Midterms 2022 general thread

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That may have well contributed to the election, along with student loan relief. I watched a news story on t.v. that stated a majority of young voters below 25 years of age were engaged to participate to protect their student loan interests. If certain people got elected, they campaigned that they would do everything they could to stop the student loan relief process. That ticked off the youngest generation that could vote as it directly affected their future financial plans.

If Republicans want people to get high pay jobs because they don't want living wages, then how do they expect people to go to college only to drown in debt? I don't understand their logic. College used to not be expensive, even with inflation. My mom worked and still was able to pay her tuition and this was the 1970s. She was also able to still pay her rent and other bills. Her parents helped some, she has no student debt. Even she thinks this is ridiculous what Republicans want and she is a boomer.

If Republicans want people to get high pay jobs because they don't want living wages, then how do they expect people to go to college only to drown in debt? I don't understand their logic. College used to not be expensive, even with inflation. My mom worked and still was able to pay her tuition and this was the 1970s. She was also able to still pay her rent and other bills. Her parents helped some, she has no student debt. Even she thinks this is ridiculous what Republicans want and she is a boomer.

If Republicans want people to get high pay jobs because they don't want living wages, then how do they expect people to go to college only to drown in debt? I don't understand their logic. College used to not be expensive, even with inflation. My mom worked and still was able to pay her tuition and this was the 1970s. She was also able to still pay her rent and other bills. Her parents helped some, she has no student debt. Even she thinks this is ridiculous what Republicans want and she is a boomer.

I suppose they want to de-subsidise it so that the many who can't afford it are forced to do menial jobs instead. There was a time when higher education was more or less open to all and filtered only by the academic merit of the would-be student, but they're rolling that back as fast as they can.

If they expect people to work menial jobs that pay low wages and not enough to live off of, then they can stop moaning about people being "lazy" and not working on skills to get a good pay job. How do they have the time if they need to work to stay off the streets and to even eat? They can't have their cake and eat it too. They can also stop moaning about the homeless too and blaming it on democrats.

Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly is the winner of the Arizona Senate race, NBC News projects, defeating Blake Masters, a Republican backed by former President Donald Trump.

Kelly's projected victory on Friday comes three days after polls closed, and as Arizona officials continued counting ballots that were mailed or dropped off, particularly in the vote-rich Maricopa County, home to Phoenix. It gives Democrats 49 Senate seats, one short of securing a majority, with Nevada still counting votes and Georgia's contest headed to a Dec. 6 runoff.

Kelly ran as a moderate, breaking with President Joe Biden on issues like immigration as he sought to navigate headwinds generated by Biden’s low approval rating and widespread economic pain due to rising inflation. He promised to protect abortion rights and build on Democrats’ achievements in recent years, including laws to boost competition with China and to lower prescription drug costs.

Kelly carried moderates by a margin of 63% to 33% and independents by a margin of 55% to 39%, NBC News exit polls showed. Kelly won women by 12 points and lost men by 4 points. Kelly and Masters broke even with white voters but Kelly carried the state's large Latino electorate by 18 points, assuring his victory.

We’ve seen it before. Far too often, in fact. And so far, the cycle is playing out in predictable stages.

First, Donald Trump or his disciples turn in a poor performance at the polls, leaving the GOP to mourn the loss of what were winnable races. Next, the pundits, politicians, and institutions on the right that haven’t had much use for Trump in the recent past bury the president and his movement in condemnations. Even some sources ensconced in Trump’s orbit appear to share the establishmentarians’ concerns, but not so much that they want to incur consequences for echoing them on the record. So, they share them with reporters on the condition of anonymity.

That’s where we are today in the immediate aftermath of a depressing midterm cycle for Republicans in which voters sought to cleanse the landscape of Trump’s hand-picked cronies and neophytes. If the cycle continues as it has in the past, this outburst of recriminations will soon face a retrograde counterattack from the forces that owe their political relevance to Trump. In the end, the fear of alienating the Republican voters who make up the base of the party’s primary electorate usually wins out over the instinct to appeal to a broader universe of voters. Trump’s critics stifle. His fans posture as though they’ve won something. Everyone retreats to their respective corners, and the GOP goes on losing.

That’s what we might expect to see soon enough, though we haven’t seen it just yet. The backlash against Trumpism—focusing less on MAGA-flavored policy preferences and more on the surly affectation the former president cultivates in his mimics—is coming from some auspicious quarters.

Former Trump adviser Jason Miller, who joined a select few who spent election night in Trump’s company, doesn’t evince any compunction about telling reporters that he’s advising Trump to keep his head down for a while. “Georgia needs to be the focus of every Republican in the country right now,” Miller said of the forthcoming runoff election between Sen. Raphael Warnock and Hershel Walker.

Is Trump even capable of making a positive contribution to that cause? Former Trump-era Press Sec. Kayleigh McEnany doesn’t think so. “I think he needs to put it on pause,” she told reporters. “I think we’ve got to make strategic calculations.” By contrast, she added, “Gov. DeSantis, I think he should be welcomed to the state, given what happened last night. You’ve got to look at the realities on the ground.”

The acute threat these admonitions present to Trump’s ego are unlikely to go unanswered. And, according to Jonathan Swan’s reporting in Axios, they won’t. While many of the courtiers caught in the former president’s realm are reportedly begging Trump to postpone a presidential announcement until the heat dies down, “he has no intention of listening to that advice.” And why should he? If Trump is looking for evidence that this burst of enthusiasm will fade like all the rest, he is getting the familiar feedback he needs.

“Several well-known Republicans declined an opportunity to tell Swan on the record that they feel it’s time to move on from Trump,” Axios reported. Indeed, the dispatches that reporters are filing from Mar-a-Lago are replete with unsourced quotes from people close to Trump who would not otherwise speak candidly about their boss’s predicament. And aspiring Republican ladder-climbers seem unwilling to give up.

In statements provided to the New York Times upon the paper’s solicitation, some MAGA-friendly current and future lawmakers turned in lifeless and perfunctory but nevertheless illustrative endorsements of their embattled leader.

“It is time for Republicans to unite around the most popular Republican in America who has a proven track record of conservative governance,” read Rep. Elise Stefanik’s endorsement of Trump’s presumed 2024 campaign.

The nature of this particular backlash against Trump feels different only because it is occurring alongside the emergence of a real competing power center inside the GOP. Within the ocean of disappointments for the GOP, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis presides over an island of hope. Previously, when the power dynamic inside the GOP was unipolar, Trump could weather intra-party criticisms. The rise of a rival pole within the Republican infrastructure complicates things for Trump.

The abject cowardice of Trump’s unnamed critics and his rote endorsers is frustratingly familiar to those who have seen similar anti-Trump insurrections put down.

Maybe this time is different. Who knows? But it doesn’t look different yet.

Democrats defied historical trends and defeated several candidates backed by former President Donald Trump to keep control of the Senate, providing enormous relief for President Joe Biden.

The battle for the House, meanwhile, remains too close to call.

The picture in the Senate became clear late Saturday after Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada narrowly defeated Republican Adam Laxalt to win re-election, putting her party over the threshold, NBC News projected Saturday.

"Thank you, Nevada!" Cortez Masto said in a tweet Saturday evening after its two most populous counties, Clark and Washoe, finished counting mail-in ballots.

Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona won his re-election contest in Arizona, NBC News projected Friday evening, directing all eyes to Nevada. Both Laxalt and Masters were endorsed by Trump and promoted his false claims about the presidential race he lost.

"I feel good for the country. Because so many people worried — I did — about this democracy," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said at a news conference late Saturday. "America showed that we believe in our democracy. That the roots of our democracy are deep and strong. And that it will prevail as long as we fight for it."

He added that Republicans were hampered by "flawed challengers who had no faith in democracy, no fidelity to the truth or honor.”

Masto's victory means Democrats will hold the Senate regardless of the outcome of Georgia’s Dec. 6 runoff election, when Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker will face each other again after neither cleared the 50% threshold required under state law.

A Walker win would keep the Senate 50-50, where Vice President Kamala Harris casts the tie-breaking vote for Democrats.

A Warnock victory would make it 51-49, giving Democrats one extra vote in a chamber where they have often been stymied by internal dissent from members like Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

Biden can now count on partners in the Senate to confirm his judicial and administration appointments, even if his legislative agenda ends up effectively blocked because of a Republican takeover of the House.

“I feel good and I’m looking forward to the next couple years," Biden told reporters, reacting to the Senate result at close to 11 a.m. local time in Cambodia where the president is attending a summit of world leaders. He credited the quality of the candidates and said they were all "running on the same program."

Addressing whether Democrats can keep control of the House, Biden said it's "perilously close," adding, "we can win it, but whether we're going to win it remains to be seen."

I genuinely believe Republicans miscalculated the impact of trumpism - not taking into account a group of voters that may not be particularily happy with Democrats but vividly opposing Trumpists.
A group that might have otherwise not voted at all, but trumpist candidates mobilised them to vote against them.

we don't necessarily vote for who we want, but rather, against who we don't want.

I genuinely believe Republicans miscalculated the impact of trumpism - not taking into account a group of voters that may not be particularily happy with Democrats but vividly opposing Trumpists.
A group that might have otherwise not voted at all, but trumpist candidates mobilised them to vote against them.