I think so. We shall see as time rolls by. The Democrats have no leaders, they have no...

An internal memo from the Arizona Republican Party is shedding light on Rep. Martha McSally's narrow loss for the Senate this year. The memo, obtained by the Washington Post , lists a number of factors as contributing to McSally's loss, including ad spending, a brutal primary, name recognition and President Trump's popularity in Arizona.

Let's revisit this post from election week, in which I highlighted a number of notable Republican victors in the media's much-discussed "year of the woman."  Since that piece went live, a number of the tentative outcomes have changed: Young Kim narrowly lost in California, Martha McSally narrowly lost in Arizona (though could end up in the Senate anyway), and despite winning comfortably, Cathy McMorris Rodgers stepped aside from leadership, with Liz Cheney taking her place as the top-ranking Republican woman in the House.  A number of female incumbents from competitive districts also lost by a hair, such Mimi Walters and...

Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith has defeated Democrat Mike Espy in Tuesday night's special Senate election in Mississippi, a contest tainted by race-related controversies, NBC News projects.

Final election tonight in Mississippi for the US Senate and a few House races.

Voters in Mississippi on Tuesday will decide a U.S. Senate special election runoff marked by racial controversy and capped by a last-minute visit by President Donald Trump to shore up the beleaguered Republican incumbent. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, a white former state lawmaker who was appointed to the seat in April, is still favored over black Democrat Mike Espy in the reliably Republican state, which has not sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1982. But she has been engulfed in a political storm since a video surfaced showing her praising a supporter at a Nov. 2 public event by...

Don't be fooled, Mississippi. Democrat Mike Espy is no southern Democrat — he’s a radical liberal with a track record of supporting tax hikes and stifling economic growth with job-killing policies.Espy, who is running in the runoff election for the U.S. Senate against Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, has been able to keep a low profile during the chaos of the 2018 midterms, and now has an outside chance of becoming the next senator from Mississippi. That would be a disaster for the entire country, just as it was the last time we sent him to Congress.Espy was a registered lobbyist for...

The signs were made public late last night, leaving no doubt this was a racist stunt by Mississippi Democrats to help drive voter turnout. MSM cable outlets have covered the ‘discovery of nooses’ in breathless fashion, but have conveniently failed to mention the signs left alongside. (Photos of the signs at link)

It's "cui bono?" in Latin. Francophones ask, "à qui profite le crime?" Whatever your linguistic leanings, the point is the same. If you're trying to figure out who committed a crime, figure out who benefits from it. Let's apply the principle to the racially-charged Senate run-off race in Mississippi, in which the African-American Dem, Mike Espy, faces Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith. One day before today's election, two nooses are found at the state capitol. So . . . who benefits? CNN's Joe Johns supplied the answer on this morning's New Day: "The President defending Hyde-Smith, and directly attacking her challenger, the...

A House race in California that was previously called in favor of Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) has been called into question, with Democrat T.J. Cox pulling ahead Monday in the vote count. The Associated Press on Monday said it was retracting its call in the race after previously declaring that Valadao had been reelected. "No new call will be made until the results are certified," the AP wrote in a tweet. --- The race in California's 21st Congressional District, which includes the San Joaquin Valley, is the last contested race in the country. Cox holds a 438-vote lead as of...

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....

FULL TITLE: REVEALED: Democrats won control of the House of Representatives by the largest margin since the Watergate scandal Democrats won the popular vote in the House by the largest margins since the Watergate scandal and resignation of Republican President Richard Nixon. An analysis by NBC News reveals that Democrats stormed to victory over the Republicans in House races, by a whopping 8.6 million votes in this year's midterms. NBC reported that number is the largest margin that Democrats have defeated Republicans in a midterm House election since 1974. That midterm race, shortly after Nixon resigned, allowed Democrats to win...

While you were watching the Red Card in Florida, guess what they pulled in California? A nation riveted. Did Florida elect DeSantis their new Governor, or the anti-Semitic crook with the Hamilton tickets and the Tallahassee corruption scandal? Did Florida elect one of its finest-ever Governors, now term-limited, to the United States Senate, or did they go again for the mummy? And for those with Georgia on their minds, did Stacey Abrams finally figure out that 49 percent is less than 50 percent, or is she still working on the new math? Well, it seems for Republicans focused on those...

Democrats took control of the House by flipping seats in the nation’s suburbs, which have long been political battlegrounds. But those victories rested on more than just the votes of college-educated white voters, whose shift away from Donald Trump and the Republican Party has drawn wide attention. People of color were also a large component of the Democrats’ victories in the suburbs—increasingly diverse communities that no longer fit the stereotype of racial homogeneity. They are more likely to live in the suburbs than in urban areas, and no matter where they live, they tend to vote Democratic. In the AP...

Georgia’s hotly contested election for governor was neither fair nor free, former Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams said in a Monday night interview. Abrams, who announced on Friday that she was ending her gubernatorial bid, told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes that her Republican opponent Brian Kemp had for years undermined democracy as Georgia’s secretary of state. “It was not a free and fair election,” Abrams said. “We had thousands of Georgians who were purged from the rolls wrongly, including a 92-year-old woman who had voted in the same area since 1968 ― a civil rights leader.”

African-Americans increasingly associate GOP with Trump, racist rhetoric Democratic wins in the 2018 midterms were driven largely by African American voters — particularly black women — who increasingly associate the GOP with President Trump’s perceived hostility toward people of color and immigrants, according to an analysis released Monday. The report by the NAACP, the racial justice nonprofit Advancement Project, and the political action group African American Research Collaborative found that across competitive elections 90 percent of black voters supported Democratic House candidates, compared to 53 percent of voters overall. It also found 91 percent of black women, 86 percent of...

New York (CNN Business)Stocks fell sharply Monday, dragged down by reports that Apple's newest line of phones may not be selling as well as Apple or its investors had hoped. The Dow fell more than 500 points and the Nasdaq tumbled 2.8%. Apple's stock fell once more after the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple has cut orders for its iPhone XR, iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max. The new iPhones, which Apple unveiled in September, cost more than previous versions. The $749 iPhone XR is the least expensive new iPhone, but it costs $50 more than last year's cheapest...