WHAT THE H*** HAPPENED? OR ELECTION RESULTS 2022
The last time we met, we were talking about what was going to happen in the midterm elections, and here we are Election Day + 3, and we still don’t know who is going to control the Senate or the House of Representatives. For you Colorado readers, I will tackle our State next week.
Writing this, I have realized that our feelings about these results were fueled by expectations. Going into the elections, the Republicans were projected to take large majorities in the House and possibly the Senate. In the 2-week run up to election day, polling was trending toward the Republicans and red partisans started to get giddy. Expectations abounded. There were talks of a red wave or a tsunami. (Where do we get these allusions, I do not know. Why isn’t it a blizzard or heavy snow, or light flurries? I guess we are stuck with these water analogies.)
Anyway, all of our dreams (or fears) were based on polling which we then projected toward what we thought or more likely hoped would happen. Whoops. No red wave or tsunami for the Republicans. For the Democrats, it wasn’t a placid lake and definitely not a blue trickle as Nancy Pelosi had predicted. (See the water analogies?) I don’t think anyone believed her, so no harm done. But I digress.
This election was strange where both parties and their partisans were talking past each other. The Republicans ran on inflation (bad), crime (bad), the border (bad).
The Democrats ran on abortion (good) and its potential restrictions (bad), election deniers (bad), Trump/his supporters (bad), and voting Republican equals the end of democracy (bad). Democrats briefly tried to run on their “accomplishments”, the $1 trillion infrastructure bill, the $500 billion student loan cancellations, and the $800 million “Inflation Reduction Act” with its green new deal subsidies. However, since all of these bills were instrumental in creating the inflation we are experiencing now or will experience in the future, they quickly receded to the background.
Republicans responded to the abortion issue by deflecting claiming that inflation, crime and open borders were more important to the voters without ever actually addressing the merits of the issue itself. Similarly, except for a few candidates who took offense, they generally didn’t bite on the Trump issue, nor did they respond to the “threat to democracy” issue since the Democrats didn’t articulate exactly how voting for Republicans would lead to a totalitarian fascist state.
The Democrats responded to the inflation issue by also generally ignoring it. For example, the Democrats spent $330 million on abortion ads and $30 million on inflation ads. The Administration’s first response to inflation was to deny that there was inflation. Then came the argument, that it was transitory. Then we moved to it wasn’t their fault, it was Putin’s fault. It was worse in Europe etc. etc. The response to the rising price of gasoline was that it was high when the Biden Administration took office (it wasn’t), and then that higher gas prices were great because it made it a good time to buy a $50,000 to $80,000 EV. So, if you didn’t have an Electric Vehicle, it was your own fault. There was no response on the crime issue except to claim that crime wasn’t that bad. As for the border, the Administration insisted that the border was secure challenging what we were seeing on a nightly basis with our own lying eyes.
In other words, crazy stuff. The surprising thing was that Democrats could have come up with some gimcrack initiative pretending to address inflation, crime and the border crisis, and then just not do it. They could have lied, but they didn’t, and still they hung on to their seats.
What were the American People thinking? Between the election and now, I have read just about everything from other pundits and commentators trying to explain what the folks were thinking when they voted and why. Some talked about bad candidates. Others talked about the negative Trump effect. Still others talked about Democrat campaign spending advantages. One Fox News Commentator claimed (without evidence, as they say) that men switched to the Democrats because of the abortion issue because they were fearful as they sent their daughters off to college, their little girls would not have access to abortions. Hell….as a father of 3 daughters myself, I can guarantee you that the ability for my daughters to get an abortion if they got knocked up was not in any shape or form a matter of contemplation in my mind much less a consideration on how I would vote. But hey, this was from a FOX analyst, and she gets paid for this stuff.
So, I figured that if these people who were getting paid could come up with this nonsense, why don’t I, as your humble correspondent, give it a shot and for you, it is free.
I think that everyone (who has any type of brain at all including even John Fetterman the new Senator from Pennsylvania) understood that the Democrats were responsible for inflation, rising gas prices, increased crime and the open southern border not withstanding their lame protestations. The problem was that while the Republicans kept pounding the gloom and doom of the Democrats failures, they never provided the voters with any plan for what they were going to do about it.
This left Independent and Democrat voters who historically voted Democrat (and thought that Republicans were generally crazy and evil) without a good enough reason to switch sides. A few switched but not enough to make a wave.
To be honest, with this Democratic President, he would rather have the people suffer a “little” (his term) than create one more molecule of carbon dioxide which may harm Mother Earth in 2100. Also, there is so much money in the economy right now as a result of government spending on COVID relief, infrastructure, economic stimulus, and loan forgiveness bills that has not as yet been spent that it will take a quite a while to squeeze this money out of the economy and bring us back to some type of normalcy. For too many years, Congress, as well as state and municipal governments, have been “fixing problems” with money. Crime? Give mental health professionals more money. Homelessness? How about some more money. Affordable housing? More money. Kids can’t read? More money. Government never goes back to see if the money actually did any good. If the problem still exists…the answer still is more money. So the chance to get this President to do anything to bring inflation down would have only two chances; little and none.
What’s the Score? As I write this, the Republicans control 49 Senate seats to the Democrats 48 with Nevada, Arizona and Georgia outstanding. In the House, Republicans have seized 211 seats to the Democrats 192. It takes 218 for a majority.
On to the winners and losers of this essentially tied election.
WINNERS:
Democrats. Obviously with the serious issues challenging the country and their failure or refusal to do anything about it, the Democrats were primed to be tossed out of office. It didn’t happen. They kept their jobs. They should be thrilled.
Republicans. What? …how can you say that the Democrats are winners (see above) and now the Republicans are winners as well? Although not nailed down yet, it looks like the Republicans will take the House. They won seats. They did not lose seats. So, they won too. More importantly and perhaps perversely, if they had won by a lot and the public actually believed that they would save the day, Republicans would have been blamed for the anticipated 2023 recession and all the other bad things that are going to happen in the next 2 years of the Biden term. In 2024, Republicans can still run on the bad Democrat policies of 2022. They will still be there.
Biden. Since there were not massive losses under Biden’s watch, he can claim victory for his party. The fact that this claim is delusional, and he was more of a liability than a plus will be lost on him. He will hang in there as the “leader” of the Democrat Party making it much more difficult for others to nudge him aside in 2024 if he wants to run.
DeSantis. With his 19-point victory in Florida compared to the underperformance of Trump endorsed candidates, Florida governor, Ron DeSantis has a definite leg up to stop the Trump drive for another shot at Biden in a 2024 rematch.
Incumbents. As this was a no change election with tight margins between the parties, the incumbents turned out to be the clear winners. As of this writing, no incumbent US Senator has been defeated. That could change with the final results from Nevada, Georgia or Arizona where three Democrat incumbents are hanging on, but absent that, it was a great night for the people in power.
In the races for Governor, no incumbent governor was defeated. The only exception could be the governor of Nevada who is currently trailing his challenger. The scorecard on the House is more difficult to assess since as a result of redistricting, a number of incumbents were matched up against each other. Also, several incumbents ran again but in districts that were drawn more unfavorably toward them. Nevertheless, so far, only 7 incumbent House members (5 Democrats and 2 Republicans) have lost to newcomers in the general election.
The Squad: Its membership of far-left socialists/progressives increased to 10 this election cycle. The original Squad elected in 2018 consisted of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Ilan Omar (MN), Ayanna Pressley (MA), and Rashida Talib (MI). They were joined by Cori Bush (MO) and Jamaal Brown (NY) in 2020, and now is 2022, they added Greg Casar (TX), Maxwell Frost (FL), Summer Lee (PA) and Delia Ramirez (IL).
Pollsters: The pollsters didn’t do too bad in this election cycle compared to other cycles. In past elections, pollsters had undercounted Republicans to such an extent that their predictions were meaningless. They adjusted this election cycle resulting in overcounting Republicans by an average of 3% in the eight contested Senate races. Whether the industry will survive in its present form is yet to be determined since for every 1000 calls, only 1.7 Americans are responding. The question remains are pollsters providing valuable information or are the results of their work, dumb luck.
LOSERS:
Trump: Trump was successful in displaying his influence in a number of Republican primary races but was unable to expand that influence to get his candidates elected. This has changed his Presidential reelection chances. While Trump still has a chance to get the nomination with the rise of Ron DeSantis and Trump’s influence in the party damaged, he can no longer be considered a prohibitive favorite.
Pelosi: Nancy Pelosi will no longer be the Speaker of the House (again if trends continue) and will not have the ability to inflict her will on Republicans nor members of her party. At age 82, she is ending her political career. It is yet to be determined if she wants to spend her time in the minority of a gridlocked Congress or not.
Campaign contributors: It is estimated that the 2022 elections cost $16.7 billion. The election for the Senate in Pennsylvania drew $373,000,000. This is compared to the most expensive Senate election in 2016 cycle of $179,000,000 for the same Pennsylvania Senate seat. That’s a lot of money to decide who will get a $174,000/ year job. This is not to mention the time that was spent by countless individuals who could have used their talents to do something productive like cure cancer or play with their kids.
What will happen now? Sorry, but the answer is, mostly nothing. We were a divided country with a divided Congress and a Democrat president coming into this election, and we will be a divided country with a divided Congress and a Democrat president coming out of this election, all for only $16.7 billion.
75% of Americans believe that the country is going down the wrong track. The President has a disapproval rating of 57%. Nevertheless, when asked what he would change for the next two years as a result of the election, Biden said remarkably: “Nothing, because people are just finding out what we are doing and the more they know what we are doing the more support there is.” Biden said he was “confident these policies are working, and we are on the right path, and we need to stick with them.” That’s a direct quote, so I would not be looking for any tracking to the center here.
Republicans take the House. If the Republicans take the House, it may cobble legislation together that would attempt to make things better or embarrass the Democrats, but it would be dead on arrival in a Democrat or 50/50 Senate, even before it got to Biden’s veto pen.. The House more likely will spend its time conducting investigations into the origins of COVID and the appropriateness of the federal government’s response. It will continue to have a January 6th investigation, but the focus will be on the videos showing the Capitol police welcoming protesters into the Capitol building and asking why Nancy Pelosi refused Trump’s offer of troops to protect the Capitol. FBI whistle blowers will come forward to talk about the politicization of the FBI and the Justice Department, and perhaps we will know why the January 6th Defendants, who are looking more and more like political prisoners, are currently held in pretrial confinement long after what their sentences would have been had they pled guilty.
While no meaningful legislation will be passed, we may have several government shutdowns as Republicans press the Administration for spending cuts or other accommodations.
Republicans take the Senate. If the Senate goes to the Republicans, it will put a stop to the Biden racist judicial nomination practice of “White men need not apply”. Of the 68 federal judges nominated by Biden and confirmed, 46 are Black, Hispanic or Asian while only 3 of the 68 (4%) are white men even though white men comprise 30% of the population.
We must remember that most of the action in the first two years to transform America was done through the issuance of Executive Orders and agency regulation. Congress was not involved. That will not change. As a result, American lives will continue to deteriorate. Inflation will take a larger and larger share of our labor. The government will spend more and more money putting us deeper and deeper in debt. Crime will continue to run rampant, and the border will continue to remain open as we struggle to place and process the millions of new residents in the country who have no jobs or assets to take care of themselves, and…
The 2024 election has begun.