"President Joe Biden’s job approval rating among Democrats has tumbled 11 percentage points in the past month..."

"... to 75%, the worst reading of his presidency from his own party. This drop has pushed his overall approval rating down four points to 37%, matching his personal low."

Gallup announces new poll results and illustrates its news with this photograph, as if to explain:

The text makes the argument:

Do I need a post about Warnock winning?

You knew he was going to win.

"It is hard to overstate just how much of a jolt to the political system Sarah Palin delivered when she defeated her first fellow Republican 16 years ago."

"He was Frank Murkowski, the sitting governor of Alaska and a towering figure in the 49th state. She was a 'hockey mom' and the former mayor of a small, working-class town who vowed to stick it to the 'good ol’ boys.'... Today, having lost her bid for Congress after years out of the spotlight, Ms. Palin is a much diminished force. She was, in many ways, undone by the same political currents she rode to national prominence.... Along the way, she helped redefine the outer limits of what a politician could say as she made dark insinuations about Barack Obama’s background and false claims about government 'death panels' that could deny health care to seniors and people with disabilities. Now, a generation of Republican stars follows the template she helped create.... But as the next generation rose up, Ms. Palin’s brand of politics no longer seemed as novel or as outrageous. Next to Mr. Trump’s lies about a huge conspiracy to deny him a second term, or Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s casual allusions to political violence, Ms. Palin’s provocations more than a decade ago can seem almost quaint...."

Writes Jeremy W. Peters, in "Sarah Palin Loses as the Party She Helped Transform Moves Past Her/The former Alaska governor, once the standard-bearer of the G.O.P.’s dog-whistling, no-apologies culture, was no match for the same forces she rode to national prominence" (NYT).

Have we stopped even caring that we still don't know the complete results of the 2022 elections?

I don't see updates on the front page anymore. The inconclusiveness is old news, I guess.

It's the new normal: inconclusive results. That seems awfully discordant with the denouncement of "election denial" we've heard for the last 2 years.

We should be seeing clear, competent counting of all the votes and straightforward reporting of unquestionable results.

I had to do my own search to see just how unresolved things are at the moment:

 

Isn't that the position we've been stuck on for about a week? The election was 13 days ago. It does not inspire confidence!

"The old Republican Party is dead. It has been wasting away for years now, and this month’s midterm results are the finishing blow...."

Writes Josh Hawley in an opinion piece in The Washington Post.

Republicans will only secure the generational victories they crave when they come to terms with this reality: They must persuade a critical mass of working class voters that the GOP truly represents their interests and protects their culture....

Work, family and culture are the touchstones of meaning for working people across the country.... A reborn Republican Party must look very different. It must offer good jobs and good lives.... And it must place working Americans at its heart and take them as they are, rather than treating them as resources to be exploited or engineered away....

From the comments over there: "He doesn't give a rat's behind about working people"/"He's too deeply masculine, and real men don't give a damn"/"No new thinking here. Platitudes about working families but no policies. Protecting our culture - how, exactly, and from what?"/"The GOP is dead because you and your fellow moronic cretins under its tent killed it, you abject loser and coward."

"Republicans narrowly win House, ending full Democratic control of Congress."

 WaPo reports. 

The slim GOP majority to come has forced many GOP members, aides, and strategists come to grips with the prospect that their agenda might never come to fruition.... 

But:

Republicans this term have said they will focus in the majority on investigating the Biden administration and they have signaled an intent to use their powers to block Biden’s agenda. Potential investigation targets include the Biden administration’s coronavirus response and border policies, the business dealings of Biden’s son Hunter Biden, and the FBI. Without proof, Republicans have accused the FBI of probing Trump’s handling of classified documents for political reasons.

"If he wants to" is funny. How can he not want to? It's Trump!

I'm reading "It’s still Trump’s party and he’ll run if he wants to ... run if he wants to, run if he wants to/The former president is set to announce another White House bid. New polling shows he’s still the top dog, even if slightly weakened" (Politico).

Excerpt from the middle of Politico's musings:

But Trump has survived periods of uncertainty before, fortified by a veritable army of MAGA supporters. And privately, he’s been unmoved by the most recent critics, seeing the chorus as similar to the one he faced during his past White House runs and stint as president.

"Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, an auto shop owner who was a virtual unknown before August’s primary election, pulled off perhaps the most stunning political upset..."

"... in the country this year, winning a congressional seat in Southwest Washington that few saw as competitive. Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat, defeated Donald Trump-endorsed Republican Joe Kent on Saturday in Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, with roughly 50.5% of the vote."

The Seattle Times reports. 

A quote from Gluesenkamp Perez that's just about perfect: "We are moderate and we are people that work for a living. We are people that pay our taxes and want good schools and want a functioning society. We are tired of politicking and we are tired of extremists, and we just want to know that our kids are going to have a same or better shot at a good life as we did.... I am not an ideologue. I am not a show pony. I am here to work, and I live like the district does...."

Dave Chappelle hosted "SNL" last night. Here's the monologue.

There's a lot of talk about Kanye West. Chappelle takes a cagey position, neither attacking him nor supporting him: "I don't think Kanye is crazy.... He's possibly not well."

Then there's a long pause and an extended run-up to a big leap: "I've been to Hollywood." Pause. "I don't want y'all to get mad at me. I'm just telling you. I've been to Hollywood. This is just what I saw." Pause. "It's a lot of Jews." Pause. "Like a lot."

"But that doesn't mean anything." That's a setup. Punchline: "There's a lot of black people in Ferguson, Missouri. That doesn't mean they run the place."

It's not a crazy thing to think: "The Jews run show business." Pause. "But it's a crazy thing to say out loud." He said out loud. 

And that was the end of the Kanye and anti-Semitism portion of the monologue, very carefully written and delivered. That was halfway point, and he paused after saying the "crazy thing" out loud, and started talking about the midterm elections. Hershel Walker: "I don't want to speak bad of him — because he's black, but, um" — pause — "He's observably stupid."

Chappelle hears people saying the Trump Era is over, but he needs to explain something that he knows, because he lives in Ohio, "amongst the poor whites." Trump is loved. And the reason he is loved is because people have never seen anything like him: "an honest liar."

Control of the Senate will not depend on the Georgia runoff.

The Nevada race has gone to the Democrat.

That's a relief. It's good to be emerging from this period of uncertainty about the balance of power.

If the Republican had won in Nevada, we'd have a repeat of 2020, spending weeks obsessed with Georgia, dependent on Georgia.

I see that Georgia has moved up the date of the runoff election, so it is the first week of December now. After the 2020 election, the runoff was in January. That's better, but it's also much better to not have control of the Senate depend on a runoff in one state.

The Democrats are massively constrained after the 2022 election, if, as it seems, Republicans do take control of the House. It's unlikely that there will be another Supreme Court opening before 2024, and if there is, the Supreme Court will only be put into more of a balance — 5-4 instead of 6-3.

"Yes, Trumpy populism was halting and self-contradictory, but the variety that emerged in Republican circles after Mr. Trump left office was downright fake."

"Correctly perceiving working- and middle-class discontent with corporate power and economic insecurity, Republicans in 2022 tried to channel it into cultural grievances, ginning up outrage over 'woke' sensitivity trainings in the workplace, for instance. A much more effective way to check corporate power would actually be to empower workers — which is what unions do best. Instead, the right continued to pursue its old program of undermining the New Deal. Fake G.O.P. populism challenged 'woke capital' — companies that it believed had become overly politically correct — but didn’t dare touch the power of corporate America to coerce workers and consumers, or the power of private equity and hedge funds to hollow out the real economy, which employs workers for useful products and services — or used to, anyway." 

Writes Sohrab Ahmari in "Why the Red Wave Didn’t Materialize" (NYT).

WaPo headline: "Trump absorbs GOP losses, while DeSantis glows with landslide victory/Early returns suggested setbacks for the former president’s endorsed candidates, and several potential 2024 rivals appeared emboldened."

That says a lot.

The former president spent the final days of the campaign lashing out and even threatening Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose apparent interest in running against Trump has puzzled him, according to advisers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations.

The Florida governor didn’t return fire, other than to hold his own campaign event on Saturday, competing with a Trump rally in Miami and further irking the former president.

Come election night, however, it was DeSantis holding the ebullient victory party, having won reelection in a 20-point landslide, almost 15 points better than Trump’s 2020 margin in their shared home state.

At the party, DeSantis’s supporters chanted “Two more years!” — encouraging the governor to seek the presidency before finishing his second term.

Last night's biggest loser: Trump.

That's my hypothesis, glancing through the news reports in the middle of the night. I'll highlight evidence — beginning with this:

Tonight, the GOP GOVERNOR Candidates Who Refused To Say If They'd Have Certified Biden's 2020 Win In Their States:

❔Kari Lake, Arizona
❌ Tim Michels, Wisconsin
❌ Tudor Dixon, Michigan
❌ Doug Mastriano, PA
❌ Darren Bailey, Illinois
❌ Dan Cox, Maryland
❌ Lee Zeldin, NY

— Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) November 9, 2022

Kari Lake didn't win?! After all that buzz?

"How to the watch election results live on CNN, MSNBC, and elsewhere free without cable."

 FastCompany has the links I wanted to see.

"We’re not just disappointed. This is the end of democracy…. Democracy died tonight…. This was it. If we didn’t win tonight, the end of the U.S.A. as we know it just happened."

It's election day today, at long last.

The post title is something a disappointed voter said, in tears, in 2012, after the failure of the effort to recall the duly elected Governor of Wisconsin.

You can see video of the desolate man here, embedded in a post of mine from 2017. I used it in one of my 6 reflections on the Washington Post's new motto "Democracy Dies in Darkness."

I'm steeling myself for the emotionalism of the day. There will be winners and losers, but how desperately mournful will the losers be?

If you actually believed in democracy, you wouldn't assert that if you don't win, democracy has died... especially if you'd spent the last 2 years denouncing those who won't acknowledge the legitimacy of their own defeat.

"Mr. Trump’s approach, gleeful culture war combativeness atop core conservative principles, delivered both short-term policy wins..."

"... and long-sought victories for his party’s base, like tax cuts, a long procession of conservative federal judges, a Supreme Court majority that overturned Roe v. Wade, the American Embassy moved to Jerusalem. He also pleased the Republican right by giving the party a new focus on immigration and shifting its foreign policy away from wars and nation-building in the Middle East. The Republican Party’s strategy in 2022 has been to double down on the Trump approach. Its candidates for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania and Georgia, Herschel Walker and Mehmet Oz, are celebrities without political experience, as is Kari Lake, a former Phoenix area news anchor who is now the Republican nominee for governor of Arizona. Blake Masters... J.D. Vance.... The Republican Party [is]... set to elect a wave of right-wing candidates who will shape American politics in the years ahead with or without Mr. Trump. The Republicans, in short, are taking entrepreneurial risks and have the initiative....."

From "Republicans Are Doubling Down on Trumpism. It’s Going to Work," a NYT op-ed by Daniel McCarthy, the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review.

RCP's midterm prediction for the Senate.

Final weekend. @RealClearNews Senate map. RCP average for each race on left. Then factors in polling error from last three elections. Adjusted estimate on right. Bottom line: Predicts 54-46 GOP control. Experimental; GOP would be ecstatic if correct. https://t.co/wnUsin4aKB pic.twitter.com/DFRRXtfgsZ

— Byron York (@ByronYork) November 5, 2022

 

Compare FiveThirtyEight here. And betting odds here.

"If Wisconsin Democrats lose several low-budget state legislative contests here on Tuesday... it may not matter who wins the $114 million tossup contest for governor ..."

"... between Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, and Tim Michels, a Republican. Those northern seats would put Republicans in reach of veto-proof supermajorities that would render a Democratic governor functionally irrelevant.... The Republican leaders in the Wisconsin Legislature say they will bring back all 146 bills Mr. Evers has vetoed during his four years in office — measures on elections, school funding, pandemic mitigation efforts, policing, abortion and the state’s gun laws — if they win a supermajority or if Mr. Michels is elected."

From "Wisconsin Republicans Stand on the Verge of Total, Veto-Proof Power/In a 50-50 battleground state, Republicans are close to capturing supermajorities in the State Legislature that would render the Democratic governor irrelevant even if he wins re-election" (NYT).

The northern seats are "three counties in Wisconsin’s far northwest corner make up one of the last patches of rural America that have remained loyal to Democrats through the Obama and Trump years... Douglas, Bayfield and Ashland Counties."

"Republicans are so close to power that they can smell it. In Washington, the spoils are being preëmptively divvied up."

"There are lists of who gets what committee, and lots of reporting on whether, if, and when Republicans will seek vengeance by seeking to impeach President Biden; the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas; or others. One can only imagine what a Jim Jordan-chaired House Judiciary Committee would do.... The entire Republican ticket this fall, up and down the ballot, is filled with hundreds of election deniers.... There is no non-Trump faction of any significance in today’s G.O.P.... I have a bad case of election dread right now...."

Writes Susan B. Glasser in "I’ve Got a Bad Case of Election Dread/Whether or not there’s a red wave, it’s clear where this thing is going" (The New Yorker).

There wouldn't be so much dread if the Democrats hadn't spent the last 2 years using their narrow majority so aggressively. They set an example, and you're afraid to see that example followed. If the situation were reversed, wouldn't you be saying it's payback time? 

"Look for Trump to take credit for Republican victories across the board —including those he propelled with his endorsements, and even those he had nothing to do with."

From "Scoop: Trump team eyes Nov. 14 announcement" (Axios).