Good Lord! Cazart! Wahoo! Have the Democrats saved themselves from utter disaster? Have they even managed a performance that looks a bit like a victory? At midnight on the US east coast, it is starting to look at least possible.
In New Hampshire, an early victory by incumbent Democrat Maggie Hassan in the Senate, seeing off upstart challenger Don Bolduc, was a cheering moment. That was followed by the defeat of Lee Zeldin, for governor of New York — a big boost. And then came the easy defeat of election-denier Doug Mastriano in the Pennsylvania governor’s race.
There was further cheer when it looked as if grungeista cool mayor John Fetterman was cruising to an easy win over hero-surgeon/Oprah quack Dr Mehmet Oz. But this has now narrowed to a 1% lead, and will run for days. In Washington state, Patty Murray appears to have easily seen off Trumpista mama bear Tiffany Smiley.
This was offset by two disappointments: the easy win by author/Trumpista JD Vance against Tim Ryan for the Senate in Ohio, taking it 53% to 46%; and the narrow lead by allegedly menacing abortion bully Herschel Walker over incumbent Raphael Warnock in Georgia — a race that will go to a runoff.
In the House, Democrats were encouraged when the much-talked-of Republican tsunami failed to materialise, at least in the early hours. The Democrats have held seats in Rhode Island and Virginia (really, Washington suburbs), whose loss would have suggested a very bad night. They’ve also picked up, it would seem, Michigan’s third congressional district, where the Republicans dropped in a crazed Trumper instead of a Republican moderate.
But now the Republican gains are starting to come — in Virginia, in Florida, in New Jersey — and the party is starting to pull ahead. And now, on the midnight hour, MSNBC has projected that the Republicans will get a narrow majority of 219-216 — but with a 13-seat error margin either way. So nothing will be known for days here either.
Finally, in the special measures, the Kentucky anti-abortion amendment appears to have gone down, by about 52-48%, and the California pro-abortion amendment appears to have been voted up. No word, however, on whether Eastern Washington has succeeded in its bid to secede to Idaho, or whether the California municipality of San Bernardino has succeeded in becoming a state in its own right.
So, unless things go really screwy in the ensuing hours, the Democrats have averted a disaster. Whether they have got anything resembling a win will not be known for days. Good lord, cazart, wahoo, etc…
The big red wave for the Republicans has failed.
The Democrats still have a very good chance of retaining the Senate.
The pollsters once again got it all wrong.
Trump got it wrong, and every journalist in America and Australia got it wrong.
The only person that I know who came close with the outcome was me and Micheal Moore.
Roe played a huge part and the seven million extra voters who came out in 2020 to elect Biden returned.
Trump is now finished and Merrick Garland is about to indict Trump very soon on espionage chargers.
No one is above the Law.
I await the morning and the journalists all fervently explaining how it was obvious it was going to turn out this way.
And well done Michael Moore!
Including G.R, by the way!
It strikes me that as with this year’s election here the critical reason was middle-class women voting en mass on a social issue, in Australia climate change via the Teals, and in the US abortion via the Democrats. The difference in the US is that with a non-compulsory voting system it got a lot of women voting who may not have voted at all.
Note to pollsters – you’re ignoring/not able to detect a sea change in the voting habits of women.
What evidence do you have for your assertions?
Social media.
Anyone under forty years of age don’t look at polling.
Strange that the US keeps getting into these existential tangles each elections. Everything feels higher stakes there than anything we get here.
Though if the likes of Bernardi and Hanson became the norm on one side of politics and every vote was one about keeping them at bay, Is
*I’d share in the anguish that sane Americans must feel each time they have to vote.
It seems that there are good Americans after all. I was starting to believe that 50.1% of the voters had finally gone stark raving Trumpian bonkers.
Is it fair to say both polls and even on the ground ‘vibes’ might not totally line up with what ends up being reality going forward?
Hope Manchin and Sinema got the boot…
Neither were up for re-election this time. They are both up for re-election in 2024.
Really? Manchin is from West Virginia, a poor, overwhelmingly white and staunchly Republican state. If he lost his seat or had to retire in the current environment, he would be replaced by a Republican frootloop.
Sinema as a centrist Democrat was initially a good candidate for a former Republican stronghold in Arizona and knocked off Martha McSally, who is yet another Republican with typically appalling views on the purpose of government and what constitutes good public policy (privatise Social Security?).
Although Manchin and Sinema have blocked significant parts of the Democrat agenda, they are better than the likely alternative.
The better result is for the Democrats would be to get to 52 or 53 seats so these two can’t hijack the process. That means getting Democrat Senators elected in places like Ohio or Florida or North Carolina. The sort of Democrat that might do this is likely to be closer to the centre than to Bernie Sanders.