Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
“Democrats kept control of the Senate on Saturday… Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s victory in Nevada gave Democrats the 50 seats they needed to keep the Senate… The fate of the House was still uncertain.” AP News
Here’s our prior coverage of the election results. The Flip Side
The left is relieved by the results.
In Nevada, “A defense of abortion rights, promises to go after corporations taking advantage of high inflation, and a pitch for policies to make life more affordable were the key to getting votes out among the Democratic base, while also reminding undecided, disenchanted, or disengaged voters of her work during the pandemic to keep businesses afloat and of her advocating for discounts to health insurance during layoffs. [Cortez Masto’s] ties to law enforcement and a ‘tough on crime’ approach during her two terms as Nevada attorney general also boosted her moderate image.”
Christian Paz, Vox
“I suspect one reason Republicans weren’t better able to weaponize inflation is that the post-materialist right is too muddled in its thinking on economic policy to have converged on a clear message. Are Republicans the party of spending more or of spending less? Yes, they are. Do Republicans believe the prices Americans are paying are too high or, as their vows to repeal Medicare drug negotiation and Obamacare subsidies suggest, too low? Yes. Is the economy running too hot because the government has pumped in too much money or does it need yet more support in the form of full extension of the Trump tax cuts? Absolutely…
“Voters are pretty good at sensing what parties and politicians actually care about. Inflation may be a problem, but Republicans never credibly presented themselves as a solution. Today’s Republican Party is obsessed with critical race theory and whether Dr. Seuss is being canceled. It is not obsessed with economic growth and health care policy.”
Ezra Klein, New York Times
NYC Mayor Eric Adams writes, “Despite an overall better-than-expected showing for Democrats on Tuesday, working people continued the long trend of voting more often for Republican candidates… The Republican Party asks the right questions even as they supply the wrong answers. Democrats have the right answers, but the wrong attitude…
“New York is the safest big city in America, but this statistic means nothing to a mother mourning a child lost to gun violence. We might have nearly two jobs available for every American who is unemployed, but that doesn’t help the person laid off from the only job they’ve ever had…
“We’re not here to tell people how to feel. We are here to show people they are being heard. The people – working people – are our north star. Their priorities must be our priorities. Their values must be respected. Their voices must be heard.”
Eric Adams, USA Today
“Biden has been consistently underestimated… After defeating a huge slate of younger and more exciting candidates in the 2020 Democratic primaries, Biden went on to defeat the incumbent president, Donald Trump. This was not a trivial accomplishment. Since World War II, most presidents have successfully won reelection…
“Despite a 50-50 split in the Senate… [Biden was] able to move a formidable legislative agenda through Congress, overcoming fierce Republican opposition and even winning a few GOP votes along the way. The American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act stand up as a historic trifecta – a legislative track record arguably more significant than any that we have seen since President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society… The midterms make clear that Biden is a much stronger president than he is often given credit for.”
Julian Zelizer, CNN
The right is disappointed by the results.
The right is disappointed by the results.
“In states with strong leaders and good candidates at the top of the ticket, Republicans did quite well… Florida is obviously Exhibit A for this. And New York could be thought of as Exhibit B. For although Rep. Lee Zeldin (R) lost his race for governor there, he lost by such an unusually small margin that he probably pulled three or four Republican U.S. House candidates over the finish line… In states where Trump was heavily involved, such as Pennsylvania, where he endorsed an idiot for governor and an underperforming daytime television celebrity for Senate, Republicans got clobbered.”
David Freddoso, Washington Examiner
Some argue, “Elections, especially swing-state elections, are about turnout. A Republican Party that wants to win needs to refocus on this fact…
“The GOP’s new populist messaging was undone on the campaign trail by a large-scale return to pre-Trump form… [Dr. Oz] pitched himself as a ‘small-government Republican’ and (somehow, miraculously) lost a state whose rural and blue-collar areas brought Trump to victory in 2016. Plenty of other candidates this cycle, for all the fretting about too much MAGA, fell back on warmed-over libertarianism…
“Democrats, meanwhile, have actually offered something to their base. In the months before the election, President Biden finally made moves towards fulfilling the campaign promise of transferring student debt away from borrowers. Somebody in his inner circle understood who his most important voters were: white millennials with college degrees. It was a blatant ploy, and the merits of the policy are irrelevant. What matters is that voters under 30 broke blue by huge margins in every important race, and they showed up.”
Declan Leary, American Conservative
Regarding the election process, “California [had] counted just 56% of the vote three days after polls closed. This is not new for California either. In 2018, NBC News did not declare a winner in California’s competitive 21st Congressional District until Dec. 6, a full month after Election Day on Nov. 6. In 2020, the Associated Press didn’t declare a winner until 24 days after Election Day…
“Florida, with a population of over 21 million people in two different time zones, is able to count all of its votes within hours of the polls closing. California has 39 million people, sure, but that doesn’t justify taking nearly a month to count votes.”
Zachary Faria, Washington Examiner
“When the counting stops, there will be somewhere around 4 million to 5 million more votes cast for Republican candidates than for Democratic candidates. That fact is of course immaterial to the composition of the House and the Senate, but it is highly relevant to assessing the strength of the conservative movement and the salience of conservative issues. Republicans won every age group over 30…
“Republicans made substantial gains with minorities. This year the GOP won around 40% of the Hispanic vote (with a lot of variation among geographies and specific demographic groups) and 13-14% of the black vote. Asians, another diverse group, are also moving toward the GOP, with around 40% voting Republican this year. Those numbers represent significant gains, but we still have a lot of upside… We conservatives should get over our disappointment and rededicate ourselves to the long struggle that is yet to come.”
John Hinderaker, Power Line Blog
