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      Who were the big winners and losers of the US midterm elections?

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      Who were the big winners and losers of the US midterm elections?Biden and DeSantis are on the up, but Donald Trump and some of the Republicans’ more unhinged candidates flopped After months of campaigning and billions of dollars spent on advertising, the message from America’s midterm elections could essentially be boiled down to: “Not as bad as Democrats feared.”There were big wins for Republicans in Florida, and the party still seems likely to take the House, but elsewhere candidates endorsed by former president Donald Trump flopped, and there were key victories for supporters of reproductive rights.As Trump licks his wounds after being compared to an egg on legs by a Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper, and as Democrats celebrate avoiding a predicted “red wave”, here’s a look at who did well, and who suffered.WINNERSJoe Biden, US presidentMuch of the talk ahead of last Tuesday’s elections was about how Biden might tank the Democratic party’s candidates. Republicans across the country ran ads tying their opponents to Biden, banking that the unloved president would turn off voters. It didn’t work, as Democrats performed much better than expected across the board. Biden remains very unpopular – his approval rating dropped to 39% in a Reuters poll this week – but that doesn’t seem to be hindering his party. The results prompted Biden, who turns 80 later this month, to repeat his recent assertions that he will run for a second term as president in two years’ time.Ron DeSantis, Republican Florida governorIt’s not just that the Florida governor won re-election, in what is supposed to be a swing state, by almost 20 points. In the process, DeSantis, 44, has also found himself anointed by the rightwing media as the future of the Republican party – in the case of the New York Post, quite literally: “DeFuture”, blasted the front page of the tabloid on Wednesday morning. DeSantis, an anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+ rights Republican, is seen as a more palatable, less hysterical version of Donald Trump. He has been cagey about whether he will run for president in 2024, but if DeSantis does want to launch a campaign, then this was a pretty good way to start.John Fetterman, Democrat Senate candidateThree years ago John Fetterman was mayor of Braddock, a town of fewer than 2,000 people. On Tuesday he was elected to the US Senate, and will represent 13 million Pennsylvanians. It has been a remarkable rise, made all the more astonishing by the fact Fetterman had a stroke days before the Democratic primary in May. The 6ft 8in, tattooed, permanently hoodie-clad senator-elect is still recovering – he relied on closed captioning to process questions in a debate in October – but overcame a stiff challenge from Trump-backed Mehmet Oz to win relatively easily on Tuesday. Fetterman, who has previously said he owns only one suit, is going to have to do some clothes shopping.Reproductive rightsAway from the noise and intrigue about Republican and Democratic candidates and races, Michigan voters approved a ballot measure to secure a constitutional right to abortion, blocking the imposition of a 1931 abortion ban in the state. In Kentucky, voters rejected a measure which would have denied constitutional protections for abortion. North Carolina Republicans failed to secure a majority which would have enabled them to ram through restrictive abortion bans, and it was a similar story in Wisconsin, where the re-elected Democratic governor, Tony Evers, will have the power to veto abortion laws proposed by the state legislature.LOSERSDonald TrumpThe one-term, twice-impeached president had a shocker of an evening, as one after another, many of his endorsed candidates flopped in key races across the country. The fact that many of the Republicans Trump had backed lost isn’t the only thing that will sting. Several of Trump’s people underperformed in states – including New Hampshire and Georgia – where Republicans who had not been anointed by Trump triumphed. To top it all off, Rupert Murdoch seems to have turned on Trump. On Thursday the New York Post, a Murdoch-owned tabloid, mocked up an image of Trump as Humpty Dumpty. “Don (who couldn’t build a wall) had a great fall – can all the GOP’s men put the party back together again?” read the accompanying text.Republicans – outside Florida and New YorkWith an unpopular Democratic president, soaring inflation, high gas prices and widespread doom and gloom about the economy, this was supposed to be the night that Republicans swept through Congress in a “red wave”. They didn’t. By Friday, with votes still being tallied in some states, the Republican party was still short of a majority in the House and the Senate, as Democrats out-performed expectations across the country. There were some exceptions. In Florida both DeSantis and Marco Rubio, the state’s incumbent senator, cruised to victory, and Republicans flourished in state-level races too. It was, the Tampa Bay Times declared, “an electoral catastrophe for Democrats”.(Some of) the unhinged candidatesIn Pennsylvania Doug Mastriano, a Christian nationalist state senator who paid for buses to take people to what became the January 6 insurrection and tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election, was swept away in the governor’s race. Matthew DePerno, a fellow election conspiracy theorist who had branded Democrats “radical, cultural Marxists” lost his bid to be Michigan’s attorney general, and his ideological counterpart Kristina Karamo failed to become secretary of state. Tina Forte, a Republican who attended the January 6 rally and has dabbled in QAnon conspiracy theories, was crushed in her attempt to defeat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic congresswoman, in New York.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022Donald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsAbortionJoe BidenfeaturesReuse this content More

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      How the fall of Roe shattered Republicans’ midterm dreams

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      How the fall of Roe shattered Republicans’ midterm dreamsWomen and young people, furious over losing federal abortion protections, helped Democrats defy expectations This summer, after a tectonic decision by the supreme court to overturn Roe v Wade eliminated the nearly 50-year-old constitutional right to abortion, Joe Biden predicted American women would revolt. Republicans, however, saw a “red wave” brewing, fueled by widespread economic discontent.On Thursday, after Democrats defied historical expectations in the first major election of the post-Roe era, Biden effectively declared: “I told ya so.”Young voters hailed as key to Democratic successes in midtermsRead more“Women in America made their voices heard, man,” the president told a crowd of supporters at the Howard Theater in Washington on Thursday. “Y’all showed up and beat the hell out of them.”The 2022 midterm elections were expected to usher in staggering losses for Democrats. The party in power typically fares poorly, and with Biden’s approval ratings mired in the low 40s, Republicans were expected to make significant gains.That is not how the results unfolded. As the vote count continues in several key races, Republicans appear on track to win a far narrower House majority than they hoped, while Democrats may retain control of the Senate.As a fuller portrait of the results emerges, advocates, Democrats and even some Republicans say one thing is clear: abortion proved a defining issue. Fury over the loss of federal abortion protections galvanized women and young people and delivered a string of unexpected victories for Democrats and new protections for reproductive rights.“You cannot have half of the population have their body autonomy put under threat and not expect it to be mobilizing,” said Heidi Sieck, the CEO and co-founder of #VoteProChoice. “And that’s what we saw across the board with young people showing up, women showing up, newly registered women being more than two- thirds of the newly registered voters.”Exit polls conducted for news networks by Edison Research showed that abortion was the top issue for many Americans, especially people under the age of 30. And about 60% of voters said they were dissatisfied or angry with the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe, according to exit polls conducted by AP Votecast.In every state where an abortion-related measure was on the ballot, voters chose either to enshrine protections or reject new limits. And it was a decisive issue in battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, where the future of abortion access was at risk.In Michigan, voters decisively approved a ballot initiative establishing a state constitutional right to reproductive freedom, effectively stopping a 1931 abortion ban from ever taking effect.They also lifted Democrats to power at all levels of government, re-electing Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Attorney General Dana Nessel and wresting control of the state legislature from Republicans for the first time in decades. Whitmer defeated Tudor Dixon, a Trump-backed Republican who said she opposed abortion in nearly all cases, including when the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.Before the election, the Michigan congresswoman Elissa Slotkin, who was considered one of the most vulnerable Democrats, told the Guardian that she believed her political fate was tied to the result of the state’s abortion proposal. On Tuesday, she held on comfortably.In Pennsylvania, where exit polls showed that abortion was the top issue on voters’ minds, Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee for governor, won in a landslide. He defeated Doug Mastriano, a far-right Republican and one of his party’s most strident opponents of abortion rights.The Democrat John Fetterman won Pennsylvania’s race for Senate against Republican Mehmet Oz, after seizing on a remark that Oz made during a debate in which he appeared to suggest that the decision to have an abortion should rest with women, doctors and “local political leaders”.The issue resonated in red states and blue ones. Like Michigan, California and Vermont approved ballot initiatives to protect abortion rights in their state constitutions. Meanwhile, in deep red Kentucky, voters rejected a ballot initiative that would have explicitly denied constitutional protections for abortion, even as they granted the Republican senator Rand Paul another term. And in Montana, another reliably conservative state, an attempt to impose new restrictions on the procedure failed.David Shor, a Democratic data analyst, told the Guardian’s Politics Weekly America that abortion had been “absolutely instrumental” in Democrats’ successes this cycle.“Abortion really up until very recently was a pretty neutral issue for Democrats – that didn’t mean it was bad, but it wasn’t necessarily a vote-getter in most of the country,” he said. But following the the supreme court decision, he said, abortion suddenly became “the single best issue for Democrats”.“The extent to which voters cared about abortion also skyrocketed,” he said. “Out of the 33 issue areas that we track, abortion went from being the 30th out of 33 most important issues to being the 12th basically overnight.”In the wake of Roe’s fall, Democrats took every opportunity to highlight their support for abortion rights and contrast it with their opponents’ views. They flooded the airwaves with nearly half a billion dollars on abortion-related ads.Voters gave Democrats a wide advantage on the issue, as debates over the loss of abortion rights raised new questions about miscarriage care and exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother. Republicans, on the defensive, sought to avoid the issue. In several instances, Republican candidates removed references to abortion from their campaign websites.But months later, as the campaign season came to a close, Democrats were second-guessing the strategy. Many pre-election polls showed voters worried more about inflation and crime than abortion. These surveys prompted a bout of angst and finger-pointing. Some Democrats argued that the party had focused too singularly on reproductive rights at the expense of offering a clear economic message.But abortion rights advocates say that logic is flawed – that abortion is an economic issue.“If you’re saying inflation, if you’re saying economy, you’re saying reproductive freedom as well,” Sieck said. “We absolutely miss that connection at our peril.”After Tuesday night, there was little doubt that the issue had been decisive in key races.“For everyone who said abortion was a losing issue; for everyone who said abortion is controversial; for everyone who said abortion is a fringe concern and not the meat-and-potatoes kitchen table problem Michiganders care about: you’re wrong, and the ‘yes’ votes prove it,” said Mini Timmaraju, the president of Naral Pro-Choice America.Even some Republicans conceded the issue may have cost them electorally.“If we lost because of abortion, an issue that was not on the ballot, if we lost because I’m pro-life, because I believe every life has dignity, I’m OK with that,” Matt Birk, the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in Minnesota said in a concession speech.The string of victories for supporters of abortion rights followed an August vote in Kansas, when voters overwhelmingly rejected an attempt to remove abortion rights from its state constitution. The result underscored the political potency of an issue Democrats had long tiptoed around.On Tuesday, Laura Kelly, the state’s Democratic governor, held off a Republican challenge as did Democratic congresswoman Sharice Davids. With the veto pen, Kelly, like Wisconsin’s governor, Tony Evers, who also won re-election in a closely watched race, can block any potential legislation that would impose new restrictions on the procedure.In Wisconsin and North Carolina, Democrats kept Republicans from winning a supermajority in their state legislatures, meaning lawmakers will not have the power to override a Democratic governor’s veto and pass new abortion restrictions.There were some bright spots for anti-abortion advocates. Conservative judges were elected to the state supreme courts in Ohio and North Carolina, an encouraging sign for proponents bracing for a barrage of challenges to new laws restricting the procedure. Though Democrats may keep the US Senate, they failed to win 52 seats, enough to overcome the resistance in their party to eliminating the filibuster and codifying Roe.And key races have yet to be called, including in Arizona, where the Republican nominee for governor, Kari Lake, has backed a territorial-era abortion ban temporarily halted by a judge.None of what unfolded this election cycle surprised longtime supporters of reproductive rights, but they hope the results will finally convince Democrats that abortion is not only a winning political issue, but a foundational one that should be central to their campaign strategy and governing agendas at the state and federal level.“Abortion is a winning issue and will continue to be in elections to come,” Timmaraju said on Friday. “That means Democrats need to keep reproductive freedom at the top of their policy agenda and fight to not only codify Roe but expand access to abortion and birth control.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US politicsAbortionWomenUS supreme courtDemocratsRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

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      US midterms 2022: Democrats’ Senate hopes grow as vote count edges forward – live

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      The closely watched Colorado congressional race between far-right Congresswoman Lauren Boebert and the Democratic challenger Adam Frisch could potentially lead to a recount, the New York Times reported. It could, however, be weeks before the race is called or before it is known whether a recount will take place, and the process is complex. In Colorado, voters have until 16 November to fix errors or discrepancies on their ballots, and after that the secretary of state’s office selects at least one statewide race and one race in each county to audit, the Times reported. At that point, if it’s found that candidates are separated by less than .5%, then the secretary of state can order a recount. At the latest count, Boebert had 50.2% of the vote and Frisch had 49.8%. In the initial results, Frisch had the lead over Boebert, but as more votes have been counted, she earned a very narrow edge. Boebert is known as a conspiracy theorist and election deniers and is considered one of the most extreme members of her party. Our story from yesterday: Colorado Republican Lauren Boebert locked in tight race against DemocratRead moreWhy is the vote counting taking so long in Arizona? The AP has a helpful explainer on why its taking days for winners to be declared in Arizona, where the AP has not yet made calls in the crucial governor and Senate races. .css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Almost all of Arizona’s vote happens by mail, and counting all of those ballots can take a while, particularly in a county as large as Maricopa. The state’s largest – and fourth-largest in the country – Maricopa is home to a total of 4.5 million residents, and about 2.4 million registered voters.
      There were some Republican activists in Arizona who advocated that voters intentionally wait until Election Day to drop off their ballots. Some of this push was based on unfounded theories that fraudsters could manipulate voting systems and rig results for Democrats, once they had seen how many GOP votes had been returned early.
      Experts had also warned that such a last-minute crush of ballots could end up creating delays that can ultimately be used by a bad actor to undermine confidence in the election. There were some hang ups this year. About a quarter of voting centers in Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous, had a printing problem Tuesday, in which marks weren’t showing up correctly when voters showed up to print out their ballots.Officials have assured voters that every ballot will be counted. Some pundits have called the Senate race for Mark Kelly, saying the Democrat has defeated Blake Masters, but the AP has not yet declared a winner. Yesterday, a newly elected House representative and the lieutenant governor of Virginia did something rare for Republican office holders: they said it was time for the party to move on from Donald Trump.Their comments were a sign that the uneven performance of candidates he endorsed in the midterms may have damaged the GOP’s support for Trump.But today, Elise Stefanik, the third-ranking GOP lawmaker in the House, announced Trump has her endorsement for the 2024 presidential election.I am proud to endorse my friend Donald J. Trump for President in 2024. President Trump has always put America First, and I look forward to supporting him so we can save America.https://t.co/EXe6Rgz7mW— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) November 11, 2022
      She’s jumping the gun a little bit – Trump has not yet announced another campaign, but is widely expected to do so on Tuesday.CBS News has more reporting indicating that Trump is not taking the loss of several of his hand-picked Republican candidates in Tuesday’s midterms particularly well:Dark time in Trump’s inner circle. Spoke to several longtime friends, donors, and aides in the past 24 hours. Many say he’s listening to very few people, isolated, and meanspirited about his potential rivals. Several of them say they’re tired of his rants and are avoiding him.— Robert Costa (@costareports) November 11, 2022
      “I have never seen him more irresponsible and chaotic then he is today. He seems to be in self-destruct mode. It is irresponsible to attack DeSantis and Youngkin, and it’s irresponsible to announce in any time in the near future” especially before GA runoff, per a Trump adviser.— Robert Costa (@costareports) November 11, 2022
      Trump is on Tuesday expected to make what he’s called a “big announcement” – likely the start of his campaign to win the White House again in the 2024 election.And with a big announcement comes big money – at least he hopes. An appeal email sent out by the ex-president’s fundraising committee today offers people who contribute $45 or more the chance to win a free trip to Mar-a-Lago for the announcement.This post has been corrected to indicate it was CBS News that reported on Trump’s mood, not CNN.Not all the results are in, but expect analysts to spend a lot of time debating just how Democrats pulled off their surprisingly good performance in Tuesday’s election. One theory making the rounds is that the party prevailed thanks to substantial support from young voters. The Guardian’s Erum Salam takes a closer look:The 2022 midterm election delivered surprising results, with Democrats maintaining more House seats than projected and a Republican “red wave” failing to materialize. As the forces driving these come into focus, one group proved to be key: young voters.While final figures are still pouring in, it is estimated that 27% of young voters aged 18-29 cast a ballot in 2022, making this the midterm election with the second highest youth voter turnout in almost three decades, after 2018. In some key battleground states, turnout was even higher, at 31%, and support for Democratic candidates was roughly over 60%, driven in large part by the fight for abortion rights after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade.An Edison Research National Election Pool exit poll showed that 18-29s were the only age group in which a strong majority supported Democrats. Support for Democrats was even higher among Black youth at 89% and Latino youth at 68%.It is a trend that continues from the 2018 and 2020 elections, where youth voter turnout – historically perceived as low – surged and proved to be a crucial voting bloc, particularly for Democrats. But some young voters struggled to cast their ballot – raising questions about the particular hurdles this group faces to have a voice in elections.Young voters hailed as key to Democratic successes in midtermsRead moreDespite many of their candidates’ rhetoric about stolen elections and voting fraud before the midterms, Republicans who lost in Tuesday’s election don’t seem to be flocking to the courts to challenge the results. That could change.Politico reports that on a Thursday conference call, Republican senator Lindsey Graham suggested that if the party’s Senate candidate Adam Laxalt loses in Nevada, it’ll be a sign of fraud. “There is no mathematical way Laxalt loses,” Graham said, according to Politico. “If he does, then it’s a lie.”It’s unclear if Laxalt agrees with Graham, who he would join in the Senate if elected over Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto. On Twitter, Laxalt has been projecting confidence as Nevada’s slow ballot counting process grinds on:Clark County Clerk just reported there are just over 50K ballots left. This number includes Election Day drop off. We know there are rural and Washoe votes to be counted. Assuming these two at least offset, then Cortez Masto needs 63.5% to catch us. We remain very confident.— Adam Paul Laxalt (@AdamLaxalt) November 10, 2022
      Outside New York City, House Democrat Pat Ryan has also triumphed in his re-election battle, the Associated Press says:BREAKING: Democrat Pat Ryan wins reelection to U.S. House in New York’s 18th Congressional District. #APracecall at 12:30 p.m. EST. https://t.co/2nlgpji7ac— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) November 11, 2022
      It was a close call for Ryan. He won 49.4% support against his Republican opponent Colin Schmitt’s 48.6% share of the vote, according to New York’s unofficial results.Another vulnerable House Democrat has won reelection.The Associated Press says David Trone has emerged victorious in a district stretching from western Maryland to Washington’s exurbs. Trone tweeted that his opponent, Neil Parrott, called him to concede the race:I want to thank Del. Parrott for his phone call this afternoon conceding the race. My promise to him, and to all of the people of the 6th District, is this: I’ll continue to work across the aisle to deliver results and get things done. Thank you, Maryland! Let’s get back to work.— David Trone (@davidjtrone) November 11, 2022
      The race was very close. Trone squeaked to victory with 50.5% support against Parrott’s 49.4%, according to the state’s unofficial results.Meanwhile in Alaska, the state’s Democratic House representative is warning that it could be a while before voters learn whether she’s won election to a full term:Buckle up, it’s going to be a bit. pic.twitter.com/9JlcJXPUig— Mary Peltola (@MaryPeltola) November 11, 2022
      Alaska’s ranked choice voting system has made calling their elections particularly complex, and the Anchorage Daily News says don’t expect the final results in Peltola’s race until 23 November. Their preliminary data shows her in the lead over Republican challenger Sarah Palin – yes, that Sarah Palin, the one-time vice-presidential nominee known for her folksy brand of conservatism.Peltola won a special election in August to replace Alaska’s longtime Republican House representative Don Young, who died in office.Guardian US climate reporters Oliver Milman and Nina Lakhani report from Egypt.Joe Biden has implored countries to do more to tackle the climate emergency, telling the Cop27 summit that world leaders “can no longer plead ignorance” and that time to confront the crisis is running out.Biden told a large crowd of delegates at the talks, held in Egypt, that the “science is devastatingly clear – we have to make progress by the end of this decade.” The US president stated that America was taking action on cutting planet-heating emissions and that other major economies needed to “step up” to avoid a disastrous breach of 1.5C in global heating.“Let’s raise both our ambition and speed of our efforts,” he said in his speech on Friday in Sharm el-Sheikh. “If we are going to win this fight, every major emitter needs to align with 1.5C. We can no longer plead ignorance of the consequences of our actions or continue to repeat our mistakes. Everyone has to keep accelerating progress throughout this decisive decade.”Biden, buoyed by better than expected midterm elections for Democrats this week, said that governments need to “put down significant markers of progress” in reducing emissions. Scientists have warned that the world is heading for disastrous levels of global heating, with emissions still not falling fast enough to avoid severe heatwaves, wildfires, droughts and other impacts of the climate crisis.“It’s been a difficult few years; the interconnected challenges we face can seem all-consuming,” said Biden, who accused Vladimir Putin of using “energy as a weapon” in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an action that has caused energy and food prices to soar globally. “Against this backdrop, it’s more urgent than ever that we double down on our climate commitment.”You can read the full report here.The climate challenges we face are great, but our capacity is greater. The global leaders of the COP27 must reach out and take the future in our hands to make the world we wish to see and that we know we need – and preserve our planet for generations yet to come.— President Biden (@POTUS) November 11, 2022
      Four of the five supreme court justices who overturned the constitutional right to abortion showed up at the conservative Federalist Society’s black-tie dinner marking its 40th anniversary, the Associated Press writes.Justice Samuel Alito got a long, loud ovation Thursday night from a crowd of 2,000 people, most in tuxedos and gowns, when another speaker praised his opinion in June that overturned Roe v Wade, long a target of judicial conservatives.At a moment when opinion surveys show that Americans think the court is becoming more political and give it dismal approval ratings, the justices turned out to celebrate the group that helped then-president Donald Trump and Senate Republicans move the American judiciary, including the supreme court, to the right.The Federalist Society has no partisan affiliation and takes no position in election campaigns, but it is closely aligned with Republican priorities, including the drive to overturn Roe.Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Alito offered brief remarks that steered well clear of the court’s work, though Alito praised the Federalist Society for its success in the Trump years and hoped it would continue. “Boy, is your work needed today,” he said.Barrett’s only allusion to the abortion case came when she responded to the crowd’s roar of approval when she was introduced. “It’s really nice to have a lot of noise made not by protesters outside my house,” she said.Abortion protections were on the ballot in some states in the midterm elections earlier this week.US states vote to protect reproductive rights in rebuke to anti-abortion pushRead moreThree days after the midterm election, we’re still awaiting the results of Arizona and Nevada’s Senate races, which will be crucial to determining control of the chamber. The majority in the House is similarly uncertain, though it looks like Republicans have a better shot than Democrats at taking the majority for the next two years. Meanwhile, Donald Trump appears ready to announce a new run for the White House on Tuesday, even as some in the GOP question whether he’s the right candidate to continue leading the party.Here’s more of what we’ve learned so far today:
      Trump has gone after a number of Republicans on social media today, including Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin.
      Why is the Guardian’s count of Senate seats different from the AP’s? This is the reason why.
      One Democratic pollster explained why he believed his party would do well all along. Another explored the reasons why Democrats performed better on the issue of crime than he expected.
      In the days before the election, another veteran Democratic pollster predicted a rough night for the party, in part due to frustration over crime.Writing in The American Prospect, Stanley B Greenberg, who played a part in Bill Clinton’s successful White House campaign, argued that Democrats had failed to convince voters of their ability to stem rising crime. So bad was their handling of the issue that many voters believed the party wanted to defund the police, even though many Democrats reject the idea.Greenberg spoke to New York Magazine in an interview published today about the reasons why Democrats ended up doing better in the midterms than his analyses predicted:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}It’s important not to take the wrong lessons from the fact that we were saved by late partisan polarization, which reflects the post-2016 era where we have high turnout and consolidation of both parties. A lot of moderate Democrats in our October poll said they were voting for Republicans, about twice as many Republicans who said they were voting for Democrats. But that disappeared in the intense partisan polarization at the end. And that was driven on the Democratic side by worries about abortion, Social Security, and democracy. On Tuesday, about 3% of Democrats voted for Republicans and about 3% of Republicans voted for Democrats. A quarter of people in our survey said they made up their mind on the last day, or in the last few days before the election, which we’ve never had before. So we were on a knife’s edge, and it could have been and was poised to be much worse.He also addressed why his prediction about the crime issue does not appear to have come true:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}If you look at the candidates who won, they addressed the crime problem early on and spent a lot of money being clear that they were against defunding the police, and being clear that they opposed those in the party who are advocating it. Voters believe that we wanted to defund the police. And so if you didn’t make your message almost entirely about respect for police and funding the police, you were not going to make any progress.
      I’m actually surprised how much voters are open to rethinking Democrats on crime, but not in the context of this election, where Democrats were mostly saying the wrong thing. They were making the issue more important, but without the right message. The national Democratic message was block grants for more police, banning assault weapons — a range of government programs that our data showed hurt us. If you look at what happened in New York, they led with that kind of messaging.The Democrats’ success in Tuesday’s elections took many by surprise. But not Simon Rosenberg. The veteran Democratic pollster and president of the NDN and New Policy Institute think tanks has been arguing for weeks that his party would perform better than polls indicated in the midterms, and ended up being more right than wrong.Yesterday on Twitter, he shared some thoughts about what propelled Democrats to their surprisingly strong showing:Happy Thursday all!Some thoughts about the election: – Big miss was on Dem/GOP intensity, abortion- 3rd straight disappointing election for MAGA/Trump- Rs denigration of early vote a mistake- AZ, NV encouraging- Please give to Warnock today! 1/https://t.co/vNjVzIzYFd— Simon Rosenberg (@SimonWDC) November 10, 2022
      Before I dive in, it’s worth reviewing our core election arguments. Will be referencing the elements in the thread below. So take a moment to read through it. Holds up pretty well. 2/https://t.co/5poVsdQNKq— Simon Rosenberg (@SimonWDC) November 10, 2022
      Now believe fundamental miss of the cycle was the ignoring of the signals about D and R intensity.Ds had showed intensity all summer/fall. R’s didn’t. Then Ds crushed it in early vote. Rs struggled. Was a clear sign.But somehow we got red wave. 3/ https://t.co/UjEpoMsup3— Simon Rosenberg (@SimonWDC) November 10, 2022
      And of course the thing which drove the Dem intensity was GOP extremism on abortion. It was really important to Rs that they erase notion abortion could drive US politics. Ideological implications of this dire for them. It was pure gaslighting. 4/https://t.co/34K1cKpZ9t— Simon Rosenberg (@SimonWDC) November 10, 2022
      Will be interesting for us learn in coming days whether Rs really believed there was a red wave coming or they knew it was all bullshit. Looking back big flood of R happy polls may be sign they knew they were having intensity issues. 5/https://t.co/1BEbErzFdg— Simon Rosenberg (@SimonWDC) November 10, 2022
      One area we have to explore together is what a political disaster MAGA/Trump has been for Rs: – lost Presidency/Senate/House in 18/20- Disappointing 22- Huge R defections across US, fractured coalition- Attack on voting/early vote costly- Candidates couldn’t raise money 6/— Simon Rosenberg (@SimonWDC) November 10, 2022
      The GOP’s crazy attack on our elections not only reminded voters every day that they’d lost their mind as a party, but it also gave Ds a huge tactical advantage as we banked huge early vote leads across US.”Election denialism” is a disaster for Rs. 7/https://t.co/WJgQ5Jta12— Simon Rosenberg (@SimonWDC) November 10, 2022
      Here is the @ThePlumLineGS on what an abject failure authoritarianism has been for MAGA and the Rs. This is a very important story. 8/https://t.co/nR1YQlTj1M— Simon Rosenberg (@SimonWDC) November 10, 2022
      Trendlines look very good for us in Arizona and Nevada. Am optimistic about both. 9/https://t.co/nR1YQlTj1M— Simon Rosenberg (@SimonWDC) November 10, 2022
      Have you heard of Chase Oliver? Democratic and Republican party leaders in Georgia certainly have. The Libertarian candidate garnered 81,000 votes in the tight race for Georgia’s Senate seat, which will now go to a run-off, in part because of his presence on the ballot. Here’s more about the “armed and gay” politician, from The Guardian’s Andrew Lawrence:The morning after the midterms, Chase Oliver was back at work. “That’s what most other Georgians have to do after an election,” he tells the Guardian. “I have a job and have to pay rent and the bills.”Oliver, 37, has two jobs, actually – one as a sales account executive for a financial services company and another as an HR rep for a securities firm. And as he toggled between email replies and Zoom interviews from his north-east Atlanta home, with three cats and a dog, Delilah, underfoot, you’d never suspect this natty, young Georgian had thrown a spanner into the cogs of American power. “You are possibly the most hated man in America right now,” read one post to his Facebook page.Oliver was the third candidate in Georgia’s US Senate race: a pro-gun, anti-cop, pro-choice Libertarian who proudly announces himself as the state’s first LGBTQ+ candidate – “armed and gay”, he boasts. And on Tuesday night, this surprise spoiler scored an historic upset of sorts, siphoning enough support away from the Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and his Republican challenger Herschel Walker to force the election to a 6 December runoff – Georgia’s second in as many election cycles. Until then, there’s no telling whether the Democrats will retain control of the Senate.The ‘armed and gay’ Senate hopeful who helped force Georgia’s runoffRead moreVote counting is proceeding at an agonizingly slow pace in Nevada, where Democrats are locked in tight races to keep a Senate seat and the governor’s mansion.For an idea as to why, take a look at this explainer from the Associated Press:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The vote counting is taking days, but that’s not abnormal for Nevada, where a chunk of votes have previously not been tallied until after election night. In the two most populous counties, officials warned up front that it would take days to process the outstanding ballots.
      NEVADA’S WAY
      A few things have slowed Nevada’s vote counting in recent elections.
      First, Nevada has also had problems with long lines of voters at poll close, although Nevadans have traditionally opted to vote early. The state won’t release vote counts until all voters who were in line at poll close have cast their vote.
      Second, in 2020, Nevada greatly expanded absentee voting, sending a ballot to every registered voter. The state passed legislation to do that in future elections as well.
      Also that year, nearly 15% of Nevada’s vote was not reported until after election night — and it took three days for the state to report 100% of the vote.
      This year, voting officials in the two most populous counties, encompassing the population centers of Las Vegas and Reno, warned it would take days to process the outstanding ballots.
      County election clerks will count mail ballots received until Nov. 12 as long as they were postmarked by Election Day.
      Officials have until Nov. 17 to finish the counting and submit a report to the Nevada secretary of state’s office, according to state law.
      The state has no mandatory recount law. More

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      Young voters blocked the ‘red wave’. Biden must deliver on student debt cancellation | Astra Taylor

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      Young voters blocked the ‘red wave’. Biden must deliver on student debt cancellationAstra TaylorBiden acknowledged that student debt relief helped motivate ‘historic’ turnout. But we have yet to see a penny of actual relief For years, advocates like myself have been saying that canceling student debt should be a political no-brainer. In addition to being economically smart and ethically just, it would energize voters – especially younger ones.Tuesday proved us right. Voters under the age of 29 broke for Democrats in overwhelming numbers, helping turn the much-feared Red Wave into a Red Trickle. In a speech on Wednesday night, President Biden acknowledged that student debt relief played a big role in motivating the “historic” turnout of young people, alongside the issues of climate change, abortion and gun violence.On Twitter, the White House chief of staff, Ron Klain, made a similar point, saying that President Biden “kept his promises to younger Americans (with action on climate change, student loans, marijuana reform, etc), and they responded with energy and enthusiasm”.The problem is that Klain’s comment isn’t totally accurate. Young people did indeed respond with energy and enthusiasm – to at least one promise that is, to date, unfulfilled. Almost three months after Biden’s cancellation program was announced, not a single person has seen a penny of relief.And now they may not ever see relief – unless Biden acts. On Thursday night, a Trump-appointed judge in Texas struck down the student loan cancellation program. This hyper-partisan decision will hold unless Biden fights back. Fortunately he has the legal tools to do so.The stakes are too high, and margins too tight, for the White House to not follow through on this essential commitment. On Tuesday, debt relief almost certainly played a decisive role in key races, including Senate races. Consider Pennsylvania, where cancellation champion John Fetterman beat back the reactionary Dr Oz. In Arizona, Mark Kelly, another proponent of cancellation, exceeded expectations. Not so for Ohio Democrat and Senate hopeful Tim Ryan, who strongly opposed Biden’s cancellation plan and lost to the Trump impersonator JD Vance. Likewise, in North Carolina, the Republican senator Ted Budd trounced Cheri Beasley, who waffled on debt cancellation and, it seems, paid a price.Ryan’s and Beasley’s cancellation-averse approach was the one many aspiring soothsayers recommended. Ever since Biden took office, professional pundits have vehemently insisted that canceling student debt would turn off middle-aged, middle-of-the road Democrats, when in fact it drew young people to the polls. (Political commentator David Frum, a man who has made his career being wrong about everything, at least admitted he was wrong about this: “I thought student debt relief was bad policy and bad politics. I still think it bad policy – but looking at the youth vote surge, hard to deny its political impact.”)Looking ahead, there’s no doubt student debt relief will play an outsized role in the 6 December Georgia runoff – a contest that may determine the balance of power in the Senate. Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock has been a leader in the fight for cancellation, unwavering in his faith that delivering student debt relief is vital to winning the south. Republican challenger Herschel Walker, meanwhile, has denounced Warnock for wanting to help student debtors, who he claims spend their loan money on booze, vacations and video games.A recent government report shows the absurdity of Walker’s lie: many students only receive one financial aid disbursement per semester, often delivered into banking products with fees so high they are pushed into overdraft; students reported that this led to the need to fast, use candles for electricity, or forgo textbooks and gas. In addition, polling shows that 29% of student debtors will spend less on basic needs – food, housing, bills – should the pandemic student loan payment moratorium end.If Biden wanted to give Warnock a boost, he would cancel student debt tomorrow and let Walker deal with the fall out. Imagine the jubilation and appreciation unleashed when tens of millions of people see their balances reduced or entirely wiped out,1,506,100 Georgians among them. Young people might once again turn out in droves, and the Senate might be saved.Biden has the power to make this happen. As things stand, his debt relief plan is sabotaged by bad-faith litigation. While the president has rightly blasted the Republicans behind these lawsuits, the real story is more complicated. Biden could have directed the education secretary to cancel people’s debts using the “compromise and settlement” authority granted in the Higher Education Act of 1965, but instead his administration invoked a different and more limited legal authority. (It was this limited authority that the Texas judge formally took issue with.)They also chose to make borrowers apply for the program, instead of automatically issuing cancellation – a slow-moving process that bought their billionaire-backed opponents valuable time to cook up legal arguments, find plaintiffs, and line their cases up with sympathetic, Trump-appointed judges poised to toe the conservative line.The White House needs to learn from its mistakes and play hardball. Biden could knock the legs out from under these cynical lawsuits tomorrow by extinguishing all federal student loans immediately and permanently using compromise and settlement authority. Now that would generate some real “energy and enthusiasm” – the kind of energy and enthusiasm required to sustain and expand this week’s odds-defying electoral success.This longer view is what motivates Nailah Summers, co-director of Dream Defenders, a group that just successfully mobilized young Floridians to elect Maxwell Frost, who will be Generation Z’s first member of Congress.“Young people and Black folks in the US did what had to be done to keep the Democratic party from utter collapse in the midterms last night and it’s likely that the terrain in 2024 is going to be even harder,” Summers told me. “Crumbs and half measures won’t secure their place in the White House as life in the US gets harder. The party is going to have to take decisive action to make American lives better and they can start with canceling all remaining student loans.”This month, young people held up their end of the bargain. Now Biden must honor his.If Biden allows Republicans and billionaires to sabotage student debt cancellation without a fight, he risks breaking the fragile trust that has only just been built with younger voters. Student debt cancellation can be one of Biden’s signature victories, and a catalyst for a reinvigorated Democratic party, or a self-inflicted failure – an empty promise that risks demoralizing and demobilizing the demographic on which the future of the Democratic party, and arguably democracy itself, depends.
      Astra Taylor is a writer, organiser and documentary maker
      This article was amended 11 November 2022 to reflect legal developments shortly before publication
      TopicsUS student debtOpinionJoe BidenUS politicsDemocratscommentReuse this content More

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      US midterm elections 2022: Trump backlash grows as top Virginia Republican says ‘I could not support him’ – live

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      Virginia’s Republican lieutenant-governor Winsome Sears said she could not support Donald Trump if he again ran for the White House, telling Fox Business Network in an interview that the former president has become a “liability” for the GOP:“A true leader understands when they have become a liability. A true leader understands that it’s time to step off the stage, and the voters have given us that very clear message… I could not support him.”—VA Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears (R) comes out against Trump’s 2024 candidacy pic.twitter.com/0g1plfHJmu— The Recount (@therecount) November 10, 2022
      The comments are significant considering Sears did something last year that Trump hasn’t done in more than six: win an election. Voters in the Democratic-leaning state elected Sears as the running mate of Glenn Youngkin in his gubernatorial campaign, and she made history as the first woman and first person of color to serve as Virginia’s lieutenant governor.Her comments also underscore the tension among Republicans over Trump’s influence on the party, particularly since many candidates he backed did not fair well in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Voter turnout this year was the second highest of any midterm since 1940, according to the Washington Post, which analyzed AP and US Elections Project data. About 112.5m people – or about 47% of eligible voters – cast ballots in the midterms. In 2018, about 50% of eligible voters cast ballots, according to the Post.And according to researchers at Tufts University, about 27% of eligible voters 18-29 turned out:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}This 2022 youth turnout is likely the second-highest youth turnout rate for a midterm election in the past 30 years, behind only the historic 31% turnout in 2018. Votes cast by young people made up 12% of all votes in this election, nearly matching the 13% youth share of the vote from the 2014 and 2018 midterms, according to National Election Pool surveys.Joe Biden just spoke in Washington to thank Democratic volunteers for their work in securing the party a better-than-expected night in Tuesday’s midterm elections.He noted that several Republicans who embraced baseless fraud claims about his own election win in 2020 ended up conceding their races without much drama:President Biden says none of the 2020 election deniers contested the results of the 2022 midterm elections when they lost:“Tuesday was a good day … for democracy, and it was a strong night for Democrats.” pic.twitter.com/NZlZwNsyIL— The Recount (@therecount) November 10, 2022
      He also linked the surprising support many Democrats received to the party’s pledge to preserve abortion access:President Biden touts the overwhelming support for abortion rights during the 2022 midterms:“Women in America made their voices heard, man … Y’all showed up and beat the hell out of them.” pic.twitter.com/Kc2qZUAwu1— The Recount (@therecount) November 10, 2022
      He closed by touting his own legislative accomplishments, including moves intended to lower the country’s fiscal deficit:President Biden: “I don’t wanna hear from Republicans calling Democrats big spenders. We’re the ones bringing down the deficit. They’re the ones that blew it up over four years.” pic.twitter.com/5N7j0ExfT0— The Recount (@therecount) November 10, 2022
      The Guardian’s Maanvi Singh is now taking over the blog, and will cover the rest of today’s elections and politics news.The Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer isn’t banking on his party continuing to hold the chamber for another two years.Bloomberg Government reports that Schumer intends to prioritize confirming Joe Biden’s judges and other nominees before the year ends and the new Congress begins:🚨Scoop: Senate leader is preparing to pull the defense authorization bill off the floor and instead focus on federal nominees and judges and majority next year is still in limbo. Instead annual defense bill will materialize as an informal conference bill @business @BGOV #NDAA— Roxana Tiron (@rtiron) November 10, 2022
      Democrats still have a path to keeping the Senate majority, particularly if Mark Kelly in Arizona and Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada win their races. Counting is ongoing in both.Even as some Republicans blame him for their party’s struggles in Tuesday’s election, Morning Consult has new data out that confirms he remains the most-liked man in the GOP, though perhaps not as popular as he once was:2024 National Republican Primary:Trump 48% (+22)DeSantis 26%.@MorningConsult, 1,691 RV, 11/2-7https://t.co/AdYWBaSMK0 pic.twitter.com/PZ1AJdcudQ— Political Polls (@Politics_Polls) November 10, 2022
      Trump’s most recent popularity peak came in August, after his actions had received scrutiny from the January 6 committee and his resort searched by the FBI as part of its investigation into potentially unlawful retention of government secrets.It may not be until Saturday that the outcomes of Nevada’s razor-thin Senate and governor races are known, The Nevada Independent reports.That’s based on comments made at a press conference by Joe Gloria, registrar of Nevada’s most-populous county Clark, where Las Vegas is located. The outcome of the two races is expected to hinge on votes from its residents, who tend to lean Democratic:Gloria on today’s numbers:He notes that Clark reported results from about 14k mail ballots last night.He says there are still more than 50k ballots that must be counted in Clark.”Majority of mail should be counted in Clark County by Saturday.”— Sean Golonka (@s_golonka) November 10, 2022
      Yesterday, Gloria said Clark received 12.7k in mail on Wednesday, and in the afternoon, the county announced it received 56.9 from Election Day drop boxes.The 14k reported yesterday was apparently Monday drop off and Tues mail. But Gloria now says there are 50k uncounted.— Sean Golonka (@s_golonka) November 10, 2022
      Meanwhile, NBC News reports a Trump adviser says the former president still plans to announce another run for the White House on Tuesday:A senior Trump adviser just confirmed Tues announcement & said “The media, the corporate elites, and political establishment has all moved in unison against Donald Trump at their own peril. It’s like they want to recreate 2015-2016. Let them. We are doing it again. Buckle up”— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) November 10, 2022
      Invites for Trump’s announcement should go out today.— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) November 10, 2022
      Virginia’s Republican lieutenant-governor Winsome Sears said she could not support Donald Trump if he again ran for the White House, telling Fox Business Network in an interview that the former president has become a “liability” for the GOP:“A true leader understands when they have become a liability. A true leader understands that it’s time to step off the stage, and the voters have given us that very clear message… I could not support him.”—VA Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears (R) comes out against Trump’s 2024 candidacy pic.twitter.com/0g1plfHJmu— The Recount (@therecount) November 10, 2022
      The comments are significant considering Sears did something last year that Trump hasn’t done in more than six: win an election. Voters in the Democratic-leaning state elected Sears as the running mate of Glenn Youngkin in his gubernatorial campaign, and she made history as the first woman and first person of color to serve as Virginia’s lieutenant governor.Her comments also underscore the tension among Republicans over Trump’s influence on the party, particularly since many candidates he backed did not fair well in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Montana has become the latest state where voters said no to further abortion restrictions by rejecting a law that was meant to stop the killing outside the womb of babies who survive a failed abortion – which is already illegal.The so-called “born alive” law would have allowed medical providers to face criminal charges if they don’t take “all medically appropriate and reasonable actions to preserve the life” of infants, according to the AP.The defeat puts Montana among the ranks of Republican-leaning states where voters have rejected attempts to further tighten down on abortion access following the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade in June.Here’s more on the failed law from the AP:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Health care professionals and other opponents argued the proposal could rob parents of precious time with infants born with incurable medical issues if doctors are forced to attempt treatment.
      “Today’s win sends a clear message to state leadership: Montanans demand our right to make private health care decisions for ourselves and our families with the help of our trusted medical teams — and without interference from politicians,” said a statement from Hillary-Anne Crosby, a spokesperson for an organization called Compassion for Montana Families that opposed the measure.
      The outcome comes after a series of wins for abortion rights supporters in states around the country where abortion was directly on the ballot during the midterm elections. Voters enshrined abortion protections into state constitutions in Michigan, California and Vermont. They also voted down an anti-abortion constitutional amendment in conservative Kentucky, just as voters did in Kansas in August.
      Supporters said the proposed Montana law was meant to prevent the killing of infants outside the womb in rare occurrence of a failed abortion, something that is already is illegal. Penalties for violating the proposed law would have included up to $50,000 in fines and up to 20 years in prison.
      At least half of U.S. states have similar post-abortion born-alive laws in place, according to Americans United for Life, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that opposes abortion, aid in dying and infant stem cell research.
      “This initiative would have criminalized doctors, nurses and other health care workers for providing compassionate care for infants, and, in doing so, overridden the decision-making of Montana parents,” said a statement from Lauren Wilson of the Montana Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.Adam Gabbatt has taken a look at the latest round in the long-running American political parlor game, ‘Has Rupert Murdoch Finally Dumped Trump?’:On election day, Donald Trump was clear about how his efforts to support Republican candidates should be seen.“Well, I think if they win, I should get all the credit,” Trump told NewsNation. “If they lose, I should not be blamed at all.”Unfortunately for Trump, he did not get what he hoped for. Instead the former president has seen conservative news outlets, the Rupert Murdoch-owned ones in particular, turn on him, in some cases with gleeful abandon.“Trumpty Dumpty” blared the front page of Thursday’s New York Post, the tabloid Murdoch has owned since 1976. Editors went so far as to mock up Trump as Humpty Dumpty, his enlarged orange head stuffed into a white shirt and a signature red tie.Next to the picture of Trump as an egg perching precariously on a brick wall, the text goaded: “Don (who couldn’t build a wall) had a great fall – can all the GOP’s men put the party back together again?”The Post cover offered the most visceral insight into Murdoch’s thinking, and its contempt was far from an outlier in the mogul’s news empire.“Trump Is the Republican Party’s Biggest Loser” was the verdict of the Wall Street Journal editorial board. A subheading added: “He has now flopped in 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2022.”The piece was just as scathing as the headline, running through nine races this November the paper said Trump had effectively tanked through his continued election denial, his various wars with more moderate Republican candidates and his general unpopularity nationwide.“Since his unlikely victory in 2016 against the widely disliked Hillary Clinton, Mr Trump has a perfect record of electoral defeat,” the editorial said.“The GOP was pounded in the 2018 midterms owing to his low approval rating. Mr Trump himself lost in 2020. He then sabotaged Georgia’s 2021 runoffs by blaming party leaders for not somehow overturning his defeat.”It added: “Now Mr Trump has botched the 2022 elections, and it could hand Democrats the Senate for two more years.”Has ‘Trumpty Dumpty’ taken a great fall from Rupert Murdoch’s grace?Read moreAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez is not happy about how Democrats performed in her state, New York, in the midterms – a series of House losses helping (probably) hand the chamber to Republicans, though Kathy Hochul, the governor, did fend off an unexpectedly strong challenge from her Trumpist opponent, Lee Zeldin.The New York City congresswoman popularly known as AOC told the Intercept: “New York, I think, is the glaring aberration in what we see in this map … what happened in New York really bucks a lot of the trends in what we saw nationwide.“… I think, in New York, the way that those campaigns were run were different than the way a lot of winning campaigns across the country were run. And I think the role of the state party had very strong national implications. If Democrats do not hang on to the House, I think that responsibility falls squarely in New York state.”Identifying key election themes in New York, Ocasio-Cortez said: “I think policing was a big one, I think the choice among certain Democrats to … amplify Republican narratives on crime and policing, running ads on it … validating these narratives actually ended up hurting them much more than a different approach. I think that what we saw in other races was that they were able to really effectively center either their narratives and the narratives that they wanted to run with, whether it was abortion rights, whether it was democracy, whether it was … other key and top priorities.“I think Democrats in New York, they did a couple of things. They ran ads around that were explicitly very anti-defund [the police], which only served to reinvoke the frame and only served to really reinforce what Republicans were saying. If we’re going to talk about public safety, you don’t talk about it in the frame of invoking defund or anti-defund, you really talk about it in the frame of what we’ve done on gun violence, what we’ve done to pass the first gun reform bill in 30 years. Our alternatives are actually effective, electorally, without having to lean into Republican narratives.“… And I think another prime mistake is that in New York state, [ex-governor Andrew] Cuomo may be gone, but … much of his infrastructure and much of the political machinery that he put in place is still there. And this is a machinery that is disorganised, it is sycophantic. It relies on lobbyists and big money. And it really undercuts the ability for there to be affirming grassroots and state-level organising across the state.“And so … you’re leaving a void for Republicans to walk into … it’s a testament to the corruption that has been allowed to continue in the New York state Democratic party.”Josh Hawley, the senator from Missouri who may or may not run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 but definitely did run from Capitol rioters on 6 January 2021, even after raising a fist to the mob, thinks Republicans did not do as well as they might’ve done on Tuesday night because they didn’t run on his populist, not to say Trumpist, principles.He tweets, in a message at least partially counter to the emerging consensus that Republicans suffered (if probably winning the House and maybe winning the Senate can be called suffering) because voters wanted to rebuke their Trumpist drift:Washington Republicanism lost big Tuesday night. When your “agenda” is cave to Big Pharma on insulin, cave to Schumer on gun control & Green New Deal (“infrastructure”), and tease changes to Social Security and Medicare, you lose— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) November 10, 2022
      A refresher on how Hawley ran, as shown by the House January 6 committee, is here.Video of Josh Hawley running, meanwhile, is here:01:08 More

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      Joe Biden indicates he’ll run in 2024, following Democrats’ midterms wins

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      Joe Biden indicates he’ll run in 2024, following Democrats’ midterms winsPresident says he’ll announce decision in early 2023, while two-thirds of midterm voters said they wouldn’t like to see him run To those who do not want to see the US president run for re-election, Joe Biden has a message: “Watch me.”A self-assured Biden, riding high from Democrats’ history-defying showing in this year’s midterm elections, said at a post-election press conference that he intends to seek another term, but that it was ultimately a “family decision”.US midterm elections 2022: Senate and House remain in balance as counting continues – liveRead more“I think everybody wants me to run, but we’re going to have discussions about it,” Biden told reporters, indicating that he would sit down with his family over the holidays and announce his decision “early next year”.01:27A full accounting of the election results will take several more days, or possibly weeks, to know as key states continue counting and a Senate race in Georgia heads to a runoff that could determine control of the chamber.Though Republicans hold the edge in the district-by-district battle for the House, Biden and his party managed to avoid the “giant red wave” that many Democrats had braced for in a political environment shaped by widespread economic discontent and the president’s low approval ratings. Control of the Senate also remains within reach for Democrats.Despite the unexpectedly strong showing Biden, approaching his 80th birthday this month, could still face strong headwinds in 2024. Two-thirds of midterm voters said they would not like to see Biden seek re-election in 2024, according to exit polling conducted by Edison Research. That includes more than 40% of Democrats and 90% of Republicans, the poll showed.But the surprising, mixed results on Tuesday may serve to bolster Biden’s case for seeking re-election and perhaps even quell concerns among those in his party who hope the party elects another standard-bearer in 2024.“Our intention is to run again,” Biden said. “That’s been our intention regardless of what the outcome of this election was.In the months before the election, vulnerable Democrats were peppered with questions about whether they would support Biden in 2024. And Democratic leaders have mostly delicately sidestepped questions about whether he should run again.For now, Democrats’ successes have shifted the attention to Donald Trump, who hoped a wave of Republican victories would propel the launch of his third presidential bid, expected as soon as next week.But many of Trump’s hand-picked candidates lost on Tuesday night, among them Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor, who lost a marquee Senate race in Pennsylvania to John Fetterman. The underwhelming results have raised questions about the former president’s political strength, with some openly warning that he is a drag on the party.Meanwhile, Trump’s chief Republican rival, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, cruised to re-election on Tuesday. Following DeSantis’s strong performance on Tuesday, in which he expanded his support among Hispanic voters and turned the increasingly Republican state even redder, many conservatives are already pushing him as a promising alternative to Trump. The conservative New York Post anointed DeSantis as “DeFuture”.Biden welcomed the Republican competition. “It would be fun to watch them take each other on,” he said.Even before the president makes a decision, his team has started to lay the groundwork for a potential campaign.“We are engaged in some planning for the simple reason that if we weren’t engaged in planning in November of this year, we should be in the political malpractice Hall of Fame,” said Anita Dunn, senior White House adviser, during an Axios event last week.Biden’s approval rating stands at 43% among registered voters, according to a Washington Post-ABC poll released ahead of election day. But he remains popular among Democrats, with eight in 10 giving him positive ratings compared with nine in 10 Republicans who disapprove of his job performance. Slightly fewer than four in 10 independent voters say they approve of his performance.There appears to be little appetite among elected Democrats to challenge Biden in a primary. The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, a leading progressive, has ruled out a run against Biden.Should Biden choose not to run, it’s unclear who would step forward to seek the nomination.As vice-president, Kamala Harris is seen as an heir apparent, and would probably emerge as the frontrunner. Harris, who campaigned across the country for Democrats this cycle, was credited with spotlighting the issue of abortion and reproductive rights, which proved decisive in key races. But she, like Biden, also suffers from low approval ratings.Other Democrats have attracted 2024 speculation. The Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar and the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, both of whom ran in 2020, traveled to several states this cycle to campaign for Democrats.California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, who easily won re-election on Tuesday a year after defeating a recall attempt, has sought to build a national profile by publicly challenging DeSantis. And Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, who stormed to re-election in a battleground state, is seen as a rising star.David Shor, a top Democratic data analyst, said the midterm results underscored the power of incumbency, as many of the party’s endangered members held on to their seats despite a challenging political environment. Rallying behind an incumbent also avoids a messy primary, he said.“There’s definitely a case that it would make sense to avoid a bruising, trillion-dollar primary where all of the smartest minds in the Democratic party devote themselves to driving the favorables down of all of our favorite candidates,” Shor said in an interview on the Guardian’s Politics Weekly America.But the bigger variable, Shor argued, could be the economy.“The traditional pattern of American politics was that there was this really strong relationship between economic conditions and presidential approval. That was true for Clinton, it was true for Bush but it stopped being true for Barack Obama and for Donald Trump. But it’s come back for Joe Biden,” he said. “And so I think ultimately, the question of 2024 is really just what the economy ends up being.”TopicsJoe BidenUS elections 2024DemocratsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      What a relief I’ve been denied my favourite election day hobby – hating fellow Americans | Emma Brockes

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      What a relief I’ve been denied my favourite election day hobby – hating fellow Americans Emma BrockesWhen things going less badly than planned is a small win, the lack of a revival of Trump-backed candidates is cheering In the playground on Tuesday, we stood in a huddle and indulged in the primary joy of election day: loathing one’s fellow Americans. In New York, where I live, the only close race was the race for governor, where the choice between Kathy Hochul, the Democrat incumbent, and Lee Zeldin – a pro-Trump, anti-abortion Republican – threatened to mess with the very idea of the city.Early lessons from the US midterm elections as votes are still being countedRead more“You know who I really hate?” said a friend who had taken the train in from Long Island to vote.I did know. Democrats take more pleasure in hating other Democrats than in hating Republicans. “Andrew Cuomo,” I said.“Yup. If he’d kept his dick in his pants we wouldn’t be here.” A line that could, sadly, be applied to any number of men in American politics. “Now we’re going to end up with a Republican governor because people won’t vote for a woman.”That was midday on Tuesday, when it still seemed probable, per polling and received wisdom about the midterms, that the dominant party in government would suffer the most losses. Anxiety about the economy and inflation; the impression that President Biden is too old; the ugly face of Trumpism apparently not yet vanquished; plus the usual superstitions and defeatist instincts of the left: all led to a mood among Democrats on Tuesday that fell somewhere between panic and gloom.So we did what people in denial do: we told ourselves that, when the results came in overnight, the worst eventuality might actually – sound the counter-intuitition klaxon! – be for the best. A friend had a friend who was a political analyst at Brown (this was how the conversations on Tuesday played out), and she said that it would be no bad thing if the Democrats lost control of Congress because in two years’ time that would mean Republicans would have to carry the can when people voted in the presidential election.This kind of worked. But then there were the races that were so starkly depressing that no amount of fancy footwork could neutralise them. Chief among these was the Pennsylvania Senate race between Dr Oz, the rightwing TV host who said in a recent debate that abortion was a matter between “women, doctors and local political leaders”, and the Democratic candidate, John Fetterman.The importance of this race was underscored when both Biden and Barack Obama turned up to stump for Fetterman on Saturday, undoing all the detachment I’d managed to achieve about the midterms. Watching Obama do his thing in front of a stadium of people in Pittsburgh was intensely moving. It was also a hard reminder of how far we had fallen since 2008. Accustomed as most Americans are these days to seeing the apparent lunatic in any race win, Obama’s appearance seemed to guarantee Oz would ascend to the Senate.Fetterman won with 50.4% of the vote. Kathy Hochul won with 52.5% of the vote. That the size of the relief was so huge, on Wednesday morning, was an indication both of how slim the margins were, and how little we needed to feel some hope. By midday, while it was still unclear whether Congress would remain in the hands of the Democrats, it was apparent there would be no red wave. There was no big revival in support for Trump-backed candidates. And there were some hugely cheering results from the centre of the country, where for example in Kentucky voters defeated the anti-abortion constitutional amendment. For the first time in ages, it was possible to think warmly of people one was used to dismissing as nutters.There were some let-downs among the reliefs. JD Vance, the bearded memoirist turned ultra-right Republican, won the Senate seat in Ohio. Beto O’Rourke lost out once again to Greg Abbott in Texas, and Stacey Abrams was defeated in Georgia. The satisfaction of seeing Trump’s candidates underperform on Wednesday was, meanwhile, eclipsed in part by Ron DeSantis winning decisively in the gubernatorial race in Florida. DeSantis, a more credible version of Trump, remains the most dangerous indication that the movement is alive and well.Still, slight gains, or at least losses on a smaller scale than anticipated, made for a whiplash effect midweek. In the playground on Tuesday, as the kids ran around, we returned to the subject of all the people who were ruining the country. On Wednesday, it was time to feel something else: relief, joy and the disorienting novelty of things going better than planned.
      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
      TopicsUS midterm elections 2022OpinionUS politicsNew YorkKathy HochulJoe BidenDemocratsRepublicanscommentReuse this content More

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      Democrats are breathing a sigh of relief. But their troubles are far from over

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      AnalysisDemocrats are breathing a sigh of relief. But their troubles are far from overDavid Smith in WashingtonAmerica is returning to an era of divided government and two years of grinding trench warfare It was a result that, Joe Biden said on Wednesday, gave everyone a “whew! sigh of relief” that Make America Great Again (Maga) Republicans are not taking over the government again.Biden won and Donald Trump lost in midterm elections to decide control of Congress. But just as in 2020, a collective exhalation is not enough to spell the end of political dysfunction in America. Things are about to get messy.For all their deflation, Republicans appear on course to capture a majority in the House of Representatives, albeit by a far smaller margin than history has suggested or crystal ball gazers had forecast.Karl Rove on the midterms: ‘Trump looms over this. No ifs or buts’Read moreThat means the end of Democrat Nancy Pelosi’s reign as House speaker, at least for now. Republican leader Kevin McCarthy has announced his intention to take the speaker’s gavel. It might be better described as a poisoned chalice.Should McCarthy prevail, his achingly slim majority will afford little room for maneuver when it comes to legislating. McCarthy will have to do deals either with Democrats or far-right Trump loyalists. In a House where every member fancies him or herself as president, the speaker could find himself perpetually bending to the will of Marjorie Taylor Greene.It is hardly a prescription for national unity. Whatever happens in the Senate, which may be decided again in a Georgia runoff, America is returning to an era of divided government and two years of grinding trench warfare.That spells trouble for Biden’s legislative agenda, echoing the plight of Barack Obama, who did big things in his first two years as president but found slim pickings over the following six.Biden, who campaigned as an apostle of bipartisanship and did enjoy some wins – on infrastructure, gun safety, military veterans’ benefits – will now find Republicans more combative as everything comes to be seen through the prism of the 2024 election.Expect the Republican majority to launch an array of congressional investigations ranging from the reasonable (Biden’s botched withdrawal to Afghanistan) to the grandstanding (Anthony Fauci’s coronavirus pandemic measures and Biden’s son Hunter’s laptop).Expect a battle over lifting the limit on US debt with the potential to cause havoc in the economy. Expect a possible attempt by the the Maga wing of the party to impeach Biden on spurious grounds, effectively as payback for Democrats having twice hit Trump with the ultimate sanction.But Republican overreach could prompt a public backlash and generates sympathy for the incumbent president.Paul Ryan, the most recent Republican House speaker, from 2015 to 2019, warned on the new Control podcast: “The last thing I think the American people want to see is a new majority used as a tool for Trump’s vindictive campaign or a vendetta. That’s not what a majority is for; a majority is for advancing the interests of the American people. Looking forward, not looking backward to settle some guy’s scores. So that’s going to be a bit of a challenge.”Ryan added: “It’s important that the adults in the room temper this by not just chasing conspiracy theories, going down rabbit holes or overreaching and just getting to truth and making sure that you hold an executive branch accountable.”If Republicans are unable to resist the rabbit holes, none of it will be healthy for the governance of democracy, adding to the feedback loop that disaffected millions of people and made them crave a “drain the swamp” outside like Trump in the first place.Hyperpartisan cable news and social media will continue to pour fuel on the flames. Twitter, now controlled by Elon Musk, might welcome back Trump just in time for an epically savage presidential campaign.The chaos would also harm America abroad. Biden has spent two years trying to rebuild alliances and assure the world that its democracy is secure.At a press conference in the state dining room on Wednesday, Biden retold the story of how, just after taking office, he attended a meeting of G7 leaders and assured them that America is back. “One of them turned to me and said, ‘For how long?’ It was a deadly earned question. ‘For how long?’”In other words, was Trump the blip or is Biden the blip?The sight of election-denying extremists ruling the roost in the US Capitol will hardly calm nerves in Berlin or Tokyo. Greene, a congresswoman from Georgia, recently declared: “Under Republicans, not another penny will go to Ukraine. Our country comes first.”Even McCarthy has warned Tuesday that Republicans will not write a “blank check” for Ukraine if they win the House. The bipartisan consensus in Washington on this issue – seen as critical to Biden’s perennial theme of democracy standing up to autocracy – could crumble with huge global ramificationsWith a portrait of a pensive Abraham Lincoln looking on, Biden reflected on Wednesday: “The American people made it clear. They don’t want every day going forward to be a constant political battle. There’s too much of that going on. There’s too much that we have to do. The future of America is too promising to be trapped in an endless political warfare.”But as reporters pressed him over whether he will run in 2024, and with Trump expected to announce his own White House bid next week, the next phase of political warfare is already under way. Given America’s structural flaws and democratic deficits, it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better.TopicsHouse of RepresentativesRepublicansNancy PelosiUS politicsDonald TrumpJoe BidenBarack ObamaanalysisReuse this content More