2020 Election Results

[Elixir]

Points? This isn't a game, remember? Let the traitors declare their allegiance so it is clear where they stand. This mealymouthed pretense to supporting "both sides" has to stop. Trump/Constitution. Pick one, period.
Forcing these reptiles into the light of day so that even their dimwitted followers can understand where they're coming from is a worthwhile pursuit, not a game!

The rift in the GOP is a dangerous one. It is bad enough as it is! We don't want the Red Hat wing to permanently overtake the GOP. Over 100 GOP Republicans supported the Texas lawsuit. If that number became 200, our Democracy might as well be pronounced dead.

Don't mourn for the GOP. Let the red hats devour them. They'll only have 20-something percent of the total electorate.

I tend to shy away from Nazi references, but the Nazis were "fools" too. The Republicans and conservatives have proven, they'll generally vote for anyone who isn't a Democrat. Trump ran the worst Presidency since before the Civil War, and he still received the second most votes ever for a candidate! He still was just a few states from re-election. So this 20% only is a fools dream. If the Red Hats take over, they will at some point assume control.

Look at the history, see the decline, these people fired George HW Bush... selected George W. Bush over John McCain... and elected Trump as President. We suffered quite a bit under W and Trump... and they haven't hit the bottom yet, and they keep taking us along with them!

They will need another trump. Jim Jordan? Devin Nunes? Matt Fucking Gaetz? Maybe Mark Burnett knows someone...

Sorry - I think Trump is more of an aberration than anything. Russia has done a masterful job of attacking our social structures, Trump has been a tremendous amazing help and the oligarchy is well established. The Republican party is just their tool now, and I have no qualms about seeing it junked.

 

[ideologyhunter]

New Trump: Jim Jordan has drunk all the Koolaid. Don Jr. has the name and the money. Hannity could follow T's lead from TV to politics.

 

[lpetrich]

Brindisi takes lead in NY-22 race with several ballots still pending judicial review

Judicial review for the 22nd Congressional race continued into its third day on Wednesday, with the latest tally showing Congressman Anthony Brindisi leading Claudia Tenney by 14 votes -- a number that's expected to change as more challenged votes are ruled on.

Oswego County Judge Scott Delconte spent a majority of the day reviewing ballot situations in Madison, Chenango, and Oneida Counties. In Madison County, 92 ballots were submitted with time stamping issues.

Iowa’s 2nd District may have no representative for months due to challenge

 

[lpetrich]

Jessica Cisneros tried to primary Henry Cuellar (D-TX-28) this year. She lost by 3.6%.
Jessica Cisneros on Twitter: "At least @AOC supports other Democrats * (link)" / Twitter
Then a screenshot of a snippet from Democrat Henry Cuellar raises eyebrows by fundraising for Republican John Carter | The Texas Tribune

Texas Elections 2018

In the U.S. House, Democrat Henry Cuellar raises eyebrows by fundraising for Republican John Carter

Cuellar, who has served in the U.S. House since 2005, has long had a reputation as one of the chamber's most conservative Democrats. But Democratic leaders are hopeful MJ Hegar's bid against Carter gains traction.

He raised funds for a REPUBLICAN???

Noting
POLITICO Playbook PM: When a Democratic lawmaker raises money for a Republican incumbent … - POLITICO

IT’S INCREDIBLY RARE for any lawmaker to help raise money for someone of the other party. BUT CUELLAR RAISING MONEY FOR CARTER is even more shocking considering the Texas Republican is in a surprisingly tight race against Democratic standout candidate MJ HEGAR. ADDING TO THE DRAMA: Hegar has been endorsed by the Blue Dog Coalition, of which Cuellar is a co-chair! One Democratic source familiar with the race also noted that Cuellar and Carter held the fundraiser on Sept. 11, and Hegar is a veteran.

HEGAR is one of the Democratic challengers leaders hope will surprise in November. She raised $1.1 million last quarter, and has had a couple of viral ads that put her on the map. THE DCCC was first informed of the Cuellar fundraiser by Playbook.

CUELLAR’S RESPONSE: “Although I was not a host of the event, I was honored to attend as I typically do for colleagues who visit my district. Judge Carter is a dear friend and trusted colleague with whom I work on Appropriations. He is knowledgeable and supportive of issues important to South Texas. In today’s climate, more than ever, friendship is more powerful than partisanship.”

 

[lpetrich]

AOC supported JC in her effort to primary HC. She responds:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "@JCisnerosTX I just want you to know that supporting you was 100% worth it. If calling out anti-choice policies & holding institutions accountable for blocking working class women like you is a source of political retribution, I’m ok w/ that.

You’re amazing & I’m proud of you. Keep shining." / Twitter

Jessica Cisneros on Twitter: "@AOC Thanks, AOC. You’re a real one. We know that political retribution is a tool that the oppressor uses to keep their power, but that doesn’t stop it from making it scary to speak out and do what’s right.

Thank you for bravery. It inspires me and others to be brave & fight too " / Twitter

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Points? This isn't a game, remember? Let the traitors declare their allegiance so it is clear where they stand. This mealymouthed pretense to supporting "both sides" has to stop. Trump/Constitution. Pick one, period.
Forcing these reptiles into the light of day so that even their dimwitted followers can understand where they're coming from is a worthwhile pursuit, not a game!

The rift in the GOP is a dangerous one. It is bad enough as it is! We don't want the Red Hat wing to permanently overtake the GOP. Over 100 GOP Republicans supported the Texas lawsuit. If that number became 200, our Democracy might as well be pronounced dead.

Don't mourn for the GOP. Let the red hats devour them. They'll only have 20-something percent of the total electorate.

I tend to shy away from Nazi references, but the Nazis were "fools" too. The Republicans and conservatives have proven, they'll generally vote for anyone who isn't a Democrat. Trump ran the worst Presidency since before the Civil War, and he still received the second most votes ever for a candidate! He still was just a few states from re-election. So this 20% only is a fools dream. If the Red Hats take over, they will at some point assume control.

Look at the history, see the decline, these people fired George HW Bush... selected George W. Bush over John McCain... and elected Trump as President. We suffered quite a bit under W and Trump... and they haven't hit the bottom yet, and they keep taking us along with them!

Maybe Trump insisting that Biden cheated will be just the Reichstag fire that Biden needs to secure his power.

 

[TomC]

I tend to shy away from Nazi references, but the Nazis were "fools" too. The Republicans and conservatives have proven, they'll generally vote for anyone who isn't a Democrat. Trump ran the worst Presidency since before the Civil War, and he still received the second most votes ever for a candidate! He still was just a few states from re-election. So this 20% only is a fools dream. If the Red Hats take over, they will at some point assume control.

Look at the history, see the decline, these people fired George HW Bush... selected George W. Bush over John McCain... and elected Trump as President. We suffered quite a bit under W and Trump... and they haven't hit the bottom yet, and they keep taking us along with them!

Maybe Trump insisting that Biden cheated will be just the Reichstag fire that Biden needs to secure his power.

Biden doesn't need a Reichstag fire. He won the popular election. He won the EC appointment.

Trump's insisting that Biden cheated is his Reichstag fire. Trump's.
It's fizzling out. But it's not over yet, and it's caused a lot of damage.
It will take years to repair the damage the TeaParty is doing to the USA.
Tom

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

I tend to shy away from Nazi references, but the Nazis were "fools" too. The Republicans and conservatives have proven, they'll generally vote for anyone who isn't a Democrat. Trump ran the worst Presidency since before the Civil War, and he still received the second most votes ever for a candidate! He still was just a few states from re-election. So this 20% only is a fools dream. If the Red Hats take over, they will at some point assume control.

Look at the history, see the decline, these people fired George HW Bush... selected George W. Bush over John McCain... and elected Trump as President. We suffered quite a bit under W and Trump... and they haven't hit the bottom yet, and they keep taking us along with them!

Maybe Trump insisting that Biden cheated will be just the Reichstag fire that Biden needs to secure his power.

Biden doesn't need a Reichstag fire. He won the popular election. He won the EC appointment.

Trump's insisting that Biden cheated is his Reichstag fire. Trump's.
It's fizzling out. But it's not over yet, and it's caused a lot of damage.
It will take years to repair the damage the TeaParty is doing to the USA.
Tom

The Tea Party stopped being a force a long time ago. It is in the same wastebin as Occupy.

The doubt that Trump and co. are trying to sow, and legal challenges people are trying to mount, might be sufficient grounds for Biden to take more power to deal with him being seen as illegitimate, which would make this his Reichstag fire. The point of a Reichstag fire is to accumulate greater powers in response after all.

 

[Ford]

I tend to shy away from Nazi references, but the Nazis were "fools" too. The Republicans and conservatives have proven, they'll generally vote for anyone who isn't a Democrat. Trump ran the worst Presidency since before the Civil War, and he still received the second most votes ever for a candidate! He still was just a few states from re-election. So this 20% only is a fools dream. If the Red Hats take over, they will at some point assume control.

Look at the history, see the decline, these people fired George HW Bush... selected George W. Bush over John McCain... and elected Trump as President. We suffered quite a bit under W and Trump... and they haven't hit the bottom yet, and they keep taking us along with them!

Maybe Trump insisting that Biden cheated will be just the Reichstag fire that Biden needs to secure his power.

Biden doesn't need a Reichstag fire. He won the popular election. He won the EC appointment.

Trump supporters are hanging their last desperate hopes that something will happen on January 6th when Congress certifies the Electoral College result, but there really is no avenue for him at this point. The Republicans might pull some shenanigans, but any delay longer than 14 days could lead to Acting President Pelosi, but not a continuation of the Trump administration.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Trump supporters are hanging their last desperate hopes that something will happen on January 6th when Congress certifies the Electoral College result, but there really is no avenue for him at this point. The Republicans might pull some shenanigans, but any delay longer than 14 days could lead to Acting President Pelosi, but not a continuation of the Trump administration.

She's third in line if the two offices are vacated unexpectedly. In the unlikely situation described above the House will choose a president and the Senate will choose a Vice President. Just because the House is majority Dem doesn't mean a Dem will be chosen either, because it is chosen by state delegations. There are more majority Rep delegations that majority Dem delegations.

 

[lpetrich]

The Tea Party stopped being a force a long time ago. It is in the same wastebin as Occupy.

The Tea Party became assimilated by the Republican Party and became Trumpism.

• The tea party morphed into Trumpism - The Washington Post
• The Tea Party Didn’t Get What It Wanted, but It Did Unleash the Politics of Anger - The New York Times
• From The Tea Party To Trump: The GOP In The 2010s : NPR
• Trump’s Staunch GOP Supporters Have Roots in the Tea Party | Pew Research Center
• Donald Trump is the Tea Party President - New York Magazine - nymag.com › intelligencer
• The Tea Party–Trump Decade - The American Prospect

The Occupy movement has not had a comparable fate. It lasted for much less time than the Tea Party, and its organizers completely neglected to find new meeting places for it after its original ones got shut down by the local authorities. It also was not represented in elected office, though some activists on the Left may be Occupy-movement alumni.

The doubt that Trump and co. are trying to sow, and legal challenges people are trying to mount, might be sufficient grounds for Biden to take more power to deal with him being seen as illegitimate, which would make this his Reichstag fire. The point of a Reichstag fire is to accumulate greater powers in response after all.

Joe Biden seems to me to be too feckless to be much of an ogre. So that seems like some QAnon conspiracy theory.

 

[fromderinside]

QAnon doesn't create theory. They create fantasies out of extreme conjectures assembled into what if imaginary fear inducing scenarios.

There is nothing more silly than the idea of the a deep state bureaucratic controlling hierarchy or some international collective controlling governments, just two fantasies crated by those who would profit off the fearful created during my adult lifetime.

People built bomb shelters in the mid west in the fifties our of fear invasion by the USSR for Christ sake. A place where there was no reasonable target for bombing by any foreign interest for any reason.

Boo!

 

[lpetrich]

Donna Imam, who ran for the TX-31 House seat, has done an assessment as to why she lost and several other candidates lost.
Donna Imam on Twitter: "I analyzed all 10 targeted Texas US Congressional races to uncover why EVERY SINGLE ONE was LOST, and if we don't do this (link) we could lose our slim majority in the house in 2022. https://t.co/xke7mDUZtx" / Twitter
noting
2020 Texas US Congressional Race Analysis with Donna Imam - YouTube
I watched her entire video, and I found it very interesting.

She looked at the races for House districts TX-02, -03, -06, -07, -10, -21, -22, -23, -24, -25, -31, -32.

Of these, TX-07 Lizzie Fletcher and TX-32 Colin Allred were incumbents, and both won re-election. None of the others were elected.

DI has lots of interesting things to say. She collected a variety of statistics on the candidates. How much funding did they get? Were they competing against incumbents or in open races? How long were the incumbents in office? Was the acandidate running for the first time? Did the candidate have to compete in the primary? Did the primary race go into a runoff? Did the DCCC decide to support the candidate?

The DCCC is the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and DI had a lot to say about it. Like it wants to run a candidate's campaign, complete with hiring its campaign consultants. DI grumbled that they stay on the job whether they win or lose, and she noted that they want candidates to do 40 hours of call time per week, a typical workweek of dialing for dollars from donors. That is time that cannot be used reaching out to constituents or campaigning. DI raised campaign money by requesting donations online, as AOC and others have been doing.

 

[lpetrich]

DI composed an overall score for each candidate, composed from scores for these features:

• Money: the more the better
• Opposition: open race good, opposing an incumbent bad, the longer in office the worse
• First time: bad
• Primary challenge: bad
• Runoff: bad
• DCCC support: the earlier the better, scored good

I plotted the victory and defeat margins against the combined score, and I found the margin of defeat increasing with a worsening score, but not very fast, and with a lot of scatter. Though DI had a bad score, she did somewhat better than one might expect from the other candidates.

A surprisingly good predictor was top-ballot candidates: Presidents and Senators. All 12 of these TX House candidates did consistently about 5% worse than Joe Biden did in their districts:
(House Dem victory margin) = (President Dem victory margin) - 5%

Comparing to the 2016 Presidential election, Joe Biden consistently did better than Hillary Clinton by about 10%.

Comparing the 2018 and 2020 Senate races, Beto O'Rourke (2018) did about 5% better than MJ Hegar (2020). Likewise, House candidates did about 3% better in 2018 than in 2020. But in 2016, Republicans had consistent victories of about 20%, though in TX-23, they had a much narrower margin of victory.

 

[lpetrich]

DI discussed turnout in her district, and it expanded from 117,181 in 2016 (Hillary Clinton) to 139,253 in 2018 (Beto O'Rourke) and 176,293 in 2020 (her)


Then she discussed campaigning: name ID and persuasion. Name ID is making the candidate known to people, a nontrivial task.

About the DCCC, she said what I'd posted on earlier, and she notes that DCCC consultants are often DC-based and are often unaware of what many voters want, especially rural voters. She notes that they stay on the job even if their candidates lose. This remains me of a scene from "Knock Down The House" where AOC's bf blasts Democratic campaign consultants as "losing".

DI talked about "earned media" - interviews and ads, especially in print media. Until the last decade or so, that was the only way to go to get one's message across. But she now seems to think that online media is good competition for it.

She notes some of the Republicans' messaging, like claiming to supporting keeping pre-existing conditions from interfering with insurance coverage, a favorite part of Obamacare. This after voting several times to repeal Obamacare.

 

[lpetrich]

DI said about her campaign that she ran it herself. She wanted to take all the blame in case she lost, rather than get into ugly arguments with campaigners.

She talks about how to win Texas, though what she advises can work more broadly.

A strong economics/jobs message. Enable people to have well-paying jobs. Promote entrepreneurship and starting small businesses.

Support the top of the ticket. This means the President or a Senator, and in her state in 2022, the Governor. That's what will get many people to the polls. Be sure to educate people about how one's job isn't done when one votes for the President. One ought to vote for the ones below.

Democrats should have a cohesive message, and they should not forget rural Americans and they should mobilize young Americans.

Put the Republicans on the defensive.

"No solution for healthcare"

"Corporate handouts killing small business" - like much of the small-business pandemic assistance money going to big businesses instead

"Technology innovation and diversifying energy" - like getting off of fossil fuels and onto renewable energy. I like that.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

The doubt that Trump and co. are trying to sow, and legal challenges people are trying to mount, might be sufficient grounds for Biden to take more power to deal with him being seen as illegitimate, which would make this his Reichstag fire. The point of a Reichstag fire is to accumulate greater powers in response after all.

Joe Biden seems to me to be too feckless to be much of an ogre.

Not competent enough to be a dictator?

 

[ZiprHead]

The doubt that Trump and co. are trying to sow, and legal challenges people are trying to mount, might be sufficient grounds for Biden to take more power to deal with him being seen as illegitimate, which would make this his Reichstag fire. The point of a Reichstag fire is to accumulate greater powers in response after all.

Joe Biden seems to me to be too feckless to be much of an ogre.

Not competent enough to be a dictator?

Watch out. The reds are under your bed.

 

[Elixir]

Not competent enough to be a dictator?

Watch out. The reds are under your bed.

S'okay, Jo Jorgenson will save him!

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

The doubt that Trump and co. are trying to sow, and legal challenges people are trying to mount, might be sufficient grounds for Biden to take more power to deal with him being seen as illegitimate, which would make this his Reichstag fire. The point of a Reichstag fire is to accumulate greater powers in response after all.

Joe Biden seems to me to be too feckless to be much of an ogre.

Not competent enough to be a dictator?

Is that the best you can do? I don't like Joe Biden because he can't be a dictator. Give it a rest and stop being so partisan. He's way better than Trump. And he's not done anything at all about crazy Trumpkin fascism except let the institutions you claim to care about retake hold of the country. You should be happy, not making up stuff just because your person didn't win.