Voter Turnout – Page 21 – The Wrongologist

Saturday Soother – January 7, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Snow covered kayaks, Lake Sunapee, NH – January 2023 photo by Juergen Roth Photography

Yesterday was two years since the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. And now, some of the same people are holding the House of Representatives hostage like they tried to do in 2021. From the WaPo:

“All but two of the 20 Republican House members who voted against Kevin McCarthy for speaker in Tuesday’s third ballot round are election deniers who embraced former president Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged…..14 are returning members who voted against certification of the electoral college count on Jan. 6, 2021.”

Then there’s North Carolina GOP Rep. Ralph Norman who urged Trump to declare “Marshall Law,” (sic) just days before the 2021 inauguration. Look at what Norman is saying now:

This should be your primary concern in the power play between the far right Republicans (McCarthy) and the farther right bat-shit Republicans, including Rep. Norman. As Paul Krugman says in the NYT:

“…even with a speaker in place, how likely is it that the people we’ve been watching the past few days will agree to raise the debt ceiling, even if failing to do so creates a huge financial crisis?”

Friday saw the first major breakthrough in the deadlocked voting when on the 12^th ballot, a group of previous Republican holdouts flipped their votes to support McCarthy, but it wasn’t enough for him to clinch the gavel. Then on the 13th ballot, McCarthy picked up another vote bringing his total to 214.

From Axios:

“House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy is on the brink of clinching the speakership after a group of 15 previous Republican holdouts flipped their votes to support the California lawmaker on Friday, marking the first major breakthrough in negotiations this week.”

McCarthy fell only three votes short of the threshold needed since there were lawmaker absences. That’s 14 new votes for McCarthy, with a maximum of 218 needed to gain the speakership. This is the current state of play, with more ballots to come late on Friday night.

You should note that McCarthy got Ralph Norman’s vote on Friday, after Norman said on Thursday that he would only switch if McCarthy was willing to shut the government down. So, is that what’s in store for us? As JVL says:

“The sad truth is that McCarthy may be about to become the weakest speaker in history. This fight over the speaker’s gavel is exactly what every important vote in the House over the next two years is going to look like: The speaker’s fight is the debt ceiling fight is the budget fight is the Ukraine aid fight.”

Think about the Republican Speakers of the House since Newt Gingrich 30 years ago. Gingrich’s Contract for America has morphed into MAGA fratricide in a decade. It’s been a bit like watching the British royals fracture because Megan and Harry wouldn’t toe the line inside the family.

Recall that the Republicans do not have a lot of experience with House speakers. Before Newt, Joe Martin of MA served two terms (1947-1949; 1953-1955). And since Newt there have been two:

John Boehner (2013-2015)
Paul Ryan (2015-2019)

Boehner was a mediocrity, but he was a professional legislator. Ryan was speaker during much of Trump’s first term. He’s noted for rewriting the tax code, which helped contribute to our ballooning deficits. McCarthy is inferior to either of these previous GOP speakers, who in their own ways were clear failures.

The Republican Party harbors some very dangerous extremists in their ranks, and McCarthy’s pandering to them is a dangerous game, not only for Democrats, but for all Americans. They don’t want policy; they only want airtime.

From Michelle Goldberg:

“…The movement these characters are part of…isn’t simply ideological. It’s also a set of defiant, paranoid, anti-system attitudes, and a version of politics that prioritizes showboating over legislating. That’s why McCarthy has found himself unable to negotiate with the holdouts.”

It’s looking like McCarthy will manage to eke out the speakership. More from Goldberg:

“It is not possible, however, that he’ll emerge, in any real sense, as a leader. His best-case scenario is that he’d be a fragile figurehead, a hostage…constantly in danger of defenestration.”

We all should know that these self-aggrandizing jokers won’t hesitate for a moment to crash the economy and/or shut down the government just so they can crow about it on Steve Bannon’s podcast.

If they will do this to their own Party, imagine what they will do to the rest of us.

It’s time to take our first break of the New Year from the “All Kevin, all the time” barrage and get to our Saturday Soother. It’s cold and rainy in Connecticut, and so it’s indoor activities this weekend, like maybe taking down some ornaments. Or maybe napping.

To help you get calmer about what a GOP majority in the House might do, grab a chair by a big window and watch and listen to “Capricho Arabe” written in 1888 by Spanish guitarist Francisco Tárrega. He was staying in Valencia, where Muslim, Castilian, and Christian cultures mixed, and you can hear all of those influences in this piece.

Here, British guitarist Alexandra Whittingham plays it in 2017 at the Church of St Pierre in Martignac, France:

Reasons For Optimism In 2023

The Daily Escape:

Spirit Lake, viewed from Mt. Spokane, ID – December 2022 photo by James Richman Photography

Wrongo has served you many big plates of gloom in 2022, and he has plenty more cooking on the stove. But, maybe there’s a reason to be a little optimistic about 2023?

Let’s take a few minutes to offer reasons why 2022 wasn’t as bad as it could have been, and why the coming year has a shot at being even better.

First, the Russians failed to win their war in Europe. And you ought to think that the Ukraine war is really a war against Europe, not just a land grab in Ukraine. Second, in the US, most of the authoritarian and anti-democratic candidates promoted by the Republican Party failed to gain a bigger toehold.

Both of these could easily have gone another way, as was nearly universally predicted by our so-called know-betters. But through the efforts of many government leaders and America’s regular citizens, they didn’t. But don’t underestimate just how close to real disaster we came in 2022.

In 2022, the West, at great cost, chose to help Ukraine defend itself. And in America, enough voters came out to help protect our democracy. Turnout in the midterms was reasonably high, especially among young voters. And despite the voter suppression laws passed in Georgia and Texas, voters got to the polls. Most losers acknowledged they had lost, just like in a functional democracy.

In fact, with last week’s passage of the Electoral Count Reform Act, the American system is enabled to create resilience, even if it doesn’t feel that way right now. Congress, with some semblance of bipartisanship, also passed a budget at the last minute.

Meanwhile despite our worst fears, the DOJ gained convictions against many Jan. 6 coup plotters and seditionists. A group of Oath Keepers is facing prison time. And the ringleaders of the plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor also got long prison sentences. Add to all of this Trump’s legal difficulties, which bring a high probability of him facing a criminal conviction, and there’s some reason for optimism in 2023.

And there is certainly more to come from DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith, Wrongo’s pick for 2023 person of the year.

Even with some optimism there are a few things that could go horribly wrong in 2023.

Russia’s war in Ukraine is nowhere near over. The war is currently at a military stalemate, but the Ukrainian people are suffering terribly. Despite recent losses on the battlefield, Russia has a formidable army, and they might outlast the West’s commitment to Ukraine. That will bring a temporary peace to Europe, but it would be a huge strategic mistake to stand aside and let the Russians win.
The political crisis in the US isn’t over. We know that the Republican Party’s elected members of Congress still represent the main source of threats to the Constitution. With control of the House, they will pursue an anti-democratic agenda. Wrongo worries that when the Debt Limit needs to be increased this spring, the Republican-controlled House will refuse to be a part of that effort.

Anyone who predicted last year that 2022 would have been this successful would have been called a Pollyanna. The twin challenges for 2023, including the preservation of US democracy and the restoration of global peace, aren’t new. We’ve been facing them for several years if not decades. And we’re still here working on them.

Here are a few Wrong wishes for the new year:

An end to the war in Ukraine with a Ukrainian victory.
Continued good health for President Biden.
No deep 2023 recession. Let’s hope the economy defies history and remains strong.
A resolution to America’s immigration crisis. Let’s hope Congress can find a bipartisan solution that respects the dignity of migrants and establishes an efficient, workable immigration process.
Further relief from Covid. Fewer people are dying, but the virus can mutate very quickly, and that threatens all of us still.
Is a more centrist Supreme Court too much to ask for?

Finally can we have a rational House of Representatives? We need political stability. Wrongo knows that delivering on this wish is an extremely heavy lift.

As we enter the new year, as Kasey Kasim used to say:

“keep your feet on the ground, but keep reaching for the stars”.

Will things turn suddenly worse in 2023? Will inflation continue to hurt Americans? Will the stock market collapse in the face of recession? Will political turmoil continue? Perhaps. But if 2022 is a gauge, it’s far more likely that we will muddle through, with our politics marking time while both Parties position for 2024. And our economy will continue to grow, albeit very slowly.

Let’s try to keep things in context, and not be distracted by the many things that could go wrong. Let’s also recognize those things that go right. Happy New Year!

Now listen to Diana Krall in 2005 asking, “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?”:

What Should Happen When A Candidate Lies On Their Resumé?

The Daily Escape:

Christmas Tree, Cape Porpoise Harbor, Cape Porpoise, ME – December 2022 photo by Eric Storm Photography

Wrongo doesn’t like to write “Dems in Disarray” articles, but here goes. Monday’s NYT had a long article about a Republican Congressman-elect from Queens and Nassau County in NY. George Santos won and is set to be sworn in on Jan. 2. He ran as the “embodiment of the American dream”, something he wanted to safeguard for the rest of us. Turns out his back story is extremely difficult to confirm.

From the NYT:

“His campaign biography amplified his storybook journey: He is the son of Brazilian immigrants, and the first openly gay Republican to win a House seat as a non-incumbent. By his account, he catapulted himself from a New York City public college to become a “seasoned Wall Street financier and investor” with a family-owned real estate portfolio of 13 properties and an animal rescue charity that saved more than 2,500 dogs and cats.”

Ok, here’s the issue:

“….a New York Times review of public documents and court filings from the US and Brazil, as well as various attempts to verify claims that Mr. Santos, 34, made on the campaign trail, calls into question key parts of the résumé that he sold to voters…..Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, the…Wall Street firms on Mr. Santos’s campaign biography, told The Times they had no record of his ever working there. Officials at Baruch College, which Mr. Santos has said he graduated from in 2010, could find no record of anyone matching his name and date of birth graduating that year.

Grab your popcorn. More:

“There was also little evidence that his animal rescue group, Friends of Pets United, was, as Mr. Santos claimed, a tax-exempt organization: The Internal Revenue Service could locate no record of a registered charity with that name.”

Maybe Santos can explain. His financial disclosure forms say he has money. He lent his campaign more than $700,000 during the midterm election, has donated thousands of dollars to other candidates in the last two years and reported a $750,000 salary and over $1 million in dividends from his company, the Devolder Organization. But several times, he was evicted for failure to pay rent:

“In November 2015, a landlord in the Whitestone neighborhood of Queens filed an eviction suit in housing court accusing Mr. Santos of owing $2,250 in unpaid rent. In May 2017, Mr. Santos faced another eviction case, from a rent-stabilized apartment in Sunnyside, Queens. Mr. Santos’s landlord accused him of owing more than $10,000 in rent stretching over five months and said in court records that one of his tenant’s checks had bounced. A warrant of eviction was issued, and Mr. Santos was fined $12,208 in a civil judgment.”

He sure sounds legit. How does someone who was evicted for non-payment of a total of about $14,500 in rent wind up in a position where he can loan $700k to his campaign? What caused his sudden change of fortune?

But Democrats, why are we only learning about this after the election? Why wasn’t this seriously negative information available before/during the election? Democrats do opposition research, even in a state like NY where they expect to win most seats.

And it gets worse. Santos ran and lost in the same district in 2020. So the Democrat’s state political higher ups had YEARS to do opposition research on Santos, but they didn’t. The Chair of the NY state Democratic Committee is Jay Jacobs, who is also Nassau County Democratic Chairman. Under his leadership, the Democrats lost four Congressional seats in November.

Within days after the election, dozens of Democratic officials from across the state signed a letter calling for Jacobs to be replaced. They accused him of sleepwalking into the midterms. Was Jacobs asleep at the wheel? Jacobs blames low voter turnout, but it’s his responsibility to get Democrats to the polls, to motivate voters to show up. And to check out the backstories of the opposition.

BTW, the NYT reached out to Santos for comment:

“We could not locate the congressman-elect and a person living at his stated address had no knowledge of his existence.”

The federal government has a False Statements Act for material omissions or misrepresentations on personal financial disclosures. It carries a maximum penalty of $250,000 and five years in prison. We’ll see. The House also has internal procedures for investigating ethics violations, but because Republicans who will control the House with Santos’ help, have no bottom for the ethical lapses they’ll accept, NY is now probably stuck with this guy.

Let’s close with another version of the Mariah Carey hit “All I Want for Christmas is You” this time performed in 2021 by the Welsh of the West End, a group of UK theater performers:

Saturday Soother – December 10, 2022

The Daily Escape:

View from Clingmans Dome, TN – December 2022 photo by Lynn Carte Hodges

From John Dean:

“The Democrats’ 51-seat Senate majority lasted about three days. Kyrsten Sinema is leaving the Democratic party.”

She is now registered as an Independent. Her announcement comes just after Sen. Warnock won reelection in Georgia, securing the 51^st Senate seat for the Democrats. It’s difficult to figure out what Sinema’s intent is. The most charitable view may be that no longer being the 50^th vote freed her to follow her conscience.

This raises two political questions. First, does this change the balance of power in the Senate? With the current makeup of the Senate, Wrongo doubts her decision changes anything. Like in the past, Sinema will vote the way she wants to vote. She has said she will caucus with the Democrats, but she rarely attended Democratic caucus meetings before, so there won’t be a change there.

Sinema has been a reliable vote for confirming Biden’s judicial appointments, for women’s issues and for LGBTQ+ issues. She was a lukewarm supporter of Biden’s infrastructure plan and is fervently against changing the Senate filibuster rules or increasing taxes. She voted against a $15/hour national minimum wage.

Sinema’s move is a reminder that every single Democratic Senator can control the Senate, and along with it, control every committee assignment and whatever remains of the Democratic agenda.

Sinema did say she expects to retain her current committee assignments, which makes it sound like she’s had discussions with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer before making her announcement. So, situation normal, more Dems in disarray.

Second, will this throw the 2024 Arizona Senate race to the Republicans? Voter registration in AZ is split nearly evenly into thirds among Dems, Republicans and “Other”, with the GOP in first place and the Dems in third.

Its no secret that Arizona Democrats aren’t fond of Sinema. Below is a year-old poll from the progressive think tank Data For Progress showing how big the climb would be for Sinema to win a Democratic Senate primary in 2024:

Sinema’s options in 2024 are:

Not to run for reelection.
To run as a Democrat and lose in the primary.
To run as an Independent and try to cobble together a centrist coalition.

She would fail if she tried to run as a Republican. She would probably face Kari Lake, the bat-shit crazy election denier who nearly won the AZ governor’s race. Sinema would be cast as a RINO with no chance to win a Republican primary as a former Green Party, former Democrat, and former Independent, who has finally seen the Conservative light.

However, it’s most likely that Sinema left the Democratic Party to maintain her political viability.

If so, the best strategy for Sinema is to run as an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats. Arizona’s Democrats would then either have to accept her as the less horrible choice in a two person contest, or reject her for Gallego, a talented politician who would have trouble winning in a three-way race if Sinema stayed in as an Independent.

That would leave Democrats in a difficult position. They could either support an Independent who mostly agrees with them and votes with the Democratic majority or run their own candidate, thereby possibly splitting the anti-MAGA majority and handing the seat to a Republican.

Remember that both Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine run on the Democrats’ line for Senate. So could Sinema. While she almost certainly doesn’t have what it takes to make Democrats love her, she almost certainly DOES have the power to make sure a more progressive Democrat doesn’t replace her.

The question is: What card will she play in 2024? She’s already cut an ad declaring her independent status. The Democrats face a brutal election cycle in 2024 with 23 seats up (including Maine and Vermont, while Republicans have just 11 at stake. The Dems can’t afford to lose AZ.

But let’s forget Sinema and political war games and turn our attention to reindeer games. It’s time for our Saturday Soother.

Here at the Mansion of Wrong, after a very warm fall, we’re starting a cold snap with the promise of our first real snow accumulation on Sunday. That happens to be when we’re going to hear a performance of Handel’s “Messiah” by the Waterbury Symphony.

So kick back and watch “I know that my Redeemer liveth”, from Handel’s Messiah, with a solo by Amanda Powell, backed by Apollo’s Fire. This was performed live in 2018, in the First Baptist Church, Cleveland, Ohio, conducted by Jeannette Sorrell who also plays harpsichord:

Thoughts On Warnock and The Midterms

The Daily Escape:

Mauna Loa erupting, Big Island, HI – December 5, 2022 photo by Deron Verbeck

You’ve heard this by now:

The 3,537.3 million votes cast on Tuesday represented a 45.2% turnout in Georgia. The record was set in the 2020 presidential election at 69.4%.

The Georgia Senate runoff election was uncomfortably close. Wrongo and Ms. Right tuned in to election results occasionally throughout the night and we were very concerned when the partial results often showed Hershel Walker ahead, at least until the Democratic-leaning counties around Atlanta reported results.

This raises a few questions: First, how (and why?) would so many Georgians vote for a completely unqualified candidate? OTOH, when we see how many people voted for Kari Lake and Blake Masters in AZ, or Dr. Oz and Mastriano in PA, there’s real reason to worry about what the US electorate thinks.

While Trump’s most visible candidates lost, many others won, and Trump still controls the Republican Party to a frightening extent. The WaPo estimated that 176 election deniers won statewide races, or seats in the House of Representatives.

If things go sideways in America (think a steep recession) there should be little doubt that a few thousand votes could easily swing back the other way and we could be stuck with a full-blown neo-fascist government led by Trump or by one of his clones. Michael Tomasky in the NY Review of Books analyzes the current state of political play:

“This is our new condition—tight races between two armies of voters, each marching to the polls with the conviction that victory for the other side would be not merely an unhappy result but calamitous for the republic.”

Wrongo has been harping on the importance of voter turnout to electoral success. The fact is that turnout is becoming more important as the nation has become more clearly divided. More from Tomasky:

“In the eleven presidential elections from 1972 to 2012…turnout averaged 56.1%. In the eleven midterm elections from 1974 to 2014, the average turnout was just 39.4%.”

Tomasky says that all began to change with Trump:

“…presidential turnout in 2016 was a bit higher than average, at 60.1%. In the 2018 midterm, turnout was 50%, the highest for a midterm since 1914. Then turnout in the 2020 presidential race set a modern record at 66.8%, the highest since 1900.”

We learned three things from the 2022 midterms: First, candidate quality is crucial. Party primaries aren’t set up to necessarily select the best candidate. They often reward candidates who fire up their base, because turnout is usually very low in primaries. Second, turnout in the general election is key in most contested Congressional districts and states. Third, we learned that we could control our destiny despite the pro-GOP “red wave” narrative pushed by the national media.

Axios reports that 2022 is the first midterm election since 1934 when the Party in power successfully defended every one of their incumbent Senate seats.

There was bound to be more turnover in the House, if only because there were seven times as many seats being contested. But it was also the first election after the 2020 census and the follow-on redistricting process. Much of the reason for the change of control in the House is due to redistricting.

This year, some incumbents were pitted against each other, ensuring one would lose. Others were in districts they could no longer win, which caused a few retirements and defeats. Almost all the incumbents (95%) who survived primary challenges won re-election.

And despite so much stability on the surface, Americans are incredibly polarized, and there’s widespread discontent. Given that, we should give credit to Democrats who didn’t dissolve into political infighting and who worked to get the job done against big odds. Georgia in particular was once again a hard-fought contest in which every vote counted. That means every Get Out The Vote (GOTV) organization and every phone call, postcard, text, door knock, made by them also counted. As did your donations.

Georgia isn’t turning blue. It’s important to note that Georgia’s Republicans swept every other statewide race (7 of them) without going to a runoff.

And for this Senate runoff, we should recognize the sacrifice made by Georgia voters who stood in line to exercise a right that shouldn’t be contingent either on completing an endurance race, or an obstacle course. We owe Georgia voters a debt of gratitude for their efforts in the face of voter suppression.

The year of Republicans blowing it has ended, and we shouldn’t expect them to let Trump pick their candidates in 2024.

Saturday Soother – December 3, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Pondicherry Park, Bridgeton, ME – November 2022 photo by Eric Storm Photo

Are the Democrats prioritizing the need to pass the Electoral Count Reform Act? Some are worried that amending the Electoral Count Act of 1887 (ECA) might not get done in what remains of Congress’ lame-duck session. If it isn’t done by January 1, it’s unlikely to be passed at all once Republicans take control of the House.

From the WaPo’s Greg Sargent:

“Versions of ECA reform have advanced in the Senate and the House, but it’s hard to see either passing as a stand-alone bill with only a few weeks left in the lame-duck session. That would chew up valuable floor time with much else left to do, including funding the entire government.

So, the most likely option at this point, a congressional aide tells me, is for ECA reform to get attached to that end-of-year spending bill.”

It’s worth worrying that this might not happen. Roll Call reports that Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Amy Klobuchar have said that it should be made a part of the must-pass spending omnibus bill.

The pending ECA Reform bill is the most substantial legislative action trying to deal with the Jan. 6, 2021 attempted coup. Citing ambiguities in the ECA, Trump’s supporters argued that Vice President Mike Pence could set aside some states’ results. You know what followed that.

The pending legislation would clarify that the vice president’s role in counting electoral votes is purely ceremonial, and that s/he does not have the discretion to set aside any state’s properly certified votes. It would also raise the threshold to hear objections to a state’s electors from just one member in each chamber to 20% of both Houses.

ECA reform would also require governors to certify the correct slate of electors. It creates new ways for legal challenges when governors violate that duty, and requires Congress to count the court-sanctioned slate of electors even if a bad-acting state legislature appointed a sham slate.

This is important since right now, we’re seeing Arizona’s Cochise County’s election board simply refusing to certify the results of their midterm election. This shows that election denialism is alive and well in the states and demonstrates the need for ECA reform. Arizona’s GOP is showing us exactly what they plan to do in 2024. We should believe them.

In a future presidential election, a GOP-controlled state legislature could seize on exactly this kind of thing — a local refusal to certify results — as its excuse to appoint a different slate of electors for the losing presidential candidate. If that state’s GOP-controlled House counted those electors, under current law it could lead to a stolen election or major crisis. That must be fixed.

The Democrats are pushing on a string trying to get the bill passed. Attaching the ECA reform to a spending bill is complicated. Right now, 10 GOP Senators support the Senate version of reform, the exact number required to overcome a filibuster. But will those same Senators support the spending bill Sen. Schumer wants to pass in the Senate?

And if not, will the ECA reform bill get a stand-alone vote? More than a few GOP Senators could seek to derail it with poison-pill amendments. What’s more, a stand-alone vote could subject it to attacks from Trump and other Republicans. That might weaken the support of some of the 10 GOP Senators who are for it.

And the Democrats need Mitch McConnell and other GOP Senate leaders to agree to attach ECA reform to a spending bill, and enlist the 10 GOP Senators to support it. That means the GOP controls whether this bill is enacted.

The threat of election subversion won’t disappear in our lifetimes. As Greg Sargent says, Jan. 6 has caused unusual bipartisan urgency for Electoral Count Act reform. It would be the height of folly to let that slip away.

And now it’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we try to forget about power, politics, and economics for a few minutes, and calm ourselves before we rush headlong into the holiday season.

We’ve gotten through Thanksgiving and are heading towards Christmas. Here at the Mansion of Wrong, the faux Christmas tree is up, the Christmas plates are going into the cabinets, and the caviar and good single malts have been stocked. The first overseas Christmas cards have arrived.

Let’s put on our wireless headphones and watch and listen to Saint-Saëns’s “Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, Op.28” for violin and piano, played in 2017 by Bomsori Kim on violin, and Jeongwon Kim on piano. The piece was written by Saint-Saëns in 1867 as the finale of his first violin concerto, but its success as a solo composition at its first performance led Saint-Saëns to publish it separately. Her violin is a Guarnieri from 1725:

Bomsori Kim is new to Wrongo and is outstanding.

It’s Always About Turnout

The Daily Escape:

Verbena in bloom, Anza-Borrego Desert, CA – November 2022 photo by Frank Sengpiel

The midterms are over and some interesting analysis is now available. Kyle Kondik at Sabato’s Crystal Ball has an analysis of how Republicans took the majority in the House by winning more districts that Biden carried than Democrats won districts carried by Trump. From Kondik:

“There are currently slated to be 18 Republicans in Biden seats and just 5 Democrats in Trump seats.”

Kondik reports that the overall number of “crossover” districts — seats that vote for one party for House but the other party for president — has been generally on a downward trajectory. Back in 2008, Democrats held nearly 50 districts that Republican presidential nominee John McCain carried. But many of those districts went red in 2010 and, aside from 2018, Democrats have won relatively few districts won by the other side’s presidential candidate.

And Republicans have now won more of these seats in 6 of the last 7 elections, as the overall number of crossover districts has generally declined. Kondik says:

“Overall, Republicans won 5 double-digit Biden districts…while Democrats won just 1 double-digit Trump district. If those districts had voted in line with their presidential partisanship, the Republican House edge would be just 218-217.”

Immediately post-election, many Dems focused on New York where six House seats flipped to the GOP in districts that Biden had won in 2020. Democrats may think that a weak campaign by Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) hurt them. But the Albany Times Union recently reported that Republican turnout in New York far outpaced Democratic turnout, with GOP turnout reaching 2020 presidential levels on Long Island:

“Republican turnout was substantially higher than for Democrats, 63 to 47 percent, according to an analysis of unofficial election results obtained by the Times Union from the state Board of Elections.”

This was a problem for Democrats all across the US. Tom Bonier, CEO of TargetSmart, an industry leader in using political data, tweeted about another way to look at the poor turnout by Democrats:

The possibly flippable districts Bonier is talking about are: IA3, NY17, MI10, CA13, CO3. Add to those the other five NY districts won by Biden that flipped, and you could have had a decent Democratic majority in the House.

But instead, we’ll be listening to the presumed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy say things like he did on Wednesday. He sent a letter to the January 6th Committee demanding that it preserve “all documents and transcripts” gathered by the Committee.

You should know that his demand is pointless. The Committee had already announced it will publish all documents and transcripts to ensure that Republicans do not destroy evidence when they take over the Committee.

As you may have already concluded about this election cycle, Pew Research says that in-person voting increased compared with 2020. A clear majority of Americans who voted in this year’s Congressional elections say they cast their ballots in person. Nearly two-thirds of voters (65%) submitted ballots in person, including 44% who say they voted on Election Day and 21% who voted in person before Election Day.

In the 2020 presidential election that took place during the Coronavirus, a smaller majority (54%) submitted ballots in person, including just 27% who cast ballots on Election Day.

Absentee and mail-in voting declined from 46% of voters in 2020 to 35% this year. Republicans (52%) are more likely to say they voted in person on Election Day than Democrats (35%), but the share of Democrats voting on Election Day 2022 doubled compared with 2020 (17%).

There were large differences in how voters cast ballots by age and racial or ethnic groups. Nearly two-thirds of voters ages 65 and older say they either voted in person before Election Day or voted by mail or absentee.

That compares with narrower majorities of voters in younger age groups, who were more likely to vote in person on Election Day. In addition, White voters were more likely to report voting in person on Election Day (46%) than Black (40%), Hispanic (32%) or Asian voters (21%).

Overall, the big takeaway for Democrats, both for the Warnock vote on December 6 and for the 2024 Presidential and Congressional elections, is that TURNOUT wins close elections.

And we must expect that all future Congressional and Presidential elections will be decided by razor-thin numbers in many places.

Give your money to groups that are committed to growing turnout.

Monday Wake Up Call – November 28, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Thanksgiving Day, Brewster, MA – November 2022 photo by Anne Marie

There was plenty of news over Thanksgiving that Wrongo was itching to talk about, but instead, he decided to take a complete break. Here’s something that’s been on his mind.

Despite all of the self-congratulating by Democrats, the Cook Political Report shows that Republicans received some 3.5 million more votes than Democrats in the midterms. Republicans received 54.13 million votes compared to the Democrats’ 50.79 million votes. Republicans did better in 2022 than they did in the 2018 midterms by 3 million votes, while Democrats got 10.3 million fewer votes than 2018, when they won control of the House by 235–199. Much of this is turnout.

Despite this context, the narrative is that America rejected the far Right by defeating election denier candidates. And most Trumpist candidates were defeated by significant margins. Democrats shouldn’t rest on their laurels or assume “the Trump fever has broken”. It hasn’t. America comes out of the midterms with voters evenly divided between the Parties.

Now, there are only four swing states left: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Wisconsin. These four only account for 43 Electoral Votes. Stanley Greenberg, a Democratic pollster points to the striking “continuity among the elections” since Trump emerged as a national political figure:

“We’ve now gone through 2016, ’18, ‘20 and ‘22 – and all looked pretty much alike….And it has locked in the coalitions.”

So we’re not only evenly divided, but we’re also deeply divided politically.

Looking at the Electoral College, the midterms offered some optimism to Democrats when 2024 comes around. The five states that decided the last presidential race did so by flipping from Trump in 2016 to Biden in 2020. Those five (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) moved more toward the Democrats in 2022.

The Dems won six of the eight Senate and governor races across these states, and Dems could notch a seventh victory if Sen. Raphael Warnock defeats Herschel Walker in a Georgia run-off next month.

But Republicans made Ohio, Iowa, and Florida Redder. Each now appears securely in the GOP’s column for 2024 (and most likely beyond). And the Dem’s perennial hope of turning Texas Blue still looks like it’s another 10 years away after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s double-digit victory against Beto O’Rourke. Republicans again won all of Texas’ statewide offices, continuing a Dem shutout that stretches back to the 1990s.

It appears that the offsetting and hardening partisan strengths of each Party could again give the power to decide the presidency to a few hundred thousand voters, in a very few close counties in a few very balanced states.

CNN’s Ron Brownstein says that a 2024 presidential race with just Wisconsin, Nevada, Georgia, and Arizona as true battlegrounds would probably begin with Democrats favored in states holding 260 Electoral College votes (including Washington, DC) and Republicans in states with 235. That means Democrats would need to win just one of Arizona (11 votes), Georgia (16), or Wisconsin (10) to reach an Electoral College majority. But that’s far from a certainty.

This division will make for tons of political stress over the next two years. Each Party understands that our nation’s future is now controlled by the choices of a tiny minority of people living in a few contested political districts: White-collar suburbs of Atlanta and Phoenix, working-class Latino neighborhoods in and around Las Vegas, and the mid-sized communities in Wisconsin’s so-called BOW counties (Brown County, Outagamie County and Winnebago County).

No GOP presidential candidate will concede Michigan or Pennsylvania just because of the midterm results. But the magnitude of those 2022 Democratic wins show how difficult it will be for a Republican nominee to take them in 2024 – particularly if the GOP candidate supports further restrictions on abortion.

It’s likely that Democrats will target North Carolina to expand their roster, while Republicans will target Minnesota and New Hampshire. But flipping any state will be difficult, depending upon candidate quality.

This shrinking list of competitive presidential states could increase political tensions for the next two years. Time to wake up America! Think about how your indifference to politics and to voting in our elections has put the country on a knife edge. The threat posed to America by the MAGA extremists remains very real.

It’s going to take tremendous effort in every single election until this dynamic shifts. And that could take a full generation. To help you wake up, watch “People Get Ready”, a Curtis Mayfield tune that foretold the turning tide in the battle for racial equality. It hit the top of the R&B charts after its original 1965 release by The Impressions.

It’s been covered by scores of artists, including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and here in 2009 by Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles. Beck’s reaction when Stewart comes on stage is priceless. Stewart served as vocalist for the Jeff Beck Group back in 1969:

Sample Lyrics:

People get ready
There’s a train a-coming
You don’t need no baggage
You just get on board
All you need is faith
To hear the diesels humming
Don’t need no ticket
You just thank the Lord

Monday Wake Up Call – November 21, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Early snow, Rockford, MI – November 2022 photo by Jeane Blazic

We’re going to cover two topics on this Monday. First, Bernard L. Fraga, associate professor of Political Science at Emory University, tweeted the demographics of the Georgia midterm election:

Black turnout was down by 4.5% vs 2018. Hispanic turnout was down 2.5%. Had the Black turnout percentage been at 2018 levels, Warnock probably would have won outright. The difference may have been caused in part by the new voting restrictions in Georgia. Wrongo talked last week about helping Georgians get photo IDs. People better wake up and help get more Black Georgians to the polls on December 6.

But today’s main wake up call is about the Rightwing group, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Wrongo has written about ALEC before, here, here, here and here. ALEC prepares model legislation that conforms to hard Right ideology. They then meet with state legislators all across America to push for adoption of ALEC-written laws at the state level. These are laws that would probably never become law at the federal level.

In the past, some Republican-led states have passed hundreds of pieces of ALEC’s model legislation almost word for word, including on immigration, voter suppression, the environment, guns, and energy policy.

Now, ALEC is pushing states to adopt a new law shielding US businesses from “political boycotts”. If enacted, the proposed legislation, would prevent boycotts by investors, banks, and companies of any other US business. The guts of the Act is that a governmental entity may not enter into a contract with a company for goods or services unless the contract contains a written verification from the company that it:

Does not engage in economic boycotts; and
Will not engage in economic boycotts during the term of the contract.

This comes about amid rising consumer pressure on firms over who they support politically, or who they choose to do business with. Think about the decision by major retail stores to stop selling My Pillow products, or the decision by Adidas to cut Kanye West’s shoe line loose after he made anti-Semitic statements.

From The Guardian:

“The new model legislation requires every “governmental entity”, which covers a wide array of bodies from state government to local police departments and public universities, to include a clause in contracts requiring businesses to pledge they “will not engage in economic boycotts”

For most of us, “free markets” means that businesses are free to make buying and selling decisions based on the information that’s relevant to their economic interests. But to enforce this Act, a state Attorney General can decide that the decision to, for example, divest the stock of an oil and gas company, is an ideological act.

What if it’s just not that good of a stock?

ALEC’s doublethink maintains that for free markets to remain free, it is sometimes necessary to restrict the freedom to make certain decisions based on criteria that an Attorney General can define as “ideological.”

Even if they are based on a sound economic rationale.

We knew all along that for the Right Wing, free doesn’t really mean free. These people are authoritarians who want to harness the powers of government for their own ends. And they’ll do whatever’s convenient to achieve those ends.

The Republican establishment is very much alive. ALEC is the right wing’s corporate gangsters in suits. In this case, it’s billionaires aligned with corrupt Republican politicians. They have purchased state and federal legislators to do their bidding. And it’s been going on for a very long time.

Let’s see what the Supreme Court does when one of these cases gets in front of them.

Time to wake up America! The hard right in America is unbelievably well-funded. ALEC is just one of the many ways that they are undermining what true “freedom” means.

To help you wake up, listen to Little Feat, that is, the Lowell George-led version of Little Feat, (not the several incarnations of newer bands using that name that have been working since Lowell died in 1979).

Here Lowell George does “Dixie Chicken”, recorded at London’s Rainbow Theater on August 3 & 4, 1977. It’s from the live album, “Waiting for Columbus”. If you don’t know this album, you should buy the 2002 Deluxe Edition CD. You will never be sorry. Don’t buy the version on Amazon, it only has 20 songs; the actual deluxe CD has 27.

WFC was recorded in London and in Washington DC. There were 4 dates in London and 3 in DC. Here it is:

That’s Bill Payne on the piano solo. Little Feat combines jazz, honkytonk, swing, ragtime and Dixie into one great song. Enjoy!

Saturday Soother – House of Representatives Edition, November 19, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Verbena and sunset, Anza Borrego SP, CA – November 2022 photo by Paulette Donnellon

We start Saturday with a reflection on the outgoing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Many think that she ranks as the best House Speaker in modern times.

Wrongo remembers her for standing up to Obama and his chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel during the debate over the shape of the ACA. There was much concern about how far the Democrats could go with the bill. Emmanuel wanted to tone it down to meet objections from the GOP and from moderate Dems.

Pelosi met with Obama and his aides and said that she wouldn’t support anything but the full monte. That caused the White House’s effort to find a more moderate way forward to crumble. And America made its biggest single step toward providing health insurance to all Americans.

At the end, It was Pelosi not Obama, who made it happen. It was her ability to deliver her caucus that gave Obama et.al a spine.

Wrongo recently learned that when Nancy Pelosi was a teen and her father, Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., was mayor of Baltimore, she maintained his “favors book”. That explains much about her effectiveness when she finally got to Congress at age 47. At the point when she took office, she had five kids. Wrangling them, plus learning to keep a “favors book” was probably ideal preparation for being the first woman House Speaker.

This week, control of the US House has passed to the Republican Party. That means two things: First, that Republicans will now say that compliance with House subpoenas is mandatory, even though they purposefully ignored them for the last two years.

Second, Americans should prepare for investigations of the Biden administration by grandstanding GOP Congresscritters. James Comer (R-KY) held a press conference saying that he will be looking into Hunter Biden, his laptop, and his father. Comer, the incoming Oversight Committee chair, has said an investigation into Hunter Biden and other Biden family members and associates will be a priority. His idea is to try and position the president as having compromised national security.

If that seems to echo the FBI/DOJ investigations into Trump, well, that’s purely a coincidence. Be prepared to see absolutely nothing get done over the next two+ years that might improve the lives of the American people.

Let’s spend a minute on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Last March, the WaPo did a story on a security review it had authorized of the disk drive on the “Hunter Biden laptop”. The WaPo asked security experts Matt Green and Jake Williams to review the drive to see what they could authenticate. From the WaPo:

“In their examinations, Green and Williams found evidence that people other than Hunter Biden had accessed the drive and written files to it, both before and after the initial stories in the New York Post and long after the laptop itself had been turned over to the FBI.”

So people had kept adding content to the “laptop,” making it impossible to say what was on the “laptop” when it was originally provided to the Delaware computer repair shop.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Voter Turnout

Saturday Soother – January 7, 2023

What Should Happen When A Candidate Lies On Their Resumé?

Saturday Soother – December 10, 2022

Thoughts On Warnock and The Midterms

Saturday Soother – December 3, 2022

It’s Always About Turnout

Monday Wake Up Call – November 21, 2022