Senate page     Nov. 10

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New polls:  
Dem pickups: PA
GOP pickups: (None)
We could have posted this yesterday, but we didn't want it to get buried in the shuffle. So, our thanks to readers S.M. in The Netherlands, and B.P. in Salt Lake City, UT, for helping us gather polling data this cycle and to readers L.R.H. in Oakland, CA, and A.R. in Los Angeles, CA for helping us keep on top of the results on Tuesday. Much appreciated, folks!

Trump Lost

The biggest loser on Tuesday wasn't even on the ballot. It was a guy named Donald J. Trump. Kingmaker? Actually, more like: paper tiger. All year, Republicans have been hiding under their desks so they would be better positioned to lick his boots should he wander by. He scared the living daylights out of most of them, even those that knew he was full of it. The problem is that they believed one tweet of death from him (even on Truth Social, which nobody reads) would mean the end of their career.

Those days are gone and every Republican politician in the country knows it, although most will keep that to themselves for the moment. Trump is boasting how well his endorsees did, but his total batting average is beside the point. In many primary races, he endorsed one candidate and when that one lost, he switched to the winner. For example, he opposed Senator-elect Katie Britt (R) in Alabama—until she won the primary, then he endorsed her. In other races, he waited until close to the election and then jumped on the leader's bandwagon. Perhaps most brazenly, he endorsed Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) about 12 hours before the election began. Way to go out on a limb there! He also endorsed a bunch of people who couldn't possibly have lost, with or without his support. Collecting easy wins like this gets his batting average way up there, but every politician from both parties knows he didn't lead the battle. He just jumped in after it was basically over.

The real test here is how the candidates he endorsed early on did, particularly the ones who staked everything on their belief that Trump won in 2020. And the highest-profile ones mostly fumbled. Among senatorial candidates he really did support from the beginning, Mehmet Oz (PA) and Don Bolduc (NH) lost. Kelly Tshibaka (AK) is going to lose (see below). Blake Masters (AZ) will probably lose, despite Trump campaigning for him and Peter Thiel giving him millions of dollars. Herschel Walker (GA) didn't even come in first and is going to be forced into a runoff on Dec. 6. J.D. Vance did win in Ohio, but with 53% of the vote he ran a full 10 points behind Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH), who was reelected with 63% of the vote without Trump's help. It is almost as though Trump's support cost Vance 10 points. Vance won not due to Trump, but simply because Ohio has become a red state and Republicans generally do well statewide now there.

But maybe Trump's gubernatorial picks did better? Nah. Doug Mastriano (PA), Tudor Dixon (MI), Lee Zeldin (NY), and Dan Cox (MD) all lost decisively. Kari Lake (R) is in a tight battle with Katie Hobbs (D) in Arizona. Maybe she'll pull it off in the end, but she certainly didn't run away with it. But what about the House? Surely Trump's horses won there? Well, super-Trumpers Karoline Leavitt (NH), J.R. Majewski (OH), and Yesli Vega (VA) all lost, Joe Kent (WA) is behind, and Lauren Boebert (CO) is in a barnburner (down by 64 votes with 99% reporting).

Trump is busy spinning his losses, blaming the candidates he handpicked. Maybe if he had picked candidates based on their ability to win elections instead to their ability to state on camera "Trump won in 2020" with a straight face, he would have done better.

Also of note, two of Trump's bitter enemies did very well. Brian Kemp, whom Trump campaigned against before endorsing him, won reelection easily. And the big bummer was the landslide win of Gov. Ron DeSanctimonius (R-FL) who crushed ex-governor Charlie Crist by 20 points. Victories like that don't happen in the (former) mother of all swing states.

These results up and down the line are going to make Republicans rethink a lot going forward. But how? What they would like are better candidates, but that will require getting rid of Trump. But how to do that? Actually, Ron DeS. has a plan: run for president. These results are going to give DeSantis a huge push to challenge Trump in 2024. He just came off a huge victory and Trump's picks were badly beaten almost everywhere. Sure, DeSantis could wait until 2028, but he will be out of office then and everyone will have forgotten his landslide win in 2022. He is strong now and Trump is weak. He knows that very well. This is his moment.

If DeSantis, who is almost as ambitious as he is ruthless, takes the plunge, the GOP primary will be a food fight for the ages. Trump will claim that he "made" DeSantis by endorsing him in 2018. Nobody is going to care about that. DeSantis will claim that he is a younger version of Trump, just as good at owning the libs, and without a stream of women claiming he sexually assaulted them. If he wants to make up a nickname, how about "Failed President Trump." He could talk about all the campaign promises Trump didn't deliver on, starting with building the wall and getting Mexico to pay for it. He could easily contrast Trump's record of failure with his own record of "success" (e.g., shipping 50 immigrants to Massachusetts— where they were accepted with open arms). His pitch could be: "Trump is an old windbag full of hot air. I get things done." If Trump is under indictment, DeSantis will also say: "It is hard to govern when you are in prison."

Is there anyone else besides DeSantis who wants to see a DeSantis run? Billionnaire Ken Griffin has already said in public that he will take care of the financing, so that won't be a problem. Griffin has a net worth of $31 billion. If he were to put 1% of it ($310 million) in a super PAC for DeSantis, that would be enough to finance DeSantis' entire primary campaign right there, so DeSantis wouldn't have to waste any time dialing for dollars. At DeSantis' victory party Tuesday evening, the crowd chanted: "Two more years!" Maybe the room was full of transplants from New Hampshire or Vermont, where gubernatorial terms are 2 years, but we think the crowd had something else in mind.

Still, DeSantis hasn't had to deal with a full frontal assault yet, isn't heavy on charisma, has a squeaky voice, and is media-challenged, so he isn't in like Flynn. Also, Nov. 2024 is two years away. Remember former presidents Scott Walker and Rudy Giuliani? Yeah, we neither. Sometimes the flavor of the day turns sour. Also, if DeSantis jumps is, that could attract the Mikes P. (Pence and Pompeo), leading the anti-Trump candidates to split the anti-Trump vote and allow him to win all the delegates in the many winner-take-all primaries.

If DeSantis runs, how does it affect Joe Biden's decision? Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) has already started campaigning against DeSantis. Maybe he knows something the rest of us haven't figured out yet. Nobody wants Biden vs. Trump again, while Newsom vs. DeSantis would be a whole new generation of politicians and an ideological battle for the ages: a true lefty vs. a true righty. But keep in mind, if a week is a long time in politics, 2 years is large multiple of the lifetime of the universe. (V)

How Did Election Deniers Do?

Hundreds of Republican candidates said they didn't believe Joe Biden won fairly (or at all) in 2020. How did that work out for them? Did they all win? Actually, some of them won and some of them lost. It is hard to tell how much their denialism played a role, though, because some won in races that no Republican could possibly lose. Others ran in more competitive races and did indeed lose. The Washington Post has a story that lists all the deniers and how they did.

The list shows well over 150 Republicans who were at least nominally election deniers who won, but for some of them, like Katie Britt, Gov. Kay Ivey (R-AL), and the aforementioned DeSantis, it is very doubtful they believe it. It was just convenient to say it. All of them in this list were favored to win their races simply due to the fundamentals of the race and the state or district they were in. Nearly all would have won even if they hadn't mentioned 2020 at all. Denialism wasn't the secret ingredient here.

Then there is a list of 46 election deniers who were in competitive races. They didn't do nearly as well. At the time we wrote this, four had won, 20 had lost, and 22 were in races that had not yet been called. That is not nearly as good a track record, but we'll see how that plays out when all the races are called.

Finally, there are 74 candidates who were in races they were not favored to win just due to the fundamentals. At the time we wrote this, none of them had won and 67 had definitively lost.

So we won't have a final score until later, but it looks like if you were in a race in a deep red state or district, claiming Trump won in 2020 wouldn't hurt you. If you were in a competitive race, it worked against you. If you had an uphill climb to start with, denialism only made it worse. (V)

How Did the Democrats Stave Off Disaster?

The New York Times asked some of its opinion columnists how the Democrats avoided the usual drubbing, shellacking, or whatever you call what the president's party normally gets in the first midterms. What is their magic formula? Here are some of their thoughts:

Any and all of these could have played a role. It has also occurred to us that even though people were upset about inflation, almost no Republican talked about how he or she was going to get it down. As a voter, if you have a problem and a candidate doesn't even talk about how he or she will solve it, why should you vote for that candidate? Put another way, the GOP wasn't offering a tangible alternative. Caterwauling about Critical Race Theory, transgender swimmers and Antifa might get people's blood boiling, but doesn't do anything to make the economy better. Maybe the secret to taming inflation will be found on Hunter Biden's laptop. If Republicans take the House, we'll soon know.

Also rarely investigated is why so many people are upset about the direction of the country. Some of them might be Bernie fans who actually want socialism. So even though they are unhappy about the direction of the country, they are certainly never going to vote for any Republicans. If you are angry with Biden for being such a centrist milquetoast, you are probably not a vote for Mehmet Oz or Blake Masters. (V)

The Senate: Candidate Quality Matters after All

We have said many times that often it seems that all that matters is that little (D) or (R) after the candidates' names. Maybe there are some limits, though. In some cases, if the candidate is simply horrid, enough people will say: "Whoa!" Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) alluded to this earlier in the fall when he suggested the Republicans had a "candidate quality problem" in some races. He was obliquely referring to Mehmet Oz (PA), Blake Masters (AZ), and Herschel Walker (GA) in the Senate and others in other races. All of those were eminently winnable races. In the end, Oz clearly lost, Walker finished second and now has to try again in a runoff, and Masters is facing an uphill battle, at best. He's down 5 points with 70% reporting. Here is a table showing the status of the vote counting in the five biggest counties in Arizona. As you can see, there are many votes yet to be counted in the two biggest counties, Maricopa (Phoenix) and Pima (Tucson), both of which are heavily Democratic.

County Margin Votes % Counted
Maricopa Kelly +8 1,129,073 73%
Pima Kelly +24 273,959 63%
Pinal Masters +11 115,558 82%
Yavapai Masters +22 101,711 85%
Mohave Masters +45 71,204 85%


Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) won a third term, despite having promised to retire after two terms. Voters don't expect politicians to keep their promises and don't punish them breaking them. In Wisconsin, it was the Democrats who had a candidate problem. They put up Lt. Gov Mandela Barnes (D-WI). Barnes is not a deeply flawed candidate like Herschel Walker. He is just too far left for a swing state like Wisconsin, even running against a super Trumper who was deeply involved in trying to steal the 2020 election for Trump. The race wasn't called until Wednesday afternoon, but when Barnes fell 25,000 votes behind Johnson, it was all over. It is not like Democrats can't win in Wisconsin. Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI) was reelected by 90,000 votes, but he is more moderate than Barnes. The message for Democrats is that it is not sufficient to pick candidates who are intelligent, likeable, and experienced. They also have to be good matches for their state. Barnes was not, even if he would have been dynamite in New England or California.

What is going to happen to the Senate now? As noted Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) looks like he will probably beat Bad Candidate™ Blake Masters. If he does, the score will be 49-49. It will all come down to Nevada and the Georgia runoff. If Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) holds serve, the Democrats are in and the Georgia runoff won't matter so much, but not having to cater to every one of the whims of Sen. Joe Manchin (D?-WV) would be a plus for the Democrats. As to the future career of the senior senator from Arizona, let us simply state that ambitious politician Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) was reelected on Tuesday from a district in Phoenix with 76% of the vote. He is clearly very popular in the heart of Arizona's biggest population center and he knows that. To be continued.

Counting the votes in Nevada could take a day or two, and there could be recounts as well. Right now, Cortez Masto is down about 2 points with 79% reporting, though all of the remaining ballots are mail-in. If Adam Laxalt (R) wins, everything will come down to the billion-dollar runoff in Georgia on Dec. 6. Should that come to pass, people in Georgia would be advised to turn off their televisions until Dec. 7 because 100% of programming will be preempted for really, really, nasty horrible, awful negative ads.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) won reelection easily against a strong Democrat, Rep. Val Demings (D-FL). Rubio is a poor campaigner and poor fundraiser. But Florida is now officially a red state and Democrats will struggle to win statewide races until the inflow of New Yorkers into Broward County exceeds the inflow of Midwesterners into the Villages.

One race that is interesting, although the outcome is not really in doubt, is the Alaska Senate race, which is a top-four ranked-choice voting affair. Donald Trump's choice here, Kelly Tshibaka, is leading with 44% of the vote over Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who has 43% of the vote. If that continues until all the votes are counted, then fourth place finisher, Buzz Kelley (R), will be eliminated and his 2.9% of the vote will be redistributed. That won't do the job, so there will be round 3. Then, Democrat Patricia Chesbro's 9.5% of the vote will be redistributed. We are going to go out on a limb here, but we predict that 100% of it will go to Murkowski and that will get her over the hump and she will be reelected.

Late yesterday, the AP called Georgia: Runoff wins. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) got 49.42% and Herschel Walker got 48.52%. Libertarian Chase Oliver got 2.07%. So Warnock is ahead, but not quite by enough. He needs another 0.58% to make it over the top. If he can get 0.58/2.07 = 28% of Oliver's vote, he will make it. If Laxalt wins Nevada and the Senate hinges on the runoff, this will be the nastiest election since, very possibly, the presidential election of 1860, which led to the Civil War. If Masto wins in Nevada, and Kelly holds on, then this becomes the icing on the cake, not the cake itself. (V)

The House: There Was a Pink Ripple

In the Senate, not much happened, actually. If Kelly and Masto win in the end, then the only state that flipped for sure is Pennsylvania, and maybe Georgia, depending on the runoff. The House is a different story altogether. Normally, the president's party gets whacked badly in the president's first midterm. For example, Harry Truman's party lost 44 seats in 1950, Bill Clinton's party lost 53 seats in 1994, and Barack Obama's party lost 63 seats in 2010. Nothing like that is going to happen this year. The much-predicted "red wave" was more like a "pink ripple."

Many races are still too close to call. The Republicans are projected to win 207 seats and the Democrats 189, with 39 still up in the air, according to The New York Times. NBC News projects a final House with 222 Republicans and 213 Democrats. CBS News projects 210 Republicans, 200 Democrats, and 25 too close to call. The Washington Post has it at 205 for the Republicans, 183 for the Democrats and 47 too close to call. And 270towin.com projects 210 Republicans, 191 Democrats, and 34 too close to call. Undoubtedly, readers would like to know our projection as well, but we don't make House calls.

Some incumbents were defeated. These include Reps. Steve Chabot (R, OH-01), Mayra Flores (R, TX-34) Elaine Luria (D, VA-02), Tom Malinowski (D, NJ-07), and Sean Patrick Maloney (D, NY-17). Among races not yet called are the AK-AL race in which Sarah Palin is trying to beat Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK) and CO-03, where, as we note above, Lauren Boebert is battling for her seat.

Despite extensive gerrymandering, North Carolina Republicans didn't get what they wanted. The House delegation split evenly, 7-7.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who normally doesn't get involved in House races, said: "Definitely not a Republican wave, that's for darn sure." He may not be the most courageous senator, but he is certainly the most polite one.

Most observers expect the Republicans to get a majority, but if it is a narrow majority, the speaker, possibly Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), won't be able to get his caucus to agree on anything except that Hunter Biden's laptop is a greater threat to America than the entire Russian nuclear arsenal.

McCarthy made it worse by setting a standard: 20 pickups. He said if the Republicans fewer than that, governing will be tough. It looks like he won't get to 20. It's going to be very tough for him, assuming he is elected speaker. He may have a very small margin. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is good at herding cats. Very good. If Lloyd Bentsen were with us, he might say: I knew Nancy Pelosi. I worked with Nancy Pelosi. Nancy Pelosi was my friend. Congressman, you are no Nancy Pelosi." (V)

The Governors: The Center Held

The center of the country, that is. Three sort-of-Midwestern swing states, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, have Republican-controlled state legislatures and currently Democratic governors. Those governors and their veto pens are the only things that keep the legislatures from banning abortion and making voting very difficult, especially for Democrats. Two of the governors won reelection. They are Govs. Gretchen Whitmer (MI) and Tony Evers (WI). Pennsylvania had an open seat because Gov. Tom Wolf (D) was term-limited. AG Josh Shapiro (D), who is Jewish, beat antisemite Doug Mastriano (R). Note that Gov. Tim Walz (DFL-MN) also won reelection, but the Democrats control the House there, so he's not the last line of defense against voting shenanigans.

One other achievement for the Democrats was Gov. Laura Kelly (D-KS) holding her job in deep red Kansas. She didn't win by much, but she won. Despite a flurry of last-minute activity on the part of the Republicans, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) won a full elected term.

Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) did much better against Stacey Abrams (D) than in 2018. He beat her by almost 8 points. This time she conceded. Beto O'Rourke (D) did fine on the border, but Texas was simply too red and Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) was reelected.

One race that was very close is in Oregon, where a real Democrat, Tina Kotek, battled a Republican, Christine Drazan, and a fake Democrat, Betsey Johnson, funded entirely by the richest man in Oregon, Phil Knight, who wanted to defeat Kotek at all costs. He figured sponsoring a second Democrat would be cheaper than funding the Republican. It didn't work. Kotek won anyway. He had better hope she doesn't bear grudges. (V)

Takeaways

Naturally, many media outlets had lists of election takeaways. Let's go:

The Guardian: NPR: The New York Times: The Washington Post: CNN: Politico: The Hill:

Are there themes here? Well, Trump's very bad night and bad effect on the GOP seem to keep coming up. In contrast, DeSantis had a very good night. Democracy hung on for the time being. There was no red wave. And Florida isn't a swing state any more, which is very bad news for the Democrats, since Ohio isn't either.

We are working on many more election results stories in the days ahead. This is just a quick start. (V)

What Will the Next Two Years Be Like for Biden?

If the Democrats hang onto the Senate, Joe Biden will be able to get judges confirmed, but if the Republicans take the House, which seems likely, he can forget about any legislation. In private, Biden and his staff have been drawing up plans for dealing with the situation. Republicans will start investigating everything from Hunter Biden's laptop to what Biden eats for breakfast. He can certainly attack them for not doing the job they were elected to do. If the House starts impeaching people, he can attack them as extremists. He can also focus on foreign policy, something Congress doesn't have much power over. As former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that is an area where he has a lot of interest and tons of expertise.

Biden could also ask Congress to pass bills that are very popular, like improving veterans' benefits and reducing the cost of insulin. If the Republicans balk, which they probably will, he can repeatedly hit them over the head with it if he runs in 2024, as in: "Republicans hate our brave veterans."

Biden could also do something like propose a middle-class tax cuts paid for by increasing taxes on the rich. When the Republicans killed it, he could say he was trying to help people dealing with inflation, but Republicans don't care about ordinary people.

One thing Biden might have to deal with is the debt limit. The Republicans are threatening to destroy the world economy by forcing the U.S. into bankruptcy if Biden doesn't agree to effectively repeal all the bills he got passed this year. There are two ways he could deal with this. One is to ask Congress to raise the debt limit a bunch using the budget reconciliation process during a special lame-duck session of Congress in December.

The other is to instruct the mint to produce a handful of trillion-dollar coins and deposit them in the Fed's bank account, thus wiping out much of the debt on paper. Republicans would howl to the moon, but it is perfectly legal. It also won't affect inflation because inflation is caused by too much money chasing too few goods. Producing five coins and storing them in Fort Knox does not change either demand or supply. It is just an accounting trick. Biden doesn't like tricks, but if he can't get the Democrats to raise the limit in December, he may not have many options left. (V)

Attack on Husband May Influence Pelosi's Future

House speaker Nancy Pelosi had an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper in which she talked about the attack on her husband and her future. She said there was a knock on her door at 5 a.m. and she was scared. It was the Capitol Police and they said they had to come in and talk. She said it was really hard for her because her husband wasn't even the target and he is the one to pay the price. She also said the toll on her children and grandchildren is traumatizing.

She also criticized how Republicans reacted to the attack. Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake made a joke about it. Pelosi said: "I do think there has to be some message to the Republicans to stop the disinformation. That is without any question a source of what happened on January 6, and the denial of that, and then a source of what's happening to me now."

But the big news is that she said she will take the attack into account in deciding what to do next. Cooper asked her if she would retire if Democrats lost the House. She didn't answer that question but did say the attack would certainly affect her decision. If her husband needs care as a result of the attack, that might be a reason for her to retire as party leader in the House and possibly even resign from the House itself, triggering a special election. Her district covers San Francisco and is D+37, so her resignation would just result in her being replaced by a younger Democrat. There is no danger the seat would be lost.

On the other hand, Pelosi can take some credit for the Democrats having bucked the historical trend and doing surprisingly well in a first midterm election. That might encourage her to stay on as party leader. Ultimately, it is her call alone. (V)


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