A No Nightmare Government, for Now
A Good Night for Democracy, Not So Good for Getting Things Done in Congress
Last night didn’t turn out to be a red tsunami. In fact, it’s shaping up as the best midterm cycle for an incumbent president's party since the post-9/11 contest of 2002. Democrats over-performed most polls and expectations in many key races.
There are lots of votes to be counted, so today I’ll be looking at the results from 20,000 feet.
Two obvious takeaways, nationally:
Hardcore nutters, generally speaking, didn’t win. We will not be going into 2024 with election deniers as Secretary of State in any of the six core presidential background states.
The drumbeat of predictive stories in mainstream media based on GOP-leaning polling gives witness to the fact that private/corporate ownership of the media has now become fundamentally incompatible with democracy.
Here’s Jordan Zakarin at Progress Report:
Once again, the political media spent the final two months of the election filtering every story through flawed poll numbers, creating a warped reality that could have become a self-fulfilling prophecy. There has to be a point at which editors and reporters take a step back and reconsider the extent to which they focus on polling numbers to drive their election coverage.
Even when the polls are accurate, exhaustively reporting on them does nothing to educate the electorate about the issues and candidates vying for their vote. If anything, the focus on numbers obscures the flaws of extremists, racists, and serial abusers running for office. There’s no reason to continue the poll-centric campaign coverage.
Politico’s influence on punditry was/is a prime example of this disservice to the public. Even as the results have failed to match up with their expectations of a big night for the GOP, they’ve deflected with a narrative about how Trump and Biden “squelched the red wave.”
Locally, Republicans made gains in a couple of South Bay mayoral contests. My initial take is that these races were mostly about Democrats losing, rather than any shift to the right by the electorate.
Speaking of Democrats losing, Mike Schaefer’s victory for State Board of Equalization represents the worst of what the party (doesn’t) stand for.
Measures B (trash pick up) & C (Midway height limit) are too close to call. Advocates for labor notched a solid win for D, and the lop-sided victory for H—> oops, should be prop U… (SDUSD) means –maybe– we’ll see some affordable housing built for teachers.
The California ballot propositions look to have ended up as predicted. The loss of both gambling measures (27 took a real pounding) give hope to the notion that elections can’t always be bought. I’ll go one step further and say this gambling thing ain’t over unless some Democrats in Sacramento grow backbones and negotiate a solution between all the warring factions.
I’ll have a more detailed analysis of the election results in the days to come.
****
Email me at: WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com