Tag: Mid-Term Elections

What About The Polls?

Let me state from the git-go….polls are notoriously wrong almost every election….so the news that was released this week should be taken with a grain of salt….

If past performance is any indication, polls ahead of this year’s midterm elections may be setting Democrats up for another major letdown. That’s according not only to pundits but also the pollsters themselves, who according to Politico have been wringing their hands and tweaking their methods ever since the 2016 election forced a reckoning in the industry. Postmortems back then alerted pollsters to a new breed of voter: Trump supporters, a considerable chunk of whom are hard to reach or simply refuse to participate in polls, therefore skewing results toward Democrats.

Despite significant adjustments aimed at reaching more non-college educated voters and those without landlines, most pollsters bombed again in 2020. Biden won, but the margins were far narrower than predicted, especially in many battleground states. Indeed, 2020 polls were the least accurate in four decades, and the industry doesn’t seem to know why. As the New York Times’Nate Cohn puts it, the polling community essentially “declared that it was ‘impossible’ to definitively ascertain what went wrong in the 2020 election.” Since then, pollsters have continued the handwringing, but they haven’t made major changes, hoping instead that Trump’s absence on the ballot will relieve the poll-skewing effect of his supporters.

Polls are looking relatively rosy for Democrats, contrary to traditional wisdom that shows a president’s party underperforms in midterms, especially in an uncertain economy. Some pundits say Democrats have legitimate momentum on their side, thanks to the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision and the fact that lots of Republican candidates have very low favorability ratings, per the Washington Post. Democrat candidates also outperformed polls in recent special elections in New York and Alaska. But as the Times also points out, the strong Dem polls are appearing in the exact same battleground states pollsters botched in 2020. For example, in Wisconsin, Democrat Mandela Barnes shows a seven-point lead over incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson; in 2020, polls showed Biden at +8, but he won the state by less than a point.

My thoughts is it is a toss up…..granted the Dems have gained a bit because the president has gained…..but I have NO confidence in the Dems to pull it out and I have no confidence in polls…..

Thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

GOP And The World Of Tomorrow

The mid-terms are just weeks away and there is much confusion on which way the votes will break…..will the country go back 70 years or will we look forward to the future?

The country as we have known it is at stake….is the end near?

It appears that all interest in the mid-terms is just not there…..and that makes me think that the results is all but sealed…..

Let’s look at the world of tomorrow if it breaks towards the GOP……

The party has issued its plan for the near future with a win and control of Congress…

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy on Friday directly confronted President Biden and the party in power, choosing battleground Pennsylvania to unveil a midterm election agenda with sweeping Trump-like promises, despite the House GOP’s sometimes spotty record of delivering and governing in Congress. McCarthy, who’s poised to seize the speaker’s gavel if Republicans win control of the House in November, hopes to replicate the strategy that Speaker Newt Gingrich used to spark voter enthusiasm and sweep House control in a 1994 landslide. The House GOP’s “Commitment to America” gives a nod to that earlier era but updates it in the age of Donald Trump, with economic, border security, and social policies to rouse the former president’s well of supporters, per the AP.

“What we’re going to roll out today is a ‘Commitment to America’ in Washington—not Washington, DC, but Washington County, Pa.,” McCarthy said at a manufacturing facility, standing with a cross-section of other lawmakers. “Because it’s about you, it’s not about us.” He offered a portrait of party unity despite the uneasy coalition that makes up the House minority—and the Republican Party itself. Propelled by Trump’s “Make America Great Again” voters, the Republicans need to pick up just a few seats to win back control of the House and replace Speaker Nancy Pelosi, though McCarthy’s ability to lead the House is far from guaranteed. McCarthy spent more than a year pulling together the House GOP’s often warring factions—from the far-right MAGA to what’s left of the more centrist ranks—to produce a mostly agreed-upon agenda.

Gingrich has been working with McCarthy and his team to craft the style and substance of the proposal. Mostly, the GOP pocket card hits broad strokes—energy independence, security, and an end to liberal social policies, particularly in schooling. Conservative Republicans, however, complain privately that McCarthy isn’t leaning hard enough into their priorities, as he tries to appeal to a broader swath of voters and hold the party together. Dems, meanwhile, aren’t impressed at all with the GOP’s agenda. “Long on slogans and short on details,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told union workers in Pittsburgh on Friday, according to excerpts of his speech. “That’s because the true details of Republicans’ agenda are too frightening for most American voters.”

Then there is the Constitution thing…..they want to re-write the document and not in a good way….

… former Democratic U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold wrote in an op-ed at The Guardian that Article 5 of the U.S. Constitution allows the document to be amended, either with amendments being proposed by two-thirds of Congress and ratified by three-quarters of the states, or through a method that has never been tested: the establishment of a new constitutional convention.

To hold a new convention, two-thirds of all state legislatures—34 total—must apply to hold the gathering, where lawmakers would have broad freedom to change the Constitution however they saw fit. Three-quarters of states would have to ratify their proposed amendments.

“The right has already packed the Supreme Court and is reaping the rewards, with decisions from Dobbs to Bruen that radically reinterpret the Constitution in defiance of precedent and sound legal reasoning,” wrote Feingold, referencing recent rulings on abortion rights and gun control. “But factions of the right are not satisfied to wait for the court to reinterpret the constitution. Instead, they have set their sights on literally rewriting our foundational document.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/09/19/warnings-mount-over-right-wing-plot-rewrite-us-constitution

There is so much more at stake than a election of a few far right slugs….they could change the very country into something that was never intended by those far thinking Founders.

You have the power to protect this country from radical change….that is thinking that you want to save this country.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

Then VOTE!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

2022 Mid-Term Cheat Sheet

The Queen is buried and now we return the mundane crap of our upcoming mid-terms…..there seems to be very little interest in these elections….is that because everyone could care less who controls Congress and therefore our country?

About 33 days and time for you to vote…..maybe now would be a good time to start paying some damn attention….(just a thought)….

For those that are truly interested in the direction of this country I offer up the Vox cheat sheet…..

The 2022 midterm elections are fast approaching, and right now, they’re anything but straightforward.

While Republicans were once favored to win a large House majority and even retake the Senate, things are looking more promising for Democrats as voters across the country have been energized by the issue of abortion rights.

With less than two months to go, there’s a lot that’s still uncertain, from how much Democrats can buck historic trends to just how big a role inflation will continue to play. Here are nine questions — many submitted by readers — that look at the factors in each party’s favor, the policies voters are focused on, and the long-term consequences these elections could have. If you have midterms questions you’d like answered, please submit them in the form below.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/9/12/23344632/midterms-2022-elections-key-house-senate-races-control-congress

What will a GOP win actually mean?

With the midterm elections less than two months away, Republicans are strongly favored to win a majority of seats in the House. Democrats, for now, are expected to keep control of the Senate, though some of the contests — particularly Wisconsin, Georgia, and Nevada — could be particularly close.

With President Joe Biden’s veto power, the implications of Republicans reclaiming one or both chambers in Congress will have more to do with blunting a Democratic policy agenda than swiftly enacting conservative priorities.

But if they do win power, what do Republicans want to do with it? If you’ve had some trouble figuring that out, you’re not alone. It’s been confusing. Different factions within the party are competing for the agenda-setting mantle, and it’s been a long time since Republicans wrote a unified policy and governing platform. When they tried at their 2020 national convention, they ended up scrapping their plans. Instead, they kept their 2016 platform, and avoided an anticipated fight with Donald Trump over a new one.

Even the right-leaning magazine National Review observed recently that “Republicans are doing little to explain what they would have the government do differently if they took power.” There has been a mix of proposals introduced with varying degrees of specificity, and previews of the intraparty fights we might see over the next few years.

It’s always easier for a party to appear united when they’re in the minority, but if Republicans reclaim power, they will have the much harder task of needing to unite around a real agenda. That’s when they’ll have to make real decisions on issues like abortion bans, civil rights, rollbacks of environmental protections, and welfare subsidies.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/9/14/23347145/republicans-midterms-2023-gop-agenda

There is much to be concerned over with these elections….but sadly I look for many Americans to be on the sidelines because it is just too hard for them to actually care about the country and its people.

If you do not vote then keep your mouth shut…..because you were lazy the country slides further down the crap hole.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Time To Look At 2022 Vote

It is late September and time to get serious about the upcoming 2022 mid-terms…..

My thoughts are that the Dems are in for a shellacking in the mid-terms…..the House may well go GOP as well as the Senate….then 2024 may well complete the takeover of the government by the far-right….

Some others thought on the elections…..

Last month, Newt Gingrich made a bold (and seemingly wild) prediction about the midterm elections. 

“I think we’ll pick up between 25 and 70 seats in the House,” the former Republican House speaker said in an interview with Fox.
Seventy seats! That would not only eclipse the 63-seat gain Republicans made in the 2010 midterm elections, but would also be the largest seat switch in the House since 1948.
Gingrich, as he often does, was likely just riffing — going for an outlandishly high ceiling on Republican gains to draw headlines and attention.
 
Which, well, mission accomplished.
Gingrich’s ceiling of 70 seats is well in excess of where nonpartisan political handicappers are — at least at the moment. David Wasserman, the House editor at the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, is projecting Republicans gain between 20 and 35 seats. Nathan Gonzales of Inside Elections hasn’t released his range just yet — it’s coming next week — but says, “Republicans are well positioned to win the majority.”
New data from Gallup suggests that the national political environment is arguably worse for Democrats than it was in 2010 — raising at least the possibility that the party suffers even larger losses than currently predicted.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/17/politics/midterm-election-house-gains-republican-democrat/index.html

Why are people making life miserable for Dems…..there is a shift quietly taking shape that should scare the crap out of us mere mortals…..

A political shift is beginning to take hold across the US as tens of thousands of suburban swing voters who helped fuel the Democratic Party’s gains in recent years are becoming Republicans. More than 1 million voters across 43 states have switched to the Republican Party over the last year, according to voter registration data analyzed by the AP. The previously unreported number reflects a phenomenon that is playing out in virtually every region of the country in the period since President Biden replaced former President Trump.

But nowhere is the shift more pronounced—and dangerous for Democrats—than in the suburbs, where well-educated swing voters who turned against Trump’s Republican Party in recent years appear to be swinging back. Over the last year, far more people are switching to the GOP across suburban counties from Denver to Atlanta and Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Republicans also gained ground in counties around medium-size cities such as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Raleigh, North Carolina; Augusta, Georgia; and Des Moines, Iowa. One Colorado voter who switched said he blamed Democrats’ support for mandatory COVID vaccines, what he sees as the party’s inability to quell violent crime, and its frequent focus on racial justice.

The AP examined nearly 1.7 million voters who had likely switched affiliations across 42 states for which there is data over the last 12 months, according to L2, a political data firm. L2 uses a combination of state voter records and statistical modeling to determine party affiliation. While party switching is not uncommon, the data shows a definite reversal from the period while Trump was in office, when Democrats enjoyed a slight edge in the number of party switchers nationwide. Over the last year, roughly two-thirds of the 1.7 million voters who changed their party affiliation shifted to the Republican Party. In all, more than 1 million people became Republicans compared to about 630,000 who became Democrats.

Like I said….the dice are being rolled and it appears that the country is about to get ‘snake eyes’…..

Weep for this country.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–25Aug22

We all have our opinion of what is happening in the state of Florida…..I would like to talk about the election that just happened….the rest can wait for a later post/s

First there is the representative that is under sex crimes investigation wins his….Matt Gaetz…..

Despite the federal sex trafficking investigation he’s facing, Matt Gaetz easily won his primary Tuesday night in Florida. The Republican congressman had 67.5% of the vote with 92% of the vote in, NBC News reports. His main GOP challenger, former FedEx exec Mark Lombardo, had 26.3%. Gaetz went hard on campaigning as well as on ads, spending $1.1 million, and he was endorsed by former President Trump. The district is among Florida’s most conservative; Trump carried it in the last presidential election by more than 33 percentage points. That means Gaetz is likely to be re-elected in the general, the Hill reports.

I am trying to wrap my head around the hypocrisy here……a Dem senator pretended to touch a woman’s breast and he is forced to resign and yet someone that may well have committed sex crimes wins his primary.

Florida is the land to contradictions…..like that in Central Florida….

The US has its first Gen Z winner of a congressional primary, NPR reports. Maxwell Frost, a progressive activist, is at 25 just old enough to serve in the House of Representatives, and he won the Democratic primary to do so in a solidly blue district in Orlando, Fla., meaning he’s also likely to win in the general election this fall. Members of Gen Z, born between 1997 and 2012, were able to run for Congress for the first time in this election, and Frost, who has worked as an organizer and activist with the ACLU and March For Our Lives, is one of the first to do so. At least one other Gen Z candidate, former Trump White House aide Karoline Leavitt, is also running in the midterms in New Hampshire, which holds its primaries next month.

Frost, whose campaign issues include the cancelation of student debt, stopping gun violence, Medicare for All, and Green New Deal, said in a statement following his victory, “Today’s election is proof that Central Florida’s working families want representation that has the courage to ask for more. I share this victory with the nurses, forklift drivers, teachers, caregivers, social workers, farmers, union organizers, cashiers, and other members of this vibrant community who supported this campaign.” He’ll face off with Republican military veteran Calvin Wimbish to fill the seat of Rep. Val Demings, who is running for Senate, ABC News reports.

It would be great to have another progressive in the House….but we need many more for a difference to be made.

Florida is interesting from a political perspective…..

Watch This Blog!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Mid-Terms Not Looking Good For Dems

The 2022 mid-terms are quickly approaching and as usual with American politics it is not looking too good for the Dems when the voting is counted…..

To state the obvious: A lot is at stake in November. The 2022 midterm elections will not only decide control of both the U.S. House and Senate, but also who sits behind the governor’s desk in 36 out of the nation’s 50 states. 

History tells us that midterm elections generally go well for the party that’s not in the White House. But how can we tell whether that’s shaping up to happen again this cycle? As we inch closer to Election Day, there are four big indicators you can watch to give you an idea of which way the political winds are blowing.

The first number to keep an eye on is President Biden’s approval rating. Since World War II, there has been a decent relationship1 between the president’s average net approval rating (approval rating minus disapproval rating) on the day of the midterm elections and how many seats his party has lost in the House of Representatives. As you can see in the chart below, the president’s party has almost always lost seats — but popular presidents have been able to mitigate their losses.

Since World War II, presidents with net approval ratings better than +30 percentage points on a midterm’s Election Day have lost an average of only three House seats. Meanwhile, presidents with net approval ratings between +5 and +30 points on Election Day have lost an average of 24 seats, and presidents whose net popularity was worse than +5 points — which includes every president since 2006 — have lost an average of 39 seats.

The relationship isn’t perfect, though. President Dwight Eisenhower was extremely popular on Election Day 1958 (a net approval rating of +30.0 points), but Republicans still lost 47 House seats. And in 1974, President Gerald Ford was pretty popular (+19.8 points), but Republicans, still tainted by association with disgraced ex-President Richard Nixon (who had resigned just three months earlier), still lost 43 House seats.

Some Early Clues About How The Midterms Will Go

If things go the way of history then the American people are in store for a chaotic 2 years until the 2024….2 years of political stagnation.

Choose wisely.

Watch This Blog!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–30Jul21

Polls are notoriously wrong….take the elections of 2016 and 2020….wrong.

This poll taken shows that those cowards that cower to Trump and basically supported the insurrection of 06 January may have a tough time in the mid-terms….

Even moments after a mob of extremist supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the United States Capitol in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election, a number of Republican lawmakers—during the joint Congressional session acknowledging then-President-elect Joe Biden’s victory—proceeded with objections to electoral votes in swing states Trump lost.

Some Republican lawmakers—like now-former Senator from Georgia, Kelly Loeffler—revoked their intended objections after the rioters shattered windows, ransacked offices, beat police officers, and breached the Senate floor, calling for the execution of any lawmaker they saw as disloyal to Trump.

Others—like Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri—continued with their objections, and have since continued to downplay the severity of the riots and absolve themselves of their culpability.

This is where the Republican party began to splinter in its mostly unconditional allegiance to Trump. Who stood up to the mob? Who proceeded to amplify the same lies that had endangered the lives of their colleagues only an hour before?

Which principles would Republican voters side with in the next election?

That last question remains unanswered, and people are divided in their predictions.

https://secondnexus.com/new-republic-eichenthal-poll-certification

We Americans can only hope that for once a poll may be accurate…..but then it is a poll and they have been useless in the past as a predictor.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–28Nov18

The midterms from Mississippi….who cares right?

I live there so I f*cking care!

There has been a back and forth for the office of US Senator from Mississippi….a racist white broad or a black guy with deep ties to DC….I said when the run-off was announced that Hyde-Smith would win no matter what her mouth did……and I was correct……

Mississippi failed to deliver the Democrats an Alabama-style upset in the last race of the 2018 midterms. Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith defeated Democrat Mike Espy and will serve the remaining two years of Sen. Thad Cochran’s term. She is the first woman elected to Congress from Mississippi, the Clarion-Ledger reports. If Espy had won, he would have been the first African-American the state had elected to Congress since 1874, and the first Democratic senator elected in the state since 1982. The victory in the runoff gives Republicans control of 53 out of 100 seats in the Senate. Hyde-Smith had been widely expected to win, though the GOP had to pump funds into the state as the race narrowed in ts final weeks.

Hyde-Smith stuck to a strategy of appealing to President Trump’s core voters—and was rewarded for it, ABC reports. The president appeared at two of her rallies Monday night and she personally thanked him at her victory party Tuesday. “Mr. President, and I just talked to him so I know he’s watching, thank you so much for everything,” she said. The victory follows a divisive campaign that led to several corporate donors asking Hyde-Smith to return their donations, the AP reports. Hyde-Smith was recorded joking about attending a public hanging, and talking about making it “more difficult” for “liberal folks” to vote. (She accused Espy of using the hanging remarks as a “weapon.”)

Espy gave a good fight….but in Mississippi is will NEVER be enough to change the the minds of the racist folk that have a lock hold on government….the “good old boy” network is firmly in control……

A good fight will never be enough in Mississippi.

I listen to the victory speech…..and I laughed my ass off….what a pack of bullshit!

“Mississippi you know my heart and my mind”  yes they do and the vote shows they know exactly what she is….

“It was never about me it was about Mississippi”…..it is never about the state and everything about keeping power centered in the hands of the few racist old bastards that remain.

This vote guaranteed two things….a black man will never be good enough and the state will remain at the bottom of every list of good things.  PERIOD!

Sorry if that offends.

Closing Thought–19Nov18

We have had a midterm election and as usual the GOP is claiming voter fraud to explain their losses….I mean it has to be fraud because no one would vote against their racist agenda, right?

But wait the dude that sits in cat bird seat of power has a better explanation of why his idiotic ideas failed……

President Trump asserts that Republicans are losing elections because people are donning disguises to vote illegally. Trump made the claim while discussing the Florida recount with the Daily Caller, along with his belief that Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes should be fired (more on that here, here and here). The full transcript of the interview shows the president also brought up California before making his disguise statement, so it wasn’t clear which state he meant when he said this:

  • “The Republicans don’t win and that’s because of potentially illegal votes, which is what I’ve been saying for a long time. I have no doubt about it. And I’ve seen it, I’ve had friends talk about it when people get in line that have absolutely no right to vote and they go around in circles. Sometimes they go to their car, put on a different hat, put on a different shirt, come in and vote again. Nobody takes anything. It’s really a disgrace what’s going on. The disgrace is that, voter ID. If you buy, you know, a box of cereal, if you do anything, you have a voter ID.”

The Guardian, which along with other media outlets paints the “disguises” claim as being about Florida, notes that Florida counties face a 3pm deadline Thursday to finish their machine recounts and that it’s not clear all of them will be able to comply; six federal lawsuits have been filed so far over the election in the state. The New York Times reports that thousands of ballots may be disqualified due to signature mismatches, though US District Judge Mark Walker on Thursday extended a deadline on that. He gave voters whose ballots were discounted over their signatures until 5pm Saturday to show a valid ID and resolve the issue, reports the AP. He also chastised state election officials: Florida is “the laughingstock of the world election after election, and we chose not to fix this.” (Trump earlier called Florida ballots “massively infected.”)

You gotta love the bullshit these a/holes can stir, right?

The GOP has become the whiny ass losers they have always been but hid very well…..they come out of the woodwork when they are losing….like there has got to be fraud because we know that everyone loves a Repub right?

Is There A Mandate?

Finally and mercifully the midterms are in the history books…..but the partisan BS goes on and on……

But an observation……. an era of Republican leadership, nationalistic and fundamentalist movements, and changing social conventions. Electing Republican presidents who favored business expansion rather than regulation, the American public enjoyed apparently unlimited prosperity, while fear of radicals and foreigners combined to almost completely close off America to immigration and contributed to the resurgence of hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.

Sound familiar?

It should it was a description of the 1920’s in the US.

But I digress…….

Dems take the House.  GOP gains in Senate.  And the Congress has a mandate.  Riddle me this….What would that mandate be?

One person has said it is try and break this vicious cycle of tribalism…..really?

To me it looks more like racism than some form of tribalism…..

It’s fashionable in the Donald Trump era to decry political “tribalism,” especially if you’re a conservative attempting to criticize Trump without incurring the wrath of his supporters. House Speaker Paul Ryan has lamented the “tribalism” of American politics. Arizona Senator Jeff Flake has said that “tribalism is ruining us.” Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse has written a book warning that “partisan tribalism is statistically higher than at any point since the Civil War.”

In the fallout from Tuesday’s midterm elections, many political analysts have concluded that blue America and red America are ever more divided, ever more at each other’s throats. But calling this “tribalism” is misleading, because only one side of this divide remotely resembles a coalition based on ethnic and religious lines, and only one side has committed itself to a political strategy that relies on stoking hatred and fear of the other. By diagnosing America’s problem as tribalism, chin-stroking pundits and their sorrowful semi-Trumpist counterparts in Congress have hidden the actual problem in American politics behind a weird euphemism.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/11/racism-not-tribalism/575173/

On the racism thing…..Mother Jones sees the racism in 2018 was down but sexism up…….

Here’s an interesting bit of polling research from Brian Schaffner. He used a panel study to test the effects of racist and sexist attitudes toward voting Republican in 2016 and 2018. Here’s what he found:

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/11/in-2018-racism-was-down-but-sexism-was-up-among-republican-voters/

Will the past election bring a return to the “rule of law”?

After Wednesday, elected officials in the Republican Party should have no doubt that Donald Trump will force them to choose in coming days, weeks, and months between loyalty to him and loyalty to the rule of law, between the public’s right to the truth and Trump’s efforts to hide it.

The president began the day with an extraordinary threat on Twitter: “If the Democrats think they are going to waste Taxpayer Money investigating us at the House level,” he wrote,“then we will likewise be forced to consider investigating them for all of the leaks of Classified Information, and much else, at the Senate level. Two can play that game!”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/republicans-must-choose-between-trump-and-the-rule-of-law/ar-BBPtOxP

Come 2019 will the GOP grow a pair or will they continue to govern on their knees in front of Our Dear Supreme Leader?

My guess is they are springing for new knee pads…..cowards always work best when kept on their knees.