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      We were told abortion wasn’t an important election issue. How wrong that was | Moira Donegan

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      We were told abortion wasn’t an important election issue. How wrong that wasMoira DoneganPro-choice anger propelled Democratic candidates, delivered decisive victories in four state referenda on abortion, and blocked the brunt of what was supposed to be a wipeout We were told that abortion would not be a major issue in the midterm elections. Over the past weeks, pundits and political strategists alike suggested that the outrage over the Dobbs decision had been momentary, capricious; that by election day, women would forget. They insisted that the surge in new voter registrations among women was a fluke, or irrelevant.American voters just sent a crystal-clear message: they believe in abortion rights | Jill FilipovicRead moreAhead of the election, it became conventional wisdom among a kind of self-serious, mostly male political commentator to insist that not only were the Democrats doomed, they had doomed themselves, specifically, by talking about abortion too much. The party had dragged itself down with a social issue that was ultimately not very important, we were told. The Democrats were going to lose, and it was going to be because they had spent too much time catering to the flighty and unserious demands of feminists.Instead, abortion rights proved a hugely motivating force for voters in Tuesday’s midterms. A still-potent anger at the Dobbs decision drove women and young people to the polls, propelled the most vocally pro-choice Democratic candidates to victory, delivered decisive wins for abortion-rights advocates in every state referendum on the issue, and helped to dramatically improve the Democrats’ performance in what was supposed to be a “bloodbath” election favoring Republicans.We now head into 2023 with Democrats holding onto a chance to keep the Senate; if they lose the House, they will only lose it by a handful of seats. There was no bloodbath; there was barely a paper cut. Abortion rights, and the women voters who wanted to defend them, are a big part of why.None of this was what was supposed to happen. To hear the Republicans tell it, they didn’t think that the Dobbs decision would cost them at all in this year’s midterms. As recently as last week, party strategists and rightwing pundits were projecting wild confidence, assuring writers like the New Yorker’s Benjamin Wallace-Wells that the post-Dobbs moment of anger and energy that animated Democratic voters had passed – and that it had not dimmed Republican prospects.“In the end, Republicans didn’t find a way through the political fact that many of the voters they wanted to win were against them on abortion so much as wait it out,” Wallace-Wells wrote last Friday, channeling the shrugging attitude toward the abortion issue that had been conveyed to him by Republican insiders. “They simply absorbed the political hit and moved on.”Even the polling, which throughout the summer and early fall suggested that abortion remained a motivating issue for voters, was explained away, dismissed as a mere “blue mirage”. One Republican strategist hypothesized that Democrats, consumed with emotionalism, were answering their telephones more often, in the hope of being polled. “Answering a political poll itself became a kind of expression of political identity.”Others, like the Washington Examiner’s David Keene, claimed that the large numbers of women voters claiming that abortion would affect their vote were in fact women who were anti-abortion, who would enthusiastically vote to support abortion bans. In retrospect, of course, this seems like risible wishful thinking by Republicans, the kind of thing one can only believe if you live in a deep Republican partisan bubble, and don’t often talk to women. Or maybe it was the kind of bluster that’s meant to intimidate political opponents into thinking that the Republicans were more confident ahead of Tuesday’s elections than they really were.But if Republicans were just bluffing when they said that they didn’t think abortion rights would impact the midterms, many prominent Democrats seem to have believed them. In the weeks ahead of the vote, a series of highly visible party insiders and off-the record insider sources were preemptively blaming the Democrats’ anticipated loss on their supposed overfocus on abortion.Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders wrote a column entitled “Democrats shouldn’t focus only on abortion in the midterms. That’s a mistake”. Sanders’ piece denounced the party’s supposed overfocus on abortion as both politically unwise and morally treacherous. “While the abortion issue must remain on the front burner, it would be political malpractice for Democrats to ignore the state of the economy.”This sentiment was not confined to Sanders and his ilk on the left. On the other side of the party’s political spectrum, the centrist Democratic strategist and PR executive Hilary Rosen appeared on television to lambast the party for paying too much attention to so-called social issues. “I think we’re going to have a bad night,” Rosen said on CNN. “When voters tell you over and over and over again that they care mostly about the economy, listen to them.”In predicting a so-called “red tsunami,” in late October Josh Kraushaar, of Axios, appealed to the data. “Biden delivered a speech Tuesday pledging to codify Roe as his first act if Democrats elect more senators and keep the House,” he wrote. “But there’s worry in Democratic circles that abortion-centric messaging is keeping candidates from talking about the economy. A new Monmouth poll found 63% of respondents wish Biden would give more attention to ‘issues that are important to your family’ – including 36% of Democrats.”It seems almost insultingly remedial to have to explain why this framing – the notion that somehow the midterms could either be about the economy or they could be about abortion – is so wrongheaded. Because, of course, abortion access is central to the economic prospects of working people. But to acknowledge this, you have to acknowledge something that still seems incomprehensible and out of reach for many of our most esteemed shapers of political opinion: that when we think and speak of economic and political subjects, we are speaking of women.It is women whose prospects shape the economy, women who are workers and consumers; it is women who dream to advance economically, to retire or finish school or buy a house; it is women whose economic prospects, along with their health, dignity and freedom, have been curtailed by Dobbs.The stigma surrounding abortion helps to marginalize the issue in the American political imagination; the silence surrounding it conceals just how common abortion is, and how central abortion access is to women’s lives. One in four American women will have an abortion by age 45; many, many more of them know what it is to fear the upheaval of an unplanned pregnancy, to pee on a stick in the loneliness of a bathroom stall as your dreams hang in the balance.To say that this experience of hope, aspiration, anticipation, fear is somehow not as serious as the dreams and aspirations of men – to say that it is somehow not an “issue that is important to your family” – is at best to misunderstand the problem and at worst to suggest that women’s lives are not of political concern at all. If the midterm results are any indication, American women voters disagree.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
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      The ‘armed and gay’ Senate hopeful who helped force Georgia’s runoff

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      The ‘armed and gay’ Senate hopeful who helped force Georgia’s runoffLibertarian Chase Oliver, 37, managed 81,000 votes despite raising just $8,000

      US midterm elections results 2022 – live
      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.Exactly who went for Oliver remains disputed: he reckons his typical voter was a left-leaning independent who might otherwise have voted for Warnock. But one pollster predicted Oliver’s success was more likely about pulling away “soft Republican” votes from rightwing voters who couldn’t face voting for Walker.Even more impressive than the 81,000 votes Oliver tallied on election night was the $7,790 he raised campaigning to win them. Of the record $8.9bn spent nationally on federal campaigns this election cycle, Georgia Senate candidates raised $136m, one of the most expensive contests in the country.Oliver’s was a true grassroots campaign. He hosted a watch party for the only Walker-Warnock debate and walked in Pride parades waving a rainbow-colored Don’t Tread On Me flag now perched outside his garage. On the front lawn are campaign signs for his fellow Georgia Libertarian challengers. When I compliment his modern ranch-style home from the comfort of a screened-in back porch, he’s quick to note that he pays rent to a live-in owner and mostly keeps to the basement – campaign HQ, officially. Inside, more Oliver lawn signs and posters share wall space with portraits of members of Star Trek’s Starfleet.Despite his obvious need, Oliver refused to indulge into the usual groveling for campaign cash. “I’m not someone who likes to get on the phone and beg people for money,” says Oliver, who instead relied on the kindness of friends, family and fellow Libertarians. The bulk of that fundraising went toward yard signs, canvassing materials and gas for his beat-up Toyota Corolla. “It’s not the prettiest in the world,” he says of the car – which, among other things, is missing a cover for the rear bumper. “But it gets great mileage.”On election night, Oliver watched from home with friends, picking over chicken wings when he wasn’t exchanging texts with his campaign team. Beforehand, he had been polling at about 5%; anything above 2% figured to spark a runoff, given how close the race was between Warnock and Walker already. When Oliver settled just above 2% and stayed there and neither frontrunner retained more than a 50% + 1 vote share, the minimum standard for victory, Oliver celebrated the coming runoff – which he says he caused partly to prove the need for ranked-choice voting across the country. “That’s the real lesson I want people to learn,” he says. “Whether you voted for Raphael Warnock or Herschel Walker or me, we wouldn’t have to wait weeks later to see who’s going to Washington DC if we passed something common sense like ranked-choice voting.”Oliver makes no effort to hide his healthy contempt for the current two-party system. But he wasn’t always so disillusioned. As an out teenager in a state where laws against sodomy were aggressively enforced until the state supreme court invalidated them in 2003, Oliver launched his high school’s gay-straight alliance. Oliver remembers screening Brokeback Mountain when it opened in 2005 and being so moved that he dragged his straight friends to the theater to see it the very next week. He thought, “This is what’s gonna get all my friends to understand the struggle,” he says. “But they did not have the same experience. They were like, ‘It was a good movie, but you kinda oversold it.’”Why is the midterm vote count taking so long in some US states?Read moreHe gravitated toward the Democratic party because of Barack Obama, inspired by promises to bring home the troops, close Guantánamo and draw down the US’s drone-strike program. But as Obama betrayed those promises, Oliver decamped for the Libertarians – a 50-year-old party that’s more culturally liberal than Democrats and fiscally conservative than Republicans and the third-largest political party by voter registration. Oliver’s platform runs from immigration reform to world peace. But it’s government dysfunction that really animates him. “There’s no real legislating going on,” he says. “What we’re seeing now is leadership drafting a bill behind closed doors with giant corporate interests.“It doesn’t matter who wins, Raphael Warnock or Herschel Walker; they’re going to be a cog in that system.”Oliver struggled for face time alongside the Senate frontrunners. When Walker flashed a fake police badge during his debate against Warnock last month, Oliver joined the meme parade, promising to bring his Starfleet pin to a subsequent debate against Warnock. (“Apparently, badges are required for debates now,” he tweeted.) But when Oliver pushed the senator on the Democrats’ flawed criminal justice policies, Warnock mostly ignored him.Although Oliver has received some threats, he tells friends not to worry about security. (“I conceal carry, so I’ll be taking care of myself as always,” he says.) To those who might bemoan this nerdy young white guy in the first Georgia Senate race to feature two Black candidates, Oliver invites would-be critics to check his record. “People who know me know that I’ve always worked with a diverse coalition of activists to get things done,” he says. “I think no matter what the skin color of the Republican or Democratic candidates, they would have been somebody I had severe policy disagreements with.”Still, many Georgians are likely to resent Oliver anyway for further drawing out what’s seemed like an endless campaign cycle – not least the exasperated voters who supported Oliver. While Oliver sympathizes with voter frustrations (and is exhausted with the campaign crush himself), if at the very least it brings about the end of runoff elections, history might say it was worth it. “I wanted to be an honest broker,” Oliver says. “I’m hoping that whoever wins this runoff reaches across the aisle a bit more and actually does some real legislating.”
      This article was amended on 11 November 2022. An earlier version misstated Raphael Warnock’s record on LGBTQ+ rights.
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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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      Why is the midterm vote count taking so long in some US states?

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      ExplainerWhy is the midterm vote count taking so long in some US states?Key races in Arizona, Nevada and Georgia – which could decide the makeup of Congress – are still undecided. Here’s why Two days after the US midterm elections, a sense of deja vu is descending over the country. In a replay of the excruciating events in 2020, when Joe Biden’s presidential victory was declared four days after the polls closed, Americans are yet again asking themselves why they have to wait so long for election results.US midterm elections 2022: Senate and House remain in balance as counting continues – liveRead moreLater in the week, it remained elusive which main party will control both chambers of Congress. In the Senate, Republicans hold 49 seats and the Democrats 48, with two states – Arizona and Nevada – not yet called, and Georgia headed to a runoff.In the House there are still more than 40 seats yet to be called, with at least a dozen of them highly competitive.So what is it about the US electoral system that makes counting votes apparently so tortuously slow?Where are counts still happening, and why?Responsibility for running fair and fast elections, like much of the way the country is governed, is devolved to each of the 50 states. How the count is done, and its speed, varies slightly between each state. (Election deniers have tried to imply that slow counts are somehow irregular or fraudulent. They are not.)The big picture here is that counts are taking extra time in races that are very close. News networks are hesitant to project winners because the margins between candidates are narrow and there are many ballots left to count – and so the need for patience may be justified.In this cycle, much of the heat is engulfing just three states: Arizona, Nevada and Georgia.What’s going on in Arizona?Several of the most consequential races are happening in the border state of Arizona. A US Senate contest between the Democratic incumbent Mark Kelly and Republican challenger Blake Masters could determine which party controls the Senate.There are also consequential state races, including for governor and secretary of state, in which prominent election deniers endorsed by Donald Trump have a shot at winning. So far only 70% of the Arizona vote has been counted.To understand why that is, you have to zoom in to Maricopa county, which covers the state capital, Phoenix. It contains 60% of all votes in Arizona and is the second largest voting jurisdiction in the nation.The number of people who vote early has increased dramatically since the pandemic. This year Maricopa county also saw a surge in the number of early ballots that were dropped off on election day – they are known as “late earlies” – rising to 290,000, the largest number in the state’s history and 100,000 more than in 2020.Each early ballot has to be verified to check that the voter’s signature matches the signature in the voter rolls, and after that is done it is sent to a bipartisan panel for approval and processing. That all takes time, as we are witnessing.Many people have drawn a comparison of Arizona’s vote count with that of Florida, which called its results within hours of polls closing on Tuesday. That state’s system allows election officials to begin counting mail-in ballots as soon as they are received; mail-in ballots have to be requested and must be received by an election supervisor no later than 7pm on election day. But the main reason why Ron DeSantis won his re-election race so quickly on Tuesday was because it was a blowout, with the incumbent Republican governor garnering 59% of the vote while his challenger, Charlie Crist, received only 40%.Had the candidates we are watching in Arizona or elsewhere had such a convincing lead, we would probably not still be waiting for their races to be called. Nonetheless, there are questions that Arizona is going to have to face in future elections.Stephen Richer, who is the recorder of Maricopa county, said that after the dust settles “we will likely want to have a policy conversation about which we value more: convenience of dropping off early ballots on election day or higher percentage of returns with 24 hours of election night”.What about Nevada?Nevada is going a bit faster than Arizona, with 83% of the votes counted, but this year the count could last through Sunday. But like in Phoenix, there are still large numbers of ballots yet to be processed in the big urban areas of Las Vegas and Reno.The state runs its elections largely through mail-in ballots, and that in itself bakes in time. For a mail-in ballot to be counted it has to be postmarked by election day, but the state now allows until four days after election day – 12 November – for the physical envelope to arrive.There is a debate to be had about the merits of such a system. Many election officials stress that it is more important to have a system that is convenient, accurate and accessible than one that is fast.The count in Nevada also has a lot riding on it. That includes a very close race between the sitting US senator Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican challenger Adam Laxalt; three tight contests for US House seats; and a battle involving one of the most visceral election deniers, Jim Marchant, who is running for the job of top election official.And Georgia?Georgia has completed its returns for its critical US Senate race, with the Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock squeaking ahead of the Trump-endorsed former football star Herschel Walker. But this state runs a system whereby if neither candidate marshals more than 50% of the vote – which neither did – there has to be a runoff election. That feels like groundhog day too – we had to wait until the January after the 2020 election for two Georgia runoff contests to be called before we knew that the Democrats would control the Senate. At least Georgia has speeded up the process: the new voting law SB 202 has significantly shortened the period for this runoff, which will take place on 6 December.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022Postal votingArizonaNevadaGeorgiaUS politicsexplainersReuse this content More

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      Trump urged to delay announcement on 2024 run until after Georgia runoff

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      Trump urged to delay announcement on 2024 run until after Georgia runoff Trump cautioned to wait until after crucial Senate race as candidates he endorsed were defeated in midterm elections Donald Trump, reeling from another electoral setback, is facing pressure to delay his announcement of a new bid for the White House until after a crucial Senate race next month.Democrats are breathing a sigh of relief. But their troubles are far from overRead moreTrump-endorsed candidates slumped to defeat in Tuesday’s midterm elections, leaving the former president at arguably his weakest standing in the party since the riot at the US Capitol last year.Trump looks set to announce a third consecutive run for president next Tuesday but some in his inner circle are cautioning him to wait until after the Senate runoff in Georgia on 6 December.Trump-backed Herschel Walker and the Democratic incumbent, Raphael Warnock, will face off after neither passed 50% of the vote on Tuesday. The race could decide control of the Senate, depending on results in Arizona and Nevada.Jason Miller, a senior Trump adviser, told the rightwing network Newsmax: “Everything comes down to Herschel Walker and Georgia. And if we can pull that off, we might get … Chuck Schumer packing from the [Senate] majority leader’s office.“I’m advising the president to hold off until after the Georgia race, after Herschel Walker … This is bigger than anything else in the country.”Miller also said Trump should deploy campaign funds to help Walker, a controversial former football star.12:55Republicans had expected widespread success in the midterms but though the House looked set to change hands, the Senate remained on a knife-edge after a high-profile Trump-endorsed candidate, the TV doctor Mehmet Oz, fell to embarrassing defeat in Pennsylvania. Many are pointing the finger at Trump.Tara Setmayer, a senior adviser to the anti-Trump group the Lincoln Project, said: “He is wounded and that’s evidenced by the rightwing media ecosystem putting out collective rebukes in the wake of a disappointing midterm result because Donald Trump was at the centre once again.“He cost them a much larger victory in the midterms. He is the albatross around the Republican party’s electoral neck and will continue to be as long as he is alive and breathing.”Trump is holding an event at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida next week where he is expected to announce his run. He has taken shots at Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor widely seen as his chief rival. But DeSantis enjoyed a strong night on Tuesday, winning a landslide, his victory speech greeted by chants of “two more years”. Worryingly for Trump, allies including the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post have come out strongly for DeSantis.A column on the Fox News website proclaimed: “Ron DeSantis is the new Republican party leader. Republicans are ready to move on without Donald Trump.”But Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, cautioned: “I’m not holding my breath that this posture will remain. We saw this before after the election in 2020 and it lasted as long as the ratings started to crash.“When they started losing ratings to Newsmax and other media outlets, they went right back to the fawning coverage of Donald Trump. Are they willing to remain steadfast this time around because they think now that Ron DeSantis is the heir apparent? We’ll see how long that lasts.”On Wednesday, Fox News reported that Trump would not delay his announcement. On Thursday, Trump launched a tirade on his Truth Social platform.“For those many people that are being fed the fake narrative from the corrupt media that I am angry about the midterms, don’t believe it,” he wrote. “I am not at all angry, did a great job (I wasn’t the one running!), and am very busy looking into the future. Remember, I am a ‘Stable Genius’.”Trump also criticised reports that he blamed his wife, Melania, and friend, Fox News host Sean Hannity, for talking him into backing Oz in Pennsylvania.“I’d like to apologise to Melania and Sean Hannity for all of the Fake News and fictional stories (made up out of thin air, with no sources despite them claiming there are!)” wrote Trump, whose attacks on the media often prove unfounded.It is not a foregone conclusion that Trump will express robust support for Walker. Trump has attacked Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader. He is also widely held to have contributed to the loss of the Senate in 2021. Then, Warnock and Jon Ossoff won Georgia runoffs as Trump persisted in his lie that his defeat by Joe Biden was the result of electoral fraud, potentially depressing Republican turnout.01:56Nationally, Republican hand-wringing continued. Chris Christie, a former New Jersey governor and a longtime Trump ally, told the Associated Press: “We lost in ’18. We lost in ’20. We lost in ’21 in Georgia. And now in ’22 we’re going to net lose governorships, we’re not going to pick up the number of seats in the House that we thought and we may not win the Senate despite a president who has a 40% job approval.“There’s only one person to blame for that and that’s Donald Trump … The only animating factor in determining an endorsement is, ‘Do you believe the 2020 election was stolen or don’t you?’”John Fetterman’s rise from small-town mayor to Pennsylvania senatorRead moreThe Republican strategist David Urban, a former Trump adviser, told the AP: “How do people feel in America? I think people feel not great about the Trump brand right now. It’s bad.”Commentators, however, noted that Trump has been written off before but still holds sway over the Republican base, as evidenced by rallies that draw fiercely loyal crowds.Joe Walsh, a podcast host and former Republican congressman from Illinois, said: “We’ve seen this movie before. He led a fucking insurrection and the party still bowed to him. So will the dam finally break with this one? No, I don’t think it will. I still think it’s his party.“This whole DeSantis thing is overrated. Trump knows that … I still expect him to come out this month and announce he’s running and I don’t expect many Republicans to have the balls to say, ‘Donald, you suck.’”TopicsDonald TrumpRepublicansUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022US elections 2024newsReuse this content More

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      Did Democrats just have the best midterms by a president’s party in years? | Osita Nwanevu

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      Did Democrats just have the best midterms by a president’s party in years?Osita NwanevuBiden’s approval rating stands at about 41%, yet the Democrats performed far better than many had expected Leave the rest of the numbers aside for a moment and consider these figures. The party of the sitting president has lost seats in the US House of Representatives in all but two midterms since 1946. The average loss is 27 seats. According to one analysis, presidents with approval ratings above 50% have seen their parties lose an average of 14 seats since 1946. Presidents with approval ratings below 50% have seen their parties lose an average of 37 seats.Polls suggest Joe Biden’s current approval rating stands at about 41%. Republicans needed to take five seats to win the chamber. It remains likely that they’ll get them in the hours and days ahead. But the fact that they haven’t already ⁠– and that Democrats have a non-trivial chance of actually keeping the chamber ⁠– is highly significant. The Democrats may have had the best midterm a president’s party has experienced in 20 years ⁠– since 9/11 brought Republicans to slight, trend-bucking gains in the House and Senate in 2002.US midterm election results 2022: liveRead moreOf course, much of the relief and exuberance Democratic leaders and candidates are feeling this morning will dissipate if and when the Republican majority, whatever its final size, is secured. While it’s preferable to lose the House by a little rather than a lot, losing it by any margin guarantees that toxicity and inanity will grip Washington again for a minimum of two years ⁠– irrespective of the outcome in the Senate.Biden cannot expect cooperation from Republicans on major issues in divided government – it’s unclear, in fact, whether Congress will even manage to raise the debt ceiling again if Democrats don’t figure out a way to settle the issue, and avert a crisis that’s been gestating for over a decade now, before January.It is clear, though, that House Republicans would use their majority to harass the administration and Democrats with investigations, hearings, cant and conspiracy theories in the run-up to 2024. The main character of Biden’s Congress thus far has been Joe Manchin; there’s a decent chance that he’ll be turning the spotlight over to Marjorie Taylor Greene.Political science and political history suggest there was little Democrats might have done to fully avoid that possibility. The party’s House majority was incredibly narrow and presidents have consistently lost seats under a wide variety of conditions. The rate of inflation, the subject of most of the last year’s punditry and predictions, is poorly correlated with midterm outcomes, as is employment growth.Income growth is a more reliable indicator, but as best as those who’ve studied midterms can tell, the factors that reliably hobble the party holding the White House may be more elemental. Voters that just won the presidency are more likely to blow off the midterms, voters that just lost it are more likely to angrily show up, and some voters ⁠– in keeping with messaging and norms impressed upon them by the press, political elites and grade school civics teachers ⁠– vote against the party in power just to bring more partisan balance to Washington.The key candidates who threaten democracy in the 2022 US midtermsRead moreDespite all that, Democrats managed to significantly outperform expectations. Republicans and centrist commentators widely predicted voters would sharply recoil at the scale of Biden’s policy agenda and the inflation it contributed to. They didn’t. Over the last few weeks, many of the same voices insisted that the Democratic closing argument on democracy wouldn’t matter or resonate. Perhaps it did. And over the last few months, we were told repeatedly that anxieties about rising crime would boost Republicans across the country ⁠– even in New York, where it was supposed that Republican Lee Zeldin had a real shot at winning the governor’s race.That didn’t happen – suggesting that the electorate was more troubled by other anxieties that hurt the right, including worries about reproductive freedom. In the aftermath of the Dobbs decision, voters in deeply conservative Kansas surprised many by rejecting an abortion ban. Last night, voters in Kentucky ⁠– a state Donald Trump won by double digits ⁠– rejected another anti-abortion measure while California, Michigan and Vermont voted to codify abortion rights in their state constitutions.As loudly as many pundits argued that Democrats would be crushed on Tuesday absent deeper moderation on abortion and other issues, it should be plain now that the burden of moderation, as far as much of the electorate is concerned, falls primarily upon the Republican party: the Democrats’ shocking overperformance amounts to a shocking underperformance on its part.Republicans’ substantive radicalism on abortion policy and elsewhere aside, it should also be plain that they’ve been burdened by their outre personalities, including the man at Mar-a-Lago and candidates who spent much of the last several months regurgitating his nonsense about the 2020 campaign to weary general election voters. Some of them are still at it. The Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, for instance, narrowly behind in her race at time of writing, alluded to conspiracy theories about voter fraud in her election night speech.Meanwhile, according to a number of reports, some Republican insiders and elites are privately wising up to realities already obvious to those who’ve studied the current political landscape closely. Donald Trump is a political amateur who narrowly won an electoral college victory in an unusual election six years ago. He’s a deeply polarizing and unpopular figure; most of the electorate reviles his political style and his policy ideas, to the extent that he has them.The structural advantages that the federal system affords the most conservative parts of the country have prevented the Republican party from fully bearing the costs of Trump’s rise and presidency – and they may well bring him to victory again in the next election. But Trump has been costly, and we can expect a cadre of Republican power-brokers and money men to pursue alternative candidates with more urgency now.That ought to trigger a shift in messaging from Democrats. Throughout this election and the last, Biden and other party figures and candidates labored to give voters the impression Trumpism is a passing fad on the right; the dream of a redeemable Republican party is still alive in the rhetoric of Democratic leaders, if not genuinely in their hearts. But it’s substantively untrue and strategically unwise to maintain that the right’s threats to equality and the democratic process are contained fully in Trump’s person and the figures who’ve tethered themselves closely to him.Over the last quarter century in particular, our politics have been coarsened and destabilized not by a narrow faction of Super-Ultra-Extra-Mega-Magnum-Maga Republicans, but by the Republican party and the wider conservative movement as a whole. It’s long past time for Democrats to make that case to the public plainly and unapologetically.If they don’t ⁠– and the Republicans do, in fact, take part or all of Congress ⁠– gridlock in Washington, invented scandals and boredom with Biden may encourage a pivotal share of voters to give Republican governance another chance in 2024.
      Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist
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      Pelosi accuses Republicans of treating climate crisis like ‘it’s all a hoax’ at Cop27

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      Pelosi accuses Republicans of treating climate crisis like ‘it’s all a hoax’ at Cop27Democrat makes surprise appearance at climate summit as midterms forecasts predict Republicans will take the House Nancy Pelosi has accused Republicans of treating the climate crisis like “it’s all a hoax” while at the Cop27 climate talks in Egypt, where the US delegation is attempting to remain upbeat about continued progress on dealing with global heating despite uncertainty over the midterm election results.Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, made a surprise appearance at the climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh on Thursday. The trip may be one of Pelosi’s last as speaker, with most forecasts predicting Republicans will eke out a narrow majority in the House.There has been “shall we say, a disagreement on the subject” of the climate crisis between the parties, Pelosi said at Cop27, adding that Republicans have said “‘Why are we having this discussion? There is no climate crisis. It’s all a hoax.’ We have to get over that. This is urgent, long overdue.“So we cannot just have any political disagreement or the power of the fossil fuel industry cramping our style as we go forward with this, but to show a path that gets us to where we need to be,” Pelosi said. Pelosi’s appearance at Cop27 comes at a critical point for the future of democracy in the US and the future of the planet. Joe Biden was able to pass the country’s most significant piece of climate legislation this year because Democrats have the majority in both the House and the Senate. With that set to change, the mounting anger at the US for obstructing meaningful global climate action, despite being the world’s largest polluter and richest country, may only get worse.Kathy Castor, a Democrat from Florida who chairs the House subcommittee on the climate crisis, predicted Republicans would axe her committee should they gain power. “They have not really been partners in tackling the climate crisis, and it’s inexplicable because the world’s top scientists tell us we are running out of time,” Castor said.Biden will appear at Cop27 on Friday and a delegation of his cabinet members have already descended upon Sharm el-Sheikh to stress to other, skeptical, countries that the US, which has swerved erratically on climate policy over the years and under Donald Trump completely abandoned the crisis, will still be engaged on fighting global heating even if Republicans do secure Congress.“I think the United States is seen favorably here based on the actions taken in the last two years,” Michael Regan, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), told the Guardian.Regan, who appearing at a number of events at Cop27, cited the inflation reduction act, which includes more than $370bn in climate spending, and the administration’s actions to promote environmental justice.“Polls suggest climate change isn’t a top-tier issue, but most families are focused on keeping a roof over their heads and putting food on the table … so it’s not surprising some issues were registering a little higher than climate change,” Regan said of the midterm elections.“But climate change hasn’t fallen off the list, it’s still a top priority. You don’t even have to trust scientists any more, you just have to look out of the window or put on the news. People are smart enough to see this isn’t some long-term conspiracy theory.”Faced with inconclusive midterm election results, the mood among many veteran climate activists and negotiators from developing countries is one of indifference, as they have seen little difference between the Democrats and Republicans over the past three decades when it comes to the most crucial climate issues like finance and market solutions.Representatives of developing countries have criticized the US at Cop27 for repeatedly failing to deliver promised funding to help them deal with the crippling impacts of floods, fires and droughts, as well as transition to clean energy. Poorer nations are pushing for “loss and damage” finance to help them cope with the climate crisis. John Kerry, the US climate envoy, has admitted that further funding would be unlikely should Republicans gain control of Congress.“The main difference is that at least the Democrats don’t deny climate change, and of course it matters inside America as without the Democrats the Inflation Reduction Act would not have passed, but on the global stage it makes no difference,” said Meena Raman, a climate policy expert from Third World Network and adviser to developing countries at the Cop summits.“It’s the same negotiators, the same blockages, the same bullying, and even now the planet is burning, the US doesn’t change and gets what it wants. It continues to deny its historic responsibility, emphasize the private sector and loans, and uses China as the bogeyman to distract attention away from its unfulfilled pledges.”US greenhouse gas emissions are rising, with plans to vastly expand gas production and fines for oil companies which don’t up extraction.Asad Rehman, director of War on Want and a coordinator of the climate justice groups at Cop27, said: “We are faced with a choice of Republicans who are climate denialists whilst the Democrats are mitigation denialists – happy to speak about the climate emergency but it’s simply hollow words.“From Bush to Biden the USA continues to block real finance, tinker with its emissions and are sacrificing billions to climate catastrophe while expanding fossil fuels which will sacrifice billions to climate catastrophe.”TopicsNancy PelosiCop27Climate crisisUS midterm elections 2022US politicsRepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump paved Ron DeSantis’s way. Now apprentice has turned on master | Cas Mudde

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      Trump paved Ron DeSantis’s way. Now apprentice has turned on masterCas MuddeTrump unleashed a revolution that opened the door to people like DeSantis. Now the Florida governor and his supporters want to continue that revolution without its original leader The day after the midterm elections, the knives were out for Donald Trump. On rightwing social media, people were emotionally debating the alleged toxicity of the former president and his hand-picked nominees, while Fox News highlighted the victory of the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, emphasizing that he is “reviled by Trump”, while heralding the “dominating win” of the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis. A Fox News contributor pronounced DeSantis “the new Republican party leader”. In fact, the idea that DeSantis is the big Republican winner of the midterms – and Trump the big loser – seems to be the broad consensus in today’s media.There is, of course, at least one dissonant voice: Trump himself. Sensing that the tables are turning rapidly, he went on Fox News to warn DeSantis to stay out of the 2024 presidential election. In his typical mafioso way, Trump said, “I don’t know if he is running. I think if he runs, he could hurt himself very badly. I really believe he could hurt himself badly.”There is no doubt that DeSantis had a great night. He won his own race convincingly, while delivering three new House seats to the Republican party, courtesy of his blatantly partisan gerrymandering. At the same time, DeSantis did less than 2% better than Marco Rubio in the Senate race, putting some doubt on his particular appeal. Moreover, as too few media noted, Florida Republicans undoubtedly profited from DeSantis’s years-long campaign of voter intimidation, which entailed unleashing a newly created “vote-fraud squad” on mostly innocent voters; against the broader national trend, Democratic turnout seemed significantly down in Florida.It is important to note that the shift from Trump to DeSantis does not indicate a return to “normal”, in the sense of old-school conservatism. DeSantis and Trump are both clearly far right and there is little ideological space between the two. Rather, it is about strategy and style. As far as Republican voters had any problems with Trump during his presidency, it was always more about his delivery than about his policies. It is not just his style but also his strategy – Trump largely operates outside of the traditional party establishment and political system.Trump is not a politician and has no desire to become one. In sharp contrast, DeSantis is and has already significant political experience with running one of the biggest states in the country in terms of both economic power and population. Whereas Trump mainly shouts from the sidelines, respecting neither the institutions of liberal democracy nor the political practices of Washington, DeSantis practices what Princeton professor Kim Lane Scheppele calls “democratic erosion by law”: the weakening of liberal democracy from within both the legal and the political system.In this way, the turn from DeSantis to Trump mirrors developments in Europe, where crude far-right politicians like Matteo Salvini are being “upgraded” to more subtle peers like Giorgia Meloni. It is, if you will, the Orbánization of the far right. The Hungarian leader is the prime example of democratic erosion by law, having effectively destroyed democracy in Hungary by perfectly legal means. It is no coincidence that Orbán is a hero of the so-called “national conservative” wing of the Republican party – mostly politicians with law degrees, such as DeSantis and Josh Hawley.What Trump lacks in legal and political expertise, however, he compensates in charisma, something DeSantis sorely lacks. The Florida governor has gained nationwide Republican support by what he does, not by who he is. DeSantis is a rather uninspiring speaker who neither draws large crowds nor captivates smaller ones. It is his actual fights with “woke capitalism”, in the form of Disney, or “woke academia”, in the form of the University of Florida, that supporters point to. As he bragged in his victory speech on Tuesday night, “Florida is where woke goes to die.”Moreover, DeSantis lacks that unique quality of Trump, authenticity, something the former president identified in bestowing the new moniker “Ron DeSanctimonious”. And while Trump, rather uncharacteristically, seems to have dropped the nickname for now – after a barrage of criticism from rightwing media – you better believe he will return to it, or to even worse names, should he face DeSantis in a Republican primary.Poll after poll might show the divisive nature of Trump, as well as his dropping favorability among both independents and Republicans, but he was still twice as popular among Republicans before the midterms. Although this can change rapidly, particularly if Fox News would support DeSantis over Trump, Trump will continue to command a modest but highly mobilized hardcore – who could make or break Republican candidates in many races, including the presidential one.While DeSantis’s star might be rising, the Republican party remains at the mercy of Trump. The former president unleashed a revolution within the Republican party that has opened the door to people like DeSantis. Now the Florida governor and his supporters have less than two years to figure out how to continue that revolution without its original leader.
      Cas Mudde is a Guardian US columnist and the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor in the school of public and international affairs at the University of Georgia
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